THE POWER OF HABIT and TMS HEALING

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Alan Gordon posted this recently on TMSWiki.org:

“I recently read the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. It's a great book, and Howard Schubiner and I have been talking about how to apply some of the concepts to TMS treatment.”

Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer for the New York Times and his book is about the science of habit formation among individuals, companies, and societies.

Duhigg explains the book and how to break harmful habits in this video:

Duhigg says every habit has three components:

1. Cue: an automatic trigger for a behavior to start.
2. Routine: the behavior itself.
3. Reward: It helps your brain to remember that habit pattern for the future.

Duhigg says that a bad habit can be changed by mindfulness -- living in the present -- and deciding what reward we will give ourselves.

Gordon says Duhigg’s concepts regarding habits can be applied to TMS treatment regarding how and when we can become free of TMS pain.

Gordon says, “Outcome independence is usually effective in significantly reducing or eliminating symptoms, but it's really hard to achieve. I think some of the tenets from this book could most effectively be applied to this section.

“Most TMS sufferers automatically go to a place of fear when their symptoms come on, and it's this fear that serves to perpetuate the symptoms. It's a difficult pattern to break.

“By creating a new routine, it's possible to replace this seemingly instinctive response with another: telling yourself you're safe, reminding yourself that the purpose of the pain is to try and scare you and you're on to it, or some similarly themed response can become the new automatic response to the onset of symptoms. We respond with fear out of habit, but habits can be changed.

“I definitely recommend this book if you're interested in trying to more effectively replace the fear response to TMS pain. It will take some discipline and plenty of repetition, but it will eventually happen if you keep at it.”

I found the video and Gordon’s comments to be educational and helpful in TMS healing especially when Duhigg talks about willpower. To me that is another way of saying we can heal from TMS pain if we make up our mind that TMS is causing the pain and that it is not structural, and that if we are determined to heal, we will take on the challenging mental and physical techniques that are suggested in Dr. Sarno’s and Steve Ozanich’s books and in the forums found in the TMSWiki.org.

 

[Zumbafan]

Yes, the repetition of a new thought, I'm talking hundreds of times!, will replace the fearful one over time. You want to create a new pathway in the brain. Imagine 2 cornfields. The first one has a track running through it that you use all the time (fearful thought). The second field is clear, you create a new happy thought, imagine yourself doing something fab, like dancing. Over time, the corn grows back over the first cornfield so the second field is now your new norm. I hope that makes sense. It is just retraining your brain, it works for me.

 

[clairem]

very interesting thanks for posting.

so am i right in thinking that if we reward ourselves for say reassuring ourselves when fear / pain hits that we are encouraging our brain to start this new habit? or is that backwards thinking?!

 

[Ellen]

I think it goes like this:

pain (cue/trigger) => fear (routine/behavior) => distraction from difficult emotions (reward)

replace with a new routine/behavior:

pain (cue/trigger) => self-soothing (routine/behavior) => choose a new reward (e.g. hot bath, favorite music, etc.)

Seems like this would only work if you no longer need the distraction from difficult emotions. Otherwise, the symptom imperative kicks in by replacing pain with another symptom that still triggers fear.

 

[clairem]

Thanks that's great I wasn't sure if rewarding my self soothing would in a backwards way encourage more pain ...

 

[clairem]

Or could it be like this

Pain / fear is the cue
Trigger self soothing
Behaviour authentic indifference to pain
Reward something nice and personal to self