The Foundation of Recovery

Hello friends!

I wanted to talk about two concepts that accelerated my recovery and will, without a doubt, accelerate yours. I truly believe that at the core of every success story—every recovery from TMS symptoms—there are two fundamental aspects: first, acceptance, and second, allowing

How you feel about the word *acceptance* is a wonderful indicator of how accepting you are of the life you’re living and the symptoms you’re experiencing. Acceptance means accepting your current situation in this moment in time. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year. It also means accepting that these symptoms—no matter how colorful they may be—are what you’re dealing with right now. If you can first accept your situation, you’ve already won half the battle.

But the real work begins when we begin to allow.

Allowing is truly the elixir for TMS symptoms, and here’s why.

Pain—whether structural or nonstructural—happens at the level of the brain. Pain is a protective mechanism designed to keep us safe from perceived threats. When we develop brain-based or neural circuit symptoms, it’s a software issue, not a hardware issue. Our brains aren’t broken—they’re simply very good at predicting danger, even in the absence of real danger.

Brains change through a process called disconfirmation. And disconfirmation can only happen when we change our response to pain and symptoms. That’s where allowing comes in.

Allowing is both an active and passive process. You are choosing to let your symptoms behave the way they choose, without trying to change, fix, or control them.

There’s a huge difference between the brain and the mind, and it isn’t talked about enough. The mind is the programmer; the brain is the machine. And the brain doesn’t speak language. You can talk to it until you’re blue in the face, and most of the time it won’t change your symptom experience. The brain speaks emotion. And emotion is where the greatest influence over your symptoms lies.

Our symptoms become a feedback loop because we continue engaging with them. None of us would have persistent symptoms if we could truly stand back with indifference. Allowing is the practice of building that indifference. It’s strengthening the muscle that lets you stand back while your body feels like it’s going insane—and doing nothing about it.

At a brain level, this sends a powerful message: you are no longer interested in the alarm.

Symptoms often get worse when you begin allowing because allowing is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Your dominant habits are resistance and solution-seeking. But if you continue allowing, over time you’ll notice your thoughts soften—and your symptoms will too. You’ll begin to experience moments where symptoms fade into the background while life moves forward.

Allowing is uncomfortable, but it’s the way out in almost every recovery story. It has been the foundation of my own journey.

When you put down the fight and the resistance, you step back and allow your body to do what it already knows how to do.

I have so much love for this community. But I also believe that tough love is still love: you have to actively work on ditching resistance as much as you can. Put down the constant search for books, tools, reassurance, and symptom comparison. It may feel like acceptance and progress—but it’s often just another form of resistance.

It’s fixing.

And recovery begins when you stop trying to fix.

With love,
SA xx