Recent content by cafe_bustelo

Watching football at a pub seems like a great way to challenge this conditioning, though something that's helped me with similar things is to always have an out; i.e. be fully comfortable with excusing myself from the situation so I never feel trapped or like I have to be in an uncomfortable...

So great to hear @Rabscuttle !

I will second the suggestion to use the Pain Reprocessing Therapy directory; I found a local practitioner who is a PT who trained in PRT recently and our sessions were amazingly covered by my insurance since they qualified as physical therapy technically. I think this situation is still uncommon...

Thank you - same to you. I do want to be transparent that I’m still recovering (today I’m in a flare for instance) and that it’s not been perfectly linear for me.

I read the Way Out, which I liked and started to persuade me that my issues were not physical, but didn’t help me that much on its own. Mindbody Prescription and the Great Pain Deception by Steve Ozanich were the next ones I read and found immensely helpful in strengthening my belief in the TMS...

Constant at first, then intermittent. It was a weird mix of provoked and unprovoked - often just bending over would flare me up for hours or the rest of the day when I was in the worst of it. I had all different kinds of sensations that included soreness for sure. But as you’ll find with TMS the...

My TMS also began with trauma to a sensitive area during intimacy. I'm male, so my symptoms are different, but I was also scared for a long time about nerve damage/irritation/sensitization as I had crazy sensations and sensitive areas all throughout my pelvic region. The best way for me to...

For me it was gradual over a period of weeks/months. But within that period of time there were a few rip off the band aid instances of just committing to going for a run, biking, swimming, playing a game of tennis, where I just said I want to do this and I’m not scared of the symptoms if they...

It will change! The key is what you said: it’s the TMS knowledge plus a gradual return to life and normal activity.

It may take another repetition, it may take 10 or 15 (but probably not that much), but soon with continued exposure you'll start to not experience the symptoms so strongly with these conditioned triggers. Social events were a huge trigger for me and it's taken me a little while, but I'm finally...

You don't actually know that. Instead of fixating on the people who have stopped posting (which actually doesn't mean anything about whether or not they recovered), why not spend your time with the overwhelming number of success stories that you can find nowadays? A big part of my recovery in...

Wow, that is an amazing bit of advice. Totally resonates with me; I have always very much lived in my head and didn't know it was possible to do otherwise, I thought that's just how I am. I am trying to see it as a blessing (or fortunate at least) that I am going through this now, relatively...

I've been writing these down here and there. Here are a few: "For years I had been unhappy, consciously & deliberately... I isolated myself more & more, undertook less & less & lent myself to a crescendo of disparagement of others & myself. But in all that there was nothing that struck me as...

Ha, you beat me to it @Ellen , I totally agree.