TMS - In challenging periods of your live

What is going on in my mind that keeps me from resting, so that I my body needs to create symptoms to make me slow down? Is a great question.
You may be familiar with TMS work, but have you been able to put its practices into your daily life?
Are the things you want to do: sports, socialize on your own etc in line (in your subconscious) with having a family? Currently, you become more stressed when something (like a symptom) stops you from doing things away from home. Perhaps you also realize a family will keep you at home more, or at least your social and sporting life may be very different for a time.
None of this is a problem unless it just generates an unconscious internal struggle of things like personal values or identity.
I like to remember that I always have a 3 year old ego (subconscious) inside of me tantruming “me! me! me!” and “I wanna!!!!!!!” - especially when my self-identity had always denied this hidden part of my mind (or deemed it ‘bad’).

 

Hi Sebastian,
I relate to everything you say so well.
I'm almost positive you will find some juicy hidden junk inside your head that needs clearing. The biggest breakthrough for me was realizing all my little selves are still tucked away inside of me. My dad didn't die but when I was about 15 he had a heart attack and I *thought he was going to die. It was traumatic. It was the start of my adrenal system being pretty f'd up. I can only imagine for you what that must have been like with your dad dying and how that impacted you, even in ways you might not know.

I also hear you on the long sickness. I got very sick with a pre-Covid virus in 2019. I was acutely sick with the cold for 3 weeks in December. Then after I thought I was turning around, everything got worse, but different. I couldn't shake it. I lost my appetite. I got depressed and honestly I NEVER get depressed. I get anxious and scared but not depressed. It was the first time I experienced it in all my life and ..well, I'm a lot older than you. I now blame the cytokines.

I think you are absolutely right about self fulfilling prophecy. What seems to happen with some of us is that we get sick, our immune systems go to work. And then for some reason our minds and bodies react to the immune system chemicals and it keeps us down. I don't know if it will help you or not but I had a doctor (ENT) check me out and said, "I think you feel, worse than you are." There was nothing physically still wrong with me but I sure felt like there was. But knowing that there was nothing wrong with me changed how I thought about it and I suddenly started getting on the mend. It still took months before I was 100% back to my baseline but I got my appetite back, I stopped over thinking about being sick, stopped dwelling, stopped symptom searching on the Internet. Lived my life.

I, too, am also a positive, optimistic person. Which makes this whole feeling like crap suck even worse.
You will be back to yourself soon. You WILL. Your body actually does know what to do to heal if we can just get out of its way.

Take care!

Booble

 

Hi ,

Again: Thank you for your responses!

In the last 3 days, I had very bad and sad moments and one evening I was that much in panic that I called the telephone pastoral care - very good experience, it helped quite well and I just needed someone to calm me (+ my inner child, whatever) down. Additionally, I recognize that I wake up once or twice a night with a big amount of anxiety. Cognitize soothing works very good for this situations .

Based on you answers w. ideas, experiences etc. I could gain some insights and had som realizations:

In the last 3 days I had very important (and hurting) realizations about my last 2 two years and about the connection to my trauma when I was 20 (2011) - as mentioned, my father died in an accident. One core point is, that I felt highly responsible for my mom after the death of my father and this prevented me from becoming an adult in a free and open manner. When I was 20, I was on the way to go to an own appartmend. When my father died, I canceled all that, due to my mother and the whole situation. When I moved to another city when I was 23, TMS started. I was much depressed and had very deep feeling of guilty. And now: The pattern repeated when my girlfriend and I moved together into an apartment. She had a very challenging life situation in the last 2 years. This highly influenced our relationship and life became more and more negative, I felt unfree and step by step lost energy to meet friends etc. In this time, I have put 1000% of my energy in solving HER problems. I felt responsible and additonally WANTED HER TO BE HAPPY so that WE can be happy in our life. Now, I realize all that and on the one hand I am grateful about this realization. On the other hand I feel with myself, with the person who I was in these 2 years full of stress, pressure and responsibility for another person's life. In the review, it was horrible and I cannot understand, how I could manage all this stress. Wow...

All these insights were challenged by means of your ideas / shared information / experiences. THANK YOU!

What’s next? My girlfriend and I are on a good way. That’s the best release I could have.

But, now I have this health-thing and very much pressure due to being ill so often. I am thinking about my job and how I can explain, being that much ill. I made a plan in the last few days, how I can bring a stress relief and with whom I can talk in my company.

I would like to have a look on my current symptoms. I still feel „ill“. Neck pain, headache, dry upper respiratory tract and ears. Since 3 days, my left ear pressures and tonight I could not sleep due to that. So, I went to „ear, nose and throat doctor“ today to let it check. The doctor was great and we talked 50% of the time about stress and pressure and its consequences.

Diagnose:
- Nose, throat, ears are very dry and red --> physical reason for my uncomfortable feeling / pain
o Possible reasons: virus and/or allergy
- Parts in my throat that are an indicator for an activated immune sytem are swollen --> my system fights against something
- Jaw and neck muscles strongly tensed --> stress-related, source for headache and further „problems“ in my head

What are my takeaways?
- I am convinced that stress and the whole story above is the main source for my situation
- Knowing that there is really a „problem“ in my nose, throat, ears calms me down (not ONLY TMS)
- Muscle tension is a good diagnose, I can deal with that
- I will check the allergy thing – my grandpa had severe problems with allergy and my mother as well; maybe that comes on top but it’s rather a secondary thing - we'll see

... sorry for that much words ... I am glad to be able to share that.

Have a nice day / evening and best wishes
Sebastian

 

Hi all,

One further month is over and I would like to share the newest information about my situation and I would love to listen to your thoughts.

I am getting life on track. The two big rocks "relationship w. girlfriend" and "job" are getting better and better:
- Relationship: we have talked, reconciled and found a good way to deal with our future together - it really feels good and I feel safe and strong
- Job: I found a way to temporarely hand over responsility (as long as I need to) to limit my workload (my boss is great)

On the other hand I am dealing with myself and am experiencing different things:
- Mediation, journaling nad yoga are part of my daily life; love it
- The way I talk with myself changed and changes - I am more sympathetic and practice trust and patience
- After having forgotten who I am, I now see very clearly what kind of person I am, what I need and try to act accordingly. This invilves communicating my "borders" - internally and also with other people, especially my girlfriend

That's the positive side: psychological I feel fine.

But physiological it still is a challenge. I am dealing with new symptoms (greetings to symptom imperative / extinction burst)
- muscles in my body are very tensioned and when they sometimes relief they feel exhausted and they hurt a little bit
- especially neck and jaw are highly tensioned; my physiotherapist found out that I am constantly in a gentle posture (FYI: I got a few physio sessions for my jaw muscle but he now focusses more on my neck because that seems to be the hotspot)
- some kind of migraine with eye problems (visual flickering)
- diffuse pain / pressing /numbness in my head (feels like blood circulation is disturbed)
- difficulties to concentrate
- headache
- pressure on the ears and noise in the ears
- dry eyes, dry nose

What am I doing with this physical situation?
I try to balance between "living normally like doing sports, going to job, having fun with friends" and "giving myself enough breaks / space and dealing with TMS". Additionally I am in contact with a TMS-coach (in Germany its called Mindbody-Medicine) and I will have a coaching program starting in July.

But...

Your thoughts, ideas, own experiences are highly welcome. I would love to read your posts, especially regarding the "new" symptoms: What is your opinion on these new symptoms?

Many thanks in advance and best regards
Sebastian

 

@SebastianM
I think you are doing great, and I think you know where you are at in all of this, spot on.
“Psychologically this is still a challenge” and “extinction burst/symptom imperative”.. perhaps acceptance: accept that you have great intuition and know where you are at! Confidence! And accept that for people with TMS there are going to be psychological challenges but you are absolutely proving you are doing this. It’s quite amazing.
I get the eye flickers as an anxiety symptom. Comes and goes (mostly goes) and is no big deal.. Your mind is challenged by your arrival to a new place of being. I loved that you mentioned all of the psychological and tms approaches you are doing before you asked about new physical symptoms. Shows so much understanding!

 

In addition, I'll offer this: I'm reading a book right now, an autobiography of a journey of emotional trauma, in which the author describes what it takes to recover, which is ultimately radical self love. From the book:

I’d been so focused on learning how to fix myself when what I needed to learn was that I had to love myself enough to believe that I deserve to get fixed

Knowing how to fix a machine is not enough. Ultimately, you have to believe that the machine deserves to be fixed. That you are worthy of the healing you seek.​

I was struck by this because I've said the same thing here off and on for years, and I should really remember to say it much more often. That in order to recover, you need to love yourself enough to know, in your heart, that you deserve to heal.

I also feel like you're doing great, @SebastianM . It's a process, and the process is not straight or level, but each day brings a new experience of living.

 

@JanAtheCPA and @Cactusflower thank you four your very kind and inspiring posts .

Both of you mentioned and underlined very important aspects: Self-love and acceptance. I completely agree. In very difficult and stressful situations / periods I tend to forget the practice of the much more difficult way: TMS-work, going inside, ... . Instead, focussing on pain & symptoms seems to be the easier way because pain is more in the foreground. The magic is, to look on the background like feelings, mindset, self-love, patience, ... and of course acceptance. Thank you for underlining this. That is so powerful <3.

@JanAtheCPA : Which book are you reading currently?

@Cactusflower : "..for people with TMS there are going to be psychological challenges ..". When I cured the first time in 2017, I thought that I understood it now and that's all gone. But.. I guess it will be part of my life - agree with you ;-).

I would like to share a very powerful realization : When I was talking with with the Mindbody coach, I found a very strong WHY, when I talked about "Why I would like to do the coaching?". Of course, because of my own well-being - that's on position one. But right afterwards there was the strong and warm feeling of "I would like to be a father, and I would like to have kids." At the moment I do not feel like I can handle TMS AND having a family. I would like to learn, how to treat myself well, how to reserve time for myself and my needs to be in my inner middle, to be resilient and patient.

Best regards

 

Hi Sebastain (and all), So many great points discussed here...and so much honesty and understanding/support. I got a lot out of reading the entire thread...helps me to read that.

I wanted to point out one thing from part of the timeline in your original post.
The start of psychotherapy was followed by getting to know Sarno's work, and then healing and significant progressed followed. When symptoms flared up (they did return), you didn't need to do much at all to handle them.

I know for me, when I'm struggling, it's helpful to dig back into the times when I was doing well. See what worked in the past and what lessons from those times could carry over into today. For me, I can look back to some of the insights, lessons, and practices that I took out of pyschotherapy....those can be super helpful today.

I hear ya that it's a super tough time now...I wish you well!!!

 

Hi all,

At first: Bonnard, thank you so much for your good wishes and also for the reminder / idea to mindfully remind myself of "what worked in the past". That's a good one and I often forget this ;-).

Little update :
Interesting things are happening...
As mentioned above, the big stressors in the foreground were on track and still are. Last week I was in the alps with some friends and climbed through the mountains, it was fantastic. Of course, meditation, yoga and journaling are part of my allday-life.

BUT..

I got the next infection mid of last week. Meanwhile I am very experienced having a virus, so I am more or less mentally fine. My doctor adressed me to a specialist for "Throat, Nose and Ears" to take a deeper look. The specialist found out that my throat is very dry and irritated. And he asked about acid reflux symptoms. Yes, I had severe acid reflux in 2014+ but was 99% free of it. But in the last year the reflux came back and I mostly ignored it because "it was just TMS". But I also did not recognize that I "should" take a deeper look on my thoughts, feelings, ... .

To make it short:
It COULD be that the infections are caused by the reflux which is in turn caused by stress/anxiety (--> TMS). There we go, I can "treat" it .


What do you think about the diagnose? Do you agree with me, that it sounds logical?

Best regards
Sebastian