Essentially healing is about feeling safe, both physically and emotionally.
TMS happens when we can no longer contain our emotional responses (imagine a pot simmering on the stove), and the pot boils over. Recovery is taking the pot off the boil and learning how to keep it that way.
So the “work” is figuring out the situations, experiences, relationships and beliefs that cause you distress or some measure of inner conflict. This is where combing your past is useful because it helps you see where your typical responses come from. Maybe you’ve inherited a belief system or some other dynamic that is at odds with who you truly are. It’s amazing how much stress, pressure and criticism we experience by out-growing limiting beliefs especially where they are heavily culturally sanctioned. And so we tend towards patterns that rest upon the nervous systems
fight~flight~freeze~fawn survival responses to cope with this psychological battleground.
So is your tendency to be reactive? Angry? Bullish? Aggressive? Or do you tend to run away? Deny? Repress? Maybe you dissociate? Or people-please?
These are the unconscious behavioural patterns that are the nexus of the emotional work’. This is quite a focused aspect of healing and it’s also the place many people get stuck. It’s not enough to introspect and garner insight, you then have to recognise where and when you start emotionally fraying and
do something about it.
This is where self-soothing enters the equation. You learn to calm your fears, shame, guilt, anger, sadness or whatever instead of letting your emotions take you for a ride. Most people here have to learn how to talk kindly to themselves in these moments, especially if pain/anxiety/depression is bad. It is these knee-jerk reactions (to emotions, to pain, to our bodies, to our relationships, to our lives), that we need to soften and become much more chilled about.
People with TMS have high levels of physical and emotional tension (boiling pots). Recovery comes with recognising the pot is boiling (anxiety/pain etc), noticing what emotional state the dial is on (anger/grief/fear etc) and dialling it back down to relaxation/mellowness/safety. It’s the surging, unmanaged, unrecognised high octane emotions that cause TMS. The work is learning emotional literacy (knowing what anger/sadness/etc feels like, knowing the way it feels in your body, paying attention to the inner dialogue that accompanies this) and through disciplines of self-care and self-soothing learning how to feel them and express them safely.
The goal is to be free of your symptoms.
That information is missing from everything I read.
Actually it isn’t. All the answers are there.
I do understand your frustration though because it took me years to experience the epiphany I needed. Before that point I used to comb the forums (here and tmshelp) for magic bullets, for the one post or piece of advice that would yield
the answer.
I used to think I was emotionally savvy, spiritually deep and in ok relationships but I was completely denying how I actually felt, how unsafe I felt every single day of my life, how conditional most of my relationships were (people-pleasing all the time)... and I never, ever, ever felt angry. Big beaming smile all the time despite the heartbreak playing out beneath the surface. It took me an age to see all this. It also took me an age to realise that while I had a great intellectual grasp on TMS, I didn’t really understand it.
If you are really stuck then it might be because you’re not sure whether this is TMS. I spent a lot of time going over and over this in my mind because I wanted to believe it was TMS but I couldn’t make the leap of faith so I had one foot in the psychological camp and the other in the physical (looking for remedies/cures/etc). At this point there wasn’t much (any?) discussion about nerves and neuralgia in Sarno’s books or on the forums and this threw me a curve for a long time. I thought the pain, numbness, tingling and associated weirdness
had to be real. I was very conflicted about this issue and endlessly sought reassurance about it.
I had to muddle through until I finally got it. I could never afford to speak with a TMS therapist but I have noticed that this step generally benefits people and enables them to commit to their recovery. I don’t think it’s necessary though largely because there are so many incredible (and mostly free) resources out there but also because TMS healing can do no harm and only further physical healing. If nothing else it’s a great complement to all other methods of healing most likely because every illness and condition possesses an emotional component that typically goes unaddressed.
The neurological explanations really helped me. A combination of Dr. Schubiner, Rick Hanson, Dr. David Hanscom and a garden variety of other such resources. Once I understood that my emotional state was keeping my amygdala on high alert and my physiology constantly revved up I made the connection and understood that this was a vicious cycle that I could break. For me, sleep was the first link in the chain because it calmed this over-sensitivity. Once I had a firm grasp on the neuro-psychology of TMS, I was able to return to Sarno and the more nebulous theories with tremendous insight.
I hope this post doesn’t read like another Zen Koan. I also hope other people pitch in with their thoughts because if you’re anything like me there will come a tipping point in your understanding and from there the TMS world becomes your oyster. Please, don’t be shy about posting and interacting on the forum because this really helps tease things out.
plum x
