Recent content by AndrewMillerMFT

Sure, sometimes, focusing on symptoms becomes a way for clients to not engage in activities or relationships in their lives that would bring on the emotional reactions they struggle to tolerate. It becomes a vicious cycle. We need to learn to tolerate emotions that cause the symptoms but the...

Sometimes, checking symptoms incessantly itself becomes like a symptom. A way to avoid the emotional things of our life. If you want to try a method like Alan Gordon's (an excellent method!), note what he says about how to engage in the symptoms with a sense of lightness and not be...

Glad to here, ARCU! Good luck on your journey.

Hi John, when we talk about fear relating to PPD/TMS, we're really talking about two things. Fear of our symptoms, fear of exacerbating them and fear as an emotion about being in danger, being at risk of something being taken from you or threatened in a specific way. These are very different...

Hi John, Another term for "extinction burst" is "superego kickback." If you end up reading Mindbody Prescription you'll learn more about the Superego. Basically, it's that part of ourselves that feels guilt over things we've done... real or IMAGINED. The imagined part is important. When we...

Sounds powerful, @Marytabby . I'll be curious to see how you feel at the end of the month. Good luck on the transition!

Hello all, I wanted to share again a technique that has been quite helpful to many people I've worked with in the TMS community and hope that it's an added weapon in your arsenal to not just combat TMS but understand it as well. My hope is that this technique can become a staple of the growing...

Hi TG957, So happy to hear you're working with a TMS therapist. It can be really helpful. We're like train conductors who help you find the right track to go down! One thing that helps with emotions, exploring emotions, especially if we haven't felt or noticed them in awhile is to try to...

Such great responses! "Traumatic" is a problematic word. In popular culture, we use it to describe what we in the psychology field call "Big T's" - car accidents, deaths, natural disasters, etc... But trauma is also made up of "Little T's" which, when accumulated can have a far greater...

tgirl, It's quite natural to get discouraged when we read something that doesn't align exactly with our symptom patterns. It's easy for that doubt to creep in leading us to think that this may not be TMS and something else. Generally speaking, this is part of the process, many TMS clients...

@eskimoeskimo, Obsessional thinking can also be another form of TMS. It's a somewhat unique form of anxiety and can easily become part of the symptom imperative. I would encourage you to use any techniques you may be using when you notice other TMS sxs (like thinking emotional, talking to...

Hi Ian, jrid32 has a great point. May I also say that it is not uncommon to have flare ups. Unfortunately, when flare-ups arise we can have two less than fully helpful reactions to them: We can quickly get scared and begin to let doubt creep in about the TMS diagnosis. This would be a good...

Hi Leslie, I will share that I had my own bought with urinary urgency. I run many groups at treatment centers and invariably I will use the restroom prior to group but if it's not exactly prior to group I will get a sense of urinary urgency right as group is about to start up. When I began to...

Hello all, with the advent of the new year I thought I would comment/repost this in case anyone wanted to experiment and try this journaling technique. Best of luck to you all in your TMS journey in this coming year! Andrew