no chronic pain but chronic fatigue/neurasthenia

Hi, 47yo male noob here,

I experienced severe back pain during a meeting several weeks ago. The back pain quickly subsided right after the meeting, just as soon as I realized the psychological reason for it, even without knowing about TMS. But having other uncured recurring psychosomatic/psychophsyiologic symptoms, I did some research & stumbled upon Dr. Sarno's work. Of course, I'm more interested in his book The Divided Mind than the others.

In particular, I'm wondering if my condition is neurasthenia or chronic fatigue? I'm not really always tired per se, but this past decade, just a bit of physical exertion quickly makes me tired, whereas I used to be very athletic. I've done several cardio pulmonary stress tests & my heart & lungs are great! I do have asymptomatic hypertension, for several years now, which I refuse to treat with medication, but by exploring various alternative means.

The gist of my chronic fatigue is that I get sick, with flu like symptoms, for weeks after moderate regular exercise, like yoga & swimming.

I do have a lot of repressed internal rage, & I have been trying to deal with it, including depression & anxiety for decades. Again, no medication & I feel like a highly functioning autistic person. I believe I have made a lot of progress this past few years but the more progress I make, the more impatient I am.

But I don't seem to be making progress with this chronic fatigue/neurasthenia. I'm not even sure if that's the correct diagnosis but I'm almost sure by condition is psychosomatic/psychophysiologic.

Otherwise I'm healthy.

Best regards,

 

Welcome to the forum, thargomjampa (that's a mouthful!). I believe it's far more important to recognise that one's symptoms are psychophysiologic than to actually put a name to a condition because in the end if you have been checked out by the docs and deemed fit and healthy, all of these symptoms boil down to TMS. You and your repressed internal rage are in good company here. Many newbies - and oldies - find the Structured Educational Program helps them in their quest to resolve their TMS issues. Check it out here: http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Structured_Educational_Program

 

Thanks for the reply, yb44. Yes, I'll be doing that.

Also, is there a section that focuses on non pain symptoms, like neurasthenia or hypertension, etc.?

 

Hi, I recommend to check out the Gupta Amygdala Retraining, there's a lot of free stuff on this site. I find it very helfpul and it does not counteract Sarnos theory. It's all about how to release emotions and calm down the nervous system and how to retrain the Amygdala so that it could get out of the state of permanent fight and flight (what causes several symptoms like pain, fatique, flu like systems). Sarno theory is more about the why we develop symptoms whereas Guptas focus is more about how this is happening. He's missing the role of the unconscious mind (to protect us from harmful emotions) but beside that it's really good stuff!

 

I'll take a look at the Gupta program.

Hi, Birdie. I went to that web site but am reluctant to sign up for the "free course"
because I've seldom found anything like this to be free.

Is it okay to sign up for the free course?


This is the web site:

http://www.guptaprogramme.com/

 

Hi Birdie,
I purchased his program back in 2006. I agree that it is good and is consistent with Sarno. I use the Soften and Flow meditation from it almost daily as I've found it very effective at relieving symptoms. But that missing piece of the role of the unconscious mind was significant for me at the time, as I didn't keep up the program, like I have with Dr. Sarno's and Schubiner's approach. It just didn't all fit together enough, or it may have just been I wasn't ready yet.

Tharmgomjampa,

I've found that my fatigue has slowly been decreasing as I've used the TMS healing techniques. It hasn't been as fast as my decrease in other symptoms, but I am seeing improvement. Both Dr. Sarno and Dr. Schubiner state that they have had success treating chronic fatigue as TMS.

 

Looks like I have nothing to lose to look at that free Gupta Amygdala Retraining program.
Thanks for posting about it.

 

Walt, the Gupta Amagdala Retraining itself is not for free! What I wanted to say is that there're lots of free informations about how the amygdala creates different symptoms...I too purchased the programme and find it to be very helpful, but it was not as helpful if I did not know about Sarno, he really is the missing link! Maybe Gupta says something about that, too. He also talks about people pleaser and the so called high-achiever (=perfectionist), but I can't remeber him saying something about the role of the unconscious mind and it's protecting function. Maybe I write him an email and ask him if he ever heard about Sarno. I know some people who fully revovered from chronic fatique with Gupta only to catch some other health issues (symptom imperativ!)

 

Jampa, what you call chr0nic fatigue/neurasthenia certainly isn't a new phenomenon. You might like to check out J.K. Huysmans late 19th century Symbolist novel, À rebours, about a decadent, world-weary aristocrat afflicted by that very psychological malady that we label today CFS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/À_rebours

The point being that what you are calling chronic fatigue is very much an equivalent symptom of TMS that appears after you have gotten rid of one TMS symptom like lower lumbar pain. A classic case of the symptom imperative where when one TMS symptom disappears it a reappears elsewhere as another symptom. This process can go on ad infinitum, ad naseum until you deal with the underlying repressed emotion that is creating the need for distracting TMS symptoms in the first place. Of course, I'm assuming you've been checked by an MD to determine that your fatigue is not caused by some other medical problem. But starting out using the tools in the SEP on the TMS Wiki couldn't hurt you.

 

Just type these words into the Search box above and you will get other forum posts and links to TMSwiki pages. How are you getting on this week?

 

You've been checked out by physicians for structural problems and none were found, you are now free to explore the TMS/psychosomatic route--(TMS stands for THE MINDBODY SYNDROME. All the symptoms you mentioned can be found in the TMS literature. A good place to look is in the appendix of SteveO's great TMS tome "GPD". He will be on tonight's Fuse Meeting call in 8pm EST. You can find info to hook-up on the banner announcement above and around this site. You're relatively new to TMS, so it will take a bit more reading and brainwashing to discard the allopathic medicine labels like fibro, lymes, cfs. neurestheina, neuralgia, etc., etc., etc. and accept they are ALL different forms of TMS--a rose by any other name will still be thorny.

Your subconscious mind picks the one that your logical mind will have the most trouble accepting as emotionally caused. Keep reading, watching TMS videos and audios until it sinks into the shadows of your brain, sleep on it and then JUST DO IT!--whatever you want without defying the laws of gravity like base-jumping without a parachute. There's gobs of TMS KNOWLEDGE PENICILLIN here, but it takes a bit of time to brainwash your subconscious mind since it's been creating the TMS defense mechanism as a PROTECTOR since you've been alive and in the womb.

p.s.: Non physical TMS symptoms like depression, OCD, anxiety, etc. are called emotional AFFECTIVE equivalents and are TMS also. They also serve the purpose to distract from dealing with emotional issues head-on that the subconscious has decided are culturally too dangerous.

 

Hello Birdie,

I am dealing with fatigue symtoms now.
Could you please explain a bit more about the Grupta program?
There are many sites related. Could you please inform on which is the good one?

Thanks in advance!

I think I will start the SEP soon ;-)

 

Hi Sienna,
here's the link to the Amygdala Retraining homepage:
http://www.guptaprogramme.com/
And lots of information to check out for free.
I know myself somebody who recovered from severe CFS by this programm. I guess she could have recovered by using TMS approaches, too. But Guptas programme is more structured with detailed instructions when to use which tool to adress certain symptoms, how often, which alternatives you have and so on. And he's specialiced in chronic fatique and related conditions like "fibro" or multiple chemical sensitivities (which is also due to an overreactive nervous system that interprets every chemical as a dangerous invader).