What else is there - Seriously

I don’t have any deep and meaningful words of wisdom Eskimo, and no TMS tricks which you haven’t heard. I beg you though to not become cynical, or dismissive of your own value. OK, you are floundering, that’s for sure, so I think it’s time to stop and recalibrate - even if the approach isn’t working, accept the goodness in the TMS methods ie knowledge that you are not alone, learning to calm your nervous system, understanding how your body works when under stress, accepting that there are people with good hearts on your team here. Try incorporating little changes - not to “cure” anything, but just because little changes are good for your soul

So what about pursuing ideas a little removed from TMS. Moskowitz (?) theory about shrinking the pain map, Selena Bartlett calming your amygdala, Curalistic.com’s trigger point advice, Claire’s go loose and limp ( seriously works for me). BloodMoons suggestion to repeat positive words. Be gently tenacious! No more negative thinking at all. Don’t expect results or rewards, just try this stuff coz it’s free, easy and calmingly pleasant. No more pushing shit uphill.
Oh God, I hope this doesn’t sound like clap-trap, I just don’t want you to give up because I know your answer is there, Marls

 

Hey, interesting replies on this. It seems that TMS "treatment" has evolved alot from the Sarno/repressed emotions/childhood trauma stuff to a more positive, science-based approach using neuroplasticity.
My personal journey is that I became quickly overwhelmed by the idea of my past and emotional issues. I am still scared now because I can't untie some of my past and present life situation from my TMS symptoms and unfortunately I'm only worse, not better, since discovering this forum.
I appreciate that is likely due to the nature of my personality - analytical, overthinker, lover of detail and struggle with abstract or spiritual concepts. I've been searching for "the recipe' and there isn't one.
I just wonder how to reconcile the advice to stop all negative thinking, with the advice that one must uncover and release negative emotions. For me, this ends up in cycles of guilt and regret for past actions with no real direction for moving forward. Being positive feels fake.
Can't believe i'm still confused about all this

 

Hey Miller, I reckon a negative thought and a negative emotion are completely different, just coincidentally using the same word. I see a negative emotion as a reality and that is OK to accept. A negative thought is just a passing waft of self-imposed gloom, totalling useless to me, serving no purpose.
Same with positive thoughts. Being positive you can fly is pretty fake, yeah, but then feeling positive about learning how to paraglide would be uplifting - pun intended.
All in the eye of the beholder I s’pose. cheers marls

 

I agree.

I don’t think my advice or stories are relevant at this point, and that’s mostly what I know. There are people with more experience with this type of situation than me and I’ll let them speak. I truly do believe and agree that the answer is there. We’re all different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach!

 

@Marls yeah makes sense. Never thought of it like that before. Did you get to a point where you'd burned through enough of the negative emotion that you felt like you were back to a state of balance in a way? That's what I'm hoping will help me. Maybe I'm naive but I have so much hope for my situation - Im only 32 I don't believe this is "it" for me. I just think I'm stuck in some really unhealthy thought and behaviour patterns, and probably have some underlying emotions to work through if I can build up the courage to face them!

 

@Dorado I think you've been really helpful and it just takes some of us longer to absorb everything x

 

@eskimoeskimo Pain shifting is a TMS symptom. The major problem here is likely depression, but you can still try to rule things out structurally. Focus on how you want to feel. If talking back to your brain doesn't work, maybe it just needs kindness. Instead of following a method, go with your gut. Cut out any negativity: news etc. and replace it with something uplifting.

 

Hi Miller,

As I understand it, the approach is not to lie to yourself and pretend that everything is hunky dory when it isn't, it's purely to direct your attention to what is actually good and positive in your life and in this world - and in any given situation, for that matter. Our brains are wired to be on constant look out for danger; the brain looks for any possible danger in anything and everything - to protect us from any potential harm and this, therefore, tends to stop us from noticing much of the good stuff that's going on because our brains are too busy noticing the bad stuff. Rick Hanson describes this, in at least one of his books, as the brain having a natural tendency to act like teflon for good things and velcro for bad things and the practice of 'taking in the good' as you go about your day helps to overcome that tendency. In this modern world, most of us are no longer under virtually constant threat from sabre tooth tigers and alike or from the neighbouring tribe of cavemen/cavewomen that might steal our food or take over our cave homes. To combat this over protective negative bias, we can make an effort to notice the good in any situation - the good that is actually and truly there and savour it. (For example, you might be cheesed off and angry with someone for not doing something they promised to do, but fail to remember all the good things that they did remember to do for you. Noticing 'the good' can put things into perspective.) This doesn't preclude us from uncovering negative stuff, exploring that stuff, and letting go of the associated rage and/or fear. If we let them go, they are then not plaguing us and producing the unhelpful chemicals that @RogueWave (in this thread) talks about us becoming 'addicted' to. If you uncover the negative stuff from the past, but the associated feelings still continue to plague you over and over again, I've found that the book that I mentioned (in my last posting above) gives some suggestions of how to combat this and stop it from happening.

 

@BloodMoon the last line in your post is exactly what I struggle with and what stops me moving forward... thank you for the recommendation I will have a look

 

I also think different people are helped by different things, and some people aren’t going to relate to certain things. There are success stories of all kinds out there, which is the good news!

 

@Dorado

Totally... and the chances are most of the people you have helped won't even post anything on here, they will just go back to living their lives. Which I have admittedly had some success with, and I'm still very much capable of living my life, just not in the way I want to. So I am really here with unfinished business I suppose! But the fact that anyone is still here and posting has to be a positive thing, as I believe it shows a degree of hope!

I just had accupuncture (pregnancy related back pain and nothing to do with my TMS issues) and we discussed some of my other problems briefly. He actually said to me that there are so many avenues for healing and achieving better levels of well-being and happiness, that nobody can tell you that something is "necessary" for your own healing... there are many potential pathways and entry points to healing. Interesting to hear it said that way. (I was referring to a therapist who told me if I didn't resolve my childhood trauma I would never ever heal, which obviously impacted me hugely!!!!)

 

This is where I diverge slightly from you and Eskimo. I also have a consistent level of fairly significant pain, but it's the other associated symptoms -- stiffness, loss of fine motor control, etc -- that are absolutely wreaking havoc on my sense of well being. If the pain never changed, but I regained the ability to move/function like before, I could be reasonably content.

Tbh, I think we "problem healers" have a case of OCD on 'roids.

 

I'm sure a lot of this will be repetition, but I do remember at my worst reading some things that made me go 'ah! Now THAT makes sense!' Sometimes it was just how something was worded, or perhaps I was just ready to hear it.

Also, apologies for the delay @Mark1122 , but there have been some really great responses so I'm happy to read others' input.

'OCD on roids' made me chuckle, but that itself IS part of the problem. It's just another branch of TMS. A habitually stressed system, caught in survival mode. will often cause someone to think OCD thoughts. This is why buying into the OCD thoughts and continually acting on them will just keep re-introducing the stress hormones that cause the OCD in the first place! (In most cases).

This is why over-analysis, over-dramatization (or both), self-diagnosis, defeatism, and anything like that will ALL sabotage your recovery. They are all understandable, but if they are allowed to continue, the brain/body will keep producing the same chemistry, and you will be trapped.

So do any of these sound familiar: 'Why me?' 'I can't live like this!!' 'What if its..(insert deadly diagnosis here)??' IT'S SO BAD! No one understands what I'm going through! What did I do to deserve this? Why aren't I healed now? Is this TMS??

All understandable (I did all of them myself, and considered suicide many, many times), but these types of thoughts (and the chemical releases that come with the thoughts), will produce chemistry in the entire system that will just keep the process going.

So, if you haven't accepted the TMS diagnosis yet (And some of you haven't, or you wouldn't keep asking 'Is this TMS??'), then go to all the doctors you can. Maybe they'll find something.

But if you have accepted the TMS diagnosis, and still aren't healed yet (or aren't making any progress at all), you have to really take a good, hard, look at yourself. No one creates TMS consciously and on-purpose. So I'm not trying to blame anyone, find fault, or say anyone has some defect.

Like I said, wayyyyy back I started off as a dietitian, and I worked with very heavy people. They'd always tell me how many things they tried, some new pill or home exercise equipment they had bought, some new book they had read, that they didn't really eat that much, and they just couldn't understand how they were so heavy.

That is until they started journaling everything. I'd grill them on portion size, how often they REALLY exercised, how they thought and felt, and always and all ways (see what I did there ), it was something they were doing or not doing that was keeping them stuck.

The process to cure TMS is really very similar. You have to change 'you.' And you have to do it consistently, with an energy greater than the energy that is keeping you stuck where you are. This usually requires crisis for people, but some of you already appear to be there.

This can't be 'I tried this for a week, month, etc and I'm not healed yet!' approach. Just like losing weight: 'But I was great for 6 weeks, and I haven't lost 50 lbs yet!'

Baby steps, consistency, and self-accountability will win eventually. But more often than not, we don't progress fast enough, so we jump to another book, another technique......hope comes initially, then fades as the old 'you' comes roaring back. The pain returns or sticks around, the 5 lbs lost becomes 10 lbs gained, and we dig the hole deeper.

As mentioned a million times already, this is not a game. Healing requires utmost sincerity and consistency, just like permanent weight loss. You can't keep weight off if you keep going back to old ways of being, and you can't heal from TMS if you stay stuck in the person you've been for the last X number of years.

The pain (and all the other TMS equivalents) are a SYMPTOM of the body being out of balance. And it's out of balance because of how you've consistently thought, acted, spoke, felt, and been for years and years (in most cases). Looking back on my case, I'm surprised it took until I was 16 or so before severe back pain exploded on me. But then again, I was a sickly kid, so the constant introduction of stress hormones most likely weakened my immune system tremendously.

ALL thoughts, actions, words, and feelings come with chemical releases. ALL OF THEM. For example, the feeling of fear causes anxiety-type thoughts, and causes the release of epinephrine, norepinepherine, cortisol, and many hormones and neurotransmitters. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU ARE FEARING. So if I fear my boss at work, how my patients are going to react to me, what my girlfriend thinks of me, if my car is going to break down......the things I'm fearing don't matter , but every single one of those thoughts will produce the hormone/neurotransmitter release I mentioned. So, just like a person trying to lose weight has to be honest with themselves about how much they are really eating, a person stuck in fear (or depression, anger, failure, or whatever) has to be honest with themselves about how often during the day they are thinking and feeling fear. This is the start of self-awareness.

At that point you will start to realize how often you are doing all the things I mentioned a few paragraphs back that are sabotaging recovery. I don't need to know anyone personally that is 'stuck', because after 16 years of practice I can guarantee you that they are doing at least one of those things (and problem several of them) throughout the day, every day. Just like an overweight person keeps overeating. It's just become habituated.

So with awareness, you can start to stop yourself from doing these things that are sabotaging your recovery. After that, there are many, many techniques to help shift the thoughts and feelings (which therefore shifts your internal chemistry) throughout the day. This is what we are all talking about when we're talking about shifting the internal environment.

But you can have the greatest meditation technique in the world, the greatest therapist, etc. and it won't matter if you fall back into old patterns the rest of the day. So if I talk to a therapist, or sit down to meditate, and have a great session, I'll probably feel a bit better for a little while. But if after the session, the old familiar 'But what if?' 'This is never going away' thoughts and feelings are allowed to steer the ship again, the effect of the meditation, therapy, etc just went out the window, because my familiar, internal chemistry just re-asserted itself, and I'm right back where I started.

There is not one set way to heal, as @miffybunny. @Dorado, and any of us that have been through this have repeatedly stated. It will take time, and it will take consistency, just like weight loss. My old Master teacher in Beijing also liked to say "The hardest part of moving a boulder from one point to the other is to get it rolling!' The same applies here. It might take a tremendous effort to see even a little improvement, but if you stay with it long enough, eventually it will budge.

I just had a girl in my office today who told me she listened to self-hypnosis on YouTube every night for a YEAR before she finally started to heal. But now she's doing great.

Funny, and I may have mentioned before, but I had another patient with a history of severe panic attacks. When I questioned her about them in our first appointment, she told me she hadn't had any in years. I asked her how she managed that, and was it some intense therapy, many hours of meditation, etc. and she looked at me and laughed. She said 'every time I had one I thought it would kill me, and I always worried about when they would come. I had so many, but nothing ever really happened, so I just really stopped giving a shit whether they came or not!' And lo and behold, that was what cured her.

Very Zen

 

Movement helps get unstiffed

Totally agree with you on the last sentence, just don't want to get hung up on yet another diagnosis label.

 

@RogueWave

How am I supposed to become a new person? How am I supposed to become someone who doesn't react to the pain with frustration and despair, generating these biochemical responses and perpetuating the symptoms? Practice and diligence are not having the desired effect. I don't want to hate the pain. I don't want to believe it will never go away. But I do not see where I any opportunity to choose a different response. I am aware of my negative habits, but I've been trying for a decade to react differently to the pain. I'm not aiming to be argumentative, I just genuinely don't understand where I've been going wrong.

 

No doubt about OCD in my case. When my acne was the worst(so basically from age of 13 to ~27) I often checked constantly how my face look. Sometimes like every 30-60 seconds. Like pimples would change in that time span It's not helping my case, that I've got my main symptoms(stomach and teeth/jaw pain) after course of antibiotics for acne, so it's kinda like I still deeply thinks that acne destroyed my life... first making me an outcast in school, someone who others would laugh at, and then destroying my body after I tried to deal with it. It's also why I'm kinda affraid of doctors and medicine - I trusted them once and how I ended up?

 

Extremely similar patterns / behaviors in my past (and present) too

 

Only thing I found 'helpful' is working so long hours and so hard, that I don't have much time for my OCD to fully manifest. It's not helping any other of my symptoms, sometimes even making them worst, but working so hard is numbing me down so I don't despair about my symptoms like I used to do. Strangely enough never any painkillers helped my for my symptoms, only thing that 'kinda' helped is alcohol, it making my symptoms a little bit better, but it's not like drinking alcohol often is healthy so I'm stuck working my ass off to not think too much.

 

As you can't stop thinking about and hating your pain, have you tried giving up on trying to give up on hating the pain...and instead, after every time you catch yourself having a negative thought about your pain, you consistently and persistently make yourself think of at least two things that you're grateful for, or that you enjoy doing, or that you appreciate looking at or experiencing, or something nice or helpful that someone did for you once or something complimentary they said etc? As I understand it, doing this should very gradually (like with @RogueWave's patient who listened to self hypnosis tapes every night for a year before she started to see some difference and is doing well now) tip the balance in favour of your brain becoming retrained, which will in turn change you.

@RogueWave said that it doesn't matter what you think about - the way it works is that if your thoughts are negative about anything whatsoever, they produce unhelpful chemicals and if your thoughts are positive about anything whatsoever, they produce good, helpful chemicals. On that basis, if all you can think of being appreciative of is, say, the nice bright yellow curtains in one of the rooms in your home, it won't matter that those curtains are just a small thing in the great tapestry of life, you'll still produce the good, helpful chemicals to counteract the unhelpful chemicals that you produce when you're thinking about your pain - or feeling angry or fearful about something else, for that matter. As I understand it, it's all about tipping the balance, the aim is to produce more of the good, helpful chemicals than the unhelpful chemicals and when that happens consistently we should very gradually get better.

 

@BloodMoon: Very well said!

@eskimoeskimo Ah, now that’s a good question. Because you are sharp and analytical, I know you probably want a step-by-step guide, and there isn’t one. We can only share our stories to give examples of what worked for us.

But look at the commonalities first. All of us that have healed have changed something about ourselves on a deep level (with a lot of effort!)

Even after I cured my back pain after reading Dr. Sarno’s books, I still wondered what the actual mechanism was that allowed for the healing. And I’ve since realized that his books gave me hope and confidence, and that replaced the anger and despair I lived with daily for most of my life. This changed my internal state, which allowed my body to relax, and the pain to start going away.

I’ve had many patients in my office who wait weeks to see me, and when they finally come in, their pain is better that day, or even as they are walking in. They always say ‘well that figures! Why is it when I finally get here my pain is better?’ It’s because hope and optimism have flooded the body with entirely new chemistry, at least for a little while. ‘Bad’ chemical states and good chemical states in the body can’t co-exist.

Energy goes where attention goes, and the thing you feed is the one that will win. It’s just that most people are so used to feeding the bad ones that it just becomes who we are....and the cycle continues.

All I can tell you is that you can’t become ‘new’ by saying, thinking, feeling, and doing the same things you’ve always done. It may help to try ‘front-loading’ the experience. So throughout the day, instead of constantly reacting to things the same way, use your imagination to (sounds corny, I know) imagine what it would feel like if all of the pain and other issues were already gone. What would that feel like? Try and feel/think it now, EVEN IF you’re in pain. It’s a leap of faith, like Hillbilly said, but it can work.

Don’t wait for the pain to be gone to think and feel differently, think and feel differently first for no reason. That will absolutely flood the body with a healthy chemical release, and healing can start.

Move away from reacting, and into creating anew, regardless of what is going on in your body, mind, or life. Anyone who has healed has done this in some way, whether they realize it or not.

My meditation teacher in China once had a simple yet powerful teaching: He said ‘while you are in meditation, and throughout the day, just imagine your body is 6-7 years old! What would that feel like?’

I still use this idea daily!