Bookmark

Hi Danielle,

Scars do run deep but don’t think that you can’t overcome them. The unconscious doesn’t understand time; it doesn’t work on a linear scale. Something that hurt you deeply when you were a child, or at anytime, stays in you like it happened a few moments ago. You learn to live with it, or around it, by adding layers to your persona, and by giving yourself more physical symptoms. Sometimes you need to express or recognize and face that pain, and sometimes you need to let go and forgive what was. Neither is easy, but it’s part of the personal growth or transformational process of midlife where you move from ego development to ego transcendence.

However—you don’t always have to do these things to heal from TMS. It is healthy to heal your past and is often recommended. With TMS healing all you’re doing is changing how your brain reacts to symptoms. As the good doctor said, “It’s simple…and it isn’t.”

I know that Reichian is some form of mindbody healing and that it attempts to unite mind and body through mindfulness. And if your therapist is an expert in somaticizing then that sounds like a good starting point. But I don’t know much about it beyond that so I’m not comfortable handing out advice. Dr. Zafirides or Alan Gordon would be better to ask about how effective it would be in TMS healing. I’m not sure about controlled kicking, and screaming. Sometimes you can more deeply condition yourself to act a certain way. Venting is conditioning. And you say that after 2 years your brain is “basically untouched.” TMS healing takes time but there should be some progress after 2 years. Deeper habits may not be changing; you may just be touching the surface with each session and falling back with no net gain. This could be why you’re reverting back after each session. But again, I don’t have that type of knowledge, best ask Dr. Z or Alan G., Si?


I don’t know how far you’ve read in my book but I spoke of something called psycho-archeology. This is the nit-picking of your life’s details over and over, digging up your pain, never releasing it, never allowing for the pain to just fade away. This could be the cycle you’re in. If it were me, I wouldn’t look to cry each time I went into therapy, my goal would be to heal (look at that example of programmed dreams that psychiatrist Clancy McKenzie gave me on page 307). If healing involves crying sometimes then by all means, but healing may just come from greater insight…those tiny ‘ah has’ that piece together your past, how you got here, and what is necessitating your symptoms now. It is more important to understand WHY you are repressing something than WHAT you are repressing. What necessitates you to repress deep and powerful thoughts and emotions? That answer is because you were brought up in an environment that either wouldn’t allow for expression of fear and anger, or because you never learned how. No matter the “why,” those emotions are too powerful, too sad, or too threatening to face and you don’t know how to face them today. And since you can’t express them or don’t have anyone to express them to, you bury them in your body to cope through each day, to appear “as normal”—whatever normal is--to continue on in life. Remember, Carl Jung said, “show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” He knew the persona was there to cover some deep issues in everyone who lives. We all have our issues, they are part of the human condition. Or as the good doctor would say, “it is universal.”

I can see the mechanism so clearly. I used to think that I wished I had easy answers for people. But not so much anymore. I now believe suffering has a greater purpose. Did you read my Chapter 25 yet?

I don’t know why your Reichmologist would tell you that your case may be worse than others? That sounds a bit self-defeating and plays right into the strategy of the TMS-brain; to keep you thinking you are unfixable. I wish I had the answers for you but I’m no expert, and when it comes to the brain even professionals are often dumbfounded. All they have to go on is cause and effect, a posteriori.

I’ve worked with thousands of TMSers over the past 11 years with their TMS and they are always so insightful about their lives, just like you are, and how well you’ve thought through how you’re healing. But it isn’t surprising since those who come to open their minds to TMS are astute and insightful people to even open up to the concept. Sometimes I think this acute awareness is part of what gets them into emotional chaos but it is also the trait that pulls them out. So be of great cheer. You can heal and you will heal if you are patient, and you remain persistent. I have never seen TMS healing fail, that is, in people who stick to it. I see people try and quit after a few weeks, and then say it failed, but it did not, they failed it—it didn’t fail them. We own our lives and our health is a report card on the strength of our relationships, past and present.

I see a second email where you’ve just described your neck pain and how it released for a bit, but did you notice what you said before that?

There ya go. This is TMS healing, and that comes from little TMS insights. Did you notice how I kept saying that healing for me was like piecing a puzzle together? Month by month I kept getting those little insights, and most of those came from the good doctor. I kept soaking up everything he said or recently published. Back then there wasn’t this entire movement of TMS healing and so we grasped at straws hoping that more details would come out. The final piece of the healing puzzle for me was the role of anger. I never felt it, and so didn’t think I had an anger problem. I am controlled and serene, which is the problem. If you have symptoms then you have a temper, if you don’t feel that anger/rage then that’s the problem—because you should!

As far as you actively being involved in your therapy sessions I would say yes, of course. I believe in humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers, et. al.. Client Centered healing. I learn best by the Socratic Method, and we tend to heal according to how we learn. And of course we know that learning is the key to healing—it is the penicillin to this disorder.

I hope you have hope because without hope we are lost. The human spirit is immutable, just believe in yourself and your abilities and know that you have much greater control over your life than you currently think you do. Don’t wait for healing to be handed on a silver platter, take personal charge. Bad health isn’t something that just happens to us. There are many reasons for our current health state, many deeply buried—and our bodies react accordingly.

Good luck Danielle, I will check back later to see how you’re doing. People are just now finishing my book and the emails are rolling in rapidly.

Steve Ozanich