Help me ideate on a business to help people with TMS!

Hi everyone! I know it has been some time since I have posted, but I have actually been working on something to support the problem I was venting about a few months ago here. First - huge thank you to all those that responded to me, especially @JanAtheCPA, because I actually connected with Dr. David Clarke of Symptomatic.me after you introduced them to me, and we have had many great discussions since then.

As I mentioned in this post, I have historically been very frustrated by how little the general public & especially those Type-A people that tend to have TMS personality traits know about TMS/MBS/psychosomatic diseases. And again, very aware that I am preaching to the choir. As some of you may know from my original post - I have an academic background in biotechnology & business. I've spent the last few years in strategy & operations roles in San Francisco (and am also a yoga teacher), and have been ideating on how I can help people with chronic stress-related symptoms that also leverages my skillset and network. I'm passionate about TMS, but also the world of mindfulness it has unlocked for me, including meditation, devotion to living an examined life, and overall being more integrated as a person, ruled less by cyclical diseases and more by just living. I would love your help in brainstorming where I might be able to have an impact. In other words, what would have helped you in your journey of TMS recovery?

A few things I have learned:

• I believe that once you know you have TMS, there are plenty of amazing resources for people, spanning from Sarno's books to podcasts to this wiki. I do not need to add yet another resource or coaching practice for people that already know they have TMS and are on a journey to cure it.
• Thus, my target audience are people who are not very aware of TMS or uncovering the power of their mind in general. They might scoff at the idea or think it is "woo-woo".
• My first idea was to start a company that would meet people where they are: at academic settings or in their workday. I created the company with the intention to create interactive, live workshops teaching about the evolutionary stress-response, how it can manifest into disease, and how to incorporate mindfulness practices throughout your workday, like quick micro-meditations or short journaling exercises. I tested it out, but frankly, didn't think it was capitalizing on my strategic skillset - I was essentially a workshop facilitator to an audience who may or may not be struggling with any stress-related symptoms.
• I then pivoted to 1x1 executive coaching for leaders in high-growth startups. Naturally, the same traits that cause these people to be hugely successful in running businesses may also cause stress-related disease. And, these people have a lot of influence and large platforms, so if I can get to them, perhaps I could get to others. However, after a lot of reflection, I'm actually not sure that leverages my skillset either...coaching requires a lot of listening, patience & guiding clients to their inner wisdom. I think with mind body ailments, I would want to do more promoting/advice-giving and pointing people to these great, existing resources in the TMS community.

So, here I am today, asking for your help. I'm a little lost on what else I could explore. I am not looking to create a business for personal profit, but I do want to provide value to people in a way that makes sense for my skillset and background in biotech - I am sure profit would follow as long as I provide value. I've considered education the medical community, given most of us went to doctors during our TMS journey(s) and many failed to point us to the right resources. But how do I convince the medical community? There are already many doctors and ATNS who are trying to bring TMS to the medical and scientific community. I've also considered making an app that people could use to self-manage their symptoms, but again, Curable exists as well as some other companies like Mindset health, which provides hypnotherapy programs for pain, smoking cessation, IBS and more. Not exactly the same, but not entirely different, and I would need a lot of funding to get something like that started.

There is no easy answer, and I am sure I just need to be patient. But rather than continue to talk to people who have not dealt with TMS, I wanted to ask this community. What do you imagine could help people who are struggling with TMS and don't know it? Should I be targeting consumers/people directly, or the medical community? Should I 1x1 provide value to individuals, or is that too saturated and instead should focus on broader outreach given my business background?

I am open & grateful to all feedback and ideas!

 

Hi, Nora,
The problem with your target audience is very few people will believe you. I think Sarno said something like only 5% of the people he presented TMS to accepted it. You might just want to have some kind of business related to soothing anxiety— because almost everyone in the world today has an anxiety problem. Then after they’re following you for that issue, you could introduce TMS to those that manifest with symptoms. I don’t know —it’s a tough thing— because even here on the forum more than half the new people don’t really want to believe they have TMS and/or want to truly work on it.

 

"What do you imagine could help people who are struggling with TMS and don't know it?"

I think this is something that has been discussed by many TMS specialists I've seen talk: Dr. Schubiner, Dr. Schecter, Lorimer Mosley and many others - they go right back to Dr. Sarno and say that the science and knowledge is the best place to present this information to people who don't know they have TMS.
Dr. Sarno's first line of presentation of TMS to his patients were two lectures where he presented the science behind TMS. It makes sense to me, because people are already looking towards a medical idea and to science to explain their pain when they go to the doctor. Like @Diana-M mentions - only a small fraction of the people Dr. Sarno presented to bought into the science and the ideas behind TMS.

The physical therapy place I utilize to help me overcome fear of movement and break habits is now trying to present a "soft" TMS model to some of their clients. They use different methods for different people. For their main clientele who are elderly, they utilize a fear (anxiety) method and more of Alan Gordon's method. For their atheletes they present it as science based Lorimer Mosely style information. They are now offering to give any client who is interested some referrals to TMS coaches and Somatic Therpists. It is a precarious part of their business, and they tend to wait until they develop some trust with their patients before even mentioning anything attached to chronic pain because so many people get offended or are not interested in the TMS model.

 

The issue are not the people who don't know it. The issue is with those who refuse to know it. Per Sarno, 80% of those who came to him with back pain refused his method. The numbers are much better now as his method slowly spreads, but the number of deniers is still very high.

 

Wow, yeah, I will echo what Jan is saying here.

I think part of the reason I never did anything about my anxiety is because I didn't understand it. I was shamed about it by friends and family -- like it was a joke or a quirk. In reality I felt alone, like I was born this way and couldn't fix it, like I was stuck with it. Of course after discovering TMS that was far from the truth as my anxiety is kept at bay 99% of the time. I wish my parents were educated about mental health. I think this would've helped immensely in my upbringing and as a child with night terrors, random chronic tummy aches. But they weren't. I grew up in a small poor Eastern European town. I'm the first to break the generational trauma in my family.

 

Same. I knew I had anxiety and OCD as a child and teen and no one helped me. It was just like it was a part of me and no one told me I could fix it. As a child I had many headaches and stomach pain that I now see as TMS. Learning to work with emotions would have helped me so much as child. I'll be approaching my sister about TMS when I visit her this summer (we live in different states). She has many TMS symptoms but I wouldn't have know if I didn't stumble onto TMS. And who knows if she will be open to it? That was a huge stumbling block for me when I first learned about. I finally surrendered when I knew no one else could help me.

 

@nora97 , sometimes when I day dream if more people are aware of TMS, maybe the world would be more peaceful because people could be more authentic to themselves and build authentic connections with others. Maybe there will be more people in power like that senator cured by Dr. Sarno' book who held a congress hearing inviting Dr. Sarno. Instead look at what we have today...

Oh well, one thing I realize about doing the emotional work regarding TMS is that I can't expect to fix others, no matter how good the intentions are. It is easy to fall back to that thought pattern and self pity/victomhood. Because trying to fix others is to give up to one's own fear that one can't heal oneself and face oneself in brutal honesty. @JanAtheCPA is totally right in planting the seed and live it oneself, if others witness that, it is up to them to make up their minds to try that.

Regarding business ideas, I wonder group seminars may be a good start. Find the organizations that could pay to start with, like corporation/academic emplyee resource/well being groups. I saw a YouTube video of Dr. Shubiner speaking at Google a few years ago, imagine how much Google would pay. Also linkedin besides facebook is a good platform to advertise TMS, because you would be targeting audience who are more likely to pay. Corporations these days typically offer some telemedicine for mental health/coaching sessions, like up to 10 sessions free. A lot of social workers or therapists work for that platform and provide online service. So maybe approach those platforms and offer TMS content as part of the employee educational resources? A few years ago, my employer had a back pain campaign, showing us correct ways to lift things, office yoga etc., looking back I think it would have been better to distribute everyone Dr. Sarno's first book "Healing Back Pain"...

Another community you could target is the FIRE early retirement community, contact some famous bloggers and utilize their platforms and create paid content. They could pay, and as early retirees the biggest concern in the US society today is health insurance. So if they adopt TMS, the benefits are quite obvious.

Regarding promoting TMS to people with less resources, maybe donate Dr. Sarno's books to local schools, churches, libraries etc. I once gave Dr. Sarno's book to a janitor lady who complained about back pain and had to get injections. I told her it worked for my husband and secretly hoped she could read it and save her tons of money getting these expensive treatments. I wasn't sure if she read it or not but since the company let her go, but at least she had the book and maybe somebody else would notice it one day.

Another thing regarding promoting TMS to people who don't know it, the value would be hard to measure in my opinion. For example, how much less insurance premiums an employer could pay, how much more employee productivity is provided if TMS resources are provided? How do you follow up what percentage of the audience would adopt TMS, maybe surveys?

 

Great ideas, @louaci !

 

“Another thing regarding promoting TMS to people who don't know it, the value would be hard to measure in my opinion. For example, how much less insurance premiums an employer could pay, how much more employee productivity is provided if TMS resources are provided? How do you follow up what percentage of the audience would adopt TMS, maybe surveys?”

This is within my husbands line of work, and he has made many attempts to get this idea through. There are actually several TMS service providers in the US available to private corporate insurance. They have to bid and win service contracts and then be utilized or contracts won’t be renewed. Unfortunately, the rate of utilization is very low, although the information is circulated (similar programs for lifestyle changes are also poorly utilized).

 

It’s really sad how insurance usually never pays for the good stuff!

 

Dr. Schubiner, one of the very best TMS doctors in the US, was fired by the hospital he was affiliated with because he was not bringing them the bacon: no surgeries, no procedures, just talking to the patients, which cannot be billed at the rate they want.

 

That was probably why Dr. Schubiner built his new business model of paid talks etc., I suppose. Dr. Paul Gwozdz could still provide TMS service through insurance possibly because he owns his one-man clinic and that clinic still floats despite a lot of these types of private clinics are squeezed out of business by big corporate health systems that want to replace most family docs with PAs or NPs.

Actually Dr. Sarno was kind of lucky, since he stayed on for decades and not until later his employer started ostracizing him. And he wasn't happy about that. If he were working these days, it would not take this long for the top management to get rid of him. So besides saying Thank you Dr. Sarno, I would say thank you to whoever in charge back in the 80s and 90s for leaving Dr. Sarno alone, lol...

 

All - thanks so much for your responses. Lots to think about...seems to me the key question is not to simply expose people to TMS/MBS/neuroplastic symptoms, it is to somehow open up their minds to accept it. I'm going to continue ideating, but in the meantime, if you have other ideas please share!

I've actually been thinking quite a bit about "Natural Cycles" which is a relatively good case study / analog for this problem. If you're unfamiliar, Natural Cycles is an app that was created as a digital, non-hormonal contraceptive using an "algorithm" to predict ovulation via body temperature. Importantly, there is actually a book called "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" that is referred to as the bible for fertility and helps people track ovulation on their own by teaching them the tools of temperature tracking, and many people think there is actually nothing special about this fancy, expensive Natural Cycles app. However, what Natural Cycles did was brilliant in my view, because they were able to communicate the ethos of fertility tracking to the general public in a digestible, easy-to-follow and understand app, leveraging terms like "proprietary algorithm" which makes it sound more palatable to those firmly against "woo-woo" self-directed techniques. Natural Cycles was also able to collect data and get FDA-approved, which drastically has shaped the market for physicians who are now much more aware and comfortable recommending this option to their patients.

You can probably see a lot of parallels to Mindbody syndrome...the information and the "Cure" is simple and if I could send a free Sarno book to everyone in the world, I would. But ultimately, the question is how to get people to accept it for themselves. Perhaps a fancy app in a way people can understand? Re-branding TMS as a techy, new-age superpower of unlocking your mind? Just some ideas. I'd be curious what folks think of Curable if you've tried it. It seems like a great app with lots of potential, but is focused on pain rather than other symptoms, and I wish it had more adoption from the public!

 

I got the impression that Curable is pretty popular. I’ve tried it and I like it. I think the mention of “pain” is easily interchangeable with all TMS symptoms.

 

Hi @nora97 ,

Thanks---really interesting to read this thread and the approach/where you're coming from.
Getting the word out that there is another approach is one thing that could be really helpful. For me, I had a physical therapist who pulled me aside one day and let me know there is another approach on how to deal with back pain, and he went on to suggest a book by Dr. Sarno. That changed everything.
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I just searched Google on "how to deal with back pain" and it was on results page#9 when I encountered anything connected to a mindbody approach.
This site showed up on results page#9.
https://www.painreprocessingtherapy.com/ (Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) | Break Free from Chronic Pain)

I went through 15 pages of results--well over 150 results and only found one result that had anything of a mindbody approach. Nothing straight TMS.
What I found was the typical--all sorts of suggestions on how and how not to lift things; dire warnings on what happens if you ignore back pain; exercises; medications; lots of things I could buy to adjust my lifestyle; suggestions on massage and acupuncture; CBD & gummies, etc., etc. Universities and hospitals had a lot to say, but they clearly have not read The Divided Mind yet.
There were lots of scary-sounding conditions. My favorite was: Occipital Neuralgia. In second place was Lumbar Spondylosis.

 

Google algorithms put search results on the top bases on how much payment is received. Direct payment may show as "sponsored", indirect payment nobody knows.

My previous work place the owner paid so whenever people searched relevant services, his company was always at the top.

Another idea I have is related to the observation the Mindbody approach is always the last resort, the Hail Mary, when people are so desperate and are willing to try anything, and somehow they stomp upon TMS, from friends, family members, random googling etc. These days with the fear of economic downturn, corporations are squeezing cost and laying off people with some sort of package. The biggest concern for people being laid off is typically health insurance. Maybe you could approach the corporate HR, and sell them a packet info with TMS resources and charge a few hundred dollars each, and that packet would be part of the severance package to soften the blow and may be minimize lawsuits and labor disputes for the corporations (selling point). And the info has to be non-disclosed to other corporations. Imagine an HR person gives the bad news and says, you know Cobra is very expensive and here is some information about saving health care costs...Then maybe part of the profit could be used to help the less economically advantaged communities to learn about TMS.