Day 5 - Improving, but having nightmares and pelvic pain.

[Japanchick]

I woke up last night in a sweat and almost in tears. My breathing and heart rate were very fast and I was very upset. The strange thing is, I can't, for the life of me, remember what my nightmare was all about. I usually don't have nightmares at all. I had reoccuring dreams as a child and vivid dreams, but I haven't had those in years.

I've been doing well with working through the structured educational program, my skin conditions have improved and my rhinitis has gone. I am not experiencing pain in my pelvic floor region though. I went to the OBGYN and he can't find any problems.

My questions are
1. does anyone else experience nightmares? Is this part of the process?
2. Can these pelvic pains be due to TMS?

Please tell me about your experiences..

 

[BruceMC]

Many of the TMS patients chronicled in Pathways to Pain Relief by Sherman and Anderson describe many dreams that might be called nightmares during their psychotherapy sessions to get at the underlying causes of their TMS pain symptoms. During therapy, however, these patients do remember their dreams and describe them to the attending psychotherapist.

You might want to glance at the chapter entitled "The Healing Power of Dreams" in The Hidden Psychology of Pain by Dr James Alexander for directions on how to remember and record your dreams and likewise to utilize them as tools for curing your TMS.

I do remember having quite a few dreams while working through the 37-day Structured Education Program available here on the TMS Wiki link that you can click at the top of this page. Seems like when you begin to address traumatic incidents in your biography, it releases a big bunch of deeply repressed emotions that can, in turn, show up in dreams during sleep.

I'm of the wrong sex to go to a OBGYN myself, but if TMS can cause so many and various symptoms, I'm sure it can cause problems in your pelvic floor too. Your doctor has already determined there's nothing physically wrong, what else is left except TMS?

 

[Japanchick]

I guess it is possible.. It just seems like a more serious problem than allergies and skin problems. I want to stamp it out before it leads to something else! Is it usual that the TMS might intensify in this way after I've started to make progress?

 

[BruceMC]

During the TMS recovery cycle something that Alan Gordon calls an 'extinction burst' can occur:

There’s a phenomenon in behaviorism known as an “extinction burst.” When you stop reinforcing a behavior, you’d think that the behavior would just immediately stop. But they’ve found that that isn’t the case. When you stop giving the rat food pellets for running on the wheel, it actually runs harder and faster at first, before it stops running altogether. When you stop giving the two-year-old candy, his tantrums actually get worse before they go away. No one likes to lose a behavior that’s working, so there’s a little resistance once the reinforcement is taken away.
How is this relevant to the pain? Often when you take away the pain’s reinforcement (fear, attention, etc.) the pain gets worse before it goes away. The mind does not like to lose a defense mechanism any more than a toddler likes to lose his candy-getting behavior. So just know that if you stop reinforcing the pain and it starts getting worse, don’t panic, that’s just an extinction burst; it means you’re on the right track.

You can find this quote in Alan's article, "Breaking the Pain Cycle", on the TMS Wiki:

http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Breaking_the_Pain_Cycle,_by_Alan_Gordon,_LCSW

Well, Japan chick, I certainly hope you are "on the right track"!

 

[gailnyc]

My questions are
1. does anyone else experience nightmares? Is this part of the process?
2. Can these pelvic pains be due to TMS?

Please tell me about your experiences..

Pelvic pain is a common TMS problem among both men and women. Do a "search" both here and on tmshelp.com and you'll find lots of posts about it.

 

[njoy]

I never used to remember my dreams but knew they were bad because of the way I felt when I woke up (sad, angry, scared, etc.). Recently, I've started to remember dreams and they are either about violence (against me) or frustration (my "goodism" in action"). I believe that my unconscious is pushing me to recognize of certain truths and my conscious brain is less desperate to keep that information at bay. This is because I can now handle the fear of remembering better than I once could.

So, OP, I think you are experiencing progress. Someone on this week's Tuesday phone in discussion group said, "anxiety is tms". That statement has helped me enormously. What that means, I think, is that your brain will produce pain to distract you from truth you can't handle and, if that doesn't work, it will switch to anxiety, panic attacks, etc. Whatever works. It really helps to know the brain will go to extremes to protect you from conscious awareness of stuff lurking in the unconscious. The solution: learn to handle the truth whatever it is. The new Alan Gordon program should take us a long way in this direction. We need to stand up to that inner critical voice that tells us what we should feel and who we must be. Phooey!

 

[PeterO]

Hi Japanchick.

Although male, one of my main TMS symptoms has an
equivalence to you, that being intense perineum pain
which I have experienced for 20+years. It can be somewhat
debilitating & difficult to find any relief. However I have
lately been applying some TMS thinking to the pain &
noticed some shift, albeit minor but I will take whatever
comes along. As Dr James Alexander points out in his
book 'Hidden Psychology of Pain' such shifts are exceptions
& indicative of a TMS response.

As for nightmares, my incidence of these has increased since
beginning the TMS journey.

Good to have you along.

Pete