My visit with a TMS doc, osteopaths, and optimism

I saw an osteopath, Dr Harold Goodman today, who is given here as a "TMS doctor" (he is Silver Spring, MD, near DC). Was pretty interesting. A real old-school guy, he seems to be semi-retired, only sees a few patients a day, 4 days/week. He actually had worked a bit with Dr. Sarno personally. He knows some people genuinely do have pure TMS, and has patients like that, he also said he disagrees with Sarno that it is "either/or" (that you either have a physical issue that causes you pain or TMS that causes the pain, but not both). I.e. in my case he said I definitely have a structural ligament issue ("but I'll fix that with a few visits"), but I also have TMS, i.e. my brain has wildly exaggerated the significance and severity of the problem to cause way more pain than there needs to be, or maybe there doesn't need to be pain at all.

He left me with a set of instructions that I think Sarno himself had written, which were more or less excerpts from the Sarno books and all the stuff that is given on this site: 1) Fully accept that your structural problem is normal and should not be causing you pain (or much pain), and 2) The reason for the pain is psychological/emotional or nervous system over-reaction. And that simply retraining your brain over time to accept this will cure you.

So it was a bit like visiting an old country doctor. He did not give me any special instructions, no "you must start meditating", no "you must eat only plant-based food", no "you have to journal every night for 20 minutes", no recommendations on changing my posture, exercise, relationships, etc. (although of course those are generally very good things that might be very helpful to some people and in some instances). His main recommendation was something like "go have a pastrami sandwich, relax, and enjoy your life" (I think those were his exact words).

So I will see him again at least a few times and can report back on how things progress (I will say there was not a miracle cure from the first visit). But I am hopeful to connect with a doc that understands this stuff, and just having a medical doctor tell you you are ok is huge.

Remarkably, however, during the visit I had two unsolicited testimonials for him. The first was that the patient who was leaving just before me was amazingly someone I knew very well from work (especially amazing since neither of us live anywhere near Silver Spring). We didn't have a chance to talk in depth, but he said he knew of Dr. Goodman because his wife had suffered from carpal tunnel for a long time. She went in to see Goodman, and Goodman did a few little gentle things. She came home that night saying "that seemed like a waste of time, I can't imagine how that could have helped". But then the next morning her carpal tunnel was gone and never came back.

The second unsolicited testimonial was from his office manager, a guy of about 40ish. While I was waiting in the office I started asking him questions about whether he had ever been a patient of Dr. Goodman. He said no. But then he added later that he had once had a sprained ankle and Goodman said "let me look at it". He said Goodman literally fixed it in one sitting - the ankle was 100% better the next day. He said this rather matter of factly, not trying to convince me of anything. So I guess good osteopaths can actually do remarkable things.

Dr. Goodman has his personal story of how he cured his insomnia on this site. I think just search for insomnia. That's how I heard of him.