Emotional repression or fear?

[Davideus85]

I am rather confused about the nature of TMS. I keep hearing some TMSers focus on emotional repression as the cause of symptoms, that in order to get better you need to dig into your past trauma and relive certain memories and validate that inner child in order for the unconscious rage that causes symptoms to dissipate. And others focus on the fear factor, that symptoms are triggered due to fearful reactions to situations and the only way to get out is to stop feeling fear. Which is it?

 

[miffybunny]

It's both. Repression of emotions, combined with certain personality traits that generate internal pressure sensitize the brain and leads up to the onset of TMS. Emotions also ebb and flow continuously throughout the day depending on our thoughts and stressors. That's part of it. The TMS takes on a life of it's own though, and we get into the fear-pain-fear loop. People start fearing triggers and then start avoiding those triggers because of the conditioned responses they have to them. They become fearful and focused on symptoms and start catastrophizing, as well as behaving in a hyper vigilant way (monitoring, doubting, searching, comparing, etc etc). It's both and it's all connected. It also has to do with our own relationship with ourselves and whether we are living our lives authentically. All of these things interact but each person has to figure out what is going on for them at any given moment, and which areas are barriers for progress.