Is attitude key?

Before this relapse I enjoyed running and working out at the gym (I still do, but now I see running as a chore because I know I need to stay active). I like my job as a teacher and coach, yeah it can be stressful but my students and athletes aren't too bad. I just feel I'm not giving a 100% because I'm focused on my tms and that's killing me mentally. I was so relieved to find out this was a mental problem and with my past experiences with OCD it was clear what I was dealing with.

I also feel that I'm not 100% at home with my wife and son whom I love to be wth as well. I just feel that I'm waiting on this too much. I'm monitoring my pain as TMS and not physical because I understand that it can't be physical but I'm just stuck so I'm down on myself because I didn't see this coming.

I feel my depressed state is correlates to my tms often, and while I'm sure I would be stress at times without my pain, I wouldn't have this hopelessness feeling at times.. Like I said, the first go around I was so amped during my healing (even with pain) that I didn't care about what hurt because I knew this was the answer.. Now I just don't get why this pain is here if I know the cause... Thus creating this loop I'm in

Man, I'm seeing what my problems are with ever post, but I'm just not getting the solutions

Also, I appreciate everyone's feedback, it means a lot to have others in the same boat help out on this.. I get stuck in my own perspective that having another is amazing

 

It is not amazing, don't you see...it is normal. The first time you got pain was normal.

TMS happens to every person, it is universal. And symptoms come back sometimes. There is nothing to worry about. You did not do anything wrong.

It happens to all of us, to have a symptom more than once. Or different symptoms later in life.

You are being too hard on yourself. The pain is there now because your brain decided to bring it back. Since you know your body is healthy, be happy you know the truth you are healthy.

As far as the pain goes, you are just going to have to understand more deeply that the pain is harmless so you should do your best to ignore it. Dr. Sarno said it is okay, if the pain is too uncomfortable, to take medicine to help reduce the pain in the short term. During this time pick up a good mindbody book and refresh your knowledge of the psychosomatic undercover operation your brain is perpetrating on your body. Try books suggested already. Do something to get your mind moving and forget about the fog your brain is trying to shroud your feelings by bodily distraction.

You are getting solutions. The solutions take time to work. Perhaps a long, long time. Or it could happen quickly.

 

Yep, yep, yep, and yep again.

It's tempting for us perfectionist personalities to think that TMS is an illness which "should" be "cured", but as BeWell says, it's actually a normal mechanism in the brain of every one of us. Well... we say "normal", but it's actually a rather primitive mechanism, it was put there for some kind of survival purpose, and perhaps it was not very well thought-out (if you believe there was a thought process at all). Because it really doesn't serve us very well in the modern world, does it?

(Or, as I would like to put on a bumper sticker for my car: "It may have been designed, but what makes you think it was intelligent?" )
(Younger members, or anyone outside the U.S. might not get that reference.)

But I digress... Thanks to Dr. Sarno and the work I've done with and through this forum, the key to what I consider to be my recovery has been to develop a completely different relationship with symptoms when they appear, as they will, and as they do. That includes pain symptoms, TMS equivalents (neuro, digestive, skin, etc), and, in the very early days, severe anxiety, and depression - but those last two are not even an issue for me anymore - not since 2011.

That different relationship means that I don't fear any symptoms anymore, I don't obsess about them when they occur, and, perhaps most importantly, I haven't had an attack of panic or depression in five years. I often drag myself to the gym when I really don't want to go, because I know that if I force myself to do it, I'll feel better afterwards, and I do. Five years ago I was in serious danger of becoming house-bound. Today I simply get on with my life, and I can't even think of any symptom or condition in five years that has kept me from being able to leave the house.

Good advice. It's been shown that over-the-counter analgesics have a positive effect on emotional stress as well as pain. So if I'm having a bad stress day, which results in my dizziness acting up, or maybe a bit of low back or shoulder pain, I'll go ahead and take an ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Just one. A little later I'll realize I feel better. In the bad old days, I would have to take five ibuprofen for my headaches, they were so disabling - and I'd spend the rest of the day feeling fragile after the pain subsided.

Compared to those days, I feel that my healing process has been very successful. Is it 100%? No, it's not, and guess what - I can live with that, and for a perfectionist, I think that allowing myself to accept something less than 100% perfection is a healthy result! I got my life back, that's what matters.

 

Doctor Sarno often used the term 'normal abnormalities' referring to age related anatomical changes, and I would suggest in evolutionary context that TMS is a normal abnormality whereby our vestigial primitive brain has not received the message that the neo cortex and the paleo brain must evolve in concert so our unconscious feelings, conscious emotions and the unknowable God within that shepards our trajectory through life shall integrate.

Observation is word used in hospitals. The patient is admitted for observation. With patience, we shall cause evolutionary changes upon our being, our minds, health, our species, using the tool of observation and practicing awareness informed by our decisions.

"Life in every breath", that is perfection. Bushido.

 

Something I'm picking up is that everyone agrees that you need to view your pain differently since it's harmless... I'm struggling with this.. I know the pain isn't caused by a physical structure but I can't view it differently. My first go around i distinctly remember how I viewed the pain in a new light and every thing slowly got better. Even when the pain was acting up I kind of just laughed at it.. Now I am at a different point in my life from three years ago with all new stresses and what not, but I don't see how that would change my perspective of pain.

I almost wonder if I'm trying to be too aware of everything and instead of living and letting myself heal, im stuck just trying to force my healing by forcing living. So I can see my perspective is different, I just don't know how to change it

 

There is nothing to heal physically. You cannot force the pain to stop.

I struggle moment to moment wondering, wanting to improve myself even as pains come, and thankfully go, then come again. I am not choosing pain, my mind is doing that.

Pain is not what I want, but more important is what I do want. To improve myself at every level emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. That is the hardest part for me.

The physical challenges though at times excruciating are not that difficult in comparison.

I am happy to know what is going on by the knowledge of psychosomatic medicine, because I now have a future to work on. Making choices that are going to lead to better results of who I am becoming.