Day 2 Happy and Grumpy...

[Emily75]

Insofar as I have understood this method, it is about how our repressed emotions do us harm and therefore, in response to the day two program, I will repress nothing and say this:

On just the second day of this program someone writes "The readings you have had so far" and so I ask "what readings?", how many?, and why "so far"? as it has not been many or far at all...I have basically been shown one interesting video with a really cute and sexy journalist and one link to a woman who was cured and that's it...there is no need to pretend that you have provided me with any kind of in-depth or complex background or knowledge because it is not so, please give me some time to adjust, say something like "the introduction you had yesterday", arghh, annoying.


2nd day reading was poorly presented - what is with these long narrow paragraphs with huge white margins on either side of the page? It would have been more readable on a neutral (cream/beige) background with the actual text (in a serif font) taking up more space and thus appearing to be shorter.

And then, please, I have suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome, it was particularly bad when I was younger and worked for the USPS, and still, I am able to make paragraphs...could someone please make an effort to edit these first person stories? Good Lord, it is unreadable in these big sans serif blocks, and pain is no excuse, because, even on the baddest day and under the worst pain, it is still possible to divide your sufferings into manageable and readable paragraphs.

3 things that make me angry:

1. Dullness
2. Boringness
3. Ordinariness

and the very same things make me sad.

Happy and Grumpy New Year to all! may it be exciting, and interesting, and extraordinary!

 

[Forest]

Heya, Emily,

Thanks a lot for that feedback. I think that for every person who gives us a bit of feedback, there are probably 10 others who don't bother. To improve our program, we need to know how the program is perceived, so it is always useful to hear what people are thinking.

I went ahead and made the change you suggested in your first paragraph. The poor phrasing probably came when someone copied and pasted text from later in the program without updating it. Regarding the other suggestions, I don't know if there is much we can do about them. You see, the goal of the Structured Program is to organize and make easier to process a curated selection of some of the best free resources on the internet about TMS. There is a huge amount of information out there and it can be a bit overwhelming, so we break it up into days and try to choose a good ordering. As such, we don't have control over many of the sources because they aren't on our own web site.

For example, the first reading, with the wide margins, is on the web site of the St. John Providence health system. Howard Schubiner, MD, a TMS physician, runs a mind-body clinic there, and I suspect that he sponsored that article. However, because we don't control that website, we can't change the formatting. The same applies to the other linked readings that you mentioned.

In terms of the first person stories, I know that for many of us, if we read an online testimonial and it seems "too copyedited," we wonder, "Who is making so much money off of this that they can hire a copy editor to edit all of the stories?" This makes us suspicious and undermines the power of the stories. On the other hand, one of the most amazing thing about our online community is that people are so happy when they recover that they take the time to type up their stories in hope that they might help others some day. In fact, someone did this just the other day on our forum:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/it-woiks.1317/#post-6758

Reading stories like that was crucial to my own personal recovery from RSI (you can learn about it here, if you're curious). When I read a story that was clearly posted by the person who lived it, the story seems much more powerful to me. Either way, I see the stories as being the property of the person who posted them, so we can't really edit them. However, you feedback does make it clear that we should probably explain this to people who are doing the program, so they understand when they start and don't get turned off like you were. In that sense, it was helpful even if we can't do exactly what you suggest.

Anyway, happy new year to you as well, and I wish you the best in your recovery!

PS. If I'm understanding you right, it was John Stossel who was the cute and sexy journalist. This puts a big smile on my face as us 'mericans aren't much into "the 'stache" any more. I'll have to tell my girlfriend, who particularly hates them. I often kid her about that.