My pelvic pain is TMS?

Not saying I'm right or wrong but my story is pelvic pain (so I guess you could say if in anything I specialise in that, but I coach more broadly) - but I don't suggest any breathing or anything really body focused (lots of people would disagree with me and that's fine). I credit Dan with a lot of my healing and my process follows his (as well as Nicole Sachs' because journalling was big for me) - and my golden rule is "what message is this sending to my brain?". You were pain free once, so your best chance in my opinion is to act the same way that you did before the pain (I mean physically, obviously emotionally we need to change as that's what got us into this in the first place!). If you do, because the brain associates that collection of movements with no pain, you can lean on this coding to recover (that's just one part of it).

So many people consciously believe they have TMS, yet they still take 10 minutes to get up off the couch (I'm using my own example). You can believe as much as you want consciously here, but you're presenting a conflict because the brain will think "well Adam claims there's nothing wrong structurally, but he isn't moving like it, so I'm not sure". The brain will only turn off the pain if it's sure, so here it will persist. You have to align your actions with the TMS belief as much as possible (pain may limit certain movements on occasion which is fine, as long as you are clear to your brain that this is what is going on). I'm glad you raised it as I don't see it discussed as often as I think it should be

In terms of the muscles, are my muscles any less tight now compared to when I was in pain? I honestly don't know. TMS can cause muscle tension but I don't think that's really relevant to healing, because the solution is in the brain either way. My brain could also have just been interpreting the sensation of tightness in an amplified way compared to how the muscle was (like a hearing aid - if it gets cranked up I could hear your whispering as shouting, but you're still whispering - Alan Gordon is of the view this is what is happening in that it's a false alarm and the brain is misreading body signals as dangerous). I actually prefer this latter idea because it takes attention away from the body.

 

Sounds like our experience alligns! I've just got started with Nicole's journal speak and i really do think this will be the missing puzzle if there is one. Because i would defintely say the stuff she says people with tms do regarding habitual thinking and processing emotions is in line with what i've done for so long. As a kid i'd cry and get over stuff, as an adult i hold it down and refuse to feel emotions because it to me would feel like i'm being weak/allowing people to get the better of me which i hated.
Dan's not really into the emotional/journal work which is fair enough as he didn't need it for himself. But perhaps for those that really have repressed emotions it is. I do recall him saying he didn't really have anxiety or social anxiety. We are all different i guess our brains and what not and process things differently. I mean he did say in his book to like feel emotions but dont go into story mode. But i find that impossible story mode wise. Actually practising journal speak/aka story mode but venting i believe has reduced my need to story mode outside of journal sessions and accept things a bit more.

Cant recall her name Dr Gronksi or something is a pelvic floor physiotherapist and i recall a video of hers saying they did a study on the tightness of men with pelvic pain and the internal muscles they studied were not tighter then men without it, although the muscles did take longer to relax once clenched. I think the muscle tone was actually slightly on average weaker. Yet in the pelvic pain specialist space it was all internal wand stuff. I dont think anything affirms to your brain more that your pelvis is comprimised then having to go get someone in a doctors office shove something up there and prod it painfully. I'd challenge any young guy to go through that and relax. And actually i went back to the gym and deadlifted fine before i made a point to really challenge my sitting pain. So i could deadlift full effort but i had pretty bad sitting pain at the time which would make no sense to any pelvic floor physio in how they tend to view things.
Going off what you said about how some dont live like its tms. My mum read Dan's book, she has back pain at times and arthritus pain. She had no pain on her holiday flight or on holiday at all yet unfortunetly still has hung onto the belief well it could be warmer weather. I dont know the stance on arthritus in the tms world if it is considered non mind body...

 

Good stuff! I have a success interview with Dan so I've spent a short amount of time with him (in addition to watching hours of his content) - the first thing I thought when I talked to him was damn you do not seem like a TMS personality at all - very calm, level headed and nothing like the stress ball that I usually am (I have gotten better here - but social anxiety has been a massive issue my entire life). I don't want that to discount anything he's been through and people can hide it, but that's always how I've sort of understood why he doesn't advocate for it so much yet others do (because he didn't need it, and fair play to him) - I needed both and it sounds like you're in a similar boat (I have coached people that only need the assurance that it's TMS to recover/aligning their actions to this, and on the flip side others who we need to go deep on the emotional side).

We are all different - and I think that gets lost often (sometimes on this forum) as people just want healing to be black and white (I understand that and it's more attractive) and get frustrated that one technique alone doesn't work. We are used to body problems which are quite uniform for the most part (your hamstring works the same as mine does), but psychologically we are all so different because we all have different experiences and even if the experience per se is the same we all experience it differently (even on the extremes such as with identical twins).