Interview with Nicole Sachs, LCSW

Forest

Forest

Beloved Grand Eagle
A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing TMS therapist and author Nicole Sachs. Her journey and recovery from TMS was incredibly inspiring to listen to. I am happy to share the interview with you all here.

Nicole was one of Dr. Sarno’s alumni panelists, and recently came out with a book, The Meaning of Truth. I am very grateful that she took the time to speak with me. She has a great story, and is really interested in helping other people recover.

March 23, 2017 edit:
Nicole Sachs just posted the following new information on page 2 of this thread, in response to someone who discovered that the video link below is now "private"​

"My interview video has been removed at my request, as my work has evolved and I wanted to represent it more clearly. Please check out my YouTube channel. XO"
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-tz1Du69PhcBkC3-9_Mgmw (The Cure For Chronic Pain with Nicole J. Sachs, LCSW)​

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you, Forest! I am so pleased to share my story on this forum, and really enjoyed speaking with you. The more people who hear and understand TMS success stories, the more people who will understand how to heal themselves, and/or get the help they need to do so. I look forward to contributing all that I can to help on this forum. Much love...
 
This is a wonderful and inspiring interview. Thanks so much, Nicole, and of course Forest for asking Nicole to share with us. I'm bookmarking link right now on my profile page - it's a keeper!

Jan
 
Nicole Sachs' story about her anger toward her second (?) child immediately reminded me of the case of Peter the architect in Anderson and Sherman's Pathways to Pain Relief, who found he could not face the ambiguities of his anger at his children:

"Even though Peter intellectually recognized that children squabble in the backseats of cars, he was appalled and frightened when he found himself fantasizing about getting out of the car and leaving his kids by the side of the road to fend for themselves. He automatically assumed that no loving father could ever think of such a thing. A good father can only have loving feelings towards his children, no matter how exasperatingly and ungratefully they behaved. Peter concluded he must be a despicable person."

Coming to terms with these kinds of ambivalent feelings, as Dr Sherman notes, are characteristic "of all significant relationships" and really confirms ones humanity (and adulthood).

Thank you, Nicole!
 
Bruce, you are so welcome! Not only have these and other epiphanies of truth led me out of pain, but they have enriched my children's lives in ways immeasurable. I can't imagine the mother I would've been if I had made it all about projecting my issues onto my kids. I thank God for the pain, as the joy I get from mothering clearly is such a powerful measure of peace in my life. xo, n.
 
Nicole and Forest,

I just watched the interview and it was wonderful. Very powerful.

Thanks to the both of you for your strength, your resilience and your determination to change the way we think about chronic pain. It is so inspiring.

Well done!

-Dr. Z
 
Hi Nicole,

Enjoyed your interview and I'm in the process of reading your book. It's taking me longer than I would like given I have a two year old and 4 month old. Goodness I can relate to your story. Fear/anxiety is probably the perpetrator of my continued pain symptoms. Thankfully I have had some straight-shooting mommy friends that have made me feel comfortable in expressing my inner truth about my rage about parenthood. I deeply, truly love my daughters more than life itself, but there are moments where I HATE being a mom! All feelings that I'm very much aware of, that don't detract from the love I have for my girls.

Just wanted to say thank you for sharing your story! Regards, Mandi
 
I don't quite remember where I saw this, OtterMan, but there was a story about a TMS recovery with before and after shots of the fellow's back. While he was having lower back spasms, it looked like his left or right side was completely twisted and distorted. Then, following recovery, only a few months later, his back looked completely normal. The only thing was that he had been twisted and hunched over like that for years previously. I believe if you look at the first few pages of Dr Sarno's Healing Back Pain, there is a description of the characteristic gait and walk of back pain patients. What you describe in yourself doesn't sound very different from what Sarno describes and the pictures in the before and after case study. Really sounds like your own case. I'm sure that the physical distortion you describe contributes to your anxiety and in turn intensifies your symptoms. Hope someone chimes in with a reference to those before/after TMS recovery patient pictures, but the change is quite dramatic. It sounds as though the intermittent nature of your condition should give you a clue to its psychogenic origins since you already indicate you've been checked out by a traditional MD and other diagnoses have been ruled out.
 
Thanks for telling your story. I forget that it is a journey and not a race. I keep thinking to myself, I should be better by now. It is like when you have difficulty sleeping and you look at the clock and them subtract the current time from the time you have to wake up. I now turn my clock and do not look at it. I guess I will have to turn my TMS clock too.
 
BruceMC said:
I don't quite remember where I saw this, OtterMan, but there was a story about a TMS recovery with before and after shots of the fellow's back. While he was having lower back spasms, it looked like his left or right side was completely twisted and distorted. Then, following recovery, only a few months later, his back looked completely normal. The only thing was that he had been twisted and hunched over like that for years previously. I believe if you look at the first few pages of Dr Sarno's Healing Back Pain, there is a description of the characteristic gait and walk of back pain patients. What you describe in yourself doesn't sound very different from what Sarno describes and the pictures in the before and after case study. Really sounds like your own case. I'm sure that the physical distortion you describe contributes to your anxiety and in turn intensifies your symptoms. Hope someone chimes in with a reference to those before/after TMS recovery patient pictures, but the change is quite dramatic. It sounds as though the intermittent nature of your condition should give you a clue to its psychogenic origins since you already indicate you've been checked out by a traditional MD and other diagnoses have been ruled out.
Click to expand...

Yes what you wrote is completely me. I get back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, fascial tightness and then i looking the mirror and im hunched over, or my abs look weird and then my back is thin and flat. But days without pain my body looks lean, fit and bigger as if there is more air in them. I am trying not too worry too much and just realize there is something going on emotionally.
 
Peter Zafirides said:
Nicole and Forest,

I just watched the interview and it was wonderful. Very powerful.

Thanks to the both of you for your strength, your resilience and your determination to change the way we think about chronic pain. It is so inspiring.

Well done!

-Dr. Z
Click to expand...

Thank you for your kind words Dr. Zafirides. It was a pleasure to be able to record Nicole's story and share it with people. Having information out there about TMS and people's recovery stories is so helpful for people trying to get better, which is something that you have been doing yourself for some time. I think that your podcast plays a vital role in our movement by bringing in new ideas and keeping us up to date on cutting edge science. At some point, I'd really love to do an interview with you in which we discuss the four categories of existential anxieties. These really resonate with a lot of people, myself included.
 
I watched Nicole on this video, she was great. Her openness and desire to help shines through. It takes courage to heal, and it takes courage to tell her story. I've begun sending more and more people to this interview. People demand to see proof. I hear it quite often, "can you hook me up with someone who has what I have? I aint buyin it till I see it."

With each of our healing stories we place another block in a monument to Dr. Sarno's life-work. Every testimonial is proof in itself. I am one brickhead in that Sarno wall of honor.

Steve ....all in all, I'm just another brick in the wall
 
Thank you to everyone who appreciated our interview, and my willingness to share my story. I was interviewed for a Podcast this AM on overcoming adversity, which I will share here as soon as it airs. It's my fervent wish to help as many people as possible. Thank you Forest, for your dedication!

-n.
 
With an interesting discussion arising recently from a blog post that Nicole wrote about the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman, I just made a list of our eight best threads related to Nicole and her work. I thought that sharing it would be a good time to share a link to the list and keep the conversation going:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/thread...ot-about-embracing-rather-than-escaping.3717/

By the way, I made the list using an upgraded feature on our forum called "tagging." Tagging will make it much easier for people to find our best content. One of the ways that it will do this is by making it easy to make curated lists of our best threads on a specific topic, like the one I just made related to Nicole's posts. We've been doing an awful lot of work on tagging over the last month and a half and you will be hearing much more about it in the next month and a half. With people working together, we will be able to build a great system that will help many other TMSers in the future.
 
EricMd. I do the same thing with my clock beside my bed. I turn it to the wall or cover it so I can't see the time
after I go to bed. Before, if I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the clock and saw it was only
1 or 2 or 3 o'clock, I had a real hard time going back to sleep. Now if I wake up during the night,
I don't see what time it is and go right back to sleep.

I will watch the Sachs video in a little while. It sounds great.
 
I just watched Nicole Sachs' video and thought it was excellent.
We learn about her years of pain and her recovery through TMS.
She strongly suggests the form of journaling in which we write a letter to
the person(s) giving us stress and do not send it. I tried this several times
and it helped to get off my chest grievances I've had with some people.

I think her book would be well worth reading.
 
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