Need some Support Today

Eric - Thanks for you insight. Everyone here has really helped me from tipping back over the edge into full blown anxiety. I was doing so well for 3 weeks using the Claire Weekes method and recognizing my fear cycle.

I have tried meditation and breathing with some varied results. I really need a good tool in my belt that I can use to defeat the symptom checking. That is where I am at now 100%. I know its TMS. I ahve had 3 eye Dr. exams, an MRI and numerous Dr. Visits. I know its all psychological.

I just need to find the one good tool that will work for me to stop symptom checking. If I can just stop giving the power to the TMS and checking it will melt away. Maybe Self Talk is the best method for me. What I am finding hard is that I can recall how it felt to not have TMS, it was just 4 months ago. It is so close I can recall the feeling yet so frustrating becuase I want that feeling back so badly I am trying too hard.

 

Ok go right back to your meditations and breathings exercises ok. You don't want to lose those cause they help with the overall healing too. Now you have to stop giving it power by self control of course as you said above but you think you need another tool. Hum. Have you done the Focusing yet. I know your focusing in a negative way with the physical thoughts but with Eugene Gendlins focusing it is a lot different and often after you get the hang of it -- like a few practices you should be able to loose this obsession. Its sort of like Claire Weekes focusing in which you focus with no judgment or criticism then like magic what ever the issue - in time - this issue will dissolve. Let me know.
Thanks

 

Eric - The only tool I am using at the moment is Self Talk. I can't seem to get the meditation to work. Do you have any good links to show me how the Eugene Gendlins focusing method works?

 

Hi Pingman, interesting that in your wife's opinion YOUR symptoms are TMS but HER migraines are REAL and that all her gf's get them also. Does she know that migraines were originally Dr. Sarno's own symptom? A psychologist colleague told him they were psychosomatic. He was able to stop them in their in their initial aura stage by thinking psychologically. The Good doctor's migraines were the symptom that began his formulating TMS theory.

Symptoms can run in families like your sinuses, the great nurture or nature argument. I'm betting in your case sinuses are a subconsciously learned TMS trait. You are highly suggestible. For TMS distraction/protection purposes your subconscious is still latching onto physical symptoms to obscure the underlying frightening emotions creating them and having to deal with them. when the TMS symptom comes on, shift your thoughts to what emotional issue is causing the rage/anger tension that must be repressed by your super-ego. The cure is brain-washing/reconditioning yourself with TMS KNOWLEDGE/PENICILLIN until y0ur subconscious mind (the other 95% of your brain) absorbs that your TMS symptoms are TMS symptoms and they fade away.

G'luck!

 

That's a very good point. My TMS chose migraine, because my mother started with it at around the same age.

Excellent post, I and many others on the forum are living prrof that it's true.

 

Thanks Mermaid .

 

Tom - You mae a very good point about my sinuses being a learned trait. My father has always struggled wth his sinuses and as a child I had sinus issues too. He has always told me I share his sinuses, bowels, kidneys etc.....Later in life I actually had gotten better up until now to be honest. I think the Dr. are labeling me with sinus issues because everyone here has them and my wife and dad are complaining about them daily.

I honestly have been wanting it to just be sinus issues so I can pin it on something...have a label. I have no doubt that I have conditioned my mind to think I have vision issues. There is no other answer but TMS and conditioning. I have had 3 eye exams that were all 20/20 with views of the back of my eye and a perfect bill of health. I have had an MRI on my brain that was clean. I have even had a friend who is a Dr. in Canada training to be a Nuero Dr. tell me that there is no way I could have light sensitivity from any structural damage or irregularities of the eye. He said that for one there are clear markers that the eye exams would have picked up on.

I have to get better at the reconditioning my mind. As I write this I realized one key thing. I keep saying I think it is 100% TMS but how can I say that when I am symptom checking my vision and getting nervous when it appears to be off? I must still think I have a structural issue to some degree. Now I have beaten back the anxiety and panic attacks so I know that I am thinking more mental but its that final hurdle I still can't get over.

I am def in that final reconditioning phase.....I am going to continue the SELF TALK telling myself its all mental, I am 100% healed and fine.

 

One question I have about this comment.....I have tried the SEP, had some therapy sessions, journaled to try and find what repressed emotion is be obscured by these physical symptoms. I have tried to think repressed but was never able to find any past emotions. What I did find when listening to Claire Weekes was that my TMS was triggered from my sciatica which I associated to a possible Nuerological issue back in November. Once I had battled sciatica and won using TMS principles it moved to my vision. The FEAR of not having perfect vision or the FEAR of missing out on activities with my family outdoors is what I initially focused on.

So its not really a repressed emotion but more of a FEAR cycle I am dealing with. When I perceieve an issue with my eyes the FEAR comes over me and I guess I start to think about the future. I think I am working on breaking the FEAR cycle and replacing the negative thoughts with positive ones.

 

What is SEP? I'm not sure what your question is. Your sciatica was also TMS, "focusing" on having "perfect" vision is the symptom imperative, you've switched from sciatica to your eyes. Were your therapy sessions with a TMS therapist? You haven't missed out on any activities with your family yet, you are worried about the future. You have 20/20 vision be thankful for that NOW. You don't need to do psycho-archeology to find past repressed incidents. You only need to understand how TMS works theoretically until it sinks into your sub-conscious. The pain is real but benign, originating in your shadow mind, exhibiting in the structures but they are not physically damaged.

Anxiety is another TMS imperative, an affective/emotional one. Thinking "positive" is not enough, you must DO positive, live positive, this will build your confidence to face life head-on. TMS tension is a combination of your early personality development, your subconscious life perceptions stored in the 95% of your brain's subconscious and what is happening currently in your now: (family, work, driving on the freeway, etc.).

Your 5% conscious mind is getting it, it's the 95% in the subconscious that is slower to be convinced, it doesn't like changes in it's HOMEOSTASIS. Look at the Rahe-Holmes list for the tension creating situations that cause stress dis-ease--there's your TMS science. Read TMS books, most of what I just wrote I regurgitated from SteveO's great book, THE GPD, now JUST DO IT!

Sorry I'm writing in a hurry but I'm about to just do it! in the pool.

 

Hey Tom - Can you elaborate on the DO Positive and live positive comments? What that means to you?

Before my TMS hit me hard in Nvember I would say I was a positive person who as surrounded by negativity. From people at work, family, news etc.....

Its been hard to regain my positive attitude when I have been thinking physical. Just curious on you defnition.

 

Right on, Herbie. Claire Weekes' books are great for handling anxiety and fear.

Thanks for the phone call. Good luck getting ready for the psychology classes.
With you in them, they're going to be fantastic!

 

Just keep positive Pingman. You are doing good. Keep with the positive affirmations all the time. This is important. Your subconscious is the builder of your body and is on the job 24 hours a day. You can interfere with its life giving patterns by negative thoughts. What you affirm consciously and feel as true will be made manifest in your mind, body and affairs. Affirm the good and enter into the joy of living. Have Faith buddy.

 

Hi Pingman

I interpret TT's DO POSITIVE, as getting on and doing the stuff you're afraid you won't be able to do NOW. Live your life as you want to THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU !!! Don't let TMS control you, you need to show it who's boss by taking back you life. Forgive me for being blunt (again), but I get the impression that you're procrastinating when it comes to finally facing it down, our old pal FEAR I think. When I first started pushing myself I was apprehensive as to what might happen. Guess what happened..................I FELT BETTER!!

I had to absolutely brainwash myself about TMS to fully accept it an lose the FEAR. You know how you when you're learning a drive a car, you do the theory - understand, but can't drive yet, get in the car and put theory into practice - you can drive, but you have to think what you're doing all the time, you make mistakes and you're a bit scared - keep practicing over and over, then your subconscious "get's it" and you can drive the car effortlessly, just watching the road, not thinking about how you are moving the car. Do you get what I mean, your subconscious lags behind you is all.

GO LIVE !

 

What Mermaid said. It means instead of thinking about playing tennis, I play tennis, it means instead of thinking about swimming I go swimming. It's not complicated--MOVE. The body is strong, use it. You've been checked out by the docs multiple times and they ALL say you are 100% and it's stress. You've been given a clean bill of health, that would make me and most everyone else feel GREAT! I would walk out of that doc's office with a great feeling of peace, confidence and contentment. Why are you looking for something wrong? Maybe you want the docs to find something wrong to take you off the battlefield of life, the job you don't like, etc.

 

Pingman you said you couldn't meditate right now. You have to be able to relax and meditate. That is the beginning of focusing. Focusing is after you have relaxed you meditate on the emotion your feeling -- Like the name of the word for it, maybe its anxiety right, Then you focus on the feeling of that emotion. Then you go right back to what the name of that emotion is and the feel the emotion again. Last you will start to loose the anxiety cause you faced it without criticism or anxiety, no fear or anger. You have to do those steps. That's focusing but you will have to train yourself to do it. It takes about 4 or 5 tries and then you will have it down ok, Be patient. Stop catastrophizing, believe you will do this, and you will. Bless You

 

Pingman here is a checklist of the most important lessons I learned from Claire's book -- Hope and Help for your Nerves. She has 4 terms that she uses together. Face, Accept, Float and time. Which ones are you not doing?

Dos and Don’ts
1. Do not run away from fear. Analyze it and see it as no more then physical feelings. Feelings are not facts, do not be bluffed.
2. Accept all strange sensations connected with your illness. Do not
fight them. Float past them. Recognize that they are temporary.
3. Let there be no self-pity.
4. Settle your problems as quickly as you can, if not with action, then by glimpsing and accepting a new point of view.
5. Waste no time on “What might have been” and “If only…”
6. Face sorrow and know that time will bring relief.
7. Be occupied. Do not lie in bed brooding. Be occupied calmly , not feverishly trying to forget yourself.
8. Remember that the strength in a muscle may depend on the confidence with which it is used.
9. Accept your obsessions and be prepared to live with them
temporarily. Do not fight them by trying to push them away. Let time do
that.
10. Remember your recovery does not necessarily depend “entirely on
you” as so many people are so ready to tell you. You may need help.
Accept it willingly, without shame.
11. Do not measure your progress day by day. Don’t count the months,
years you have been ill and despair at the thought of them. Once you
are on the right road to recovery, recovery is inevitable, however
protracted your illness may have been.
12. Remember withdrawal is your jailer. Recovery lies on the other side of panic. Recovery lies in places you fear.
13. Do not be discouraged if you cannot make decisions while you are ill. When you are well, decisions will be more easily made.
14. Never accept total defeat. It is never too late to give yourself another chance.
15. Practice don’t test.
16. Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.
If you do this, you WILL recover.

I want to say what facing is where you know your about to have anxiety right. So you don't fear it, or judge it or criticize it. Wait for it to come if it must, most everyone has been taught to hate anxiety. Well the more you hate it the more it will become and the bigger it will get so you have to learn how to Float. I'd highly recommend getting her book ok.

Claire Weekes:
Float Through Anxiety
What did Claire Weekes mean by that? Here's how I understand it.
How Do You Swim?
It's complicated. You have to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and head to propel yourself through the water. You also have to breathe without taking in large quantities of water. And you have to keep going in the right direction, even when water gets in your eyes.
If you're like most people, it took a lot of practice to learn to swim, because there are so many things you have to make happen, and so many techniques to master.
How Do You Float?
You don't really have to learn to float. A block of wood can float, and so can a person. What you might have to learn is how to not get in your own way, how to simply let floating happen.
The block of wood doesn't have to make it happen, it just floats, as long as it's in water. People will float too, if they just lay down on the water.
But people, unlike blocks of wood, often find it hard to let go and trust in their body's natural ability to float. Their mistrust and apprehension will lead them to "do things" to try and stay afloat.
That's not floating, that's sinking! To teach someone to float, you might have to give them a few instructions - lay back, lay your head on the water, lay your arms and legs out, lie still - but the most important part of the "technique" of floating is...do nothing, let go, and let time pass.
Float versus Swim
When anxious clients come to me for help in dealing with anxiety, they usually expect that I will offer them the swimming kind of help: lots of specific ways for coping with anxiety, and many techniques to keep them "afloat".
But what they really need is more the floating kind of help. They need to learn to let go, rather than to make something happen, or prevent something from happening. That's the surest path to anxiety relief.
What did Claire Weekes Mean by "Floating"?
First and foremost, she meant to convey the opposite of fighting. The way to regain a sense of calm is to go along with the sensations of anxiety and panic, rather than oppose them.
She described floating as "masterly inactivity", and said this meant:
to stop holding tensely onto yourself, trying to control your fear, trying 'to do something about it' while subjecting yourself to constant self-analysis.
That's a tough sell! Claire Weekes knew that, of course, and wrote:
The average person, tense with battling, has an innate aversion to ...letting go. He vaguely thinks that were he to do this, he would lose control over the last vestige of his will power and his house of cards would tumble.
Claire Weekes Knew it was a Trick
The aversion Claire Weekes referred to is the result of the Panic Trick. It's the idea that a person is just barely holding himself together, and that if he relaxes his grip even a little, he will fall apart. In fact, it's his struggling to keep a grip that maintains the anxiety!
What I like best about the notion of floating is that it avoids two common misunderstandings about overcoming anxiety. The first one is the idea that you have to struggle against anxiety, fight it, and overcome it. And the second, related to the first, is that you have to arm yourself with all kinds of techniques and objects in order to enter the fray and confront anxiety.
In reality, you'll make much better progress when you let yourself float through the anxiety, not striving to overcome anything, not struggling to employ techniques, but simply allowing the sensations to pass over time.
The best kind of help, in my opinion, is the floating kind. It's help that assists you to rediscover your own natural abilities to cope with whatever comes, rather than arming you against potential adversity.
Back to The Anxiety Trick from Claire Weekes
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David Carbonell, Ph.D. Anxiety Coach

I got all of this off the net Pingman. At first we learn then we learn more ok.

Bless You

 

Eric, thanks for all of the information. I guess I am having trouble with the symptom checking and floating phase. On Friday, I went to dinner with my family and had no issues becuase I assume my mind was preoccupied. Came home and slept like a baby from 10pm-6am.

Then on Saturday I was anxious...thinking my eyes felt off and again on Sunday. I didn't sleep well either night.

So today I awoke a little anxious and when I went outside to warm up my truck the anxious feeling hit me. The conditioning I have is to associate outside witb my eyes hurting even though it was still dark.

Drove my son to school and on the way home was driving right into the sun with my glasses on. I was even looking at the sun and no pain or anything was felt. It is just my Mind thinking I ahve an issue and causing my head muscles to tense up.

So would you say I cant float?

 

Pingman Floating is described above pretty well, yes you can float -- anyone can float my friend. See facing is not about looking right into the sun or trying to make your symptoms worse ok. That's not facing. Facing is when you know you have an issue right -- and you know my friend what your issue is -- then you face that issue head on. So your eyes are your obsession right. So now you have really already faced that issue in away by acknowledging that you have the issue and now you are ready to work at overcoming the issue ok.

Facing again is knowing your issue and not fearing it or running from it. When we fear what might be then we bring on a wave of fear that's not real , its a trick. So you face it head on without fear. You would do great to loose the fear. Floating is where you experience the emtions and symptoms without fighting them -- just let them be -- and then as you face, accept and float together you should be able to over come this fear. The more you run from fear the stronger it gets. Now that you know not to fear it you can float through the symtoms as described in Claire Weekes master activity thread I posted a while back.

(Masterly Inactivity)
to give up the struggle to stop holding so tensely unto yourself by trying to control your fear, trying to do something about it while subjecting yourself to constant self analysis. it means to cease trying to navigate your way out of illness by meeting each obstacle as if it were a challenge that must be met if recovery is possible. it means to bypass the struggle, to float and let time pass. the average person tenses with the battle,they never will do this floating.

They feel they must stand on guard, "keep control" and (hold thereselves together) all the while this is giving more power to the problem.

(Loosen your attitude)

Practice masterly inactivity and let go -- if your body trembles - let it tremble - dont feel obliged to try to stop it. Don't try to appear normal.DONT EVEN STRIVE FOR RELAXATION. Simply let the thought of releaxation be in your mind, in your attitude toward your body. Loosen your attitude don't be concerned because you are tensed and cannot relax.
The very act of being of being prepared to accept your tenseness re-laxes your mind. And relaxation of body gradually follows.
You dont have to strive for relaxation you have to wait for it. When someone says i have tried so hard all day to be relaxed-surly he has had a day of striving, not of re-laxation.

Claire Weekes- Hope and help for your nerves

 

Good stuff Eric. Pingman, you have to use positive affirmations and really, really, really believe that there is nothing wrong with your vision. YOU KNOW THIS. Do not let fear interrupt your healing and just go with your day not holding back and laugh when a symptom may come up. My general symptom is lower back pain. I have been doing most of what I had been doing before and will soon do everything. I offered to drive an hour and a half yesterday for my wife to pick something up. I tell myself that nothing is wrong structurally and it was not a problem. Have faith. Let Go, Let God.

 

I would say that the affirmations has helped me tremendously. I use Im calm, relaxed and patient. Then I say the word peace and I imagine what peace feels like emotionally then I get that emotional feeling. I also use the word love and then I imagine the word love and what it feels like emotionally. Then I go from there. This is how I get relaxed and ready for my day.
Thanks