Attempt To Define TMS

TMS is believed by most who are aware of its existence as physical pain that has no root in problems with the body. Someone more aware might say it is an emotion.

What is an emotion? I suspect most women can answer that question easier than men. When I was in TMS hell I couldn’t have given an answer. I did not know and was unaware of the fact that emotions are felt physically in the body. The majority are felt in the gut in various ways.

Years later looking back it’s clear that TMS is a result of that lack of awareness, or a general lack of awareness period. Emotions hit us as a trained response or as a manifestation of thinking. Are you a thinker? That’s a trick question. Even if you think 24/7 you are not that thinker. The harder you try to “solve” your TMS the more cleverly it finds a way to persist.

All that thinking and strategizing is being done by the actual root cause of the TMS, but you believe that’s you trying to figure it out. You will never be free of TMS until you see through this illusion. Reading post after post and book after book isn’t going to solve it unless it bolsters your confidence to believe in that fact.

Because you believe in your pain you energize it. When you find the fearlessness deep within, you won’t have to care about the pain. It will no longer make sense to focus on it, and it will self destruct. You’ve gone down a rabbit hole in your mind, and it led you through a bridge over troubled water. The mind destroyed the bridge and left you trapped staring at the troubled water and thinking about how you’re gonna get out. Realize it’s all a dream in the mind and you will be returned home.

TMS pain indicates an extremely hardy belief in the fiction that goes on in your own mind. How many of you read this consistently reshaping what was typed to fit “YOUR TMS.” That’s part of the illusion. Your pain isn’t special. Neither is any other poster’s pain. Your belief that it is traps you inside the TMS hell.

Someone with TMS pain has a serious lack of self awareness, and you’re gonna have to eat a huge helping of humble pie to get better. You want to be the fixer of this problem or be someone less in your mind who doesn’t feel chronic pain or anxiety and is actually capable of happiness and compassion?

So what reaction did reading this stir up in you? Defensiveness? Fear? Denial? Anger? Can you see that it was involuntary, or do you believe in it 100% just like your pain? All part of the illusion you believe in. See that it’s just thoughts and emotions you have no method of controlling and be humbled by this. Surrender to that pain. Let it win. Accept that the rest of your years will be lived with this pain. Without someone there to believe in the pain, the pain dies. It has no purpose.

 

The journey of discovering how to fix your TMS also has to go away to be free. All your strategizing locks you into the TMS. You’ve read the above. You’ve read the wiki. Now watch the monkey dance in your head and pretend it hasn’t been given the solution. That’s TMS’s survival tactic.

 

@Tms_joe: If I follow your post, you are saying that the way to rid yourself of TMS symptoms is to just competely surrender. ("Surrender to that pain. Let it win. Accept that the rest of your years will be lived with this pain. ") I.e. Accept that you have TMS, it is a mirage of sorts and that by doing anything - even journaling, meditating, affirmations, whatever - with the hope that those things will help to get rid of it - simply gives it the fuel to remain?

If that's what you are saying does that fly in the face of various "TMS programs" that incorporate those things? (the SEP, Shubiner, Alan Gordon...) . Can it be that some of those methods work for some people but not for others?

On the other hand I have seen various success stories where the person says that the main thing that made them better was to do exactly that, lose the fear and surrender, just imagine you are at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by sharks and it is pointless to do anything and just not do anything special. For example here was a post by user Dorado:

"Nope, I did not follow any particular treatment/recovery plan. I'm not saying these types of methods are incapable of helping anyone, but there are a number of us who simply don't respond to them positively, and I think it's so easy for people to get way too caught up in trying to heal or viewing "TMS" as a separate condition with more permanent affects. Trying to heal can be incredibly counterproductive, creating more fear and obsession. For me, it was far more effective to simply manage my fear and emotions, accept what was happening as emotionally driven, and live life fully again"

https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-i-healed-from-a-myriad-of-symptoms.18723/ (How I healed from a myriad of symptoms)

 

You can only control your thinking, and your body responds by either symptom imperative or symptoms reducing.

 

I cannot cope with how confused this makes me feel - my brain just won’t stop trying to decipher tms and what has happened to me in the years I’ve been trying to heal myself (ive got much worse and never heard anyone else say that)

 

Interesting post and point of view. I'm sure it will be helpful to someone out there reading it.

For me, whether you "follow" Sarno or Alan Gordon or Nicole Sachs or whoever methods, I think it all boils down to giving the pain the strength it needs to survive or flourish. Some of us do that by viewing it as "dangerous" and therefore in need of attention. Many of the methods, again whether Sarno or Gordon etc, are all about taking away that dangerous view and therefore robbing it of power, making the symptom impotent. What the OP here is describing is doing a full end-around on this - by focusing on "fixing" TMS and trying to thereby "remove" the pain, we are giving it the very strength and attention it needs. Instead, we have to run the end-around and just get to that ignoring part without going through the focusing/fixing to get there.

In other words, there is no spoon....

 

Hawaii_fiveo,

Your first paragraph nailed it. You’ve got it. It’s the final step in eliminating TMS. The “methods” used up till then are to make you more accepting and able to do this. Drop the rest of what you posted. It’s the resistive thinking that locks you in. It may seem like a paradox, but it’s clear once you’re free. That’s why so many are stuck.

Balsa11. That’s an example of something you believe in that is 100% false and will cause you to suffer dearly. Thoughts happen to you 99% of the time. You cannot control them. They don’t have to control you when you realize this. I don’t mean thinking like a math problem. I mean what’s flying through your mind all the time.

Miller, confusion is good if you can get comfortable and accepting of it. It represents a shattering of beliefs that are untrue or only partially true. Remember, you need to be humbled heavily to see the way out. Patiently accept that confusion and wait some days or weeks with no judgement of it. It should clear.

If you read this and formed an opinion about it, that needs to be examined heavily. What’s been typed here is indigestible to anyone with TMS who isn’t almost free already. Want to be free? I’ll give 1 “method.” Refuse to believe ANYTHING that you cannot KNOW with 100% certainty is true. That’s meant literally. Take it to the highest extreme possible. You may never want to live without that “method” ever again.

 

Word salad

 

Hi guys,

I just wanted to share something that might provide some clarification for some of you regarding to what TMS really is.

Most of you mention that TMS is emotions that are felt in the body. While this is quite correct, it can help you to understand that there is also a physical process taking place in the body, as a result of the emotions. This will help you grapple with the doubts that often come when you have symptoms that feel very physical, and which get you wondering whether they are really TMS or not.

Please check out my video here, where I explain how this works. And if you have any feedback or things to add, please post below!

All the best,

Miriam Gauci Bongiovanni
TMS Coach & MindBody Practitioner

 

For an MD's explanation and perspective about this truth, I highly recommend When The Body Says No, by Dr. Gabor Mate.

Nice to "see" you, @Miriam G. Bongiovanni!

~Jan

 

I’m pretty sure the way out is the opposite of what I’ve been doing for the last few years but can’t break the cycle

 

Well one thing is for certain. What’s been done the last few years doesn’t work. That must be taken in and accepted. You can truly do anything that allows your attention to be anywhere but on the pain or on negative thoughts. Seems like every “method” has been posted here at one time or another.

You don’t truly have to “DO” anything. You come to a deep realization of what’s really going on. The only purpose the pain has it to keep you in a negative thought pattern of fear. Transcend your fears and transcend the pain. Imo transcending fear and hardships is the purpose of life. From that mindset there is no victim. Best wishes.

 

I certainly agree with this...

...but this is easier said than done for many people, for many different reasons. Because we are all different. And our individual circumstances are different. And those circumstances - including what's going on in the world - are constantly changing.

At the very least, in order to "come to a deep realization" you actually DO have to completely change your mindset and a lifetime of what you thought you knew about your brain, your body, and all physical sensations. Some people can do this on their own, others need the help of a program, a coach, or a therapist because their ability to accept such a change is being thwarted by extremely complex and deep emotions.

What works will be different for everyone, but you have to make a commitment to just do it. Going back to the first statement:

For those who just keep searching for something they think will suddenly resonate for them and present THE answer: you at least have to recognize that you're just spinning your wheels, be willing to stop, give yourself a kick in the butt, and resolve to make a commitment to ONE proactive thing which will force you to do the real work in order to create the real change you seek.

Easier said than done. I was extremely successful in achieving a high level of recovery in 2011, which I enjoyed for a while, but then several personal losses, growing dysfunction in my own country, followed by the pandemic, climate change and now world disorder, all on top of the fear and rage that comes with aging, are taking their toll. I feel like I could manage the aging issue if that's all I was experiencing, but let's face it - we're all struggling with mental health these days when it seems like it's always fucking something. Nonetheless, I'm actually quite pleased that I'm still standing and still functional. Even at 11 years older than when I discovered Dr. Sarno at age 60, I'm nonetheless better off now than I was then in a number of ways (back then I was on a fast track to becoming housebound), and I do attribute that to my understanding and acceptance of the brain process that we call TMS. And to therapy, which I started in the summer of 2020.

~Jan

 

@

So I do “nothing” and get on with life AKA what I was doing BEFORE I found this forum and started obsessing over healing and journaling and meditating and identifying repressed emotions And became more focused on my dizziness and anxiety which was never an issue to begin with? That’s a big slice of humble pie right there

 

Can you really "do nothing" if you tried? TMS is what was obsessing. That's not you. Doing nothing is a meditation. Watch all these things going on including your pain that are 100% involuntary in spite of your best intentions. Thoughts, pain, sensations, etc. All part of what simply exists in this life.

You don't get to reason with, shape, and define "what is." The pain simply "is" like the weather simply is. The planet simply rotates and orbits. It just "is." Your body hurts. That just "is." Your spouse just cheated on you. It already "is." No time machines. You're going to die, and it could be tomorrow or many years from now. It's also considered completely normal to not accept these things in our culture. It's a delusion pervading our world. Causes nothing but emotional pain inside people(sometimes physical) needlessly. When we feel this pain it's like a bruise on our soul. When somebody touches it, intentionally or not, we lash out at them which kicks off the same scenario in them.

Someone suffering TMS is holding onto some make believe identity of someone who can shape their reality as if they were playing God. We've been conditioned to behave this way since we were born. We believe things that just plain are not true. The majority of what you see on here is people trying to reason their way out of TMS instead of accepting it. It may be easier to see this in another's posts than in yourself, but once you do, you then need to realize you wouldn't have TMS if you accepted the reality of what life throws at you without resisting it. It's like standing under a waterfall and being upset you're getting wet. The energy inside that so desperately wants to fix TMS just wants to create the reward of defeating TMS. It's got you dancing around for the cure so you'll be too busy to notice the answers have already been provided, just not digested bc you're off on a journey to find the bucket of gold. You're sitting on it.






















I likely won't be back on here for quite some time or potentially not coming back. I feel in my heart a desire so strong to help people struggling with TMS bc the memory of those circumstances(not the pain) doesn't go away, and it's crystal clear in hindsight years later what was going on. Providing this kind of advice to someone through words on a page doesn't allow for gauging how what is said might be perceived. No body language or tone. Even worse, I suspect it stirs up uncertainty in others(a good thing), but nobody is by their side to provide guidance and reinforce what self discoveries might be made. The best advice I can give someone who has spent months or years on here without being free of their pain is to recognize the pointlessness of what they are doing, realize potentially 100% of what they think needs to be done is just plain wrong, and then sign up for some therapy lessons with someone well versed in TMS. Go find out what you are NOT. It's the greatest gift you could ever give to your "self." Best wishes to all. You don't have to suffer regardless of what "life" seems to tell you at every turn. God bless.

 

Nice to 'see' you too @JanAtheCPA ;-)

@Tms_joe I get your point, and for the same reason I am only here on the forum on and off, for the purpose of understanding what kind of struggles people are going through, and providing my support where necessary. That said, this forum is very dear to me, because personally, it has helped me a lot when I myself was recovery, and I am sure it's helped so many others as well.

I am a Coach in the field, and as you said, when people have been doing something for their pain for a long time and it hasn't worked, then they should stop and identify what's keeping them from recovery. This is, in fact, what I focus on in my sessions. If you need any support or guidance with supporting others, please feel free to connect with me (I think you'll easily find my website and facebook group without my having to advertise it here ;-) )