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Wow! I really enjoy reading your prompt Forest, and the responses above. I feel like my process is implicitly understood on may levels, and I am grateful for the support here.

I am about 18 months into my recovery from severe foot pain.

My learning/relearning right now is around “thinking psychologically.” I think this is the beginning of the process and the end too. It is so fundamental. And a long-term project for me, which has revealed deeper and deeper layers.

This resonates with me:

There is one thing to avoid. We don't want to take the same obsessional tendencies that got us in trouble in the first place and turn those to a different process.

Let me explain. I notice an uncomfortable or “stiff” sensation in my feet and all the thinking patterns from my long days of pain emerge--almost unconsciously—I want to recoil, delay movement, reduce flexion, reduce weighting on the foot. All of this is very subtle. I'm hiking vigorously up a hill, but these patterns are activated just below the surface. These processes activate and they are taken for granted at a semi-conscious level. In my mind, subtle fears arise that the many “physical diagnoses” doctors assigned my pain may actually be correct. I entertain fears of more pain. All these activities arise together as a sort of “script” which seems to have a life of its own. The discussions on “nerve pathways” resonates with me here, both in the body, and in the brain.

Thinking psychologically has many levels. I remind myself that as my foot pain dropped off, I started getting some migraines, and then this summer I saw that those were TMS and they went away. My old whiplash pain, from two accidents, lingering for 10 years, is gone all by itself, without working on it... ”Sarno is right, and that is why I am hiking up a hill instead of nursing scars from nerve surgery.” I notice that when the discomfort arises, I inquire about what kind of pressure I feel I am under, both from myself and from others.

But deeper, I can feel compassion for the mind-body suffering that I have endured. With my compassion also comes a sort of matter-of-fact appreciation for this TM syndrome. It just is. It is almost universal in humans. It doesn't make me wrong. That said, what kind of action can I take? What do I know works? What works is seeing the syndrome in its truth, and how my conditioned patterns of thought fuel that syndrome.

This is growth for me, to have compassion for my suffering, rather than beating myself up for suffering, or catastrophizing, pouring more fear onto my fear. This approach, of observing the syndrome get activated, and dealing with it directly by witnessing and not going along with it, and not beating myself up for having it, is a notable growth for me. This easeful approach is more naturally at hand. It addresses fears too: I remind myself, and understand that I can use the techniques that cured me, if pain arises.

With this, the thinking patterns that I was dealing with around “maintaining a perfect cure” are softening. This is a relief. 12 months ago I was more run by beliefs that I shouldn't have any stiffness or pain, or believing that I am a failure for still having some symptoms. I was more caught in believing my super ego ideals about what my experience “should be” if I was “more perfect” or “less wrong.” I see this loosening around the inner critic, and loosening of constricted beliefs about who I have to be in order to be “safe” is part of the grace of the TMS. The softening is hard-won, coming from witnessing these difficult patterns. The world of a constricted suffering Andy, in physical pain and psychological pain is not gone. It is a dimension of experience that can arise and subside, and that's OK. The less I worry about it, the more quickly this suffering subsides. This level of acceptance is important to me now, and part of a deeper learning about “thinking psychologically.”