As you know, I love your posts, but I disagree that these things are merely a distraction. On the contrary, I think that they can have some very positive benefits.
I love your posts too Forest, and post from many many others in this forums. Like Walt, Mike, Tennis tom, Eric Herbie, Stev O, Alan Gordon... I have learn more and more from each of you each time I come here.
We think because I came from the East, I exposed to Eastern culture and way of thinking and also because I have not master the English language that is why we think different and we don't understand each other fully. I do not want people to think that meditation, tapping, journaling is not good. I hope to be able to explain my thinking better this time. If you read many of my posts here and at tmshelp forum, I was a big proponent of meditation. I'm a student of the zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and Doctor Herbert Benson, the author of the book "the Relaxation Respond". I have read much about the health benefit of meditation. Doctor Ornish used it in his program to help patient of heart disease get better. I practice meditation myself as a life long student of the Buddha. The same with Journaling and tapping. I have read much about them and know lots of people who benefit from them. Despite all that I still think when it come to dealing with tms they are distraction. Now don't get me wrong yet. The different between you, Mike, and I are probably just language or meaning of the word distraction. In the West, when it come to fighting mind body illness, the words distraction and Placebo have a negative value. People think it mean temporary, it is not a solution, not permanent, not helpful, not REAL. Doctors and healers in the East often harvest the power of distraction and placebo effect to treat their patients. They know their patient's ill are brought on by toxic, negative thoughts. Those thoughts are "stuck" and come on automatically somehow. So save them healers have to find ways to "distract" them somehow. And they often prescribed meditations, praying sessions, focus relaxation, spend time on a farm or in a temple ... They use placebo like giving "magic" herbs potions, acupuncture, detox praying ritual... and many more that I don't know how to call it in English.
So to me, distraction and placebo is not negative if we know how to use it, know how to harvest its power. The only one in the West I know of that promoting Placebo effect is doctor Lissa Rankin (google her) I love her book.
The reason I think Meditation, journaling, and tapping are distraction is because I don't think it will cure tms. It will help but it will not cure. My Eastern way of thinking is tms/anxiety exist because we have wrong belief. We think our body is defect. We think our symptoms are incurable. Those method help calm our mind and distract our mind, but they don't help us see the truth. And the truth is there is nothing wrong with our body. We have tms because our body function exactly the way it was designed to function. We put trash in, we get trash out. We put toxic, negative thoughts in our mind we get tms. We just couldn't see the truth. we couldn't see that our body is very normal. I work the way evolution (or the creator) design our body to work. So to over come tms, mind body illness we have to be able to see the truth, to recognize that we are healthy and normal.
Those method mention above don't help us see the truth. Using them we will calm down, we will be less tense, we will benefit, but it will be very difficult to be truly cure. In few case it, people using those method got lucky. Their symptoms lesson, their stress reduce, and it click for them: "hey, I was able to get better using these methods. Then my body probably is not defect. Because if it was structural or pathological then the pain shouldn't reduce even if I meditate or tapping." When they realize that they loose their fear and were able to change their belief. They now believe that there is nothing wrong with their body and go on living their life and cured.
I'm sorry for the long talk and broken English. I normally try to write better but I don't have much time today to review and edit my post. The point I am trying to make is when I said those method are just distraction I don't mean it in a negative way. They are helpful (if you do it correctly and devote enough time to it). It is just my own humble opinion that they won't cure tms until you can able to realize that there is nothing wrong with your body. It is just your belief that need to fix.
Thanks guys. This is a very interesting discussion. I am very thankful you are all very nice and professional in your discussion. We can agree to disagree without hating each others.
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