Muscle skeleton Chronic pain team

[Macca]

Hi

I have been working on the tms connection for a while now and though my symptoms haven’t changed my knowledge is getting better.
I have been speaking to some tms experts because I feel I will need it to succeed.
For the first time this week I have started to feel emotions again (slightly) anger, sadness.
It’s been nice seeing that I haven’t felt anything for what seems like years.

I have been seeing the mks chronic pain team (nhs) in the uk for a year now. Today I was full of emotions in the meeting because although she agreed that pain comes from your brain, she basically said that some pain is just unexplained and I will have to work on the fear side of it.
I was explaining to her the mind body connection but she wasn’t having it.

On the two occasions that my chest pain/ costochonditris started I explained that I was under massively amounts of stress and no physical injury happened. I then become obsessed, ruminating and feared the pain plus trying to fix my posture/ thoracic spine because it was said that was the cure. I ended up stuck in a pain cycle for the last 3/4 years.
I asked her about the condition, As she dealt with anyone who has it? She said yes and they don’t recover, they have to learn to live with it.
I told her the pain didn’t make sense, no triggers and the pain was random from stabbing, burning to aching, tender to touch.

It made me angry that the hope was being squashed, it made me more determined to work on myself and ease these symptoms and get back to loving life.

I’m sure I’ll have low days to come but I’m more determined than ever to beat this.

Hope this is a changing point in my recovery.
Sorry for the rant.
Just a question on emotions, now that I can get upset when I think about the situation. Should I be doing this frequently?
Thank you

 

[Fal]

I had a similar experience with the NHS, they just aren’t equipped enough to know what the problem is or how to deal with it. My orthopedic hand surgeon when I explained my symptoms seemed unsure and quoted “might be CRPS” which is just a label.

Hand therapist was just as baffled, if they can’t give you any diagnosis then treat it only as TMS, take your life back and if you need any support do the SEP on here and also find various TMS coaches on YouTube. My favourite is Dan Buglio

 

[JanAtheCPA]

although she agreed that pain comes from your brain, she basically said that some pain is just unexplained and I will have to work on the fear side of it.

Yeah, I get it, and I see that she's coming from the "you just have to live with it" paradigm. Nonetheless, this statement is actually TRUE. You just need to reinterpret it in the context of TMS. And you DO have to work on the fear side of it, because that's where you are currently stuck.

I asked her about the condition, As she dealt with anyone who has it? She said yes and they don’t recover, they have to learn to live with it.

Seriously, this is good news!!!! This is PROOF that your symptoms, in her experience, have no explanation and no treatment - and those are the conditions that are, by definition, based in the TMS brain mechanism. We see this over and over and over again. To repeat what Fal said:

if they can’t give you any diagnosis then treat it only as TMS, take your life back

The practitioner, without knowing she was doing so, DID diagnose you with TMS. Which is ironic, because you had already diagnosed yourself with TMS:

On the two occasions that my chest pain/ costochonditris started I explained that I was under massively amounts of stress and no physical injury happened. I then become obsessed, ruminating and feared the pain plus trying to fix my posture/ thoracic spine because it was said that was the cure. I ended up stuck in a pain cycle for the last 3/4 years.

Look, the VAST majority of people on this forum, especially the vast majority who have experienced success, self-diagnosed our own TMS, based solely on the knowledge we learned from Dr. Sarno and others. I am one of those people.

My point in stating this is that you do NOT need someone else to tell you that your symptoms are TMS. You will certainly get nowhere trying to educate someone about TMS in the limited time span of an NHS appointment! This is more than an exercise in futility - I will go farther and say that this is an activity that was designed by your TMS brain to do two things that IT wants: 1) to make you think you're accomplishing something when you really are just spinning your wheels, and 2) to distract you with shallow anger over the results.

I can see why this incident is a trigger for anger - but I'll say this again: in terms of emotions, it is shallow, distracting anger. That being said, this incident is a place to start exploring your emotions in the SEP's writing exercises - you just need to go deeper and feel why not being heard is so enraging to you. In doing this work, you must understand that the immediate and apparent source of rage is NOT what your rage is really about. You have to go deeper and usually much farther back.

But let's go back to fear. Before you can make a serious commitment to the deeper emotional work, you have to work on the amount of fear that your TMS brain has you sucked you into. Reassurance-seeking is a fear-based activity. It will only keep you stuck, which is exactly where your fearful brain wants you to remain. Start by making a commitment to no more appointments. And if you've never read Help & Hope For Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes, read it (or find the A/V options).

You've got the knowledge, and you've got the awareness - you're already well on your way. You need to take the next big step.

 

[Macca]

Yeah, I get it, and I see that she's coming from the "you just have to live with it" paradigm. Nonetheless, this statement is actually TRUE. You just need to reinterpret it in the context of TMS. And you DO have to work on the fear side of it, because that's where you are currently stuck.


Seriously, this is good news!!!! This is PROOF that your symptoms, in her experience, have no explanation and no treatment - and those are the conditions that are, by definition, based in the TMS brain mechanism. We see this over and over and over again. To repeat what Fal said:



The practitioner, without knowing she was doing so, DID diagnose you with TMS. Which is ironic, because you had already diagnosed yourself with TMS:


Look, the VAST majority of people on this forum, especially the vast majority who have experienced success, self-diagnosed our own TMS, based solely on the knowledge we learned from Dr. Sarno and others. I am one of those people.

My point in stating this is that you do NOT need someone else to tell you that your symptoms are TMS. You will certainly get nowhere trying to educate someone about TMS in the limited time span of an NHS appointment! This is more than an exercise in futility - I will go farther and say that this is an activity that was designed by your TMS brain to do two things that IT wants: 1) to make you think you're accomplishing something when you really are just spinning your wheels, and 2) to distract you with shallow anger over the results.

I can see why this incident is a trigger for anger - but I'll say this again: in terms of emotions, it is shallow, distracting anger. That being said, this incident is a place to start exploring your emotions in the SEP's writing exercises - you just need to go deeper and feel why not being heard is so enraging to you. In doing this work, you must understand that the immediate and apparent source of rage is NOT what your rage is really about. You have to go deeper and usually much farther back.

But let's go back to fear. Before you can make a serious commitment to the deeper emotional work, you have to work on the amount of fear that your TMS brain has you sucked you into. Reassurance-seeking is a fear-based activity. It will only keep you stuck, which is exactly where your fearful brain wants you to remain. Start by making a commitment to no more appointments. And if you've never read Help & Hope For Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes, read it (or find the A/V options).

You've got the knowledge, and you've got the awareness - you're already well on your way. You need to take the next big step.

thank you for your post.

I have been implementing the mind body connection but not fully, something was holding me back.

I now know I’m ready and I truly believe that I will get better.

day by day I will take it but here’s to a brighter future.

I came across a podcast with Howard Schubiner and Dr Chatterjee last night. It was brilliant and it helped a lot, definitely recommend it.

 

[Cactusflower]

I saw a therapist who said I would have to learn to live with it, and a few TMS coaches who said it more in the TMS frame: you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable..
Meaning that it wasn’t just pain but any other mental and emotional symptom. You need to get comfortable enough to not let it control you, because that’s when you can move forward. When I grasped the subtle difference between the way these things were said, I could better understand the mindset of the second phrasing.
I chose to stop reacting to the first, the therapist, because she didn’t get TMS but she had so much to offer for the mental and emotional side of my suffering. We talked about it briefly and decided to agree to disagree -and that was a huge element of me recognizing I did not have to people please someone I felt was helping me. Big win, for me, and it really helped with my doubt that I could stick to my belief in TMS.
There’s another great interview Dr Chatterjee did with a neuro scientist who asks why we let our brains boss us around. He found the idea behind TMS so fascinating because we would not let our liver or kidney’s boss us around, and s brain is simply an organ equal to them, and that We get it wrong when we think our brains are “us”.