New medical information on my neck and spine. Inverted curvature.

Sorry, @Fabi, I lost track of your post. And when I first saw it I wasn't sure how to respond, because I want to say more than "of course you can continue to belong".

I'm sorry about your diagnosis. But you've known about the basics of TMS theory for many years, so I'm surprised that you don't realize that TMS skills can help you to manage physical injuries and illnesses, although of course ideally we want our skills to help us fully recover if that's possible. Many people have used personal faith and belief in self-healing to completely recover from what appeared to be unrecoverable conditions, so personally, I would not be inclined to buy into any assumptions up front about whether any condition is recoverable or not. Nothing -- NOTHING in this life is black and white. Even palette experts will tell you that black and white themselves are not absolute. But I digress.

I recall reading about a study some years ago, which recounted how medical professionals who treated people with life-threatening burns noticed that the patients with a constructive and proactive outlook on their ability to recover, and the skill to positively visualize their recovery, always recovered better and faster (in some cases simply did recover) compared to individuals with a negative outlook, or who gave all of their power to others to "fix" them.

Here on this forum, in addition to the requirement that we do the emotional work, we also need to believe in our ability to promote healing within our own bodies. Even if we can't find 100% recovery, it is always possible to manage symptoms and reduce the need for medications, especially when it comes to pain. Pain relievers act physiologically on the perception of pain that is created by our brains. If there is a need for pain (Hey! Don't walk on that broken leg!) then you should probably pay attention. If there is no need for pain (Hey! Suffer with this migraine instead of uncovering the truth about your horrible childhood!) you can use the knowledge that the pain has no physiological purpose to control it - although obviously it takes time and effort to develop those skills.

If you're being given pain relievers for whatever this condition is, it means that medically, you are allowed to cover up the pain - which must mean it's not dangerous for you to use that body part. At least, that's how I tend to think of pain relievers. Personally, I'm not above taking an ibuprofen or a Tylenol every once in a while, just to "take the edge off" while I contemplate my emotional state.

My point is that pain evolved to serve a purpose - so if you deaden the pain, what does that mean about its purpose?

Anyway, in my many posts, I have often described my pain experience when I crashed my bike and broke my femur in 2008 - I finally saved one of the descriptions in my collection of TMS-isms... here it is. The intro sentence is referring to the neuroscientific fact that all pain (and in fact all bodily sensations and processes) are created by our brains, not by the body part where we think we feel them.

This (pain is in the brain, not the body part) all explains my experience when I ended up in the ER in 2008 after a bike crash, with pain in my hip that felt like an 8 to me - and I was freaking out over the thought of being totally disabled for 6 or 8 weeks with a broken hip. When the ER doc came back with my x-rays and said it was a simple fracture in the neck of my femur, and that they could pin it up and have me on crutches in two days, my pain level immediately plummeted. They asked if I wanted drugs, and I said that some ibuprofen would be fine, and that's all I ever took. After the surgery they kept coming by to ask about my pain level, to which I finally decided to say "I've had cramps worse than this!" Knowing what was wrong, what they could do, and what I needed to do to heal quickly, was more important to me than the pain. I had not had surgery since my tonsils were removed at age 5, but I decided there was no reason to fear it. I utterly failed to catastrophize the situation once I knew the prognosis, and it's like the pain was optional. It was there to remind me what not to do (obviously) while recovering, but that's it. This happened three years "before Sarno" for me, by the way. I've had anxiety all my life, but this situation provided me with a lot of certainty, and a clear plan of action in which I had faith, and which I was happy to follow to the letter.

Good luck to you @Fabi - and stick around if you like! Just remember - we don't talk about physical symptom details here - we aren't medical professionals, and although everyone would love to achieve 100% recovery, it turns out that this is a hard goal to reach 100% of the time. So we learn to live with our imperfect brains, we examine the emotional pain and conflict behind so many of our symptoms, and we learn to accept and manage setbacks even if we can't banish them entirely - because there is no cure for life.

 

Why do so many people think that our brains are doing nothing while we sleep? SO UNTRUE! During sleep, the gazillion of processes that are used to see, hear, smell, taste, stand, move, balance, etc. are able to rest, and the brain reservoirs where we unconsciously store all kinds of perceptions and experiences and emotions from the waking hours are now being accessed and processed while we sleep. While processing these thoughts and emotions, our brains might be even busier than during the day!

A LOT of people with TMS report being woken in the night with symptoms. Like you, they think this means that there must be something uniquely wrong with them. Nope - this is very common. It's just another form of the many versions of how TMS keeps you stuck.

You can use visualization, self-talk, and a brief meditation before you go to sleep to enjoy better and more productive sleep.