Ugh -- that's defeating the whole purpose. We're hiding the anger because of the very natural human/animal "behavioral impulse to aggressive action toward the object of your anger" --- and that's the exact thing we need to get to and release.
ISTDP agrees that anger is a very natural human/animal aggressive behavioral impulse. It is a genetically hardwired product of evolution because our long ago prehistoric ancestors who responded with aggression (the fight part of the fight/flight response to danger) when their survival was threatened were much better at surviving long enough to produce and raise the next generation than were those of our long ago prehistoric predecessors who were not able to respond to respond with aggression when their survival was threatened. In evolution theory, this is called natural selection.
ISTDP also agrees that the exact thing we need to "get to" (i.e. need to unrepress and become aware of) is the aggressive behavioral impulse. ISTDP also agrees that the best recovery includes release of the aggressive impulse by vivid portrayal of it, e.g., crushing mother’s skull.
So far, Booble, I don’t see any conflict between you and ISTDP.
However, I do see a conflict between you and--surprise--Sarno. Not just you but many commenters on this forum, which I one reason why I seldom comment here anymore.
In
Healing Back Pain, Sarno wrote the following about his tendency to repress his own anger: “I do that a lot. I have learned that heartburn means that I’m angry about something and don’t know it. So I think about what might be causing the condition, and when I come up with the answer the heartburn disappears.” Once he came up with the answer to who-am-I-angry-at-and-why, his heartburn stopped. Sarno said nothing about needing to release the aggressive behavioral impulse of his anger by an imaginary portrayal of how he would act on it against the object of his anger.
In The Mindbody Prescription, Sarno wrote the following under the heading Knowledge Is the Cure:
“For some people simply shifting attention from the physical to the psychological will do the trick. Others need more information how the strategy works, and still others require psychotherapy. But in every case knowledge is essential to the cure, for by making people aware of what is going on both physically and psychologically we frustrate the brain’s strategy. . . . By changing the focus of attention from the body to the psyche we render the pain useless, take away its purpose and reveal what it was trying to hide. In a small number of cases the person must actually experience the emotion, like rage or profound sadness, before the pain will cease. This always requires the help of a properly trained psychotherapist.”
Sarno said that only a small number of people with TMS need to “actually experience the emotion.” Later, in the Foreward to a book authored by two psychologists who worked in his clinic, Sarno quantified the “small number” as being about one-quarter of his patients. So about 75% of his patients did not need to actually experience the repressed emotion. And based on what he wrote about himself in Healing Back Pain, neither did Sarno. What about the other 25 % who did? I think Sarno meant, with regard to anger, that these people needed to feel the aggressive behavioral impulse. Did he also mean that they needed to release the anger by imagining how they would act upon that impulse, as in ISTDP portrayal? Maybe, even though he did not explicitly address that as far as I am aware. But notice that these people always required the help of a properly trained psychotherapist. By “properly trained,” Sarno meant one trained in analytic therapy that focuses on uncovering repressed emotions, such as (but not limited to) ISTDP, not some other therapy model such as traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. Unfortunately, these properly trained therapists are few and therefore hard to find.
Focusing on repairing the relationship and apologizing and comforting and portraying love toward the object of your is what we do every day in sublimation of the anger. And what, according to Sarno and his theory of TMS, causes the physical pain. Why is everyone trying to do everything but what Sarno teaches? Oh wait, I know why......because that's what the TMS beast wants!
I am not sure I understand this. According to my dictionary, sublimate means to divert or modify an instinctual impulse into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity. I think your objection to my earlier post is that if a TMS sufferer's focus is on maintaining a solid relationship with the object of his or her anger and showing love for that person, this will distract the TMSer from uncovering his or her repressed anger as Sarno prescribes. If that is what you mean, I don’t agree. Yes, sublimation is a defense mechanism, but ISTDP portrayal is entirely different. The first step is to uncover your repressed anger. Only
after that do you change focus to the rest of the complex emotions, i.e., grief, guilt and love.
Regarding the 25% who need to “experience” the aggressive impulse of their anger and who (if Sarno is right) always require the help of a properly trained therapist but have to proceed instead on a self-help basis, the best that I that I have to offer is to go back to my earlier post, review what Nat Kuhn said about ISTDP portrayal, be sure you grasp it, and try to implement it.
