Is the SEP for me?

[dh627]

Hi all,

I noticed in week 0 it says 'In our research for the program we found very little information on the success of these activities in treating people with PTSD, depression, or anxiety.'

I've always felt that my symptoms are very anxiety or stress related, and they seem to increase with how anxious or stressed I am, and my pains are mostly in my chest and in my abdomen and to the sides of it. Of course, my symptoms make me even more anxious, stressed and sometimes depressed, and I get stuck in a vicious circle. My symptoms came about from a series of ongoing very very stressful and traumatic events and an illness and I have wondered if I have PTSD but have never gotten it diagnosed. I have dipped my toes into TMS work before and have found that usually I revisit it, my symptoms calm down (sometimes almost entirely, but this never lasts long) - so it does seem to me as though I definitely have a mind/body issue, but it is very very closely correlated to anxiety or stress and a messed up nervous system for me.

Can anyone advise whether the SEP would be worthwhile for me? I was surprised to see anxiety listed in what i've pasted above from week 0, as it seems that anxiety is a key part of perpetuating TMS symptoms. Or am I misinterpreting what's written?

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I expect it's a CYA statement, simply restating what Dr Sarno clearly said, which is that some people have psychological issues which are too repressed and/or complex to respond to self-help techniques and a mere understanding of the TMS mechanism. Such people may require professional therapeutic intervention in order to heal.

I feel like you're overthinking this, which is probably one of your TMS symptoms, because overthinking is a great distraction against revealing repressed emotions. Revealing repressed emotions is a significant goal of the SEP, and it's exactly what your TMS brain does not want you to do. That being said, you're reporting past success using TMS knowledge, which is great, because it means that you can build on that if you can get some control over your fearful TMS brain.

Take a deep breath, see if you can calm down all that chatter in your head, and recognize that nothing about this work is written in stone. Doing psychological work is not black and white, it's not linear, and it's going to be very different for different people.

That being said, I regularly state that certain people need to get their anxiety under control before they can expect to achieve anything from the SEP. I suspect you are one of them. And if you have experienced significant unresolved trauma, that also needs to be addressed.

There are plenty of anxiety and trauma resources which will complement the work done in the SEP, although for trauma in particular, professional therapy is the obvious recommendation. However, if you're resistant to that, you could at least educate yourself with one of several books by Dr Peter Levine, depending on what you're dealing with. For anxiety, we always recommend Claire Weekes, "Hope and Help For Your Nerves".

 

[dh627]

Thank you so much for your reply. I have ordered the Claire Weekes book. Do you happen to know of any other anxiety/trauma resources that may complement the SEP work that you've mentioned? Thank you.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Do a keyword search on this forum (upper right corner of the screen) for "anxiety" to see what others are talking about. In the results, you need to choose the tab "results from our forum only". You could choose to read only results from the Success Stories subforu, but recently there were at least two threads with links to a Claire Weekes video, one was earlier today.

You will learn the most by participating and reading other people's threads and posts here. You can also go directly to the Success Stories subforum and scan the thread titles. Anxiety is not just a frequent topic - it's probably the most frequent one.