I guess because no one else has this on the TMS wiki the belief part is a bit harder.
So here's something I've learned to recognize over the years: the people who spend the most time trying to match their symptoms to other people seem to be the ones who end up with a symptom that in their minds (in their TMS brains, actually) CAN'T be matched with anyone else and that (their TMS brains try to convince them) must therefore be "real".
My parentheses above are a reminder that none of this is YOU - this is your TMS brain. I also like to say "this is your brain on TMS".
So in terms of TMS, there are two possible causes for this phenomenon:
1) You are being fooled by your brain into believing that anything other than a 100% exact match is unacceptable, causing you irrationally reject reasonable comparisons. This is a fabrication which can be easily created by your very tricky and very skilled TMS brain mechanism. The goal is to keep you stuck and in doubt and spinning your wheels looking for the perfect match instead of really doing the work with emotional commitment. Which of course will never happen, which fulfills the goal.
OR
2) Your very tricky and very skilled TMS brain mechanism has actually created a brand-new and very unique symptom
just for you, purely for the purpose (let me repeat) of keeping you stuck and in doubt and spinning your wheels looking for the perfect match instead of really doing the work with emotional commitment. Which of course will never happen!
In order to be successful in your recovery, you must accept the following
fact: every single physiological process or physical sensation that can be sensed in the body (eg: symptoms) is produced by your brain, NOT by the body part where you experience it. This is a neuroscientific FACT. This means that apart from easily-diagnosed injuries or illnesses with a clear treatment plan, ANYTHING can be (and usually is) TMS.
You may need to re-educate yourself about the truth of this. Go back to Dr Sarno's earliest example, which is blushing. Blushing is a 100% emotionally-sourced phenomenon which results in a completely real and even visible physical symptom. Look up phantom limb pain, which is completely accepted by everyone to be real pain "in" a limb that no longer exists, because the pain was never generated by the limb in the first place - the pain always came from the brain of the amputee, and for whatever emotional reason (like PTSD) the pain is still being generated by the brain.
The brain mechanism that we still call TMS is a combination of this neuroscientific process combined with our primitive survival brain's intense need to repress dangerous negative emotions so that you will remain in a state of fear and anxiety, and thus not be eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger. This mechanism worked fine in the primitive wilderness when all we had to do was survive long enough to breed, but it does not work at all in the modern world when we know at an early age that we will live for decades with an infinite number of modern stressors to worry about. Unless you're living in a part of the world with serious dangers that literally threaten physical survival, your stressor are, like most of us here, are existential (mortality and isolation, for example) or due to intangible emotional issues (relationships and career, for example).
I read this quote the other day (and I copied it to my clipboard without attribution, oops) which I think is brilliant:
"The whole problem is our modern culture (I mean, post 1700s!) is based on a form of brain functioning which is constantly stimulating our fight-or-fight response."
This will be the third time in the last 24 hours (and not the last, I suspect) that I strongly recommend Nicole Sach's latest podcast episode (S3, E27) which her intro explains is a repeat from last year. The topic is "A Deep Dive Into the Symptom Imperative" which was a very powerful episode (I think) and the reason for the repeat is because so many people in her groups are reporting intense struggles with belief about new symptoms. Please listen to it and let us know what you think.
