Phobias/Conditioning

into my second week of the Tms protocol treatment,sleep has improved a little,pain isn't as constant,just comes when I drive and sometimes sit. My subconscious has conditioned to me to feel pain when I drive since I had severe pain while driving my truck at work. Any recommendations on how to overcome this fear? In the book HBP, dr sarno talks about this and how going thru his treatment people will overcome this. Just want to know if there's anything else I can do on top of the treatment protocol. Any advice would be appreciated

 

In my experience, over come tms/anxiety symptoms is the easy part. Over come conditioning symptoms is much more difficult. Most people either looking for structural or emotional causes and did not realize their pain are from conditioning most of the time. Bright light - eye problem. Tunnels or high bridge - anxiety. Raining - depression. Driving - back pain. Loud music - tinnitus. Drinking milk - stomach bloating. Typing - RSD. .... you get the idea. Our body can be conditioned to thousand and thousand of "things". The hardest part is realize that our body is being conditioned. Not us that being condition. It is our body. There is not input at all from our brain. No subconscious. It is our body all by itself. Our body, our cells learned to produce the symptoms.
We jump on the bicycle we just bike. We don't need our brain or our sub to tell us how to bike. We see a snake our heart beat faster, our breathing is faster, our stress hormones flooded our blood stream instantly. Our body doing all that in a fraction of a second, without any input from our brain. The same thing is happening to you when you're driving. Your body produce the pain symptoms when you drive. It doesn't need anything instruction from your brain at all. The body know when to produce the symptoms. Pavlov's dog salivated when he ring the bell. You have pain when driving.
1 -Ringing bell - Driving
2 -Salivating - Pain
3 -Food - Fear
Now look at the formula above. When Pavlov keep ringing his bell but he stop giving food to his dog. After awhile the dogs stop salivating even when he keep ring his bell. (the extinction of the salivating condition)
If you stop feeding your mind with FEAR and just keep driving, after awhile the pain will stop. (the extinction of the pain conditioning)
When you keep doing #1, but take away #3, then #2 will disappear.
If you keep driving but refuse to fear then the pain will stop. So try to relax. Tell yourself you enjoy driving. It doesn't make sense that driving can cause you pain, or else no one would work as truck or taxi driver. The back is strong. The body is strong, it is the mind that is sometime confused and conditioned. Explain to yourself that is does not make sense that driving can cause pain. Beside, no one on earth ever die from back pain. No one on earth ever get permanent nerve damage from back pain. No need to fear driving at all. Keep explain to your mind. Keep supply it with correct information. Eventually the body will "understand" and it will cease to produce the conditioned respond.
Good luck.
good luck.

 

Balto that makes so much sense.. Thank you for that advice,I'm sure gonna use it..

 

I think your body is not only conditioned to produce pain whenever you're driving, you're also conditioned to constantly scan your body for symptoms. Conditioned to produce negative thoughts often. Conditioned to worry all or most of the time, and worst of all, conditioned to FEAR.
Tms is our body's way of telling us we are in danger. We are under stress, trauma, too much pressure.... it is not good for us and we need a break. If right then and there we give ourselves a break, the tms symptoms will disappear and life will be back to normal. But no, we are stupid and we made a mistake. We FEAR our symptoms. We worry about our health. We are scare of what is going to happen to us. This FEAR emotion is what keep the symptoms alive. If you think about it, most people can handle the pain from tms. The pain can be severe but we can handle. It is the Fear that is bother us. The Fear is what keep us up at night. The fear is what gave us anxiety and panic attack. The Fear is what make us tense and depress.
The pain I had when I broke my leg, when I have my wisdom teeth pulled, when my hear broke the car's windshield in an accident, when I felled off the ladder cleaning the gutter,..... is much worse than tms pain. Yet, I have no fear with those pain. Can you see the different in those pain and tms pain? the different is FEAR. Tms caused fear, and fear caused tms, (looping)
Whatever you do, your main goal is to eliminate fear from your mind.
If it truly structural, it will heal in a few days or the most in a couple months. Everything else is tms/anxiety. Our body have an amazing ability to heal and adapt. Good or bad it will adapt when given enough time.

 

Great one.. Balto I love reading your replies.. and your success story too.

I love that amazing dog Balto which delivered serum to protect many people from the deadly disease.. I remember you said you like it from cartoon show.. but this happened for real ..just in case you are not aware

 

Whwres Baltos success story Indymarshal?

 

http://tmswiki.org/forum/threads/healed-for-10-years.3556/

 

Thank u

 

Balto gives great advice, as always. Fear is worse than any pain. Most of us tend to think the worst is going to happen... we "catastrophize." But seldom does the worst ever really happen.

I watched an interview on TV with a man whose house was washed away in the California flooding. He said he would survive and take life as it came to him. He was confident that things would get better for him and his family. That takes a lot of courage, but his positive attitude is going to help him and his loved ones.