Don't be naive, most people don't seem to get better, but maybe it's worth a go, I think som of the positivity around TMS does more hard than good
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What else is there - Seriously
- Thread starter eskimoeskimo
- Start date
Don't be naive, most people don't seem to get better, but maybe it's worth a go, I think som of the positivity around TMS does more hard than good
Fal
Well known member
Biggest advice i got was that you can't come out of TMS the same as the person who came into it.
You can't be the same person as you were before as that version of you got you into this mess (the daily patterns, thoughts, how you act and what you do etc). If you want to come out the other side just like miffybunny posted earlier on in this thread you yourself need to change from the inside, i realised from this i was sitll holding onto anger to my ex leaving me when i needed her the most, my dad for how he treated me when i was young (strict and very negative) and other things where i felt people or circumstances did me wrong or my own why is this happening to me attitude.
Getting rid of the fear helped stopped the pain i was in last year but it didn't get rid of other symptoms or it is being agonisingly slow in terms of improvement.
You can't be the same person as you were before as that version of you got you into this mess (the daily patterns, thoughts, how you act and what you do etc). If you want to come out the other side just like miffybunny posted earlier on in this thread you yourself need to change from the inside, i realised from this i was sitll holding onto anger to my ex leaving me when i needed her the most, my dad for how he treated me when i was young (strict and very negative) and other things where i felt people or circumstances did me wrong or my own why is this happening to me attitude.
Getting rid of the fear helped stopped the pain i was in last year but it didn't get rid of other symptoms or it is being agonisingly slow in terms of improvement.
Adam Coloretti (coach)
Well known member
Diana-M
Beloved Grand Eagle
Lee, I hear you and I witness your frustration. It is astonishingly hard to keep a good attitude the longer you have TMS. I go through big cycles, up and down, each day. The downs are very low. But I fight my way out. There’s always some small sign of progress I can latch on to. Even if it’s an internal change in how I see life or how I process things. Even how I interact with my family. Everything seems to be changing for the better in astounding ways that I never really thought could be true for me. In essence, I’m becoming more free and more authentic. Heavy price to pay for those changes, eh? This whole thing wasn’t my choice. But here I am. And I know I won’t quit until I get better.
As far as what you said about most people not getting better. We really have no data on that, here on the forum, or worldwide. So you can’t say that’s a fact. We do have Alan Gordon’s study of people using his pain reprocessing therapy, and the majority got better. https://mytmsjourney.com/resources/...psychological-approach-can-cure-chronic-pain/
Why are some of us slow to recover? Heck if I know. But the way I personally deal with that, is I assume I have a bigger mess to clean up. More habits to change. More emotions to process. Maybe you do too.
I love this guy. Whenever I’m blue I watch one of his videos. He healed from 75 symptoms.
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More great feedback, Rogue. It is so true that the "only way out is through." I am at a point where I have to live as fully as possible right now, even with the symptoms. The good news is that I can function for the most part, and my pain has generally already gone down, though I can still have severe spikes. My main struggle now is lower calf pain and especially foot numbness/discomfort. In fact, for the last three or four months, my foot discomfort has actually bothered me more than anything else. I find it easier to dismiss pain and attribute it solely to TMS than the foot numbness, which really bothers me while wearing shoes.
With some of the feedback I have received, I have to be careful that I don't convince myself I will just have to live with the pain and numbness forever and just do the best I can. That doubt is very destructive, and not consistent with my full recovery from other TMS symptoms.
It's not arrogance. It's trying to help people. The TMS brain will do everything it can to stop you from recovering because, by definition, its goal is literally to stop you from experiencing those emotions. So when people say "it doesn't work for me" what we hear is "you've got a really strong protective TMS brain."
The more we try to offer guidance the more you might feel like we are dogmatic a-holes. In my opinion, if you feel such strong negative negative feelings about this, it's because you've got a lot of stuff tucked away that your lizard brain is doing a heck of a job keeping you away from.
Your comment that there should be more negative stories is indicative of all of this. Your brain wants to PROVE that it "doesn't work" so you don't have to go there.
That's fine. It's up to you what you want to do and not do.
You can have a full recovery. Don't listen to the naysayers. Their TMS brain is trying to stop others from success in order to justify itself. If "it doesn't work" then they have a good excuse not to "do the work." It's a clever strategy from that pesky lizard brain that is trying so hard to "protect" people from finding and experiencing the emotional crap.
I also believe that a nervous system that has been on high alert for years in most cases is VERY reluctant to come out of it.
It has been responding to a ‘threat’ for a prolonged period of time, and if it assumes its own survival is at stake (a threat is a threat after all), it will take a lot of work to convince it otherwise.
Absolutely. It really becomes a way of life. Those of us with "health anxiety" since childhood aren't going to be able to stop having health anxiety by learning and doing a few exercises. But we can learn to minimize it and how to deal with it when it pops up and various coping mechanisms which allow us to go for long stretches of time without it becoming a major drag on our lives. Likewise with TMS. Our brains have learned to protect us from emotions in this way. We may keep playing out those pattens but we are now armed with methods to handle it so that we can remove the physical pains that popup to replace the emotional ones.
That's not very encouraging. My symptoms have been much higher for 2+ years, and I have been working hard to get better for 2+ years. What do you mean by "It will take a lot work" - what type of work, specifically? Honestly, this almost sounds like it might not even be worth trying.
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Cactusflower
Beloved Grand Eagle
Are you worth trying? Are you worth feeling better mentally, emotionally and physically?
A big question, but it's a very important one.
The work: examples of it are the free programs on this website: structured educational program and Alan Gordon's free program (the basis of his Pain Reprocessing book and more recent work).
TMS often makes people very resistant to the work. The work sounds intimidating. "Lot of Work" "Hard Work" - the ideas of it being hard or lots is because our resistance fights it. The work is actually fairly simple if you let it be. It's our TMS minds that seem to overthink and complicate it and tend to worry that we won't be successful. You will never know until you try it.
Adam Coloretti (coach)
Well known member
The work is mainly inner, emotional work (there are some things to get right with the symptoms themselves too).
So in this two years of recovery, how have you come to treat yourself better and in what ways are you more authentic? Are you more accepting of your own emotions?
Hi Cactus - yes, of course, I think I’m worth it. That’s why I have worked very hard over the last 2 1/2 years to get better. Dan Buglio’s group, a tremendous amount of time with Dan Ratner, and his columns process. I could go on and on with the hard work I have done to feel better, and will continue to do so in some manner. For example, I just started EMDR this week (I so appreciate you sharing your positive experience with your EMDR!).
However, since I know my body is not the problem, I don’t think it’s a matter of more “work”. Similar to Hillbilly, I have become convinced the next step is to just live my life, regardless of any pain. That, and I already have less fear and pain than I did after starting to adapt Hillbilly’s approach. I can function OK now, and I believe I inadvertently added greatly to my pain by being very tentative about re-engaging in my life. I’m done sitting around, working on myself, hoping to feel better, so I can live again.
Maybe he got better. I was in the same boat as eskimo, similiar age, mentality etc. I still have my symptoms but my inner life got so much better in the last few years that I'm certain my syptoms will get better. I sometimes even laugh at them because I have two main symptoms (jaw/teeth pain and stomach pain) and they pretty much almost NEVER flare together. So when I ignore one symptom for a longer period of time it will get calmer and immediately the second one will flare. I knew that that's CLASSIC TMS behaviour but for over ten years I thought "I'm different than others", "my pain is worse than others" etc. Now you think the same stuff - "other people are getting better, but maybe I won't better. There are even some other people that never get better" It's not faulty thinking, it's human to do it, but that's something you have to change. You can't directly control you thoughts but you can stop dwelling on those that are do not serve you well.
Aww, Warren. You are breaking my heart here. You are doing so well. Don't let someone on the Internet dampen your process. YOU have the power to be strong, to take charge, to get over this, to put it behind you, to live your life, to knock it back down when the little buggah pops up. YOU know you can do this.
The reality is it's all just a stupid mind fuck that we do to ourselves. A little tiny part of our brains thinking it's in charge.
But guess what? It's not if we don't let it.
Don't listen to anyone who can't do it. That's them not you.
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Cactusflower
Beloved Grand Eagle
"However, since I know my body is not the problem, I don’t think it’s a matter of more “work”. Similar to Hillbilly, I have become convinced the next step is to just live my life, regardless of any pain. That, and I already have less fear and pain than I did after starting to adapt Hillbilly’s approach. I can function OK now, and I believe I inadvertently added greatly to my pain by being very tentative about re-engaging in my life. I’m done sitting around, working on myself, hoping to feel better, so I can live again."
This is a much different attitude than what you had stated earlier (and I answered to). Can you see the difference between the two and how you speak about your experience? I think that is very important, and you can really learn about your mindset and how it can change even minute to minute by simply writing something down and then reading it back to yourself in a forum like this.
I am at the place you are at. I have done "the work" via eg. lessons etc. and now I am putting it into practice. It's not more work - you are absolutely right. It's how the work is done in your everyday life: what you have adopted and value and use moment to moment and what you've decided doesn't work for you (eg. all the TMS obsessions etc) and leave them behind. Like you, I just decided that there was no use to "wait" to re-engage in life. I mean what the hell am I waiting for? I chose to believe the isolation was another form of TMS - and that by engaging in ANYTHING I would put what I learned into practice. I'd say that for the first year I felt really weird about it all, but then I could practice compassion toward myself by realizing that weirdness was something that would pass. Personally, I think this part of the journey - of re-engaging and living life is still "working on myself" - I am still breaking habits and cycles, still working on mindset, emotions etc. It's been about 2 years that I have been very actively engaged. I still have pain, symptoms etc. but they fluctuate, move, come and go. Whatever.
I learned that success is doing life EVEN IF we have pain, symptoms, illnesses, anxieties, repetitive thoughts etc. It can all be there, and eventually other stuff becomes more important and the pain even if persistent becomes less interesting because it gets in the way of doing the fun stuff (even the not so fun stuff).
So perhaps you are on the journey you need to be on. The place you need to be. I love that you are thinking about making firm decisions - that's a great sign.
This is a much different attitude than what you had stated earlier (and I answered to). Can you see the difference between the two and how you speak about your experience? I think that is very important, and you can really learn about your mindset and how it can change even minute to minute by simply writing something down and then reading it back to yourself in a forum like this.
I am at the place you are at. I have done "the work" via eg. lessons etc. and now I am putting it into practice. It's not more work - you are absolutely right. It's how the work is done in your everyday life: what you have adopted and value and use moment to moment and what you've decided doesn't work for you (eg. all the TMS obsessions etc) and leave them behind. Like you, I just decided that there was no use to "wait" to re-engage in life. I mean what the hell am I waiting for? I chose to believe the isolation was another form of TMS - and that by engaging in ANYTHING I would put what I learned into practice. I'd say that for the first year I felt really weird about it all, but then I could practice compassion toward myself by realizing that weirdness was something that would pass. Personally, I think this part of the journey - of re-engaging and living life is still "working on myself" - I am still breaking habits and cycles, still working on mindset, emotions etc. It's been about 2 years that I have been very actively engaged. I still have pain, symptoms etc. but they fluctuate, move, come and go. Whatever.
I learned that success is doing life EVEN IF we have pain, symptoms, illnesses, anxieties, repetitive thoughts etc. It can all be there, and eventually other stuff becomes more important and the pain even if persistent becomes less interesting because it gets in the way of doing the fun stuff (even the not so fun stuff).
So perhaps you are on the journey you need to be on. The place you need to be. I love that you are thinking about making firm decisions - that's a great sign.
This right here.
Sometimes you have to live by the "Just Do It" motto and "Do what you fear most."
Cactus - sounds like real progress - congrats! I recognize I can oscillate back and forth, but I am getting more confident I know what I need to do. Until recently, I never really seriously considered engaging in life with symptoms. Your characterization that "it's how the work is done in your everyday life", and have decided that living my life with my symptoms is my next step.
I have very much benefitted from working in Dan Ratner's group and working with him. I have seen people progress and a few get fully better. It's hard to tell who is fully better/improved, and who gave up, when people leave the group. What I have noticed is how many people in the group still have a fear of their symptoms, ME INCLUDED, and are stuck because of it. I have also seen people struggle to connect to deeper, very difficult emotions, again similar to me.
Booble (great name, BTW) - thank you for the reinforcement. I think what threw me for a loop was this statement by Rogue - "nervous system that has been on high alert for years in most cases is VERY reluctant to come out of it." My TMS brain read that to mean I may never get better, since I have already been working on this for 2+ years. I know he did not mean it that way.