Need help progressing my recovery

[dbarro]

Hi All,

I am brand new to this or any forum on TMS. I have only read the books. I am looking for a little help with some struggles I am having with TMS. Long story short, I have struggled with back and hip pain for 10 years and had always thought my ailment to be physical in nature until reading Dr. Sarno's books. I have had MRI's and have been to countless doctors and various treatments with little to no success.

I have read Dr. Sarno's first 2 books twice and I am currently on "The Divided Mind." Although I have seen some improvement, I feel as though I have plateaued. I am better than I was, but still get the pain returning and feel that it is a constant battle that is not progressing any further. Reading the books helps and I can usually help alleviate the pain if I can get some time to stop what I am doing and really think about what is bothering me (not as easy as it sounds).

I am discouraged as I feel that I have pounded the logic of TMS into my brain long enough for things to be better. I had hoped my pain would be gone by now as I really do grasp the concepts in Dr. Sarno's books and accept the diagnosis of TMS.

Is there any advice or help that you can provide to help me break through this barrier? I really appreciate any suggestions you may have.

 

[Mermaid]

Hi dbarro,

Welcome to the forum

Congratulations on having come this far, I know it's frustrating but many of us have found ourselves in the same position as you, before we moved up to the next level.

I would suggest that you start the Structured Education Programme on this site, and that you work on losing the fear of your symptoms. Check out Balto's posts he gave me some excellent advice on dispelling the fear.

You don't mention that you have done any journaling, this really helped me to get to the source of my TMS. Finding the combination of "tools" that work best you is a very personal thing that you just work out by trial and error. The things that I have found the most helpful are as follows :

• Educating myself about TMS from as many sources as possible.
• Journaling
• Meditation
• Progressive Relaxation
• Positive Affirmations
• Visualization
  
• Listening to uplifting music
• Getting out in nature as much as possible
• Gentle exercise
• Spending time with my friends

I know it sounds a lot, but it very quickly becomes second nature to do these things when you see the results.

Here is a list of some further reading I would highly recommend :

The Great Pain Deception - Steven Ray Ozanich
Self Help For Your Nerves - Claire Weekes
The Meaning of Truth - Nicole J. Sachs

I was very sick with many TMS symptoms too numerous to mention, but slowly, slowly I have gotten much better and now consider myself almost healed. We can learn things in our conscious mind very quickly, but our subconscious take a little more convincing. Patience and persistance are the key. Everyone on the forum knows EXACTLY how you feel, and we're all here to help each other along.

Bless you

 

[Anne Walker]

Hello. How long have you been working on your TMS? I'm not sure how well my advice will go over, but trust it is coming from someone who has suffered from a whole lot of pain over the last 25 years. Try to do everything in your power to stop thinking about the pain. As long as you are monitoring, thinking about whether it is still there, wondering whether what you are doing is working, measuring your success based on your pain levels, then you are being distracted by the pain and not focusing on your life. I know how difficult and frustrating this advice is. There are all kinds of ways to do it, but if you can focus on what is going on in your life, how you are feeling, what brings you joy and makes you happy, the pain will get better. I have been working on my TMS for nine months and I am just now experiencing success. That does not mean it will take you nine months! We are all different, but if you truly believe you have TMS then one of the first obstacles is stop putting a time frame on how long it will take to heal. When you notice that you are frustrated, discouraged over it not happening soon enough, that is fine. Feel the frustration or perhaps anger over it and then redirect your thoughts back to what is going on emotionally and psychologically. I mean this to be very encouraging. You can do it and you will find relief.

 

[Mermaid]

Hello. How long have you been working on your TMS? I'm not sure how well my advice will go over, but trust it is coming from someone who has suffered from a whole lot of pain over the last 25 years. Try to do everything in your power to stop thinking about the pain. As long as you are monitoring, thinking about whether it is still there, wondering whether what you are doing is working, measuring your success based on your pain levels, then you are being distracted by the pain and not focusing on your life. I know how difficult and frustrating this advice is. There are all kinds of ways to do it, but if you can focus on what is going on in your life, how you are feeling, what brings you joy and makes you happy, the pain will get better. I have been working on my TMS for nine months and I am just now experiencing success. That does not mean it will take you nine months! We are all different, but if you truly believe you have TMS then one of the first obstacles is stop putting a time frame on how long it will take to heal. When you notice that you are frustrated, discouraged over it not happening soon enough, that is fine. Feel the frustration or perhaps anger over it and then redirect your thoughts back to what is going on emotionally and psychologically. I mean this to be very encouraging. You can do it and you will find relief.

Great advice Anne, never a truer word spoken !

 

[dbarro]

Hi dbarro,

Welcome to the forum

Congratulations on having come this far, I know it's frustrating but many of us have found ourselves in the same position as you, before we moved up to the next level.

I would suggest that you start the Structured Education Programme on this site, and that you work on losing the fear of your symptoms. Check out Balto's posts he gave me some excellent advice on dispelling the fear.

You don't mention that you have done any journaling, this really helped me to get to the source of my TMS. Finding the combination of "tools" that work best you is a very personal thing that you just work out by trial and error. The things that I have found the most helpful are as follows :

• Educating myself about TMS from as many sources as possible.
• Journaling
• Meditation
• Progressive Relaxation
• Positive Affirmations
• Visualization
  
• Listening to uplifting music
• Getting out in nature as much as possible
• Gentle exercise
• Spending time with my friends

I know it sounds a lot, but it very quickly becomes second nature to do these things when you see the results.

Here is a list of some further reading I would highly recommend :

The Great Pain Deception - Steven Ray Ozanich
Self Help For Your Nerves - Claire Weekes
The Meaning of Truth - Nicole J. Sachs

I was very sick with many TMS symptoms too numerous to mention, but slowly, slowly I have gotten much better and now consider myself almost healed. We can learn things in our conscious mind very quickly, but our subconscious take a little more convincing. Patience and persistance are the key. Everyone on the forum knows EXACTLY how you feel, and we're all here to help each other along.

Bless you

Hi Mermaid,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate you caring and sharing your thoughts and suggestions. I am willing to try just about anything to progress further in overcoming TMS. I know I have it and felt stuck and did not know what to do next. You give some good suggestions and I will look into them further. I am really glad I found this site. It looks like it contains a wealth of information on TMS and a great place to get some new ideas and strategies.

Thanks again.

 

[dbarro]

Hello. How long have you been working on your TMS? I'm not sure how well my advice will go over, but trust it is coming from someone who has suffered from a whole lot of pain over the last 25 years. Try to do everything in your power to stop thinking about the pain. As long as you are monitoring, thinking about whether it is still there, wondering whether what you are doing is working, measuring your success based on your pain levels, then you are being distracted by the pain and not focusing on your life. I know how difficult and frustrating this advice is. There are all kinds of ways to do it, but if you can focus on what is going on in your life, how you are feeling, what brings you joy and makes you happy, the pain will get better. I have been working on my TMS for nine months and I am just now experiencing success. That does not mean it will take you nine months! We are all different, but if you truly believe you have TMS then one of the first obstacles is stop putting a time frame on how long it will take to heal. When you notice that you are frustrated, discouraged over it not happening soon enough, that is fine. Feel the frustration or perhaps anger over it and then redirect your thoughts back to what is going on emotionally and psychologically. I mean this to be very encouraging. You can do it and you will find relief.

Hi Anne,

Thanks for your response. I have been "really" working on TMS for the last 3 months. I had started maybe a year ago reading "Healing Back Pain," and did nothing else except read the book once. I felt like I got a little better and thought it would just continue. I was wrong of course. After some improvement I went cold turkey off the Cymbalta my doctor had me on. I was happy to be off it and thought things were going well. Then one day I went to lift my baby out of his crib and threw my back out. I got very discouraged and thought that this is not supposed to happen. I gave up for a while until a coworker of mine who introduced me to it reminded me of some details I had forgot and suggested trying again. That was 3 months ago and I have been much more involved working on my TMS ever since.

As you know it is hard not to think of the pain when it has been there for so long, and it is easy to get discouraged when I feel I am not progressing. You are correct, I need to stop worrying about if what I am doing is working and trying to measure my success. I need to not focus on the pain, rather think of the emotions instead. I am trying, and thanks to the advice from you and Mermaid, I have some more tools in my belt. I really am thankful that I found this site as it already seems to be a wealth of information and allows interaction with others going through the same thing I am. I did not have this before and feel that it is going to help immensely.

Thank you so much.

 

[Mermaid]

Hi Mermaid,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate you caring and sharing your thoughts and suggestions. I am willing to try just about anything to progress further in overcoming TMS. I know I have it and felt stuck and did not know what to do next. You give some good suggestions and I will look into them further. I am really glad I found this site. It looks like it contains a wealth of information on TMS and a great place to get some new ideas and strategies.

Thanks again.

No problem you're very welcome. You really will get past this you know, one day something will just click for you and you really will get it, just stick with it.

You'll have your ups and downs along the way, don't let this discourage you it's normal. Have a read through some of the success stories to give yourself a boost.

Your baby's gorgeous by the way, I suspected it wasn't your picture all along !

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

dbarro, hi. You are not alone in wondering why your pain lingers on even though you've done a lot of
TMS reading and working on it. The others have made some good suggestions, and I will add that
you should take a look at the posts by Herbie. He knows a lot of TMS healing techniques, one of the main
one is visualization. His post today about Soviet athletes using that to achieve in sports is typical of them.

He also has made some free videos you can watch about swishing and visualization. Just look up his name
on the TMSWiki to see them.

Some folks are lucky and heal from TMS just knowing about it, or reading one of Dr. Sarno's books.
For most of us, it takes more work. But you'll heal. Keep that positive thought and imagine yourself
being pain-free and doing all the wonderful things you want to do.

 

[dbarro]

Hi Mermaid,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate you caring and sharing your thoughts and suggestions. I am willing to try just about anything to progress further in overcoming TMS. I know I have it and felt stuck and did not know what to do next. You give some good suggestions and I will look into them further. I am really glad I found this site. It looks like it contains a wealth of information on TMS and a great place to get some new ideas and strategies.

Thanks again.

Yes, that's my little man. Thanks.

Oh, I realized I forgot to ask you about journaling. Not sure exactly what that entails. A lot of these tools are brand new to me and I wan to make sure

 

[dbarro]

dbarro, hi. You are not alone in wondering why your pain lingers on even though you've done a lot of
TMS reading and working on it. The others have made some good suggestions, and I will add that
you should take a look at the posts by Herbie. He knows a lot of TMS healing techniques, one of the main
one is visualization. His post today about Soviet athletes using that to achieve in sports is typical of them.

He also has made some free videos you can watch about swishing and visualization. Just look up his name
on the TMSWiki to see them.

Some folks are lucky and heal from TMS just knowing about it, or reading one of Dr. Sarno's books.
For most of us, it takes more work. But you'll heal. Keep that positive thought and imagine yourself
being pain-free and doing all the wonderful things you want to do.

Thanks Walt. I appreciate your suggestions and I will look into Herbie and the healing techniques. I was hoping to be one of the lucky few that Dr. Sarno talks about in his book that are cured in a matter of weeks, but it looks like I am in for some work. it is good to know that I am not alone in it.

 

[Mermaid]

Journaling is no big deal it's just writing about your TRUE thoughts and feelings with regard to anything you think might be contributing to your TMS. It releases the tension from your body as you get your troubles down on paper somehow. I tear mine up and throw it away as soon as I've finished, so it's gone and I wouldn't want anyone else to see it anyway.

If you go to page 142-146 in The Divided Mind it explains in detail what to do. It's part of the S.E.P. on this site, which I suggest you start, it's a day by day learning programme.

It's a huge help to some people, less to others. I just do it for 15mins in the morning and again later in the day. If something really annoys me I get to it straight away though to get it out of my system.