How to perform Somatic Tracking when it is not possible to trigger the pain?

[Annot]

Hi,

I've just read Alan Gordon's book. I cannot say for sure if my 4 y.o. pain is neuroplastic, but I have good suspicions it is. I am now trying to end the pain and fear circle.
One issue I'm having with the method is somatic tracking. The pain I have comes and goes completely randomly
Besides, 90 percent of the time it lasts only a second. When I say randomly, I mean that I haven't found any position, movement, habit, time of the day or week, humour or anything that is triggering the pain. It just arrives at any moment, like a stabbing knife, and then disappears.
It is that brief that I do not have time to do somatic tracking, I am just surprised by it every time. So I just suffer it and do not have time to observe.

Anyone in this situation ? Any lead on how to deal with it?

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[JanAtheCPA]

So I just suffer it and do not have time to observe.

Suffering is a choice, but perhaps that's just a poor choice of wording on your part. Nonetheless, it can be said that choosing to cling to the idea of suffering is a form of victimhood, and I can for sure tell you that victimhood is not conducive to healing from a mindbody disorder.

Be that as it may - I'll offer my experience and opinion since no one else is responding to your question.

I don't do somatic tracking - I never did, and I don't know if there will ever come a time when it will be relevant to my experience. Perhaps if I were to suffer a severe illness or injury I would want to adopt it. But back in 2011 when I discovered Dr. Sarno during my biggest lifetime TMS crisis, I immediately plunged wholeheartedly into doing the emotional work, and I recovered. Looking back, somatic tracking for my symptoms would have been pointless, because with the exception of what I used to call "5-ibuprofen headaches", I did not have any pain symptoms that manifested while I was sitting or lying still, and my many other TMS symptoms were things like anxiety, depression, balance, dizziness, shakiness, and alarmingly bad digestion but without discomfort. These are more likely to respond to meditation than to somatic tracking, but in fact what ALL of my symptoms responded to very quickly was me doing the emotional work. Including the headaches of many decades: gone, never to return (to this day, thirteen years later)(although believe me, I still struggle with other TMS stuff, but that's maintenance).

Anyway, here's my advice - let go of somatic tracking, and try something else. You may have to (gasp!) do the emotional work. I know that Alan has stepped away somewhat from the emotional side, perhaps trying to appeal to the many people who are afraid of the concept of repressed emotions, and I guess that's fine, but honestly, I've been around this forum for a long time, and I have been a moderator here for almost as long, and as far as I'm concerned (and I see this every single day in the awesome advice provided by my peers), it's apparent that the emotional work is still the one thing that is consistently helping people the most.

Let us know if you need advice on where/how to start, since we don't know your TMS history. I have a long list of favorite resources on my profile page. I did the Structured Educational Program, and while it's a bit old and not all of the links work anymore, it's still helping people on a regular basis. The Curable app (which is not free but is pretty affordable compared to what most of us spent "before TMS") is like a professionally curated and constantly updated SEP, with lots of additional resources, including an excellent free podcast. Nicole Sachs offers both paid and free resourcs (including her YouTube channel and her podcast and her website thecureforchronicpain.com) and she is all about the emotional journey and accepting the truth about reality. We have a whole subforum devoted to Success Stories and many different resources are mentioned by those folks.

Good luck.

 

[waruwarui]

Suffering is a choice, but perhaps that's just a poor choice of wording on your part. Nonetheless, it can be said that choosing to cling to the idea of suffering is a form of victimhood, and I can for sure tell you that victimhood is not conducive to healing from a mindbody disorder.

Be that as it may - I'll offer my experience and opinion since no one else is responding to your question.

I don't do somatic tracking - I never did, and I don't know if there will ever come a time when it will be relevant to my experience. Perhaps if I were to suffer a severe illness or injury I would want to adopt it. But back in 2011 when I discovered Dr. Sarno during my biggest lifetime TMS crisis, I immediately plunged wholeheartedly into doing the emotional work, and I recovered. Looking back, somatic tracking for my symptoms would have been pointless, because with the exception of what I used to call "5-ibuprofen headaches", I did not have any pain symptoms that manifested while I was sitting or lying still, and my many other TMS symptoms were things like anxiety, depression, balance, dizziness, shakiness, and alarmingly bad digestion but without discomfort. These are more likely to respond to meditation than to somatic tracking, but in fact what ALL of my symptoms responded to very quickly was me doing the emotional work. Including the headaches of many decades: gone, never to return (to this day, thirteen years later)(although believe me, I still struggle with other TMS stuff, but that's maintenance).

Anyway, here's my advice - let go of somatic tracking, and try something else. You may have to (gasp!) do the emotional work. I know that Alan has stepped away somewhat from the emotional side, perhaps trying to appeal to the many people who are afraid of the concept of repressed emotions, and I guess that's fine, but honestly, I've been around this forum for a long time, and I have been a moderator here for almost as long, and as far as I'm concerned (and I see this every single day in the awesome advice provided by my peers), it's apparent that the emotional work is still the one thing that is consistently helping people the most.

Let us know if you need advice on where/how to start, since we don't know your TMS history. I have a long list of favorite resources on my profile page. I did the Structured Educational Program, and while it's a bit old and not all of the links work anymore, it's still helping people on a regular basis. The Curable app (which is not free but is pretty affordable compared to what most of us spent "before TMS") is like a professionally curated and constantly updated SEP, with lots of additional resources, including an excellent free podcast. Nicole Sachs offers both paid and free resourcs (including her YouTube channel and her podcast and her website thecureforchronicpain.com) and she is all about the emotional journey and accepting the truth about reality. We have a whole subforum devoted to Success Stories and many different resources are mentioned by those folks.

Good luck.

Super insightful as always! I feel like my problem is that I don't know what the emotional work is...

 

[Cactusflower]

Super insightful as always! I feel like my problem is that I don't know what the emotional work is...

Dr. Sarno talks about the emotional work briefly in his books (make sure you read one!) and the free Structural Education Program at tmswiki.org (scroll down page) takes you through it, and teaches a variety of ways to do it.

 

[Booble]

Hi,

I've just read Alan Gordon's book. I cannot say for sure if my 4 y.o. pain is neuroplastic, but I have good suspicions it is. I am now trying to end the pain and fear circle.
One issue I'm having with the method is somatic tracking. The pain I have comes and goes completely randomly
Besides, 90 percent of the time it lasts only a second. When I say randomly, I mean that I haven't found any position, movement, habit, time of the day or week, humour or anything that is triggering the pain. It just arrives at any moment, like a stabbing knife, and then disappears.
It is that brief that I do not have time to do somatic tracking, I am just surprised by it every time. So I just suffer it and do not have time to observe.

Anyone in this situation ? Any lead on how to deal with it?

Thanks in advance!!!

Here's my take on it......my guess is that the Pain is 100% normal and it's the Fear that is the problem.
One of the things they never tell you is that everyone has various pains. And other things. We are raised with this belief that being healthy means that our bodies are 100% perfect, energetic, textbook, and lovely at every moment of every day at every hour and every second.
A stabbing pain that lasts for a second? Completely, totally, absolutely normal. Everyone has those.
Most people get those pains and think, oof, and then don't give it another thought.
People like us get that pain and focus on it. We put tremendous weight and meaning on something that is a normal blip. We think about it. We worry about it. We suffer from it. Look at how closely you must be paying attention to it such that you "haven't found any position, movement, habit, time of the day or week, humour or anything that is triggering the pain." That's a lot of thinking and focus and attention!

And meanwhile, the rest of the world gets those exact same things and don't give them a thought or care in the world.

So the question is, why do we get so fearful of them? Why do they make us suffer?
That's where the emotional work can come in.

Or not. If this is the only thing that you suffer from you can take heart in that everyone gets those stabbing pains from time to time and they don't mean a thing.

 

[Annot]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Dear JanAtheCPA,

I rather meant endure than suffer. English is not my mothertongue as I'm french so I might have used the wrong term.

I will listen to the podcasts you mention.

I actually read "The mindbody prescription" from Dr Sarno 2 years ago, when the pain started to really impact my daily life. I found it quite interesting and I actually realized that some back pain I often had (which was clearly not debilitating) was probably related to some stress level, and applying Dr Sarno's technique at least helped those (unless it stopped because I stopped all sports). Doing so I did a big introspection on my feelings, and I tried my best to tell my brain that pain was related to stressful situation. But in the end I was not able to correlate any stressful event, situation or feeling to the moments I was feeling my groin pain.
So this didn't work at all on the pain for which I'm writing which is near the groin.

I'd like to illustrate a bit more the pain I feel. To give an example I was a very very good sleeper. It was very difficult for anyone to wake me up at night, whereever I was sleeping, and indepentenly if I had back pain or any other injury. I used to sleep non stop very deeply. However my groin pain started to wake me up, violently, at any time of the night.

I believe that Alan's Gordon method, even if it doesn't remove completely my pain, could help reduce its impact on my life. Hence my original question.

Thanks again,

Dear Booble,
I'm afraid your guesses are incorrect. I am really not one to worry about one weird pain that I feel every other day. I used to practice a lot of sport, up to 1 to 2 times a day (mostly sport climbing, bouldering, cycling, running, mountaineering and ski touring). I was used to push my body often and was clearly not afraid of some pain. I had many painful injuries which did not result in any chronic pain.
Actually, even though it was extreamly painful, at first I used to forget almost immediately this groin pain. I was clearly not rumating on it. And as in the beginning it occured rarely, it took me 2 years to first see a doctor about it, when it became daily and started to wake me up almost every night. Before that I was of course worried on the moment, but the minute after was able to move on to something else.
When I reached the situation of daily pain, then yes I started to feel overly worrying. I am totally aware that this is not helping and this is what I want to work on.

Thanks anyway

 

[Booble]

at first I used to forget almost immediately this groin pain. I was clearly not rumating on it. And as in the beginning it occured rarely,

I don't think my guess is that incorrect but I'll leave you to ponder it it.
Hopefully you'll take @JanAtheCPA 's advice and do the emotional work.
It seems likely that your mind wants to distract you and even considering that it's normal and not something to worry about set your unconscious mind off. For if it is normal and nothing to worry about, then your mind losing the ability to distract you from whatever repressed anger it's hiding from you.