Relapse Question

Hi everyone. I'm a long time lurker, first time poster.

My quick background: thoracic outlet syndrome diagnosis 2010, surgery 2012, and I had a terrible bout with brachial neuritis over 2 years ago. I ended up on 4 different meds while recovering and came off all of them after reading and following along with Dr Sarno's Mind/Body Prescription.

Recently, I've had some significant pain and I'm afraid of the neuritis returning. My question is, has anyone had significant pain come back during your reading because of the depth of your emotional issues? Is it possible to go to fast when thinking about the unconscious? I feel immediate relief when finding something, only to have it come back within a short time. It's incredibly difficult to not catastrophize when feeling this way. Thanks.

 

Congratulations on de-lurking

Don't worry, healing has many layers and it's entirely normal to experience a flare-up. We've all been there. We've all freaked out and then got passed it. Focus on your gains, not on your fears and you'll be fine because fear really is the big bugaboo for everyone. Now is the time to gently deal with that.

During your lurking have you explored Alan Gordon and Claire Weekes? Just trying to get a bead on how familiar the terrain is for you.

Plum x

 

Thanks for the response. When you say "not the fears" do you mean to ignore unconscious rage right now? I believe my unconscious rage revolves around my family and myself. All of this has ties to fear.

I've read Alan's program but nothing with Claire. Alan's definitely has helped.

 

It's very easy to get lost in the maze of recovery. This is something I did and it was totally unnecessary. You really don't need to do all the digging and psychoarchaelogy to heal, you simply need to soften and soothe your fears and to gently learn to be emotionally aware. Most of us are excellent at intellectualising our emotions but not so good at actually feeling them. This is something we can delve into later if you like.

So yes, let the rage be. These repressed emotions surface in their own good time and tend to organically resolve as a by-product of healing anyway. Here is a great post by Steve Ozanich on this:

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/seeking-the-grail.529/ (Steven Ozanich - Seeking the Grail)

When I say focus on your gains, I mean specifically place your attention on your successes with respect to healing, such as the way you came off meds and recovered before. Focusing on the good is probably the most healing practice anyone can do because it challenges the negativity bias that is hard-wired into the brain. Here is a post on this by yours truly:

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/the-final-leg-need-tips.18154/#post-96490 (The Final Leg: Need Tips)

You'll recall how Alan explains that fear is the fuel for pain and other symptoms. Claire Weekes was a doctor who specialised in panic attacks, fear and anxiety. She provides solid advice on what to do when fear strikes. There are loads of posts about her on the forum but these links to audio files (on the forum) are a good start:

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/claire-weekes-audio.2569/ (Claire Weekes Audio)

It really is worth reading her book(s) yourself though, if fear and anxiety are a big problem for you.

I appreciate there is a lot of information in this reply so take your time with it and feel free to come back with any thoughts and questions.

Plum x

 

Again, thanks so much for all of this info.

 

This change in symptom occurrence or intensity --and even more so when the change is stimulated by your contemplations only, is direct evidence that it is TMS which you're suffering from. So this is actually positive. Contemplating this, rather than focusing on immediate relief from symptoms may help with your fear: you have strong evidence that this is TMS, and we know this is workable.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm sure everyone here can understand how encouraging it is to hear things like that.