TMS How to be sure

[JackJohnson]

How can one be 100% sure that one has TMS and accept the diagnosis? It could always be possible that there is some kind of physical explanation. For instance, some people get fibromyalgia because of some reactions to food, or implants, or some other environmental factors. Even if doctors can't find an explanation for the symptoms and one thinks that TMS could be a likely explanation, one can never be 100% sure. Given that acceptance of the diagnosis is essential, this seems to me somewhat problematic.

 

[Dorado]

I actually just wrote about this in another post after a member with a stress fracture was dealing with shin pain and thought that they had shin splints, which are commonly viewed as mind-body/TMS issue. This resulted in a broken bone. I actually referenced fibromyalgia as an example in my response to the member. Here are some excerpts from my response:

I am concerned that you’re misunderstanding the true mind-body connection/TMS philosophy, as real injuries that have not healed are not considered TMS.

This is why people are urged to get checked out medically and make sure nothing is wrong. Real injuries absolutely need to be treated as such; people like Steve Ozanich are the first to say this. It’s important to work with a doctor and get a complete understanding of what’s happening in the body before treating anything as mind-body symptoms/TMS. This is one of the benefits of working with a doctor who is knowledgeable in how the mind and the body are connected: they can closely work with you and guide you down the appropriate treatment plan (structural, mind-body/TMS, or a mix of both; my neurologists weren’t TMS doctors, but most of them VERY deeply understood stress-related symptoms and were able to do this for me). You can trust them to differentiate between the structural and the non-structural, eliminating the need for you to try to do it on your own - which we do not recommended for this exact reason.

A stress fracture does need to be treated structurally, as it’s an actual crack in the bone - this is not considered TMS. Similar topics have been brought up before, and the TMS doctors and counselors have stated that recent fractures which have not healed are not to be treated as TMS. One example: http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/is-my-back-fracture-tms.5634/ (Alan G. - Is my back fracture TMS?)

It’s important for everyone to be aware of this, as our philosophy is not to simply write everything off as mind-body/TMS. We do not ever recommend that to anybody. The shin splits people have healed from using a TMS approach were not real injuries like your stress fracture, and that’s where the confusion in your post seems to be stemming from. There is a difference between your stress fracture and TMS shin splints. As another example, if a cancer patient has severe tendon and muscle pain after chemotherapy, it’s best they get checked out and follow doctor’s orders based on any test results, because not all tendon and muscle pain is fibromyalgia (a true mind-body TMS issue). It would be very unsafe for that chemo patient to assume that tendon and muscle pain is always fibromyalgia and solvable with mind-body/TMS work, as chemo can cause damage.

I hope this helps with any confusion you may feel. I don’t believe the philosophy is misleading - we all need to make sure we’re being evaluated and diagnosed safely. The mind-body connection runs incredibly deep and is necessary to heal from various symptoms, and it's worth believing in when the situation is appropriate. Again, it’s best to work closely with a knowledgeable doctor you can trust who understands both sides of the coin (mind-body/TMS, structural, or a combination of both), because conventional medicine has also dropped the ball and harmed patients who had TMS but were subjected to unnecessary treatments like risky back surgeries, long-term antibiotics, opioids, etc.

 

[Andy Bayliss]

Hi JackJohnson,

You ask a great question, and Dorado's post addresses some of the thinking and strategies around this. As he has written, when it comes to fibromyalgia, the TMS community generally believes, I think, that all fibromyalgia is a form of TMS, and therefor TMS treatment is the best, and possibly only treatment which actually gets to the cause.

With some conditions like fibromyalgia and Lyme disease there can be an initial ailment which, after successful treatment kicks off long-term symptoms which are mind-body. Sort of like a whiplash injury.

Most other ailments, from the TMS perspective are relatively easy to divide into those treatable, and those not treatable as mind-body, once serious systemic or structural issues have been ruled out.

Even if doctors can't find an explanation for the symptoms and one thinks that TMS could be a likely explanation, one can never be 100% sure. Given that acceptance of the diagnosis is essential, this seems to me somewhat problematic.

Going to a TMS physician is very helpful to get close to %100 sure. Without this help, other forms of TMS practitioners can also help, as well as case studies for instance in the TMS Wiki or the Success Stories.

The truth is that there may always remain some small doubt, even with successful treatment. Doubt goes away as the treatment works. So you can treat as mind-body, and learn to watch symptom response to stressors, triggers, emotions, etc to "build a case" as you go along. I hope no one lets perfect acceptance stand in their way!

You are right. It is not perfect. But for those of us in the TMS community, experience shows that most cases of conditions listed on TMS and TMS equivalent lists almost always turn out (after eliminating serious conditions) to be mind-body "conditions." Mind-body symptoms are extremely prevalent, and not understood to be so by most physicians, chiropractors, osteopaths, herbalists, Chinese medicine specialists, naturopaths, physical therapists, etc. There is an epidemic of mind-body ailments, as has been said before.

Disclosure: And not all conditions are mind-body!

Andy B