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Thread:
Overcoming conditioned response
"Inaccurate thinking" thinking means many things, such as, correlating the wrong causes with the wrong effects. Sally Ann just gave a great example that I hope everyone pays close attention to. The rides in the car were not the cause of her symptoms. She corrected her thinking by understanding that the car wasn't causing her pain. Her experience proves Dr. McKenzie's Two-Trauma Mechanism correct again. The brain reverts back to the earlier period and ignites the same neurotransmitters that were firing when she was a child, recreating the same experience.

The most important thing she said was that it was the "fearful expectations." This is being proven in every placebo trial out there. The expectations are what happens, and what you become. So if you inaccurately think that surgery will help you, or that you will be harmed by picking something up, or that herniated discs or car rides hurt your body, then they will. Your expectations come from your thinking. If your thinking is inaccurate then your body will expect the wrong thing and respond to the error.

Sally Ann was also correct in that not all conditioned responses are from traumatic experience. Some of them are from pleasurable experience, even peace. This is why guided imagery helps so much, and is not utilized enough. The mindbody has no idea if the event is real or not, it only reacts according to the thoughts that it receives, and then creates the appropriate neuropeptide chain to recreate the same experience. You can imagine a loved one dying and you will cry, even if it never happened. You can imagine a sexual experience and get aroused, even though it never happened. You can imagine being in a car as a child and getting tense even if you are an adult.

Thinking creates the body's response. If you think that sitting causes back pain then it does. If you think that a pain cream or EFT helps with your pain then it will. But these things only work because of your expectations, which is why many of these things don't do anything for other people. They don't expect anything, or believe.

The only thing that works is the power of belief. What you deeply believe will eventually become. If you think your body is broken and needs fixed then it is. If you think the next ritual will help you then it will. But Dr. Sarno came along and proved that the body is ok, and that it is responding to the emotions and not to the things other physicians were pointing to, they had created inaccurate thinking in everyone. And everyone fell for it.

So inaccurate thinking is the first link in the chain of disaster because the body responds to the thoughts. In the beginning was the word. Nothing moves without words except for impulses. So make your words count. And of course, the common TMSer is filled with doubt, low self esteem and negative thinking, so you can imagine why the body is responding in the manner that it is.

Get to the thinking, and make it accurate. The only way to do that is through education. Dr. Sarno pioneered a great process, and it begins with "informing the patient on what is truly going on." Awareness will heal you, as Sally Ann kindly explained here when she said, "I realized that as a child family car journeys were very stressful, as my father would have angry physical outbursts. I spent every car journey in a 'fearful frozen expectation'. This was an important 'discovery' for me in letting go of the stress messages my brain was sending my body and inviting a new sense of relaxation and experience."

Her awareness of what was truly happening was a discovery that allowed her to relax and to gain a new experience. Her thinking changed.

If your thinking is still inaccurate, ie, believing that running is bad for you, or that you may be hurting yourself with a renewed physical exertion, then your body will respond with greater pain. The false thinking will set you back, just like faulty medical advice is making us worse.

I hope that makes sense regarding accurate thinking. I may have not been thinking accurately when I wrote this.

Steve