John E. Sarno on Physical Activity

[gailnyc]

I appreciate the kinds words, fellas. Honestly, I do. But I'm sure you're all aware of how hollow those words can be when you are in the pit-pain of despair. I feel like I have been mindful, focused on the mental when pain strikes (its always there, just sometimes MUCH worse than others) and doing my best to let my mind know that I know what it is doing. Outcome independence is probably the only thing I have not tried, though I must admit that is seems like more of a way to try and trick the mind than anything else, because ultimately, if there isn't an end goal of physical and mental peace, then why try at all? I know I am being a donnie downer. Just glad y'all are out there doing this for the broken, like myself. Cheers!
S

Shane,
Well, in a way, you DO want to "trick the mind." Your brain right now is telling you there's something wrong when there isn't. You have to "trick" it out of sending you this message (via pain). I agree with other posters that the best way to do this is through acceptance. It may sound counter-intuitive, and it may take months, but what you really need to do is get back into your life and just accept the pain and shrug your shoulders at it. Is the pain really that important, or is doing things you love important? It was only once I did these things that my pain began to subside. I still have pain, but now when I notice it I ask myself, so what? I am doing what I want to do (after months of not being able to) and that's what is important. No one ever guaranteed me a pain-free life.

The books that helped me most were Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes, and The Hidden Psychology of Pain by James Alexander.

I wish you good healing.
Gail

 

[JoelA]

I feel that I need to follow-up that statement with a question. I suffer mainly from RSI and foot pain and I have, during this summer, gone through Schubiners programme "unlearn your pain". I'm at the last week and the healing is basically status quo. Slight improvements, maybe 20-30 %. I'm using a computer again and tried to push through pain with movement, which works partly. But still, my gigantic roadblock is the fear of movement. So reading this makes my heart sinks. How is it possible to believe that relapses (like my two new symptoms that I've developed during the summer trying to increase my activity, hamstring/buttock "injury" when doing too much yoga (certifered ashtanga yoga teacher since 2 months back, and I havn't been able to do any yoga due to my buttock pain, which obviously suckss. I really wanna get back into it, but physiotherapist says its a "real" injury.) and heel pain running 15 min in a difficult terrain) is 100% due to TMS but not to actual injuries?

Reading the Great Pain Deception by SteveO (which greatly lifts my heart and gives me some sort of hope when I reread parts of it, thank you for writing this masterpiece) makes me wanna go out and run. again and again. I could do that if it was "guaranteed" that I would get better. However, I see the possibility that my heel pain, buttock pain and so forth just gets worse. The catch of my life.

Could TMS be a form of painphobia? Just as someone is afraid of spiders. Food for thought..

EDIT: I would like to add that I have all the personality traits that a TMS'er has, pain moving around in the body with a constant amount basically always there (with ups and downs ofc). Furthermore I had a troublesome period from the age of 13-16 when I got bullied and locked every single emotion inside to be "cool", the only logical way out of bullying at that period of time. At the moment I'm finishing my masters degree at uni and some selfinposed pressure is def. there.

Steve, my observation about how ischemia can lead to muscle tears comes from the chapter, "The Physiology of Chronic Pain" in James Alexander's new book, The Hidden Psychology of Pain (2012):

"In addition to ischemia, a painful problem can occur when muscles that are already suffering from an insufficient supply of oxygen become more vulnerable to tears in the muscle fiber due to exertion. The pain that results may be due to muscle fiber tear on top of ischemic pain which has resulted from a decrease in blood supply. As such, an acute pain (from a muscle strain or tear) can occur in addition to a longer term chronic pain (caused buy psychologically induced ischemia)." p. 83

Dr Alexander's remark made me wonder whether my torn rotator cuff had occurred because that was at the beginning of my TMS relapse in 2007, exactly the time I would have been starting to experience a psychologically induced ischemia to my extremities? It certainly does seem possible that you could injure yourself more easily because of poor blood circulation that would be caused by psychological factors like TMS. I would bet a dollar-to-a-donut that TMS and "real" muscle and tendon tears often occur at the same time and operate in a complimentary self-reinforcing vicious cycle. This must occur frequently when a TMS patient tries to push through the pain at work doing heavy lifting or other forms of manual labor, don't you think? This is where perfectionist and goodist personality traits must add to the problem by forcing the patient to just keeping pushing on doing his job no matter how much it hurts.

In any case, it does sound like Dr Sarno's admonition not to start exercising before the pain has disappeared or almost disappeared completely is, as usual, good advice based on his many years of clinical experience with TMS.

 

[Forest]

Can people with TMS suffer from real injuries? Yes, of course. However, as Monte said, for TMSers it is "99.99% TMS." If you do have a real injury a doctor will be able to tell you and prescribe you the necessary treatment. If you have doubts about your physiotherapist, seek a second opinion, and ask if anything bad would happen if you treated it conservatively.

Keep in mind though that your post is exactly what everyone else on this board has posted at some point. We all have had our symptoms reduce, and then they move and we fear that this time we have a serious injury. Remember, your unconscious will only create symptoms that you believe are serious. It will never create a symptom that you 100% believe is TMS, because that would serve this purpose of distracting you.

Painphobia or even hypocondria has a very close relationship with TMS. This is a condition that is fueled by our fear of our symptoms. The more you fear your pain, the more you will have pain. This is why you must believe your symptoms are benign.

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Hi, Kshane, I agree with Ellen. I accepted about 90 percent of TMS causing my back pain, but didn't heal until I
convinced myself and my unconscious mind it was 100 percent. I kept believing it was from aging, but it was from
repressed emotions.

Keep working on that 5 percent of doubt. You're closer than I was!

 

[kshane]

More than 6 months later and I am still in bad shape. I still surf, workout, etc. and fight through the pain daily. I had about two weeks of reprieve a couple months ago when I hurt my shoulder and was forced to do a lot of icing and take a ton of ibuprofen. During the time of heavy ibu dosing, I had a lot less discomfort in my back. It was heaven. Since stopping that I am right back where I started. Years of pain. I sometimes wish I could get a visit with the good Dr. Sarno himself. Knowing that will never happen, I give up. I am resigning myself to living with lower back pain for the rest of my days. Wow, does that sound hopeless or what? LOL - inappropriate laughter, I know. ;-)

 

[Emre]

The good part about this approach is that the more confidence you gain, the more you accept the diagnosis and therefore reduce your symptoms. As the Sarno quote I posted to start this thread off stated, so much of the TMS distraction is the restrictions we place on ourselves. Finding out that we are okay and we don't need those restrictions is a freeing experience. It is like your avatar, Max. Learning about TMS allows us to break away the ball and chain.

It is like your avatar great way to put it thanx forest