Derek S. Politically induced tms

[Guest]

This question was submitted via our Ask a TMS Therapist program. To submit your question, click here.

Question

Could it be possible that the constant horrible neck, back and left bicep pain I've been feeling is from TMS? I have been very upset since the election and it's results. I'm worried about my family losing our ACA and I am worried about the future of our country. I have recently spent a lot of time arguing with people on social media I am generally an anxious person and I also am just coming off of my mothers death in 2015. Do I just need to breathe and tell myself to send oxygen to those spots? Should I stop taking aspirin?

 

[Derek Sapico MFT]

Answer

Thanks for your question.

This is an issue that is coming up a lot in my practice, and that of many of my colleagues. Should we come up with a name for it?

Trump Myositis Syndrome?

Mind Body Bannon Disorder?

Feel free to make suggestions!

All kidding aside, politics is something that can cause a great deal of stress and despair. Furthermore, social media debate can be a strange platform for political discourse and can become both frustrating and demoralizing at times.

All of the change happening right now also creates a great deal of uncertainty, which is not something that TMS'ers tend to tolerate very well.

I would suggest that you identify a realistic sphere of influence for yourself. In other words, get involved in causes that are tangible, such as local campaigns, where you can interact with people face to face and actually feel like you are making a difference.

Many of us are trying to figure out how to care for ourselves in this new socio-political landscape. Use meditation, relaxation, and self-compassion techniques to calm down your nervous system. The symptoms that you mention all sound very much like TMS and the fact that their onset seems to have coincided with a stressful event on the heels of the loss of your mother would be ample reason for a flare up of TMS.

Make it a priority to work toward creating safety for yourself while also making more room to feel your emotions. The loss of your mother, the election, and the daily damage report on the news are enough to bring up a great deal of sadness and rage. Don't push these feelings down or try to ignore them. Instead, feel the emotions in your body and breathe through them without judgment.

I don't have any strong feelings about taking aspirin, but if discontinuing it helps you to think more psychologically then I think that's a good idea.

Best of luck finding your way in this strange new world. You are not alone.

-Derek

---

Any advice or information provided here does not and is not intended to be and should not be taken to constitute specific professional or psychological advice given to any group or individual. This general advice is provided with the guidance that any person who believes that they may be suffering from any medical, psychological, or mindbody condition should seek professional advice from a qualified, registered/licensed physician and/or psychotherapist who has the opportunity to meet with the patient, take a history, possibly examine the patient, review medical and/or mental health records, and provide specific advice and/or treatment based on their experience diagnosing and treating that condition or range of conditions. No general advice provided here should be taken to replace or in any way contradict advice provided by a qualified, registered/licensed physician and/or psychotherapist who has the opportunity to meet with the patient, take a history, possibly examine the patient, review medical and/or mental health records, and provide specific advice and/or treatment based on their experience diagnosing and treating that condition or range of conditions.

The general advice and information provided in this format is for informational purposes only and cannot serve as a way to screen for, identify, or diagnose depression, anxiety, or other psychological conditions. If you feel you may be suffering from any of these conditions please contact a licensed mental health practitioner for an in-person consultation.

Questions may be edited for brevity and/or readability.

 

[Jude]

This is more than 2 years old, but I came here looking.... I am a "recovering" TMSer, with quite a few symptom-less years under my belt-- and now since January persistent left-side neck/head, shoulder pain that comes on lying down. I have done all my inner work on it, and I'm pretty convinced it is Trump Syndrome. Searching for others dealing with same (maybe I should do a separate post?)

 

[AnonymousNick]

I really think politics can be a repressive strategy like anything else in TMS. Do you ever feel better after you go on a political rant? Maybe a little (or you might even feel worse), but it's nothing like going on a personal rant -- something that might actually address your real feelings.

Trump has been called "pure id" and clearly his ego favors the impulsive, childish, and irresponsible while folks with a TMS personality favor the parental, restrained, responsible super-ego. Since TMS work means getting more in touch with the child/id side of things, an example like Trump almost makes you want to stay in pain! I remember learning this Freudian stuff and dreading, "oh crap, I've got to be more like my father?" But there are many positive things about the id, and also the goal is to find a balanced identity ultimately. And it seems that the id doesn't need to see its worst impulses actually happen in reality, just that the feelings be addressed and not ignored.

Hope I got all of that Freud stuff right. What I'm trying to say is that it has to be deeper than Trump. Almost everything is...

 

[Jude]

I have been doing political work (on campaigns, etc) for the past 2 years, as well as working on a book. I thought all that activity was allowing me to be in touch with my feelings while not getting stuck in them because I was "doing something" (unlike many people I know who rant and then feel depressed). I thought I was handling it just great until this neck pain. That came on after recent anti-Semitism--I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor and I guess that created a double whammy with Trump. So I don't think it is "Freudian" as much as it is kicking up the trauma of dictatorship that was very real in my life as a child.

 

[Baseball65]

I have wanted to start a string on this topic. Virtually ALL of my friends and Family who are PSYCHO's on either side of the political spectrum have TMS.

My brother has Trump Derangement syndrome AND Gnarly Sciatica. We were raised in a vitriolically Harvard-Stanford-Mexican-Jew left wing Family and he is carrying the torch.
Snobby-know-it-all Atheist-bleeding -heart-ivy-league-blowhards...my whole family.

BUT... one of my best friends is a Rush Limbaugh quoting, AOC-obsessed-Fox news-parrot- indignant Trumpster and he has the worst pain of anybody I know personally.

They are photographic negatives of each other in personality and reasoning. ... and I can't stand to be around either one of them when they get going (nor can anyone else for that matter)

If you read "Amusing ourselves to death" By Neil Postman OR "In the absence of the sacred" BY Jerry Mander they both PREDICTED our current state of affairs. They also both predicted a largely useless, dull mass that was over-informed and enraged, confused and INERT largely doing nothing but consuming 'news'. That anger is popping out as TMS. I am sure of it based on my anecdotal field research (LOL)

Having worked for the Devil...uh .. I mean the entertainment industry, I can assure that the 'news' is just another show designed to get you to watch it by provoking you emotionally (TMS) and as we grow numbed to certain things it has to grow ever more provocative to get you to watch it. We vote once every couple years but they need to piss you off every night !!! (or they don't get ratings-advertising dollars=FAIL)
The internet is largely just a perma-TV as far as 'news' goes. If there is one thing that the Child King is right about, it is FAKE news... (Even a broken clock is right twice a day). But I was aware of this around the early 2000's when I read these books.

Hey Jude (lol...had to do that once) My Bro has worked on numerous campaigns for a variety of 'woke' candidates and his TMS is as bad as it gets. Politics is a mythological construct. There is no A-B-C correlation like there might be say...building a tree house?

My Aunt still has her Auschwitz tat on her forearm. I know very few MOT's who didn't lose family in the Shoah... but as far as the wokies are concerned we are no longer useful in the 'intersectional olympics'

Turn it off. There is an 'off' button on every electronic device... it might be harder to find than an exit in a casino, but it is there. Play an instrument. Follow sports. Go out and walk your Dog.

and Let the dead bury the dead

if you want to be TMS free you have to walk away from that play-acting BS

 

[Jude]

Thanks for your perspective, Derek.

What I have learned in over a decade of working with my TMS is that--basically--once I acknowledge an emotion that I previously denied, I become TMS free. Which means I don't have to limit myself to walking the dog or sticking my head in the sand.

If what I have come to understand turns out to be true here too, it will look like this: (1) I acknowledge to myself that I'm deeply disturbed by Trump (and that I still carry fear and sorrow about the deaths of close family in Nazi Germany), which are two sets of feelings I've been telling myself I already dealt with and I'm "old enough" to dismiss, (2) my brain will no longer have reason to create neck pain to avoid those feelings, and so (3) I will be free to continue working with friends on causes and campaigns I'm passionate about.

Too early to say, but I'm eager to see if this will work out as I suspect.

 

[sam908]

It's official. This formerly very helpful website has now been "fundamentally transformed" into a political forum.

 

[andy64tms]

I feel better just reading this thread, for I am not alone.

It’s hard to know whether to suppress our political views or have a good scream and vent, I guess we are all different on this point. I suggest this thread should be the only one we come to have a good political yell, after all we have one for Christmas day family stress issues.

Unfortunately politics is based on inducing fear within us, and fear is a major component of TMS. Here is my example I am glad to get rid of:

Trump could not contain himself as the media covered his poking threats to Kim Jong about “Hell hath no fire and fury in 2017”. Was he taking us to the brink of war? I come from war torn Europe, so my mental memories are based on this background.

Around that time I awoke one night and heard a roaring sound from the direction of Los Angeles. In a micro second my sleepy mind went to the horror that might be happening. Was the nuclear reality taking place? I opened the drapes looking for the flash that would soon fill the sky. I had absorbed and suppressed these thoughts unknowingly, a typical TMS strategy to suppress unworthy emotions.

After a while I came through with TMS relief and went back to bed. The lesson being don’t listen to it – turn off the news. Being 1/2 deaf I have got very good at phasing out background
TV, who would have thought deafness could be an asset?

I never discovered where the noise came from, perhaps it was in all my head, but I really do remember going through to the next bedroom and opening the drapes.

 

[andy64tms]

It's official. This formerly very helpful website has now been "fundamentally transformed" into a political forum.

Sam, fear not, it will pass,

We all have to address our TMS elephants in the room sooner or later. I credit this website and the people here to be intellectually responsible don’t you?

 

[andy64tms]

Yin, Yang

Some of my windsurfing friends are Trump supporters, and I am looking at them and saying to myself: “You believe that?”

I realize with TMS honesty they are looking back at me and thinking the same thing.

 

[had]

Just because people feel the same physical or mental pain coming from two different ends doesn't make both sides of the debate equal or correct. A racist is wrong and that they suffer too doesn't make their position valid. Politics isn't imaginary...it's ideologies conflicting and the right and left are very opposing and incompatible ideologies. There is no middle ground that either would find "correct". I personally will not give way to racists, sexists, bigots, isolationists, greedy individualist etc for some fake ideal of "everyone has a valid viewpoint". Some things are just wrong. We shouldn't still be fighting a war over whether people matter more than money, or whether skin color or sexuality are "proper". I always chuckle when "bleeding heart" is attempted as an insult. Everyone should have empathy and care about other innocents.

I dream of a world where everything I hold dear as decent human behavior isn't seen as "evil and wrong" by half of America. Only one side is voting against equality, building walls, removing social protections, alienating the rest of the first world while calling guns an inelienable right, but healthcare, education, food and shelter are labeled "greedy entitlements"...it's insane. Being against such selfishness, and a buffoon reality TV star who has always been known as a slimey person, doesn't make one "deranged". When I was a child I was taught to share, care, everyone deserves equal rights, help others etc...it's just unbelievable to me that the people who are opposite to that have been normalized as "just another viewpoint" and how far to the right the "center" has become.

 

[Andy Bayliss]

With Respect Everyone,
I suggest we refrain from adding any more entries to this thread. This thread seems like it has gone into a political opinion discussion (in some places), and this is not helpful in creating a Forum which will invite everyone here into easeful conversation and support. There are heartfelt opinions expressed here, but this is not the place for them.
Sincerely,
Andy B

 

[Lainey]

Andy, I don’t see this thread as threatening to the heart of this forum. I’m also not so certain that this is ‘not the place for them’. I think that the heartfelt opinions expressed here are appropriate. All threads are not to every members taste and this should be ok. Let this thread ride out and it may take us to a better place.
Lainey

 

[Lainey]

I feel better just reading this thread, for I am not alone.

It’s hard to know whether to suppress our political views or have a good scream and vent, I guess we are all different on this point. I suggest this thread should be the only one we come to have a good political yell, after all we have one for Christmas day family stress issues.

Unfortunately politics is based on inducing fear within us, and fear is a major component of TMS. Here is my example I am glad to get rid of:

Trump could not contain himself as the media covered his poking threats to Kim Jong about “Hell hath no fire and fury in 2017”. Was he taking us to the brink of war? I come from war torn Europe, so my mental memories are based on this background.

Around that time I awoke one night and heard a roaring sound from the direction of Los Angeles. In a micro second my sleepy mind went to the horror that might be happening. Was the nuclear reality taking place? I opened the drapes looking for the flash that would soon fill the sky. I had absorbed and suppressed these thoughts unknowingly, a typical TMS strategy to suppress unworthy emotions.

After a while I came through with TMS relief and went back to bed. The lesson being don’t listen to it – turn off the news. Being 1/2 deaf I have got very good at phasing out background
TV, who would have thought deafness could be an asset?

I never discovered where the noise came from, perhaps it was in all my head, but I really do remember going through to the next bedroom and opening the drapes.

 

[Lainey]

Andy64
A very similar incident happened to me a couple of years back. My husband and I both woke up to a roaring sound and a sense that something was amiss in our world. It was different than the sound of thunder or of earthquakes I have experienced. We looked out our windows as well. Since I live just outside of D.C. and have for all but three years of my life, this reaction almost seems ordained for me. Quite humbling.
Lainey