Is it possible tms selects a problem we read about years ago and makes those symptoms?

[newlearner]

I mean if your body is going to produce pain, why not make one strong enough to capture your attention?

Like you have a small back pain one day and think maybe it's my spine. You research spine problems obsessively. You read about symptoms and numbness and the path it takes. Then, eventually, you have pain over that path, and you think that has to be my spine because the pain is taking the same trail as the innervation, therefore it's a physical problem.

However, it's not, it's tms which knows how to make the pain because you studied it earlier.

 

[Celayne]

I mean if your body is going to produce pain, why not make one strong enough to capture your attention?

Like you have a small back pain one day and think maybe it's my spine. You research spine problems obsessively. You read about symptoms and numbness and the path it takes. Then, eventually, you have pain over that path, and you think that has to be my spine because the pain is taking the same trail as the innervation, therefore it's a physical problem.

However, it's not, it's tms which knows how to make the pain because you studied it earlier.

You are exactly right! If you have a TMS symptom that you are neutral about, it will come and go quickly because you don’t engage with it/wonder about it/worry about it.

This is why old injury sites can continue to hurt or reappear long after they have physically healed.

 

[fridaynotes]

often when i read about some ailment in the newspaper or online i tell my brain “don’t file this away and bring it upon me at a later date!”
so, to answer your question: yes!

 

[TG957]

Well, as one male doctor wrote, when he studied childbirth in the medical school, he once started experiencing contractions.

The scenario you described happened to me. My TMS followed precisely a severe condition that my grandaunt had and which eventually paralyzed all her limbs. The more I worried that I was developing the same condition, the faster it was developing. Our mind can be extremely powerful, in both positive and negative ways.

 

[Mr Hip Guy]

Absolutely it does. TMS will plant many seeds, the ones that sprout are the ones that land in fertile ground. If you're aware, better yet very frightened, about some diagnosis then those are seeds that are likely to sprout.

I recall reading back 4 years ago when I was in the throes of my hip pain journey (that led to surgery), I ended up on Paul Ingraham's "chronic pain" website and read his backstory. Now, this is not a TMS website, far from it, Paul tends to try to debunk EVERYthing from surgery to massage to snake-oils...but if you read his backstory he was doing all this research on these various conditions until...irony of ironies...he himself was afflicted with chronic pain. Now, in reading that at first, I was horrified...how sad, right? And I remember visibly recoiling from that particular reading...I mean, what if I too could "catch" this chronic pain condition like Paul did?

Well, now in reading all of that I see what was going on. TMS had found fertile ground for Paul and the seed had sprouted. To my knowledge he still suffers from the various chronic pain elements - and while he has research on Sarno on his site, he tends to not give it much credence. Here's the site in case anyone is interested:

https://www.painscience.com/about-paul-ingraham.php (Paul Ingraham Bio—PainScience.com)