Autoimmune diseases. Sarno and Garbor Maté

[thomastakesfive]

Hi!

I'm a new member 0n this forum, but an old soul in the TMS world. Posted my success story 12 years ago on another forum, which looks to not be active anymore. I had trouble with RSI for a long time and is free of pain ever since. I still journal though. It's a habit I got from TMS that I never quit.

Recently I've read "When the body says no" by Garbor Maté and to me it seems very similar to Sarnos theories. Actually almost the same. Sarno mentions some autoimmune disorders from what I remember but Garbor really takes those theories to another level. It makes so much sense to me.

I think this is very interesting and would love to read about or connect with people who have tried to apply TMS thinking/healing to an autoimmune disorder. If there are anyone on this forum I would love to hear your story, or if anyone know of any other site that discusses that please tell me about it.

Take care.

 

[BruceMC]

I've heard of TMS healing strategies being applied successfully to healing Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) but obviously haven't done so myself. I believe JanAtheCPA used TMS methodology to heal herself but later came down with RA. She may be able to help answer your questions.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Hi @thomastakesfive, and welcome to the "other" TMS forum, where we are alive and well! And still working on our TMS, of course - the lifelong journey.

I have many years of TMS stories to tell - you can check out my initial profile from way back in 2011/2012. I always say that the two books which helped save my life back then, after The Divided Mind by Dr Sarno, were Hope & Help for Your Nerves (Claire Weekes), and When The Body Says No. Interestingly, where I found Dr. Mate to be inspirational, a surprising number of people over the years have reported that they were frightened by his theories (some were angry to have the book recommended to them). It will come as no surprise to you that those people were the ones who continued to struggle and never really experienced any significant amount of recovery. Healing can not take place when fear rules.

In any case, I picked up on the inflammation connection quite some time ago, and I push it often. I have also known, for decades, long "before Sarno", that my lifelong anxiety was not doing me any favors and that it could affect my health at some point with more than just come-and-go symptoms that I knew were related to my anxiety.

@BruceMC has got it right - the pandemic did me in in 2020, and I developed sudden-onset, and extremely late-in-life RA, at age 69. I've told that story and my personal theory about the TMS/stress aspect a number of times. I just did a keyword search and found these two specific posts that I wrote in a longer thread that's pretty interesting in its entirety (it starts out with a question about allergies from someone who has never recovered and is in fact too mentally ill to be trying to do this on his own, but that's another story...) anyway, these two posts discuss a lot of my thoughts about the inflammation/mindbody/stress connection.
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/hay-fever.26977/#post-139748 (Hay fever)
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/hay-fever.26977/#post-139815 (Hay fever)
One of the users I was engaged with in this discussion is also really interested in this topic, so check out his posts and success story. He's also just written a self-published book about it! theacrobat | TMS Forum (The Mindbody Syndrome) (tmswiki.org) and now that I've tagged him, maybe Rob will join in the discussion! And hopefully others as well, because it's a fascinating one.

Oh, and check out this thread I posted about a very recent Nat Geo article: Inflammation and Depression - new link? | TMS Forum (The Mindbody Syndrome) (tmswiki.org)



Cheers,

~Jan

 

[thomastakesfive]

Thank you @BruceMC and thank you @JanAtheCPA for your very generous reply.

I've read up on your story from the posts you mentioned as well as the article in Nat Geo. From what I understand you have gotten your RA under control with the TMS approach as well as a low dose of medicine to reduce the immune system. I hope I got that right. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm very happy for you that it seems to be going well.

Just to be clear here for you and anyone else who might read this. I don't think people with AI diseases should stop taking their meds and approach a TMS approach completely. I have read some stories about that but they seem to be a lot more rare, so sometimes it feels like people are just throwing in an AI disease with the rest of their symptoms that got healed. Of course I'm still looking for more evidence/stories from people on this. That is why I'm here. This is one of the most interesting subjects.

I can totally understand that "When the body says no" can stir up some strong emotions in a lot of people. It's a heavier book than Sarnos.
I'm totally on board with the theories though.

I haven't been following the TMS theories and the spread of it for some years but it seems to be a lot more books about it now than when I started to learn about it. I'm a little surprised that since "When the body says no" acclaims to be an international bestseller and there is a big(?) community for TMS online that there is so little information about people applying the TMS approach. I also found it strange that Sarno is not mentioned in the book.

This last part is just me thinking out loud and making connections:
My main TMS issue was RSI, and even if it took a while to get rid of, it was pretty easy to battle because it was just pain. I could just do the stuff I wanted to do anyway and ignore the pain knowing what it was and if it ever comes back I can handle it in minutes by mindset. But I have also sometimes skin issues that actually is inflammation. It is very related to stressful emotional events but you can't just tell it to go away. If it's triggered it will take a while to heal, even if I know it's TMS related, since there is actual inflammation. So the only thing I can do is reduce stress and how I handle hard emotional situations in which the stress comes from. This in the long term means to change a part of my personality, like perfectionism, helping others before self, hard worker etc, which I have done a lot but still, this is the hardest part.

Anyways. That is kind of how I look at the AI conditions in terms of trigger and inflammation. I understand AI is a lot more serious of course, but it makes me sad thinking about needing to lower the immune system through meds all life. I hope I find more stories to read about this. I'll post here if I find anything of interest in the future.