Hi Marls. Dorado also found and recently posted on another thread this article re Michael Moskowitz https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2019/08/03/rewiring-the-brain-to-get-out-of-pain-the-moskowitz-approach/ (Rewiring the Brain to Get Out of Pain: the Moskowitz Approach - Health Rising)
Or working, or watching movie, reading book... I'm visualizing few times a day but that book states that it's not enough, that 'casual disctraction'(but I have to work! Or have some life other than dealing with pain) is not enough - 'every time pain is detected push back with full focus' like I said I have 24/7 pain so that would essentialy means abandoning my life... something I wonder is 'medicine' better than 'illness'. Maybe I should let TMS roam free? But I did that for years and that only brought me despair that I will be always in pain. What works best for me(not for pain - for me) is living my life, and doing some TMS works in hope that someday it's gonna pays off. It's like with gym - I'm not strong but I work out because I'm hoping that with time I'm gonna be strongerI too have pain 24/7 and what I'm going to do is perform the visualizations every time the pain spikes significantly and/or shifts to another part of my body (if I'm not having to do something else at that particular time) plus a further 7 times a day. In the article that I posted above, Moskowitz advised his patient, Jan, to do the visualizations 7 times a day (but she was in a position that she could visualize most of the day, so she did that and became pain free relatively quickly). I therefore infer that Moskowitz (at least at that time; I don't know if he's changed his opinion since) believed that visualizing just 7 times a day would/might work. As you will have gathered, the idea is to bring back into proper use the areas of the brain that normally mainly do other things, e.g. are involved in processing visual stuff, that have been hi-jacked to mainly deal with pain instead. On his website, Moskowitz says that some people don't respond to solely doing the visualizations and with those people he suggests other ways to assist in altering/rewiring the brain, e.g. using the sense of smell and touch, which are processed by other areas of the brain http://www.neuroplastix.com/styled-2/page71/soothing.html (Section 5: Soothing | Neuroplastix). (For me, I feel it's got to be worth a try in combination with other things I'm doing, e.g. affirmations.)
On Morowitz's website it recommends peppermint, lemon and lavender - see the penultimate information box on this webpage for more information http://www.neuroplastix.com/styled-2/page71/soothing.html (Section 5: Soothing | Neuroplastix) (I too love the smell of coffee though and will think about and actually physically smell that too!When it comes to smell I had an idea, I wonder if for example smell of fresh coffee(so something almost everybody likes, including me) WHILE visualizing reducing pain areas in brain could help. It's worth a try like I said... and well good coffee is never harmful
)I'm no expert on this, but what you're doing sounds good to me. I think we just need to do what we can, when we can - to the extent that we can manage; if we give ourselves too big of a commitment/target it can cause us pressure/stress and make us want to just give up .
On Morowitz's website it recommends peppermint, lemon and lavender - see the penultimate information box on this webpage for more information http://www.neuroplastix.com/styled-2/page71/soothing.html (Section 5: Soothing | Neuroplastix) (I too love the smell of coffee though and will think about and actually physically smell that too!
I'm no expert on this, but what you're doing sounds good to me. I think we just need to do what we can, when we can - to the extent that we can manage; if we give ourselves too big of a commitment/target it can cause us pressure/stress and make us want to just give up .
Or if not pain, 24/7 anxiety, tension, and weird sensations
It's one of the very first lectures that you come to in the app. I have to read the transcript because I can't stand the voice of the woman who reads the lectures. I understand she's one of the founders/creators of the app. She does that thing that some women speakers do called "vocal fry," where the speaker pitches her voice low at the end of sentences and it changes to a growl. Hearing her voice makes me want to hurl my phone across the room. But at the bottom of the screen is an option to read the transcript. Another good Curable lecture is the one called "Pain Catastrophizing."
I think the only way to truly test Outcome Independence is to flat, f****ng give up. Not as a way of achieving results through the back door, as it were, but just throwing up your hands in weary surrender to the circumstances. And I'm not sure "acceptance" (whatever that is) has to be part of it. I think it's more of a draining of expectations. You go to the cupboard of strategies, techniques, modalities and when you open it a moth flies out and it's totally bare. Kind of like when people try a bunch of dating apps and go on a bunch of dates over a period of years and finally conclude there is just no one out there. And the next day they meet The One. As was said above, there is a lot of mystery about how all of this (and indeed, Life Itself) works. Maybe the reason giving up can cause such a shift (if it really IS authentic giving up) is that it clears the decks. Sweeps away all plans, expectations, agendas, and even hope. If hope, as Emily Dickinson says, is "the thing with feathers," then giving up is taking a cast iron frying pan and smashing that annoying, fluffy trickster who has led us on a path to nowhere for years.
I'm up early on a Saturday morning because I was awakened (and have been for many months) by excruciating pain in my legs. Yesterday it had me up at 4. This morning at 5--but only in the right leg today. A couple of years ago it was in my right shoulder and eventually that went away, but my legs started hurting. I won't hijack, but just wanted to say that I'm in this club, too, and I'm constantly searching for answers.
Early morning thoughts... no coffee yet...