Day One

I am a wife and mother of two young boys.
My pain (right leg) is crippling and I have not been able to walk as of this week. A month ago it was in my back. I cycled through acupuncture and chiropractors and the pain resisted everything.
We have just moved to New York. Financial duress. Too many changes and so much fear.
Intuitively, I know that I can heal myself through Dr. Sarno's work. I don't know how yet.
I am very grateful for your support.

 

Hi, elzie. You have come to the right place. Many many of us were in pain and no doctor or medication helped. We found out about Dr. Sarno and HEALING BACK PAIN and then this web site which helped us to become pain-free. Your leg pain sounds like it comes from the emotional stress you have been under, such as the move to New York, financial problems.

Try not to let fear get to you. Keep positive and practice deep breathing and living in the present (called Mindfulness Meditation). There are excellent videos on Youtube for both breathing and MM.

If you have been checked out for anything structural and nothing has been found, then it is TMS from the emotions.
I'm glad you have begun the Structured Educational Program. It helped me to heal from severe back pain, and it has helped many others.

TMS tends to move pain around. It moved from your back to your leg. That's typical, so don't let it worry you. Soon it will all go away.

It is important to keep in mind Dr. Sarno's 12 Daily Reminders, from his book HEALING BACK PAIN. Another TMSer, Herbie, wrote a longer version of them that I think will help you.

Herbie’s Extended Version of Dr. Sarno’s 12 DAILY REMINDERS

1. The pain is due to TMS. This is real pain or anxiety but it's caused by subconscious tensions and triggers, emotional stressors and traits to your reactions and fears and also when at boiling point your conscious tension can and does cause real pain too.
2. The main reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. This means that when you get in pain or in anxiety then the the blood is restricted from going to your lower back for instance. The blood being restricted causes oxygen deprivation which causes the pain - remember, where there is no oxygen then there is pain in the body. Also, The pain stays because of fear and focus to physical organic symptoms and repressions.
3. TMS is a harmless condition caused by my REPRESSED EMOTIONS so even though you think you can harm yourself from the years of pain you have felt and how you feel in general -- so far no reports have been heard from TMS healing knowledge causing damage to anyone, it only helps.
4. The principle emotion is your repressed ANGER -- this means under your consciousness lies something that happens automatically to everyone. TMSers have repressions that are stored because of our personality traits,traumas, stressors, fears, strain, etc... When these stored repressions build and build, then eventually they cause the brain to send pain into your body to keep you from having an emotional crises. The mind-body thinks it's helping you.
5. TMS exists to DISTRACT your attentions from the emotions, stressors, tensions and strains of your personality traits because if you can get distraction then you wont have to be in emotional turmoil. When you don't face and feel your emotions and they get repressed cause you didn't want to deal with something -- they are just adding up in this beaker, ready to pour over and create real pain and anxiety in your body.
6. Since my body is perfectly normal, there is nothing to fear. So in reality when I fear the pain or anxiety I just cause myself undo strain and tension adding to the beaker of pain. If I fear then I feed the pain, If I fear Its impossible to recondition. Fear keeps the pain and anxiety alive in the body through focus.
7. Therefore, physical activity is harmless.If I want to work against the pain I could but its better to lose some of the pain so when I start my life over I=t have to be in pain trying to heal cause facing the repressions and all the other activities that cause the pain and reversing my fear and focus to them then I can heal.
8. I am resuming all normal physical activity. I don't fear moving anymore. I believe in my bodies ability to heal now. I can move how I want. I will not fear moving with a bent back anymore. I will also practice going out and acting normal again, not in fear of what pain might do to me.
9. The pain is unimportant and powerless. Its only power is how its hidden -- its illusion, Its fear.
10. I will keep my attention on the emotional issues. I will think about my emotions and feel my emotions throughout the day. I will not judge, criticize or fear my emotions. I will not run from my emotional issues but face everyone of them. I will feel my emotions fully and cry if I need to. Then I will release the emotion and get my mind and thoughts back to my life and living in the present, in flow.
11. I am in control of all of this. This is how I recover.
12. I will be thinking PSYCHOLOGICALLY AT ALL TIMES. This means I will keep my thoughts on psychological issues like happiness, fear and anger -- traits and triggers, conditioning and journaling. The science behind mind-body/tms healing, etc.... This way I will not feed my thoughts to the body -- that is a trick of tms. Tms will always try to get me to focus on the body caused by the pain until I break its show and flair. When I get my attention off psychical symptoms and on emotional issues and psychological issues then I will not feed the fear of the physical issues anymore thus making the tms of no effect. This will in return, gives us the cure.

 

Hi Walt, thank you so much for this. Its so nice to hear you say have been here and that it won't last. It gives me strength.
May I ask a question about no. 8, resuming physical activity?
Is the idea to breathe through the pain, tell it you don't believe it, and keep going? I have been just begun doing so but sometimes it still brings me to the ground and this feels awkward and sometimes unsafe in public. This is where I am stuck. I really need to be able to function now for my two boys. Can I meditate through it? Acknowledge my anger? I see where the whole thing is going and it is perfect, I just don't know what to do practically, today.
Thank you in advance.
Elzie.

 

Also, I am going to meditate on this list. Thank you.

 

Hi Elzie, welcome to the forum, and I'm really glad you found us and Dr. Sarno and that you're doing the SEP!

I encourage you to read the stories in the Success Stories subforum, where people often describe what they did that worked for them. There are many ways to do this work and many ways to recover.

To answer your specific question, the key is to discover the negative message that your brain is giving you, and to replace that with something more constructive and positive. What has worked for me is the message that I can't hurt myself because there is nothing structurally wrong with me, and that by doing the activity anyway, I'm helping my body to recover.

I've also had success by meditating on the "other" side - for example the arm that isn't hurting, and visualizing that same lack of pain in the arm that is hurting. This takes a bit more time and concentration than the "message replacement" technique. It is, in fact, a mindfulness meditation, where again you are recognizing and then clearing your mind of all of the negative chatter and concentrating on the positive outcome that you want to visualize.

Yesterday and today I've been posting the link to an excellent movie that came out a year ago, called The Connection by an Australian journalist named Shannon Harvey. Shannon recovered from a serious auto-immune condition (I believe she was diagnosed with lupus) by using mind-body awareness, knowledge and techniques. She's offering free streaming of the movie for one week to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its release.

To view it you're asked for your email address, but I've been on her list for more than a year and I know she doesn't abuse it - she sends maybe one email a month, whenever she posts a new article on her blog, so it's always good new information. She's in Australia, so I'm not entirely sure when the free viewing ends, but I got the email announcement yesterday (West coast USA) so through next Tuesday sometime. I have the DVD which I bought last year, but I watched it this morning using the link and it streamed flawlessly to my tablet. It's a little more than an hour long. https://www.theconnection.tv/store/

Finally, the other side of recognizing and replacing negative self-talk is learning to accept yourself, forgive yourself, and truly love yourself. You need this so that you know in your heart that you deserve to recover.

There is a ton of great information in the movie, and a ton of great information on the wiki and on this forum. Take full advantage, keep posting, and tell us how you are doing!

~Jan

 

Jan, your response was very helpful to me! Thank you.
From the success stories, I got so much. I was really struck by the story a woman told about not feeling pain when she was at her favorite, special supermarket. Something clicked inside of me.
I was inspired to get out of my sick bed and try a horseback trail ride, something I have always wanted to do. Yes, my leg hurt a bit, but many times it didn't. And I feel better tonight than I did at this time yesterday. It didn't hurt me at all to do this!
Without realizing it, I had stopped doing things I love; things for myself. I didn't want to spend any money and besides the kids need so much..... This was really liberating.
I have also tried the meditations you suggested. They are interesting. And I will check out that film. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your support and inspiration.
Elzie

 

There you go, Elzie, you are on the way - congratulations on the cool horseback ride, that is awesome!

And you are very welcome. We are all in this together, and I will never forget how this community helped me

 

That is just beautiful, Jan. Thank you.

 

Elzie, a little exercise is better than none, both physically and psychologically.
I suggest you ease into exercise by going to Youtube and trying one or more of the sitting or standing exercises videos for seniors.
They are easy but get you moving. They are from 5 minutes to half an hour. They're good even if done two or three times a week.
If any exercise hurts (more than a little) stop and go on to the next one.
You don't have to use weights or even a can of soda in each hand. Hope this idea works for you.

 

Thanks, Walt! I will!

 

I am so touched by the generosity of all of you who create this forum.

 

Thanks, elzie. I agree that there are a lot of nice people who post and reply to posts in the forums.
I've made some real great online friendships through it.

And maybe we care about each other because we have gone through similar TMS emotions.

That horseback trail ride sounds wonderful. I hope you can do that more often.