I'm completely new, just signed up, but a friend suggested TMS might be related to my panic attacks. I've only been looking at it a couple hours, but have already sent links to three people (two that have the classic back pain issues) along with two youtube interviews. I'm mostly house bound (as in even being outside during the day evokes severe anxiety) and have hopes that this might help me get closer to the 'normal' self that used to be a professional consultant not even 5 years ago.
Welcome to our community, Buckeye! I love your username.
It looks like you've already responded to a thread about panic attacks, so I hope you are getting good information. I think you'll find a really terrific group here, who can relate to your struggles and support you in your journey.
Edit: here is Buckeye's introductory post:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/anxiety-panic-more-fun.7036/
Anyway, thank you Forrest for approving my account. You might put a message at the front that says there is manual approval so people don't loose hope when they're not automatically approved. I understand why you do it. No problems there.
I'll add it to my list. My hope is to add a software package that automatically blocks memberships from the current three teams of spammers so that they give up more quickly (
the three teams are from the Phillipines, Pakistan, and India). Once we do that, we can turn off manual approval entirely. This would be great because some people may not make an account until they are ready to post, and I don't want to lose those people to frustration.
The great news that I have is that I had a great conversation with
@Ellen yesterday about how she could help out with the nonprofit. Her support will allow us to move forward with a new project that I am referring to as "easy moderation." The "Easy Moderators" will help us with the moderation tasks that are relatively easy and non-stressful.
This is crucial for the long term-growth of our nonprofit. Eventually I hope the organization will grow to the point where it can win grants and hire staff. In the meantime, though, we are a volunteer organization, so the easiest way to grow is by adding members to the team. Right now we don't know how to do that very well, but the Easy Moderators program will help us to learn more about it. Even once we do grow to the point where we can hire staff, having a team of committed and experience volunteers will help our financial and human resources go far further. Our main programs - a wiki and a forum - are perfectly designed for volunteers to become involved with, and every nonprofit must safeguard it's money and make sure it goes as far as possible. This is, of course, especially true in this current environment where very few people are interested in psychosomatic medicine.
The tentative name, "Easy Moderator," was chosen because the vast majority of our most committed, responsible, and helpful members are very busy and don't think of themselves as "computer people."
I'm very grateful for every volunteer's help, and the goal of this program is to give people a way to help out that won't be be a big drain on their time or be overwhelming. The hardest part of being an Easy Moderator will be keeping up with what is going on on the forum, so the ideal person will be someone who is profession and responsible and keeps up to date with the forum already. I'll hopefully be making an official announcement in the next several weeks, though it may take months to roll the entire program out. I just though I'd make a quick "soft announcement" now to the core members who are keeping up with this thread.
Many thanks to Ellen, who has demonstrated her compassion, care, and good judgment over hundreds of posts in the last several years. I think she will be an ideal moderator and am so very happy to have her as a friend and, now, colleague!
If you'd like to become an Easy Moderator or volunteer in some way, please contact me like Ellen did, and I will try to help you come up with a way of helping out that works with your needs and schedule.
If not, however, there are many other informal ways to help out around the community. I was up until 2:00 AM last night configuring our new Linux server. I've been working on it for the last two weeks and hope to roll it out this weekend (if I do my job well, no one will notice the change, except for a brief period when you can't post, most likely at around midnight EST tonight). Sadly, of necessity, my emails are becoming more businesslike and my posts aren't as frequent as I'd like. We are often congratulated for being an incredibly warm and helpful community, and over the last several years, I have come to rely on you for that. I am continually amazed at how good people here are at listening to others (most are better than me!), understanding the other person's needs, and then helping them based on their own experience.
So I guess we are a big team. Everyone has different roles and finds ways to contribute that work for them. Whatever your role is, whether it is unregistered lurker or formal volunteer, thank you for your participating in our community! You are the ones that make this place worth working for.
