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Free from pain forever

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Filipe2025

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Hi, as you all know I had a relapse from TMS/RSD/CRPS, what ever you wanna call it. I'm completely pain free for the past 2 months. Wanna now the click to overcome pain? Stop feeding it. Stop OCDing about it. The brain developes what you focus on. Stop thinking about pain/TMS. Stop watching videos about TMS.

I got stuck in this relapse, because now that I knew RSD, pain, fibromyalgia, etc, was chronic anxiety, or being stuck in the fight or flight mode, I got obsessed with it, about fighting to not being anxious, or in fight or flight, or not being in fear, etc... Shif your attention. Live your life!

You have to be resilient. That is, Accept anxiety as normal, and move forward. You are much stronger than you think. Big pharma wants you in fear, so you be sick.

You get stuck in pain, like I was, because you are trying to hard to figure out what your traumas are, your inner conflicts, etc, or obsessed with the idea that you are in flight or fight mode, or in fear, for the rest of your life.

Deal with it, know that is TMS, and move on. Stop digging the past, live your life, stop obsession with pain, and get healthy obsession, such as creating stuff, writing, etc...

God bless you all, from the bottom of my hear. Information is the key. We are being lied by the health industry that supposedly should makes us healthy. But that is not profitable... That's the cruel truth

Special thanks to Rita Labarber, and Diana.
 
Congratulations!
You really know how to master your mind. The path back was already laid out from the first time, so I guess you just needed to calm yourself down.
 
Yes. When you do it for the first time you loose the doubts. In the past I conquer pain, but I am very anxious person, and well, pain, is anxiety, and depression. You cannot feed the negatives, period. Pain is anxiety, pain is depression, but you have to move on. Loneliness, and change are a part of life. Change makes me suffer a lot, but, I'm sure good things are coming. You feel pain because you fight those feelings, but also because you start fearing them and OCD on them, and you get stuck, because you think there is no place to go, but there is. As for me, I have to find a way of living lonely. Because you cannot have exciting new things going on on your life, all the time. Even if you re surrounded with persons that love you. People change, life changes. One thing I learn, the worst thing you can do it's to feed TMS. Stop watching videos about TMS, stop thinking about it, or panic about fight ir flight mode, etc .. in the end, the cure is just in a sentence "stop being sorry for yourself". Your body will obey you when you change your mindset. Hope this help everyone one here
 
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Filipe2025 said:
Wanna now the click to overcome pain? Stop feeding it. Stop OCDing about it. The brain developes what you focus on. Stop thinking about pain/TMS. Stop watching videos about TMS.
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Yes, yes, yes and yes! I so agree, @Filipe2025!

Personally though, I do still watch videos, but ones that positively reinforce what @Filipe2025 is saying, like these two video shorts from Dr. Howard Schubiner...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rc6Od1XV1KA

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zRHSoJERaug
 
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CalmIsTheCure said:
I did go back to living my life, it didnt help haha.

Clearly thats not enough for me
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Having read several of your comments, I can see a lot of anger and apathy and depression. This is a common state with pain at times certainly, but only you can bring yourself out of it. The longer you linger there you actually begin to try to "prove" something is REALLY wrong with you and that things work for other people but not you.
 
@Filipe2025
I totally agree with you. I’ve made some huge progress since I got off the forum and my self-absorbed identity with TMS. After 2+ hardcore years of studying TMS and spending long days on the forum. I just rounded a bend and started living. At first I was sort of at loss. I was spending all my time trying to help myself get better ASAP. But all it was doing was keeping me focused on what’s wrong. It was feeding my anxiety.

I live a pretty anxiety-free life now. I don’t talk to mean or unpredictable friends or relatives anymore. I don’t watch or follow any news, even if it makes me somewhat of a freak. The news doesn’t help me in any way. It is part of the reason I got anxiety in the first place.

I don’t try to make new neural pathways or journal to excavate my past and my rage. Angry journaling, like journalspeak, made me feel much worse. I don’t look for the new latest revelation on how to heal TMS. Instead I read books on interesting topics I like. I pray and search for a closer relationship with God. This has greatly calmed my body and deepened my core sense of security. I exercise more and call people on the phone more. Overall, I wake up happy now, and I enjoy my little victories. I fully expect to get better. Little by little things are improving for me. And I don’t much pay attention to or label flares anymore. I am what I am. It is what it is. I just ignore it.

Of all the techniques I have tried, my life most closely follows Dr. David Hanscom’s plan. He didn’t talk about TMS even to his family. He had fun and forgave people in his life.

(I will say that I needed to learn all the things that the forum taught me. Very valuable things! And I am deeply grateful. But after a while, for me, there were diminishing returns. I always wish the best for everyone on this journey!)
 
Diana-M said:
@Filipe2025
I totally agree with you. I’ve made some huge progress since I got off the forum and my self-absorbed identity with TMS. After 2+ hardcore years of studying TMS and spending long days on the forum. I just rounded a bend and started living. At first I was sort of at loss. I was spending all my time trying to help myself get better ASAP. But all it was doing was keeping me focused on what’s wrong. It was feeding my anxiety.

I live a pretty anxiety-free life now. I don’t talk to mean or unpredictable friends or relatives anymore. I don’t watch or follow any news, even if it makes me somewhat of a freak. The news doesn’t help me in any way. It is part of the reason I got anxiety in the first place.

I don’t try to make new neural pathways or journal to excavate my past and my rage. Angry journaling, like journalspeak, made me feel much worse. I don’t look for the new latest revelation on how to heal TMS. Instead I read books on interesting topics I like. I pray and search for a closer relationship with God. This has greatly calmed my body and deepened my core sense of security. I exercise more and call people on the phone more. Overall, I wake up happy now, and I enjoy my little victories. I fully expect to get better. Little by little things are improving for me. And I don’t much pay attention to or label flares anymore. I am what I am. It is what it is. I just ignore it.

Of all the techniques I have tried, my life most closely follows Dr. David Hanscom’s plan. He didn’t talk about TMS even to his family. He had fun and forgave people in his life.

(I will say that I needed to learn all the things that the forum taught me. Very valuable things! And I am deeply grateful. But after a while, for me, there were diminishing returns. I always wish the best for everyone on this journey!)
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I appreciate you can only speak your truth as you've found it — and I truly respect that. But personally what I feel saddens me is hearing the forum mainly served to highlight techniques/approaches that took up a lot of time and didn't help or were even detrimental for you. (Of course, that's just my read — others may see it differently.) Personally, I’m concerned that this could so easily be misread by newcomers as "just get off the forum to recover", and discourage them when they're just starting out, and may not be true for them. Perhaps you could highlight and detail some positives that you did find from being a member here, for balance? I know that you've gone through a lot and have struggled to find some personal peace, so fabulous for you that the forum served a purpose in informing you what you personally don't need and you've now found your own pathway to recovery away from the forum.
 
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BloodMoon said:
I appreciate you can only speak your truth as you've found it — and I truly respect that. But personally what I feel saddens me is hearing the forum mainly served to highlight techniques/approaches that took up a lot of time and didn't help or were even detrimental for you. (Of course, that's just my read — others may see it differently.) Personally, I’m concerned that this could so easily be misread by newcomers as "just get off the forum to recover", and discourage them when they're just starting out, and may not be true for them. Perhaps you could highlight and detail some positives that you did find from being a member here, for balance? I know that you've gone through a lot and have struggled to find some personal peace, so fabulous for you that the forum served a purpose in informing you what you personally don't need and you've now found your own pathway to recovery away from the forum.
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I cannot obviously speak for Diana but I wanted to chime in and say that the forum was absolutely essential for me personally to gain confidence in the diagnosis and to undergo a period of initial learning and realigning, kind of, around what I needed to do or not do to recover. I felt I learned a great deal from the forum that helped me to trust that this was going to work, and it has been incredible to get support during difficult spots along the way.

I also realized at some point that it seemed to help me the most to then *stop* orienting my life around recovery, and lately I’ve been spending less time here because I notice I feel my life is fuller when I simply am not thinking about TMS or my symptoms. But the crucial shift and I think what you’re driving at only happened *after* I had been more intensively doing the work for a while, and my fear lowered to a point that I could start just getting back to life without fear of symptoms.

I am not fully recovered yet but I’ve been doing really well lately, and I feel it was an important step to consciously move away from checking the forum all the time and constantly reading TMS materials. I started to have more confidence in myself and started to need less external support. But I couldn’t have gotten to that place without spending some (or a lot of) time here first and for that I’m incredibly grateful to everyone on here, past and present.
 
Thank-you @Diana-M for your raw honesty.
Yes, there are some people who use the forum to feed the TMS mechanism. It is just part of their cycle, and part of their self-discovery. It seems they either don't want to have TMS or they cling to the "diagnoses" because they are still focused on "what is wrong". This ends up to running on the hamster wheel of TMS. Needing to disengage from the forum is also why we probably don't see a lot of people who consider themselves a success story hanging around and that's just fine.
Congratulations for finding your way, and for telling us how you are doing it.

Very proud of you, lady!
 
cafe_bustelo said:
But the crucial shift and I think what you’re driving at only happened *after* I had been more intensively doing the work for a while, and my fear lowered to a point that I could start just getting back to life without fear of symptoms.
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Yes, exactly so! And fantastic that you have and are continuing to make great progress! Any forum newbies (and not so newbies, for that matter) will imo be encouraged by your experience and feedback. Thank you for that! :)
 
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@BloodMoon
Absolutely the forum has helped me and it still does! Without the foundation of everything I’ve learned here, I wouldn’t have hope whatsoever. What you and @Cactusflower have taught me about baby steps has been the guiding principle for my healing. In addition to lessons from so many other caring and dedicated people on this site. The camaraderie is a lifesaver!

All the different mentors and videos that I’ve watched; all the books I’ve read have all came from the forum and all had good information that changed me or gave me hope. I tried countless things. I always believed I would find a silver bullet that would just open the door and I would get better. I don’t believe that now. I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet. All there really is, is determination, dedication and hard work.

As you know, I was on here hours a day. It was like my full-time job for two years. I think that it was keeping me personally from doing the work that I needed to do. It was time for me to do more things physically— not just sit on the couch and talk to people on the forum. I was using the forum as an excuse to avoid what hurts, which is the baby steps that it takes to get better. Ultimately, you have to challenge what hurts and keep moving forward (this, you taught me!)

Since I did explore so many possible solutions on the forum, I am passing on that Dr Hanscom’s principles are probably the most useful to me of all that I tried. I did his app last year (with you) and it was very, very helpful. I think it’s stuck with me and I think it’s been the most useful along with everything taught by Helmut Koeckritz (formerly the Mindful Gardener). He also believes in baby steps (known as graduated exposure).

Needless to say, I have a firm Sarno foundation, and three years of very difficult psychotherapy under my belt the past few years… so I definitely explored my underlying emotions. It’s hard to say if one can heal without that. Since I have done the journaling work, it has formed part of my healing, so I don’t know if it works without it. Some people say it does.

All I’m saying is that ultimately you have to do the work, which is, face your fears, bust your low self esteem, and challenge yourself. It’s a daily battle. And if you’re spending a lot of time just sitting around reading posts on the forum and not doing things to help yourself, you’ll get stuck just like I did.

It’s also hard if you start to identify with TMS. All that does is solidify that you will have this forever. You have to get your brain out of it— whatever that takes— it looks different for everybody. And yes, you can be in a lot of pain and have a lot of physical challenges and still forget about it, believe or not. You have to get your head out of what’s wrong and onto living.

This is my fifth major round of TMS in my long lifetime— and each time ignoring it was the trick to get rid of it. It’s just been harder this time because my symptoms plowed into me and really terrified me at first! This forum can save people from that terror. It’s an absolute lifesaver and I don’t want to leave permanently. I just want to get my head straight and keep making progress for a while. I still come on here, but just not every day like I used to.
 
@Diana-M, thank you — this is gold! Love how you honour the forum's foundation (incl. baby steps we shared) while sharing your vital shift to action. Perfect balance that’ll inspire newbies and others. Keep shining!
 
CalmIsTheCure said:
I did go back to living my life, it didnt help haha.

Clearly thats not enough for me
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It's the only way. To move forward. Accept what you are feeling, and move on. You cannot change the exterior, you cannot change the human condition, you can only change the way you react to the external world.

I'm always alone. I try hard to find friends, to be with people, but I have to accept that as you grow older, your loved ones will die, your children will become independent, etc. I'm a very nostalgic person, always thinking about the past, and the good memories, it makes me suffer, it makes me feel sad, and feel pain. So I have to consciously stop thinking about it... Life is what it is... I always new that it is impossible to change life. I never had this romantic idea about life. Well maybe for some periods, I did. I don't like it, but I don't want to suffer, nor die. I have to accept it. The other day I saw a video, where the bird mother throw away is babies from the nest. It was so cruel. They fall, and hit the rocks, and the ground, so hard, and the ones that didn't manage to fly died... Life is cruel, yes, we all know that... But the show must go on, as Freddie Mercury, used to say... Overcoming pain, is finding the will to live (again).
 
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I need to accept life. That's my biggest problem, now. That's why I feel depressed sometimes, not pain, but I still feel sad. Got any ideas? I stop having pleasure with my hobbies. Changes in life leave me very anxious, because we all know what is ahead of us, we are mere mortals ...
 
I think you can approach it two different ways:

You can simply accept and have compassion that you have these emotions of feeling sad and depressed - there is a line between thinking these things and actually feeling them in the body. Feel them, let them pass. Depression is more of a "state" than an emotion (sadness would be the emotion, perhaps others are also involved) and feel that sadness. Emotions pass fairly quickly in the body when we allow them to just be and feel them without trying to push those sensations away. TMS-ers tend to push the emotions or even the states of things like depression away - thinking we should not be feeling them when we have every right to feel that way - it's part of being human. We can also recognize these states are temporary.
If they aren't temporary and don't pass in say: weeks, or a month - there is help for us when we need it. Mental health help, medications etc. Sometimes it is needed and opening our mind up to these possibilities to consider they may have a positive effect (instead of constantly viewing everything as negative) is a way to advocate for yourself. It doesn't mean you are going to use these: it means you would consider them if needed.

Another way is to learn meditation: to separate yourself from the thoughts you don't want to dwell in and to learn to live more for each moment. As a human, you are still going to experience sadness, perhaps times of depression and other "negative" emotions but your reaction to these things will change over time. Meditation gives us a greater understanding of internal peace even if it is fleeting. We can disengage from certain thought spirals even for moments. I is a very challenging thing to learn meditation, but along the way you also begin to feel a larger sense of compassion and patience for yourself and your brain begins to focus on moments in the hear and now instead of the worries and anxieties of things that do not currently exist.

You might also be ready for a journey to your spiritual core. What are your beliefs and why is your fear of "what is in store for us humans" - your mortality so fearful for you. That includes deciding it isn't something you want to think about or confront right now, or it is a place you'd like to explore. Whatever brings you more peace.
 
My wife left me. I think my inner child is tiered of being alone. It is shouting for my wife to come back, it is screaming, because it fear change, it fear loneliness, it misses the old days, it knows it is going to be impossible to get another woman. It's been 6 years and I find find anyone, I found some very traumatized divorced women that prefer to live with their cats, than with a men . How do you deal with this?

Anyway, I total agree with you, you have to let those emotions flow, don't fight them. The problem is that I'm very lonely. And can't stand being at home, I'm always looking for something to do, do I cannot deal with those emotions, that vois. They are eating me alive. I still haven't find the piece of mind of the old days...

After I got divorced I spent a lot of time alone, traveling, at, I got so sick of it. I'm just tiered of being alone all the time. But that's the natural law. Is it possible to be happy, alone?
 
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