Steven Ozanich TMS and Pop Culture

Here's another from "Still Standing": It starts about 10:30 mins. in, or so in, Bill expresses himself, and the symptoms leave. This was one of my favorite comedies of all time. It never quite made it. TV Guide had a cover on it that said, "The Best Show You're Not Watching."

Forrest how do we keep these all together? Can you just take the "TMS in the Media" page and switch out the word Media with Culture? "TMS In Pop Culture."

 
I never knew about the show but enjoyed the clip. Bill's neck pain went away when he let our his frustrations.
He must have read about TMS, or the writer of the show did.
 
Five of the Greatest Quotes of 1970s Television Characters Number Two: "Oh, this is the big one! You hear that, Elizabeth?! I'm coming to join you, honey!" by Fred Sanford of "Sanford and Son"
What helped make Redd Foxx's character a household mainstay in the homes of yesteryear? It was his fake heart attack rhetoric and movements that he displayed when he was under stress or wasn't getting his own way. When watching "Sanford and Son", one would anticipate ol' Fred Sanford yet again pulling off this comedic romp that never got tiring to watch, unless you were Lamont.

Here it is on Youtube:

 
THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)

This terrific romantic drama was made during the closing months of World War Two and tells about an American pilot (Robert Young) who is injured when his plane is shot down over Java. He loses use of his right arm and his face is badly disfigured. He puts on hold his plan to marry and becomes a recluse in a cottage on the ocean in rural Massachusetts. The cottage’s owner (Mildred Natwick) hires a plain-looking young woman (Dorothy McGuire) to help her as house maid.

Neither of the young people have any hopes of anyone marrying them, and it doesn’t help that Young’s mother and stepfather haven’t a clue as to why he wants to give up. His stepfather tells him, “No sense in being a mental case over a little injury.” Young’s arm and facial deformity are a lot more than little injuries to him.

McGuire tells Young that she feels the cottage is enchanted, holding the love young couples felt when they honeymooned in it over many years. Young asks, “You mean it’s haunted?” “No,” she says, “to be haunted means restless, ugly, afraid. I believe it is enchanted, which means happy and beautiful and touched by love.”

Young continues to be depressed and is close to shooting himself, but McGuire persuades him against it, and they become friends.

A concert pianist neighbor (Herbert Marshall) is blind, so he can’t see either of them as they look to themselves and others. Marshall advises Young: “By cultivating other senses, it opens up new worlds. In place of the two eyes I lost in the last war, I have a hundred invisible ones. The other senses come to your aid… touches, smells, sounds. You get a heightening of perceptions. A sort of sensitivity to all living things. Nature is more beautiful than I knew it before. Human beings are more understandable. Sometimes I think that before losing my sight, I was blind, and it is only now that I see.”

Marshall says he found a new life in music and encourages Young that he too will find something. “But how, where?” asks Young, skeptically. Marshall replies, “You’ve got to have faith in yourself.”

Gradually, Young takes a new interest in designing a new airplane, which he had begun before his war injuries. He and McGuire also fall in love. They marry, and on their wedding night in the cottage they see each other differently; she sees him as being handsome and he sees her as being beautiful.

Marshall tells them, “Take this gift and enjoy it, without questioning and without fear. Accept it as a heaven-sent miracle and be grateful for it.” McGuire asks, “A miracle?” Marshall replies, “Don’t you believe in miracles? Modern miracles happen to you, to me, every day, tomorrow. Maybe you both have been touched by a power beyond this world.”

Young and McGuire both begin to accept that to others, his face still looks scarred,
and she looks plain. Their love keeps them looking beautiful to each other.

The message of the movie is one from which we all can benefit. We all live in an enchanted cottage of our own mind. How we perceive our pain and have faith we will overcome it is the miracle that can set us free. One of several strong TMS concepts for healing.

The movie, based on a 1920s stage play, is beautifully told and acted, and it can enchant you, too. It is especially good for anyone who was in an accident or injured in war, and for their loved ones and caretakers. It is available on VHS and DVD.

enchanted cottage.jpg
 
Anne Walker said:
Five of the Greatest Quotes of 1970s Television Characters Number Two: "Oh, this is the big one! You hear that, Elizabeth?! I'm coming to join you, honey!" by Fred Sanford of "Sanford and Son"
What helped make Redd Foxx's character a household mainstay in the homes of yesteryear? It was his fake heart attack rhetoric and movements that he displayed when he was under stress or wasn't getting his own way. When watching "Sanford and Son", one would anticipate ol' Fred Sanford yet again pulling off this comedic romp that never got tiring to watch, unless you were Lamont.
Click to expand...

I love this, Anne - and it's bringing up all kinds of thoughts, about how we accept the concept that emotions can cause a heart attack - but then we don't really - do you know what I mean? I'm thinking about how we laugh at this bit, partly because we recognize that there's an element of truth in it (isn't that the basis of the best comedy?) - in fact, it's almost like a universal truth. But apparently it's not universal enough to change the general perception of heart disease. I wonder if we (that should be "we" as in the general public) allow ourselves to deflect the truth, because the comedy "stretches" the truth to the point of silliness? Hm.
 
Good point JanACPA, our first conditioned response is probably breathing, when we realize that it saves us, we keep doing it. Our second conditioned response could be crying. When the baby becomes aware that crying brings people running, pulling people to it, that becomes the modus operandi. As we become adults we can't cry due to superego control, so we can pull people to us with fake heart attacks, and the likes of TMS. We unconsciously pull others to us with symptoms in lieu of crying. Our TMS could be a means of crying because physical pain is acceptable, and crying isn't.

This is one of the best examples of TMS. The ads are insufferable, can anyone rip the videos from their roots?
The Dick Van Dyke Show, "The Brave and the Backache" Feb. 12, 1964.

http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/.../1354804403/The-Brave-and-the-Backache/videos
 
Really good points JanACPA. I do think comedy emphasizes and exaggerates truths and we laugh because we recognize someone or something that we know. I think what makes Red Foxx so funny with his "this could be the big one" is how much he buys in to his act each and every time. He would be so believable if you hadn't already seen him do it so many times. I often think this is how my close family members see me. I have had so many different pain conditions and each time I buy in completely. Each one feels like the worst "the big one" and they scare the heck out of me. But its hard for those close to me to take it too seriously. They know I am going to survive and get through it even if I am not so sure.

Steve - I love the Dick Van Dyke Show episode!! Classic. They sure are making fun of psychiatrists and it was funny to see him smoking in his office. Very funny! Some of my favorite lines are:

"You're going to go see a psychiatrist?"

"Yes, I am going to see a psychiatrist. What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid you're going to find out there is something wrong with us."

AND

"I'd rather have a neurotic husband with a backache who loves me than a normal husband with a good one that doesn't"


Thanks for a good laugh.
 
Dr. Bob Evans, a TMS doctor, says he prefers the Bill Murray 1984 version of "The Razor's Edge," partly because
when Murray (as Larry Darrell) is about to depart his time with the guru, he says it's easy to be a Holy Man on top of a mountain retreat, but not so easy in the modern world. To which the guru replies, " The path to enlightenment is as sharp and narrow as a razor's edge."
 
Anne I liked when Buddy saw Dick in pain and said, "what happened?" Dick said, "oh Sally sneezed and sprained my marriage."

The funniest part was was between Dick and the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist never said a word but the conversation kept picking up. He kept saying, "what do you think....is that what you think?"

And the reason I thought it was a great TMS episode was because at the end, they never said whether it was a structural or emotional problem. They left everyone as confused as they are in most places. But we know better now, it's very rarely a structural cause.

Steve
 
Yeah, but I think it was pretty clear it was emotional. Dick is soooooooo funny with the physical comedy, like when at first he can't sit down and then he is stuck in the sitting position. It really is hilarious.
 
I was just watching an old movie, THE SHOPWORN ANGEL (1938) on Turner Classic Movies, and a London showgirl sang the old World War One marching song, “Pack Up Your Troubles.” The lyrics are a prime example of how to stop pain caused by TMS repressed emotions such as fear and anger or just being in a miserable situation that causes stress and anxiety.

The popular marching song told soldiers going off to World War One to smile.
They couldn’t laugh about it, but they could smile. The words from the 1915 song are:

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a Lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

To the British, a kit-bag was a duffle bag, a Lucifer was a match, and a fag was a cigarette. The song has been sung in movies since the early 1930s
and each year Snoppy dances to it while wearing his World War One flying ace uniform and Schroeder plays it on his toy piano in the annual Charlie Brown Christmas television special.

We may not be able to laugh our pain away, as Norman Cousins said he cured himself of life-threatening spinal disease, by watching funny movies including those of the Marx Brothers. But we can try, and also can do the next best thing and smile. The smile may work its way into becoming laughter. Dr. Sarno and others say laughter can help heal our pain.

Steve Ozanich, in The Great Pain Deception, writes:

“The inability to laugh and to let go – as a child naturally does – gets lost in midlife. It’s eventually replaced with emotional isolation, followed by unhappiness. With the disappearance of innocence comes conflict, because every adult is also a child. Re-learn enthusiasm (as in Theos, Greek, defined as ‘In God.’) So become enthusiastic and find silliness all around you. The mind holds both joy and rage simultaneously – each incumbent upon the existence of the other. They are necessary complements – folds of the same person… as the yin chases the yang… and this becomes that…

“During the darkest days of his presidency, Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet members to laugh, telling them, ‘Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. You need this medicine as much as I do.’

Oszanich says “Laughter suppresses the release of the stress hormone and immune system suppresser, cortisol – boosting the immune system’s power. Laughter also releases endorphins and natural painkillers into the spinal canal. The endorphins release a sense of peace and happiness and pleasure –an analgesic effect that alters mood – relieving depression and boosting disease fighters. All good stuff. Laughter is the antithesis of anger and worry. Worry demands control, laughter is losing control. Laughter heals.”

For many of us, the first step toward laughing is to smile.

I tried my own advice as I finished writing this posting. It didn’t store on my computer in TMS and Pop Culture or anywhere else. I yelled at my computer, and then laughed and rewrote it.
 
Plum suggested a web site that says movies can be therapy to help us deal with physical and emotional problems. It’s www.cinematherapy.com and I think she and it are right.

I checked it out and thought that mentioning it is appropriate to add to Steve Ozanich’s TMSWiki thread: TMS and Pop Culture where our members have suggested movies that relate to TMS pain.

Viewers of the cinematherapy site share their thoughts and impressions on movies that reflect their own life experiences, “struggles as well as gifts.”
The site says cinematherapy “can be a powerful catalyst for healing and growing for anybody who is open to learning how movies affect us and to watching certain films with conscious awareness.” It allows us to use the effects of imagery, plot, music, etc., in films for our psyche for insight, inspiration, emotional release or relief and natural change.

Used as part of psychotherapy, cinema therapy is an innovative method based on traditional therapeutic principles, the site says. Following certain guidelines for choosing films and watching them consciously can support personal and spiritual growth.

Cinematherapy says one aspect of most movies is that they serve as allegories, in much the same way as do stories, myths, jokes, fables, or dreams which can all be utilized in psychotherapy. Identifying with a character can help us to develop inner strength as we recall forgotten inner resources and become aware of the right opportunity for those resources to be applied.

“Like dream work, cinema therapy allows us to gain awareness of our deeper layers of consciousness to help us move toward new perspectives or behavior as well as healing and integration of the total self.”

Cinematherapy says, “This inner work is a form of "modern-day shamanism,", where we find a way to our soul that makes sense to our mind. Just as in poems, music, and literature, studying film's symbolic and deeper meanings empowers us by helping to integrate emotions, intuition and logic, and therefore blend our rational and "irrational" processes.

Also, understanding reactions to characters who are "different" and unlikable can guide us to discover our true self and our potential.
Cinematherapy suggests movies on various topics, such as these:

Movies on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder:

As Good as it Gets, The Aviator, Baby Boom, Breaking the Waves, Carrington, Educating Rita, The End of Innocence, Frances, The Odd Couple, Pelican Brief, The Sheltering Sky, Three Colors Blue.

Limb and spinal problems:

23 Paces to Baker Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Whose Life Is it Anyway?

Bullies:

Ever After: A Christmas Story, Mean Girls, My Bodyguard.

Self-esteem, questioning negative beliefs about our self and rediscovering our strengths:
Billy Elliot, Children of a Lesser God, Dead Poets Society, Erin Brockovich, Field of Dreams, The Full Monty, Gattaca, Forrest Gump, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Holland’s Opus, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, My Left Foot, The Other Sister, Parenthood, Places in the Heart, Powder, the Shawshank Redemption, Secrets and Lies, Shine, The Turning Point.

Childhood abuse: emotional and physical:

Antwone Fisher, Bastard Out of Carolina, Dolores Claiborne, Jane Eyre, Matilda, Mommy Dearest, The Prince of Tides, Radio Flyer, Sling Blade, Stand By Me.

There are dozens of other categories of films related to other physical and emotional problems and pain listed on cinematherapy.com.
 
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