History of TMSWiki and forum

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berlinale

Peer Supporter
I have discovered this site 2 weeks ago and I think it is a very great source for help & support. Thanks a lot to all who contribute(d) to it. I am really, really happy & thankful I found it.

When going through a lot of the threads I had the impression that a majority of the content was added before 2020. It somehow seemed the forum had it is peak around 2017 when Alan Gordon published his recovery program and was an active member on this forum. I also had problems finding out more about the PPD/TMS Peer Network which seems to be the operator of this amazing site. I only found a facebook site which does not have any new feeds since more than 2 years. Instead I found the website of the newly renamed association for the treatment of neuroplastic symptoms and was wondering whether there is any connection to this site as a lot of familiar TMS experts are members of it.

Do not get me wrong. This is no criticism at all (see paragraph 1), I think this is a great place. I am just wondering whether this is just a normal development for such a forum or whether there were any specific reasons such as different opinions, strategies, reduced funding etc. that lead to this development. Thanks a lot to anybody who can shine a bit more light on this.
 
These are good questions, @berlinale,and I'll do my best to answer them.

I'm not entirely sure when TMS wiki.org was established , but I think it was around 2009 or so. The founder and owner of both is @Forest. Forest and a team of volunteers (I was one) transferred the wiki and the Forum to their current software platforms in 2012.

The PPD/TMS Peer Network was supposed to be a non-profit entity so that tax-deductible (US) donations could be made in order to hire someone to maintain the software as well as update and expand the two platforms, but it's very difficult to keep up with the compliance required of a non-profit organization, so that never worked out - which is why there's no information about it. The reality is that Forest doesn't have the time to do more than keep the software and servers running, and thank goodness he does that, because the forum is thriving, with about 15 to 20 legitimate new members each week.

But it's quite true that the main content of the wiki has not been updated in a long time. However I'm pleased to say that the entire Structured Educational Program was cleaned up last year, thanks to someone who had done the SEP (though not a forum user) and who reached out to me in a private message, asking what she could do to help update it. There were a lot of dead links, outdated information, and old typos and grammatical errors. This project was on my wish list for a long time, but it required finding all of the issues for all 42 Days of the SEP, researching replacement links or sometimes entirely new resources, and then to logging in separately to each page for the tedious chore of making the edits, many of them requiring HTML code... well, it was more than I was willing to do on my own. Partnering with somebody else made all the difference in the world. This wonderful volunteer (who excelled at spelling, grammar and punctuation) went through each day, documenting in a spreadsheet each item, big or small, that needed to be fixed in each page of the SEP. I followed behind as she completed the Days and I did the actual HTML editing, as well as occasionally rewriting sections when replacement resources weren't available. And it's done! For now!

Your question gives me the opportunity to say that if anyone finds a dead link or obsolete information at tmswiki.org, DM me with the URL of the page and description of the issue. A suggestion for a replacement link, resource, or suggestion will be more likely to receive attention! There are some areas I'm not authorized to edit (Alan's original program on the wiki, for example) and I can't add practitioners to the directory (the PPDA is a better resource for current practitioners who are members of the PPDA at ppdassociation.org).

berlinale said:
I found the website of the newly renamed association for the treatment of neuroplastic symptoms and was wondering whether there is any connection to this site as a lot of familiar TMS experts are members of it.
Click to expand...
Tmswiki.org is a labor of love created by Forest in honor of Dr Sarno, who helped Forest recover from TMS. The PPDA (now with the new name) had not even been envisioned back then.

To briefly state the differences:
tmswiki.org is a self-run resource for ordinary people who want to heal ourselves of PPD, aka neuroplastic symptoms, aka TMS. It was well-established a number of years before the PPDA was formed.

The PPDA is an organization of mindbody practitioners, with a goal of building awareness of mindbody practice among the traditional medical/psychological community.

I will disclose that Forest has been involved with the PPDA (as a non-practitioner) since it started, but there is no other connection between us and them.

As for Facebook, I recall tmswiki.org had an account, maybe still does. I think there is still a private TMS FB group managed by forum member MatthewNJ, who is one of the earliest volunteers. There might be other FB groups with TMS in their names, but not affiliated with our wiki. I have not participated in any of them but it doesn't surprise me to hear about the lack of activity. Fewer people using FB in the last five years.

It's good to recap our history every once in a while.
 
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@JanAtheCPA

Thanks a lot for the explanation. And a big thank to you and Forest and all the other who put so much effort into this. I have seen that Forest has not posted for quite some time but I understand he is just busy and hopefully still active in the background.
 
If he's needed we know how to find him;)

The best thing about our members is that 99.99999% of them understand and support the principles that he originally developed, and together we make sure that the forum remains a safe and supportive and somehow self-sustaining resource for healing. It's pretty amazing when you take a step back and look at it from that point of view.
 
@JanAtheCPA is very modest about her own contribution to this forum. It is outstanding as she keeps it going as a moderator and a major contributor to the content, along with several volunteers.

If I may, I would like to add that many of the practitioners from PPDA (now Association For Treatment Of Neuroplastic Symptoms) have contributed to the content here over time. The fact that more and more chronic conditions are being reversed by Dr. Sarno's method and that more and more practitioners have joined the movement is a clear testament to the validity and power of his method, which has been modernized with the most recent developments in neuroscience and psychology.

Also, every volunteer on this site does their work out of gratitude to Dr. Sarno for giving us our lives back and out of desire to carry his mission forward.
 
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