Steven Ozanich TMS The Man Sarno

"Guilt seems to play a big role in TMS."

Susan, did you read the very last page of my book? I summed TMS up in one word. IMO.

Steve

 

Walt did you fall asleep in the middle of that email to me? haha. I figured you hit the wrong button or walked away.

But to answer your question, yes of course you should remember the good. It's the "always remembering the bad" that sets up TMS.

I had great success years ago getting people to think of 3 things they were grateful for before they went to sleep. Before sleep is the easiest time to sway your brain. Once the subjective psyche and objective psyche switch places the unconscious begins to rule the night.

People will often arise after sleep with much greater energy and a more healthy outlook. Remember, the absence of disease and pain does not mean good health. Good health also includes vitality and a passion for living once again. I know people who are pain and disease free who are depressed and miserable.

There's a fine line between mantras, however. I called them Coueisms. It's good to hear yourself reversing years of beat-downs with things like "I'm healthy"...or "I am worthy"...but, if you continually reaffirm something you don't believe, you more deeply ingrain failure. This is why prayers don't always work, people simply don't believe it will work, so it doesn't. You have to have some semblance of belief in the words you are affirming. I contacted some experts on affirmations and they agreed, you need to believe what you are saying can actually come true.

Write about good things when you journal! See the light, see all your blessings, see how good you truly have it all.

One thing I did that worked every time was to reminisce. For some reason, this dissolves pain. I think it has to do with shifting to an earlier brain state, new neurotransmitters, etc., and of course getting your mind's eye to look somewhere else for a moment. Thanks for the memories, Bob gives us Hope.

Go open a high school year book and dream of that young person who weighed 100 pounds, had eternal energy, and thought of sex 24/7.

Steve

 

Hi Steve:

I order the book two days ago and I am still waiting for it. I hope to see it arrive today. Folks are saying great things about it. And yes, guilt plays a big role in our emotions and how we feel about ourselves. I experience this as a working mother all the time....

 

Just found your reply to my email that was sent without me finishing it. I've been using the Coue mantra for years...
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." It's helped me tremendously and I'm using it talking to my subconscious.
It probably helps because I believe it.

I just finished the first week of Dr. Brady's 6-week program and believe it's helping.

A question.. I'm 82 and outside of the back pain am and have been in excellent heath. When I sit and tell my subconscious the pain is frm repressed emotions, it gradually goes way. Yesterday I drove my dog to her favorite park and she sniffed while I walked around and when I got home the back pain was worse. My journaling has resulted in many more repressed emotions than I thought I had. Especially one, in which I phoned my boss and yelled at him. I think work-related stress with a super Type A boss, and being Type A myself, compulsively doing all the work he wants right away when he actually asks me to do it ASAP. That does me right away anyway.

Anyway, does being 82 and all those years of being Type A mean it will take me longer to be rid of the back pain? I do like to think that the increased pain yesterday and into today means I'm closer to being healed. One great thing that has come out of the first week of Brady is I returned mentally to the Catholic Church, not letting its coverup of pedophilia or politicizing bother me any more. Thanks for your advice. Walt

 

I don't think age or how long you have been in pain are big factors in TMS recovery: http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Q&A:_My_..._Will_it_take_a_longer_time_to_get_rid_of_it?

 

Walt, you're never too old to heal. I was helping a 76 year old man several years ago. He couldn't walk at all and now golfs a couple times per week.

I also experienced that mode of going to walk, or run, and the pain increasing. At first I thought I was getting worse, but later I realized that my pain was increasing each time that I became more active because my brain didn't want me to become active. TMS wants to keep you inactive because when you're inactive you have more time to think about pain. When you're walking you're defying your brain by not fearing activity. So it seems to punish you by increasing pain. Also remember, that when your pain increases that you are winning! The pain increases to keep you riveted to your body in obsessive focus, but if you increase walking and don't fear your pain as much, then your brain must increase your pain because your brain knows it's losing your focus on the pain. I hope that makes some sense to you.

Walt, in my experience, things like getting angry at a boss, etc., are only reflections of a much earlier experience. Getting angry at a boss occurs often, but it's normally not the problem, the problem is usually something from childhood, most likely an experience with a parent or loved one. So the thing you're mad at is not usually the thing you're really mad at. The source of anger is normally much deeper. Plato said, "A man angry at all women is really only angry at one woman."

The source of rage is normally not what we think, and is most often misdirected because the person we are really angry at is too important to us to admit our anger towards. I would look much closer to the heart for my true anger, and not toward things like bosses or wives and husbands. I used the example in my book of the man whose back spasmed at his leaky faucet. The leak was never the true cause of his pain. He had TMS, he healed his heart through forgiveness and his pain vanished.

This brings you full circle to your church. You go to church for your inner peace. If you focus on your own life, its flaws and the things you need to do to better your life, then all those other problems are insignificant. If you heal your life you heal the whole body of your church.

Something has you very angry now, but in your life you've built up a persona to cover this view of yourself. My guess is that it's an aging trigger. Everyone I've worked with over 60 or so, has been hit with the unconscious rage of aging and dying. It is a normal reaction to our existential existence. Church is good for you now to find peace.

But I don't know you. You may have had a disagreement with someone you love that brought on your symptoms. God knows I'm receiving many emails from people having increased symptoms, over the upcoming presidential election. Hands paralyzed, necks locking up, tingling in limbs, etc. But as before, these are only where the anger is currently directed, it is not the true source of the rage. The rage comes from the pool of residual rage from childhood.

Every day in every way, I am getting better and better. This is the most famous Coueism. A teacher in my kid's school used to say it every day to his classes. He was also voted the best teacher year after year. He "got it." It's about personal beliefs that things are better than we think, and that what we think becomes our future reality. Change your thinking and change your world, change YOUR world and you change THE world.

Steve

 

A very helpful reply, Steve.

I thought my main repressive feeling was work and boss related anger, but now that you say it could more likely from childhood stresses, you are probably right. I grew up during the 1930s Great Depression, to hard working, loving parents, I was the third of three children, and we lived in apartments with rats and roaches and moved almost every year for failing to pay the rent. I grew up with all sorts of insecurities, and my parents divorced when I was about 10 because Dad, whom I loved, was a drinker and gambler who always lost, or gave handouts to friends if he won. Mom gambled on the horses but always lost, and at home would try to commit suicide sometimes. A month after their divorce she married a man she met in a bar because he owned a house and we would have a roof over our heads and security. Our stepfather Otto was not mean to us, but his sister was and she lived with us. Our parents got back together about a year later and remarried. Dad's drinking and gambling continued and they were about to divorce again when he died. Two months later Mom married his brother who was insanely jealous of everyone including me.

Growing up, my older brother ran away a lot, to the Navy when he was 16 during World War II; My year-older sister and I felt trapped at home whether Mom was married to Dad or to Otto or to our uncle Leo. He was mean to sis and me, and even to Mom who he said he loved. I graduated college, then two years in the army, but when I got back home, Leo wanted me OUT so I got my own place. He just sat and drank and died after about eight years. I was on my own then, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I left after 7 years to be a freelance writer and have been at that for the past 40 years, with books and magazine articles published. But not much money and lots of financial insecurity which I am still in, in this terribl economy.

I have always been a positive person but Type A all the way, wanting to be liked, and am. I forgave my birth father before his death and we had a totally new father-son understanding. Mom kept dating after Leo died, needing a man. She was always a 1920s "Flapper." I loved her but one day she said I was too old to love her so much. I was a young teenager then. Maybe I never forgave her for that rejection. I never loved her physically,
I don't think. I stayed a bachelor because of all the failed marriages.

I hope I haven't shared too much with you, but it does make me believe my pain is from suppressed childhood/young adult anger.

Walt

 

Steve,

I also think you're right about suppressed anger over my mortality. Dying really didn't sink in to me until I turned 80, 2 1/2 years ago.
It happened to everyone else, but not me. I better get used to the idea, and not be afraid of it. It does help to have just made peace
with my church.

Walt

 

Walt you had a perfect-storm childhood for TMS. Remember, when I give any advice I'm assuming the person has had a full workup.

Each of those mother separations is a form of rejection, and they often set up future sources of rage (The Two Trauma Mechanism). One thing for sure, you probably did stay a bachelor because of all those failed marriages and separations. The adult screens all relationships through the eyes of the child's experiences of happiness or pain.

Your step-sister treated you poorly because she was jealous, as Freud said, the child does not like sharing the love and affection of the parent with its siblings.

As you've now reached this stage in your life, you may be reflecting back to that relationship with your mother--a relationship that was never made, and has stuck with you throughout your life. Up until now you were probably busy with life and had not paid much attention to it, or didn't even realize that this lack of attunement with your mother was actually a driving force in your life. You also may not have known that most of your health problem, both emotionally and physically, were the result of that lack of connection with your mother. Your life has reached a stage, an opening for you, to reflect.

The unconscious mind doesn't understand "time." It still feels the old hurt, and emotional pain as if it happened yesterday. Unless true forgiveness happens, then it's purged from the system.

You may have not realized it but you just journaled to me. Did it feel better? I'm fascinated by the great depression. What those people did to survive was amazing, we would most likely have done those same things, given those same circumstances. So it's time to forgive your mother. Close the wound.

Be well, don't fear your pain, don't stop being active. Go walk! Have fun.

Steve

 

Walt,

Thanks for sharing your story.

I think you can be an overall positive person and still be angry. I think you can be Christian and still be angry (I mean, even in the Bible, JESUS yells at people!)

I used to feel like anger had to be dealt with immediately and eliminated because it was somehow not spiritual. I'm getting over that

~ Veronica

 

Many people today are suffering the same problems as those of the 1930s Great Depression.
I wrote a book about my boyhood during those years but sugar-coated it and my mother.
No one ever published it. It contains a lot about the GD and I could email it to you.

Maybe I ought to write the real story. It could help me.

Yes, I was journaling to you and am glad you didn't mind.

Now I will journal it with more thoughts about motherly rejection.
I believe now it was not really rejection but her way of helping me to grow up.

And I need to become accepting of my mortality. CS Lewis said something about leaving
the downers of life behind us and looking forward to a better existence.

Thanks again, Steve. I'll buy your book.

Walt

 

Walt, maybe this will give you some peace: It does for me.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswe...a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html

It also ties into what I wrote about, Dyad from Monad. A few people asked me why I wrote that in my book. It means anything divided, or separated, is met with tension, because it's still, and always, connected to its source. This holds true for mother, all relationships, as well as Earth and the big bang as a single particle gets divided into life. It quickly gets complicated with something called "quantum entanglement." But just know that what this neuroscientist describes in this article, of what he experienced in Heaven is the same thing I described yesterday.

Here is a quote I took from the Heaven article after I posted about the mother-child separation anxiety:
"Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided. Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference, physics tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation."

He also wrote this about dying and his experience:
"I don’t expect this to be an easy task, for the reasons I described above. When the castle of an old scientific theory begins to show fault lines, no one wants to pay attention at first. The old castle simply took too much work to build in the first place, and if it falls, an entirely new one will have to be constructed in its place."

It sounds just like TMS doesn't it? Dr. Sarno challenged the walls of the old castle, and designed a new one in its place. The good doctor designed the new castle but it's up to the people to construct it.

Steve

 

Steve, thanks for the web site to the article about afterlife. I'll read about it.

My head is a little on overload right now. Walt

 

Walt:

You are never too old to heal emotionally or physically!! Keep it going, I admire your will to change and explore.

 

Thanks, Explorer. It's kind of exiting, to learn about myself after all these years. LOL.

Steve has been a huge help with emails today. He got me into/onto the two main things I've been suppressing.

 

Hi, Steve. I journaled this morning to acknowledge the childhood causes of my repressed anger/guilt and now hope I have convinced my subconscious that I truly do forgive those people. I understand, finally, those causes and its easier to forgive. I was too young to understand back then.

While journaling I remembered that my father used to belittle me in front of his friends and I never even remember getting a hug. But when I was 21 we had a wonderful understanding and I believe we became friends. He died within months, but at least we had that. I believe my mother loved me but didn’t want my arm around her when I was a teenager because she wanted me to grow up. I can forgive that.

I bit the bullet and took my dog for a walk this morning. 4 blocks (2 up and 2 back to the car to drive home). It was painful but not as bad as I've had it. Maybe my subconscious is starting to believe me and give up on giving me pain. I hope so. -- Walt

 

Today's journaling reminded me of other reasons for anger and feelings of rejection from my boyhood and teen years and although they remained deep inside me to give me TSM, now I can see how I either misunderstood them or how unimportant they were. One of them is actually humorous now, but sure wasn't back then.

 

Steve, I'm remembering so many reasons for being angry in my journaling about repressed feelings from my boyhood and adulthood,
I'm wondering how specific I have to be? Is there a way I can forgive everyone for everything or must I be specific in each case?
That gets depressing, bringing up so many downers of the past. -- Walt

 

I got steve's book yesterday and am really grateful for the information. I think multiple chemical sensitivity and electromagnetic hypersensitivity which I have are both TMS equivalents. I have made some improvements not too long ago before even hearing of TMS by doing really similar work with a technique called FasterEFT which focuses on releasing emotions. I have countless triggers because many traumas that were dealt with by not feeling the appropriate emotions. I thought I was doing something very good for myself by not letting situations that would get other people angry to also get me angry, but the result was getting really sick instead.

 

Raffy, you got it. There's something about being on constant high alert that enables all those triggers. Many people lose their sensitivities to these triggers when they heal from their pain. I suppose when the sympathetic nervous system is constantly engaged that it lowers our threshold for triggers because most of our energy is tied up in survival mode, and as it's intended, this system is our survival system, so if it's always ready and engaged it overreacts as part of survival.

You're also right, by not getting angry, either with others, or showing it yourself, you just get sick. Something's gotta give. If nothing is expressed, the system just overloads with energy until it collapses. Many good studies show that expression boosts the immune system.

Walt, I want to clarify something. I'm not blaming mothers and fathers. Everyone does what they do to survive, some show love better than others. I mention this all important relationship with mother because they are the major sources of rage later on. We learn how to handle stress during these early years. So I'm just saying that to understand that how you react to life is based in these early years that you're journaling about now. I believe your current pain is based in something current, most likely aging, mortality, purpose, etc. It's more important that you look at what's currently going on in your life, but also understand that how you handle what is currently going on is due to those early years when you were developing with mother and father (primary relationships).

All TMS is based in childhood, and how we learned to react to shame, or trauma. Throughout life we then use these same early experiences to screen our lives. So you can say that TMS is all relationship based, in fact I did say it in my book. Dr. Sarno stated in MOBP, that all family relationships are loaded with tension, and that it is the first place you should look when having an acute attack. I'm saying it is also the place you should look in a chronic case; the early roots are the ones that support the plant.

Forgiveness is the ultimate healer. It lets go of all the poison energy in the system. But also note that just because you understand why someone did something to you doesn't mean you forgive them. You can say, ahhh, I now understand why this person did this or that, but it doesn't mean you don't still harbor anxiety toward them. True forgiveness goes beyond understanding, but it does begin there.

Walt, don't linger too long in going through every person in your past, trying to forgive each one of them. If you could forgive everyone for everything in the world we may be worshipping you one day as our new savior. You are only human. Don't beat yourself up. I suggest to people to forgive themselves first. If we can take care of our flaws and faults, and stop projecting them onto everyone else, we will have done our part and made the world a better place.

Be well, and be happy right now. Enjoy the day, the sunlight, the food, the friends and family.

Steve