Help understanding fear of the symptoms

R

readytoheal

Peer Supporter
Hello. I’m needing some help sorting through my tms experiences. With bladder/ic symptoms the less I feared the symptoms the better I got! I’d challenge fears and instantly see improvement. But with visual migraine, when I don’t fear the symptoms-wham! I’m hit with one. This is conditioning me to always be on guard. Why am I hit when I least expect it- when I’m actually feeling best? It’s bewildering. If I’m watching and anticipating- no migraine; let my guard down- shows up. Is this tms? Or is this just randomness from a real issue and related to my blood pressure, genetics, triggers, etc etc? If it is tms, why is this happening?? TIA
 
Hey readytoheal. In my experience with TMS, symptoms hit the hardest as soon as I am feeling better. And often, as is the case for me currently, they are brand new or exaggerated. The reason this occurs is because once you begin to feel better, your brain loses all its power to manipulate you and will search for new ways. My TMS doctor says "the subconscious brain is very clever," meaning, if your brain thinks it has an opportunity to convince your conscious mind that your symptoms are not TMS, it will take it. Thus, causing you to ask yourself, "why do these symptoms come when I least expect it?" and then entering into the same cycle of pain the original symptom started with. Just remember, if it is TMS, it WILL eventually reveal itself. Good luck readytoheal.
 
Thank you for your response! I like what you said about TMS eventually revealing itself. That’s a good point and something to watch for.
 
I started getting ocular migraines (one of my many, many TMS symptoms) in 2015. They still happen on occasion, but I feel no fear. They are a reminder that I need to take care of myself and step away from the computer for about 30 minutes. Deep breathing or meditation in a dark room helps. I think I remember reading that Dr. Sarno had ocular migraines and was cured by treating it as TMS. It's important to accept that you don't have a brain tumor, eye issues, or are having a stroke. A lot of people have them and they are harmless.
 
I had migraines a large part of my childhood. In fact understanding the conditioning portion of TMS came from them because they were some of the first conditioned symptoms I had e.g. they were triggered by smells and being in 'movies' at school . For you youngsters, that is they took us to the gym, dimmed the lights and we watched old fashioned reels, just like at a theater.

I was probably having some sort of symptom need the FIRST time or two they happened, but as we are all very condition-able, all of the rest could have been conditioning. Things that are conditioned are...well, conditioned and it is quite a blow to our thinking waking ego that things in our environment can trigger our TMS...and that are thinking mind can't 'over-ride' this knowledge.

The Good news is that we are re-condition-able. You can advertise in your own head. This is where that talking to ones self that Sarno recommended comes in so handy. True, the younger guys at work think I have gone round the twist, BUT I never have any symptoms anymore. Fear of them can trigger the relapse via conditioning and the nocebo, But it's only gas on a fire...sometimes we have to find the spark.

also @ readytoheal . Virtually all of my TMS relapses 'came out of nowhere' and I was 'ok'...that's part of the mechanism. Usually when I was OK when one of them occurred, I went and sat still and did a review...think, think, think... goT It! I am Not OK... I repressed or was repressing something that wasn't so OK but I didn't think it was a big deal, decided to ignore it and be a positive kind of guy...and ouch my foot hurts.

Learning about ourselves,the unconscious and TMS is a lot like Einsteins metaphor of the watch and God's universe. WE might never be able to open up and exactly know how the watch works, BUT we can through trial error and intuition create a model that reproduces the watch. In this case, YOU are the watch and each one of us needs to figure out how it 'works'. Keep paying attention and you will!!
 
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