visiting "normal" psychologist

[gx92]

Hi do you guys think its a good idea to work with a non Tms psychologist? I am realy considering joining a clinic where they help you getting back into your life, they are treating depression ocd anxiety low selfesteem and so on. Cause i feel overvhelmed with all this Mental stuff and the work i have to do on my own. Sadly there is no tms psychologist in my country. It should be very helpful for me to work with them with the knowlage of TMS in the back of my head, what do you think?

 

[Baseball65]

I went to a 'normal' therapist for awhile...as long as your trying to get to repressed ANGER, it's fine..but remember this is not about
'perceived' emotions. It's from RAGE that is festering in your unconscious...

I was clear about that being my problem when I saw the shrink , so that's why it helped..my pain was actually gone, but when it left I was in a non stop rage

 

[Sita]

Yes, it will be helpful. Go there. They'll teach you different modalities about how to better cope with different issues; how to discover some negative thinking patterns that you have. How to take care of yourself better. How to build resilience etc.

Take care.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I believe that many, if not most, trained therapists have received at least an introduction to the basics of the mindbody connection - especially these days. Absolutely bring your own mindbody awareness to the table! If they are open but don't seem to to have substantial experience, perhaps ask if they will read one of Dr Sarno's books (I would recommend The Divided Mind, because he explains his theories in four very efficient chapters, before turning the book over to six other professionals. I think it's a quick way to be introduced, plus it was his last book, revising some of his earliest theories a bit).

As @Baseball65 and @Sita both said in different ways, it's most important to be open to your emotional issues and changing your old patterns of repression.

 

[Cactusflower]

There are several types of therapy which are mind/body based.
EMDR and Internal Family Systems will assist you in feeling things in your body instead of thinking them. Both help you link stuff from your past to your current operating systems: coping mechanisms. Like @Baseball65 says, you can talk to your therapist about things like rage -look for what you do to hide rage and what might be under the rage or paired with it like fear. I have started EMDR and the therapist is curious about tms work after explaining it. If these are available to you at the clinic, it could be helpful. Also ask if any therapist has had clients with chronic pain. I don’t expect to become pain free, I just hope to cope with some of the emotional tms stuff better.

 

[TG957]

I had experience with a "traditional" therapist (I don't think they are normal, I view TMS therapists as normal now) who was interested in TMS and was trained in psychoanalysis, but it was total waste of time. Some of them are beyond repair.

 

[Duggit]

In The Mindbody Prescription, Dr. Sarno wrote: “ There are two major fields of psychotherapy: behavioral and insight-oriented (analytical). Behavioral psychotherapy tends to focus on life events and how best to deal with them. . . .It should be clear from the theories propounded in this book that insight-oriented therapy is the choice for people with TMS or its equivalents.” By behavioral psychotherapy Sarno meant cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Dr. Schubiner’s treatment approach includes (but is hardly limited to) some cognitive reappraisal techniques of CBT. But he was highly critical of what he called standard CBT in Hidden from View: A Clinician’s Guide to Psychophysiologic Disorders, which he co-authored with ISTDP psychiatrist Dr. Allan Abbass. “Psychophysiologic disorders” is their term for what Sarno called TMS and its equivalents. Schubiner wrote this about CBT on age 46:

“Most patients receiving CBT for pain do not have a careful evaluation to search for PPD and therefore all pain is treated as being due to structural disorders. Because of this, the primary goal of standard CBT for chronic pain is to cope with the pain in order to manage it better. Finally, CBT treatments typically do not address underlying emotional conditions. Indeed meta-analyses (van Dessel, et. Al., 2014) point to only small effects from standard CBT in somatoform disorders. The goal of the following inverventions (i.e., treatments techniques in Hidden from View) is to the eliminate, rather than cope with, the pain and other PPD symptoms. This distinction is critical to the success of this approach."
​

This passage dovetails with Sarno’s position that for a person to recover from TMS, it is essential for him or her understand and accept that the cause of the pain is not structural. If I am not mistaken, CBT has evolved over the years to pay more attention to emotions, but if its focus remains on how to cope with the pain in order to manage it better rather than eliminate it, Schubiner’s criticism seems devastating to me.

 

[theacrobat]

I agree with Dr. Schubiner, in that basically the problem with mainstream psychotherapy is they don't make much (or enough) of the mind-body connection. Knowledge of that connection is crucial to success with TMS. You can do all the therapy you like, but without belief in (or knowledge of) that link, there won't be significant improvements to symptoms. CBT, the most common form of therapy, also isn't particularly interested in repression/the unconscious, being more focused on behavioural patterns/conditioning and coping mechanisms. Therefore as a method it has its place but struggles to get to the root cause of anything, be it mental or physical. Hearing a professional voice reservations about the mind-body link and whether the emotions are really the cause of your physical issue, might sew seeds of doubt, unless you are 100% convinced yourself. You can zoom a TMS therapist or coach if there isn't one nearby. If you do go for a 'regular' therapist then I'd advise you to go for a psychoanalyst/ dynamic psychotherapist (ISTDP is the meat and potatoes of TMS therapy), even if it is a virtual meeting. I would also give more credence to actual results (success stories) than qualifications when choosing a therapist.

 

[TG957]

Here is what I posted on my blog on CBT vs TMS therapy, based on the clinical studies and my own experiences:

https://defeatcrps.com/blogs/tamaras-blog/#cbt_therapy (Tamara’s Blog)

 

[gx92]

thanks yea, im going to look into the posting. Today i had a date, everytime im engaged in intimacy or a romantic conversation, i totally forgot about the symptoms. I dont think about them, i dont notice them, its like they were never there. They are gone like magic i think, or at least 90% better. But as soon as it ends , suddenly i think to myself : wait how are my symptoms , where are they, something is missing lol? and puff they creep back in, I mean i am crippled the whole day every day , cant even function normally. Thats the only time i am distracted 100% in a positive way.....should be proof enough for me normally. Yet im here again thinking : damn something really must be wrong, they were still there but you didnt notice them ). Damn fearful brain. OMG haha. These exceptions are so damn rare, im trying to write them down now and look more for them