Alan Gordon TMS Recovery Program coming - Help needed!

[Forest]

Hi Everyone, I have some great news! Alan Gordon, LCSW, has created a free TMS Recovery program for the online TMS community. For those who don't know, Alan is a TMS Therapist whose visits to our TMS Webinars have helped a lot of people and have been immensely popular.

He has been working on the program for about a year, and it ties together many of the themes from his webinars and presents important skills that we can use in our healing.

I am tremendously grateful to Alan for contributing the program to the nonprofit, and want to make sure that our community can provide the best social support for the program that we can. I'm looking for some people to help with this. I'm hoping that a couple of us can start up a terrific discussion about the recovery program here on the boardHow

We have a tremendously smart and supportive community. Whenever I read a book, I find it fascinating to read what other people think of it. For example, does it accord with your experience? What twists have you made on the program that have helped you apply it? What has helped the most?

So, anyway, I'm terribly excited about posting the problem. If anyone would be willing to help out, just let me know!

F

 

[Stella]

Count me in...

 

[Forest]

Thanks, Stella, you're the best!

 

[Forest]

I've also sent the preview link to the three other cohosts of the call-in discussion group, so they can help out, too. There won't be much to it, really, as we already have such a wonderful and supportive culture... Just keep doing what you always do.

Anyone else want to join? We'll keep adding people for the remainder of the week.

 

[Pandagirl]

I would love to help!!!

 

[Forest]

Thanks so much! At this point, our goal is just to start some interesting discussions so that people who are reading the program can see other people's ideas about what has helped them apply the program and what they have struggled with. That's what we all want to see, right? So, just whenever you get a chance, read through the program and share your thoughts in the special subforum, perhaps in the sticky thread at the top.
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/forums/alan-gordon-tms-recovery-program.31/

 

[plum]

Forest, this is wonderful. Will it be enough to embrace this help organically? As in, I'm a healing-in-progress, and such-and-such makes my petals wiggle, thoughts from the field? Or were you more interested in people who have recovered?

Gorgeous day, brimming with sunshine here. Hope the golden orb smiles as graciously on you.

 

[Forest]

There are not any real requirements to posting about the program. Any comment is a good comment. If someone has recovered and wants to discuss how it relates to their own experience great, but we would also love to have thoughts from the field.

The new subforum was made to give people working through the program a place to receive feedback and discuss what they have learned from it. You and everyone are more than welcome to check out both the program and forum at http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/forums/alan-gordon-tms-recovery-program.31/ .

It is equally sunny and all around wonderful here in New England

 

[G.R.]

Forest,
I be more than happy to help. I just read through Alan's recovery program and make comments. Is that how we can be helpful?
Also, where does one post the comments?

I am so happy to help.
G.R.

 

[Forest]

Hi GR, thanks so much! Yes, that is exactly it. The goal is to start a great discussion that will complement the program.

I should probably explain why I think that it is important and valuable to create a discussion like this. From talking with Steve Ozanich, I get the impression that one thing that he struggles with is helping people to really get everything in the book and see how it applies to their own lives. I think that it is this way with all TMS books: it takes a long time and a lot of work before you really get them and see the implications they have to your own life. Perhaps you can relate. I know I can.

Many people get stuck because they just keep reading the books passively and don't know that the real progress comes from applying the book to their own life, in doing the work. In the end, progress comes down to application. Many people don't make progress because they don't do the actual work of changing their lives.

The problem will be especially acute with the recovery program because I think that Alan has distilled an entire education in how to be a psychotherapist into, essentially one web page. Yet this one web page has the potential to transform our lives. It gives us tools for standing up to our inner bully, for feeling our emotions, for developing self compassion, for learning mindfulness, for overcoming anxiety, and for many other things. Basically, it teaches us how to be our own therapist. Without the aid of a skilled therapist doing one on one work, how do we get from a single web page to personal transformation?

Well, I believe that we TMSers are a highly motivated, determined and clever bunch, so I think we can do it. And I think that reading forum threads about a program can help. They make the process more interactive, and bring an element of human connection into it. They also force us to consider questions and viewpoints that we might not, otherwise, have thought of. As a result, the neural networks in our heads get smarter. We become better able to recognize our own patterns and more confident in our reactions to them.

It will, of course, take a long time for this discussion to play out. A crucial step will be giving each of us time to go through the program as many times as we feel we need to figure out how to apply it to our own lives. We'll have to learn: what happens when we try to face down our own inner bullies? When we try to feel our feelings in our bodies, does it work? In other words, we have to apply the program to our own lives before we will really get it. Before we can help others, we will have to help ourselves.

I look forward to seeing how it all plays out and what we come up with. It may take a year or so before it really takes off. However, we created the Structured Education Program forum from scratch as well and now it has nearly 3000 posts and has helped to transform many lives. So perhaps this is another way to think about this: we are helping to build the next Structured Educational Program subforum. The great thing is that all that we really have to do is read the program, apply it to our own healing, read threads that interest us, and write a post when we feel like it. If we approach it even with a small amount of mindfulness, a wonderful community will spontaneously arise.

It's exciting stuff! Thanks for your help and enthusiam.

 

[G.R.]

Forest,
Thank you for explaining how we can help in more depth. I am very interested in helping. I will start to read
Alan Gordan's Recovery Program.

I am in agreement with everything you said in your post. I am very excited to help others transform their lives.
G.R.

 

[Forest]

I am very excited to help others transform their lives.
G.R.

Reading that put a smile on my face. It's inspiring stuff when we help one another. That's really what this whole organization is about.

 

[MarkV]

Forest, count me in too. You have created a tremendous platform here as there's power in sharing feedback (including commiseration) versus simply reading the books without engaging in discussion and bouncing ideas & successful strategies off each other. Alan's model is a great new discussion point as are all your forums.
Great stuff...thanks! MarkV

 

[Leslie]

Me too! As inspiring as it is when we help someone else, I've recently found it to be as inspiring - possibly even more so, when I realize that what I'm typing to help someone else is also meant for me.

 

[chickenbone]

I want to help, too Forest.