Recent content by Ollin

For me this initial sensitizing event (as it turned out a perceived injury, but only after many months of investigations by which time the pain developed its own life) was traumatic enough to keep me stuck in doubt, catastrophizing, fear of movement, not to mention feeling like a failure and...

Thanks for sharing, I believe that your experience is very common to those dealing with TMS, and you certainly have a lot of insight into how your activities affect your symptoms. You are working on preventing set-backs (or flare-ups), which is an essential part of any pain recovery program...

I can't see if this was advertised here before but AVAIYA is doing an Overcoming Chronic Pain summit starting on 21 Jan, and a lot of the content is about mind-body connection. Check it out: https://www.avaiya.com/chronic-pain/clip1/ (Join Us For The Free Overcoming Chronic Pain Masterclass)

I'm going over the program again, to go deeper and discover what I missed the first time. In the posts people talk about there being some video clip on somatic tracking, but I don't see it anywhere on this or past version of this page...

Whenever i get intense new pains i reassure myself that it's just TMS biting back and probably extinction bursts. The problem is this was happening for over five years and if anything the pain got progressively worse spreading to other areas. So this idea is no longer giving me hope. Maybe it...

Thanks Alan. Very important point. Since my pain has been getting worse I stopped doing some yoga poses when i noticed that they cause me pain. But then i decided to challenge this belief and to my great surprise when i did them slowly and mindfully the pain was actually minimal or none. I...

This is so true. When I'm by myself i can get pretty motivated by small successes from trials and errors and really feel good about myself. But then it gets all ruined after one comparison with someone else's achievement. I'm struggling a lot with self validation and confidence because of my TMS...

We are all going to die. In a few decades your current worries won't matter. Just make the best of life and enjoy because it's never perfect anyway... I can't believe I said this. Normally I'm a basket of worries. . But I'm having a better day than yesterday so right here right now I feel OK...

I am traveling so I fell behind with the program but still read whenever i can. Since my symptoms got worse about 1.5 years ago I find that slowing down my life helps keep anxiety under control. I also move slower and feel that this is exactly what my body craves - relaxed mindful movement. I...

I soooo relate to this! I also feel like a failure for having this pain and not able to keep up with my partner socially and fitness-wise. Type B personality is probably even more damaging personality than A because we use the stick to motivate ourselves. Type As are highly driven and...

Glad to know we don't have to be 100% certain. While I strongly believe the roots of my pain are psychological (i.e. no injury or structural defect), but then... being in pain for a long time changes our movement patterns which can result in muscular imbalances and trigger points, but on...

Ha, you're right that we replaced some stresses with other as we moved from tribal societies to global civilization. In the past we had more of the external dangers from the environment, but increasingly people were able to defend themselves by predicting weather, improving weapons against...

Well, that makes perfect sense: as a civilization disease, we didn't have enough time to develop natural protection from TMS.

Thank you Alan - it's a real blessing to have you here and designing this course - I'm sure I'll learn a lot. There's just something that I thought I understood, but now realized it doesn't really sit well in my mind - and can perhaps block my recovery... At the risk of being a pain (pun...