Laughter I may be the first person to worry TMS is psychological

This is a short post about a humorous and slightly embarrassing worry I had last week.

For every new treatment I started for my pelvic pain, which I thought would resolve my pain, I had a worrying thought.

"What if this is a placebo?!" I thought, my heart racing. What if the anti-biotics were a placebo, and the positive effect was all in my head?! What if the week of improvement from my physical therapy was a placebo?! Looking back, I now know that those were placebos, and after a short time, they all wore off.

When I first started reading about TMS and its treatment, my catastrophizing brain kicked in. I had the same very worrying thought pop in my head, but directed towards TMS: "What if TMS is all in my head?! What if I have improvements and they're all just psychological!". I genuinely got worried. My heart was pounding.

I let that 'worrying thought' stir around in my head a while. Drank some more coffee. Walked around a bit.

And then my brain woke up and I realized that TMS was a psychologically based syndrome, and I burst out laughing. I think I might be the first person to ever panic that TMS might be psychological. Guess one part of my brain was convinced I had TMS, but another still thought the pain was physical and anything psychological didn't count.

For all the stress and anguish my brain has caused me, I can't help but laugh at it sometimes!

 

Brilliant post!!!

Mark Twain said something like: "I've lived a long life, and I've had a great deal of troubles. Luckily most of them never happened."

 

That's funny, c90danwaiel! Amazing, if less amusing, how our brains/minds create our suffering and anxiety by accepting certain beliefs...cool: your being able to laugh about and at it!
Speaking of laughter (coincidentally?)...just now as my mind was wandering outside my head so as to better understand what's inside my head, I came upon a nice treatise on the stigma placed on psychological origins for physical effects by Suzanne O’Sullivan in "It’s All In Your Head: True Stories Of Imaginary Illness". She uses the innocuous example of laughter to demonstrate how the mind alters the body: “It is a physical display of emotion, its mechanism is ill-understood, it is not always under our voluntary control, it affects our whole body, it stops our breathing and speeds up our heart, it serves a purpose… if we can collapse with laughter, is it not just as possible that the body can do even more extraordinary things when faced with even more extraordinary triggers?”

PS: As I started to write this post I restarted my music program and Solas' "For Love and Laughter" album was waiting! Wishing more of both for all of us...r

 

You're not the first person to think that, so don't worry. In the 90s, I remember being afraid that I was in control over my own health, and how it momentarily seemed easier to blame me health on my failing body. But that's the favor by the brain, it's trying to help you escape accountability for your own life. I didn't want to be responsible for my actions (but you can't escape karma's arrows). So for a period I was hoping TMS was wrong.

But I've been asked too many times "isn't TMS just a placebo too?" Yes it is if your definition of a placebo is "belief." Dr. Sarno's contention is that you have to believe there's nothing wrong with you. I asked him, "what's the main point in TMS?" He said, "belief." And he's right again!

The entire process was unveiled when Einstein and his colleagues busted open the atom and revealed that matter didn't exist, everything is energy and consciousness. We control our fate through belief. However compassion is the net that has us entangled. There's a fatalism in thinking that the body is finite, but relief in knowing it is not.

 

OMG, this is very funny. I just wish I had someone I could tell this joke to (the opening post). It’s a bit nuanced. We are relatively small pack, those who have spent enough time understanding and applying Sarno that we could even get why this is funny. I have tried to educate my friends, not only to fix them ( ha ha) but also to have more of a shared vocabulary. I have also tried to educate my therapist, and she really approves of Sarno, and hands his books to people, but still shows up with different parts of her body in splints because they “went out,” on a regular basis. I always say something to her like “pick up your bed and walk!” (quoting Jesus, to a guy who had been lying by a magic pool for 35 years. Every time the moon was up — or something — it was supposed to have healing power, but he was always pushed aside by others and never managed to get in the water. Jeezus just busted him: “Wilt thou be whole?” (Do you want to be healed?) OK, then pick up your bed and walk. The first TMS doc on record. Happy Christmas and Hannukah and all.