What else is there - Seriously

[eskimoeskimo]

These people that have reached a level of acceptance with their pain will receive the corresponding amount of relief. They are not adding preoccupation to the mix. If they knew the actual reason for their pain they would be able to resolve it entirely by taking the appropriate steps to do so. There are effective methods to resolve psychological/emotional/remembered pain pathway causes of chronic pain.

In discussing people who are not familiar with TMS, but who are not preoccupied by or fearful of their pain, but nonetheless still have pain, I am responding to a view of TMS treatment which regards losing the fear and preoccupation as the primary or even sole prescription. I get that if you think other pieces are necessary for recovery, then such examples don't matter much. I totally get that. But I'd like to hear from someone who does take this behavioral view of TMS recovery regarding such examples.

 

[eskimoeskimo]

How did you achieve this independence, particularly of your environment, in practical terms, @RogueWave? Could you describe how you endeavoured to do this in the early days of your quest to feel better that led to your eventual success - with some examples from a 'day in the life' of @RogueWave, perhaps? (I think this would be helpful to me and maybe to other 'strugglers' too.)

Exactly. The outcome independence stuff sounds great. I try it. Fail miserably. Ask "how"? Answer: keep practicing, the goal is to have a good day despite the pain, not use the pain as the barometer, etc. Try again. Try for months. Fail miserably. Still want the pain to stop. Ask "how?" Rinse repeat.

I've been doing this for 8 years. "Outcome independence" now sounds like some cursed invocation

 

[eskimoeskimo]

Well that sounds reasonable, but just because something sounds reasonable doesn't mean it's true. How do you know what constant pain means? I've read many TMS books, watch many videos but never encounter anything that says things you said about constant pain. I'm just curious how do you know that? Like I said it's pretty reasonable and indeed most of my life I put pressure on myself but I want to know if that something that was described by doctor like Sarno or Schubiner or just something that someone invented because it sounds nice

I hear you Kozas. I don't understand how people can speak so authoritatively about a subject which is so complex and personal

... ( I know people are going to say "but TMS is simple, it only seems complex." Eh, maybe. Maybe not)

 

[eskimoeskimo]

I can relate a bit to eskimo,

I too am still in pain next to brainfog, heart palpitations and exhaustion everyday. The thing is it only got worse, a lot worse during my TMS period. Because my body would alert me not to do certain activities and i did them cause belieiving in TMS. I still atleast hope that TMS is what i got but i am again at a point where i am just scared to keep believing. Because i get the feeling if it's not TMS something terrible could happen to me since my heart is reacting a lot too. I feel really sick, exhausted and everything is spinning next to my pain ofcourse. I don't even care about the pain anymore. But my heart scares me.

I can say for myself that reading eskimo's messages can work a little against believing TMS like some wondered here. But on the other hand what if there are people here who don't have TMS and ruin their life even more with the TMS approach because they ignore the symptoms their body gives to alert them of maybe real damage?

Again i don't know anymore what i got myself but i can relate to eskimo and maybe we are TMS'ers who haven't healed yet. Maybe we both get to heal in the future and this thread will be an amazing story to get people through who really struggle to heal as well.

Maybe my post is bad for healers to read and i should delete it again but i wanted to say this.

Hi Mark. I struggle with this concern. Multiple time I've actually asked admin to delete all of my posts. Nobody has ever gotten back to me (Does anybody actually run this site anymore?). I guess all I can say is that I'm here to seek help. I need help. I'm not here to just accept everything I'm told is TMS doctrine and spread the word. It hasn't worked for me. That's just the truth. I hope to goodness that's because I haven't gotten it yet, not because there's nothing to get. That's why I'm here.

 

[RogueWave]

@RogueWave Thank you for taking the time to write such thoughtful responses.
Thank you. I hope my messages resonate with other people who are struggling and provoke responses that speak to our doubts and point towards a way forward, rather than to encourage more dejection in others.

Just because a body 'wants' to heal, doesn't mean it isn't prevented - frequently, and often permanently - from being able to do so.

Thanks for the tone of this discussion as well.
This response will be shorter as it’s late I don’t want to keep repeating myself.

So first, I didn’t glance over type 1 diabetes. That’s included in the ‘born with genetic deficiencies’ group I mentioned.

Secondly, you are entirely incorrect about the brain being ‘malleable’ only to small degree. It’s more than I can type, but you want to look into neuroplasticity, psychoneuroimmunolgy, and epigenetics. They are all newer areas of science that point to mind/body connections and possibility.

To state it one last time, new pathways, thoughts, emotions are always, ALWAYS possible. The reason they don’t ‘stick’ is because the ‘you’ is so familiar, and so well-practiced, it functions like and addiction, and your brain is invested in the known as a survival mechanism. We keep stuck, and the brain will justify that the same way an alcoholic will justify drinking.

Look at your own life. How many thoughts, actions, words are repeated daily? Have you Ever even considered this? How many obstacles have you taken head on and overcome? How many uncomfortable situations have you put yourself in purposeful just for the point of growth? How may behaviors have you repeated deadly, unceasingly, without change? Be honest with yourself. The same actions, words, thoughts and feelings produce the same chemical releases, over and over. The body stays ‘stuck’ in the past experience, the environment is altered, and the problems start.

Do you see the ‘groundhog day’ now?

Can people make permanent, healthy changes? Oh yes. WILL they? Most won’t. The old neural pathways will win, usually.

I call it the ‘New Year’s Gym Syndrome’. Every year a bunch of people make a resolution to work out, and if you go to any gym in the world, it’ll be packed in the first few weeks of January. But usually after about 3-4 weeks the numbers dwindle. Why? Because the old pattern wins out and people go right back to the state they were in before. This is also seen with weight loss, trying to break addictions, etc. The new behavior sticks for a while, then people get right back go back to drinking etc. etc. New connections start to be made, then the old ones re-establish themselves, and the new ones are pruned away. It takes an intense, consistent effort to make the new ones stick, and most people give up.

I have had several patients who got stomach bypass surgery, lost hundreds of pounds, and within a year to eat through the surgery and gain it all back and then some. Why? Because the wait wasn’t the problem, the weight was the symptom of the underlying problem that was never addressed.

And so it is with many health problems. You keep referring to health problems interrupting homeostasis, but what we are trying to point out here is that most diagnoses are a SYMPTOM of the underlying problem, i.e. the body being in a chronically altered state.

Can the problem alter homeostasis? Yes, of course. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed by changing things so that the body can function correctly. It just requires a significant change over a very long period of time.

There was a study done in the 70s on stem cells, before most people even knew what a stem cell was. A researcher cloned a bunch of stem cells, so they all has exactly the same genetics. He took a bunch of them and put them in different solutions. And guess what happened? They turned into entirely different cells (different gene expression) depending on the solution (environment). They all had the same genes, but differentiated completely different depending on their environment.

We now know that a single gene can code up to 3000 variations of a protein. So a skin cell makes another skin cell, but how does it determine which of the 3000 it makes? Healthy or diseased, weak or strong? Environment.

So I’ll end with this, and that will be it, because we are going in circles yet again: Thousands of people have been cured from TMS. This was independently studied in the 90s, and at the time Sarno’s success rate was around 70%. Later he pre-screened patients, and the success rate went on even higher. So that alone shows that permanent change is possible.

You either accept TMS and work at it (find your own way if you have to. Use your own wisdom and maybe you’ll figure a new approach), or hunt down all the other possibilities.

Are there a few outliers out there with unknown causes for their pains? Sure, but those are very few and far between. It is extremely doubtful there you are unique in this regard. If you are hell-bent on it being a structural problem then only a structural approach will fix it. So find a good surgeon, or body worker, and I hope it works out. But if that’s the case, there is no need to post anymore.

You will never convince me at this point in career that these types of problems can’t be fixed in a large majority of the people. I have my own experience, and have helped many others through
this process. People can change, and they can heal, but the individual has to take the responsibility to do so.

You can stay a victim, stuck in the same reactive patterns, or you can get in the driver’s seat. Everyone I’ve ever met who is stuck only ever wanted to justify their ‘stuckness’.

‘My childhood, my genes, my family, my job, my unique body that is different than everyone else’s (I hear this at least a few times a week), my thing-that-isn’t-fixable’....it goes on.

Create anew, give the body an ideal internal environment on a regular basis, and absolute miracles can happen. Period.

 

[eskimoeskimo]

To start this response, and to add to what @miffybunny just said, please keep in mind we are all creating these situations, but we are absolutely not doing it consciously or on purpose. The funny thing is, after a certain age, the subconscious programming is ‘driving the ship’ far more than we realize, but this is info for another time

The first, and overall the most important part of my healing process, was knowledge.

First, knowledge of how I got there (my Dad had bad PTSD from Vietnam, so it was an abusive household from birth). But that was normal to me, so most of my life I just thought I was more driven than other people, an over-achiever with a bit of a bad temper. But that was just ‘me.’

My sister had the same experience, and her TMS was so bad she was in a wheelchair for several months with terrible back and neck pain. 12
Specialists in Boston, and no one could figure it out. I talked her out of Suicide several times in my early 20s before she found Sarno, and to this day I credit him with saving her life.

I say all this because the first part of my healing process was to objectively look at my whole life, and humbly saying ‘oh, yeah, this affected me FAR more than I ever wanted to admit.’ This helped ‘open the door’, to understand why my body was stuck in survival mode.

So after several years of debilitating back pain, reading TMS books cured it after several months.

It was a blessing and a curse that that happened so fast, though, because I never really had to dig any deeper.

Years later, after I started my own office, bought my first house, and had all the typical adult stresses start around the same time, the TMS came back with a vengeance, but this time it was about 20-30 other symptoms that would fluctuate. I suspected TMS immediately, but reading Dr. Sarno’s books didn’t help this time. I found the other TMS forum and Hillbilly’s posts, and immediately started to look at things differently. I tore through Weekes, Low, and host of others. This helped, but I couldn’t seem to fully get ahead of it. So I’d keep re-reading, and slowly things improved.

So for me, step one was admitting I had a problem (sounds like an addiction, right?), and that it was housed in the mind/emotions.

The second step was re-assuring myself though the things I read repeatedly. Hundreds of times, over and over, drilling it into my head. I felt better slowly over time, but it was still a struggle, and I’d have some really bad days. But the information laid a solid foundation, which was a big part of it.

Believe it or not, this went on for several years. I had MRIs, blood tests, etc. Looking back, my analytical/medical mind worked against me for sure. Fear, concern, fixation....were all winning, and this delayed my healing. No matter how much I meditated, read, talked about it...I just couldn’t fully get ahead of it. And to make it worse, my main symptom was constant dizziness. It always felt like I was on a boat in big waves. So just ignoring that was nearly impossible. I began to feel trapped, like ‘if I can’t ignore this, how can I ever heal??’ I fought depression and suicidal thoughts regularly at that time. I tried every modality out there, and many helped a bit, but nothing was fixing it.

From reading these comments, I think quite a few people are stuck in that place.

But then, like Hillbilly, I had an epiphany of sorts. And it’s exactly what anyone who healed had said, but I realized I just wasn’t doing what they recommended. I realized even though I was trying to ignore it, I was waiting for my situation to change to feel/think differently about it, instead of changing myself. I noticed that fear ruled a lot of things in my life. I didn’t fear my actual symptoms as much, but I noticed I feared confrontation with my employees more.

The situation didn’t matter, the feeling did (and the chemical release that comes with it).

So after noticing these patterns, and after getting so sick of being sick, I finally started just doing things and thinking differently. As much as I could, I’d just let thoughts and sensations come and go, and on top of that, I just kept trying to think and feel as if I was already healthy.

This was very, very difficult at first! Especially when symptoms were bad. But the absolute ’I am done with this!!’ energy kept focused. So with practice, even in the midst of dizziness and other things, I started to smile more. I kept asking myself ‘what would perfect health feel like right now?’ Over and over. I shed my old skin so to speak. I spoke up when I didn’t want to, I did things I was afraid to, ALL while feeling shitty.

I keep thinking of how it would feel when all this stuff was gone, even if I felt horrible. Bad thoughts would come in, but I’d catch them and shift them immediately.

No more I said, and this is it. Do or die, really, because I couldn’t live with it anymore (still sounds like an addiction, doesn’t it?). That ‘post in the ground’ saved my life. Your resolve has to be greater than your addiction.

Knowledge->experience/practice—>being/becoming.

That is basically how I did it. Practice, practice, practice until you shed the old you (and with it all the pain and dysfunction)!

I do notice that in many of the success stories that I find most convincing, the common denominator is that the sufferer gets to the kind of rock bottom point and then being able to say "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don't care what the pain does anymore." Yourself, Dan Buglio, Dorado, Hillbilly. To me, that sounds like the gist.

But it also sounds like this didn't happen so much by choice as epiphany. You used that word. Others have too. It's almost like you're describing the faith striking you. So how does one reach this outlook by choice? Is it just that I haven't really hit rock bottom yet?


Another thing I really strongly want to discuss. You mention knowledge therapy. Reading, Rereading, Rereading again. Reassurance. Self-reassurance. To me this is a major red flag and something I'm deeply concerned about in the TMS community. I have OCD, and I think there is a lot about TMS which resembles OCD. Sometimes I think TMS really just is OCD. OCD of the body. But with OCD, they say - and I really believe - the reassurance (which very much includes self-reassurance) is the FUEL. THAT is the addiction. I always want someone new to convince me all over again but in some new way that there is nothing wrong with my neck and that I can get better. But it never 'works' for more than 5 minutes, and then I want more more more. Ditto for self-reassurance. I had a note in my phone full of all of the reassuring things I had read on this forum and others. That included everything Hillbilly ever said. I was absolutely addicted to reading through that note, and collecting more reassuring tidbits. At one point I did a word count on that note. I forget the number, but it was something like 400,000 words. Seriously. Then I learned more about OCD and the first thing I was instructed to do was delete that note. I do not regret it. I worry that people are often advised - with the very best intentions, I recognize that - to read and read and reassure. I worry this keeps the obsession alive, makes it worse. If anyone is curious, Ali Greymond OCD on YouTube does a wonderful job of explaining this aspect. I know Dorado also found her very helpful and saw the TMS connection.

 

[eskimoeskimo]

I understand, but I quess it's hard to believe when years goes by and nothing changes like in eskimo case(or mine too, to be honest). I kinda envy how strong your believe is. Maybe that's part of TMS, but I have many thoughts - for example just because you had CRPS doesn't mean that everyone with CRPS have TMS too. Humans and our world is extremely complex. Many people here believe there are 2 cases of pain - TMS or structural, where I on the other hand believe it can be a plethora of causes. For example change in microflora, which is not really structural nor emotional. And even TMS seems not really like a 'one' problem but a bunch of them, coupled together - some people seems to have pain because of difficult experiences in childhood, some had structural pain once and clinged too much to it, some are maybe hypochondriacs, some are too perfectonicts and think too much about every little pain, making habit in their mind.
I'm trying not to think about it too often because it can make my head hurt, and it's not like I want another place in my body that hurts I just think Sarno was just a beginning, and we need much more knowledge about TMS. Maybe someday...

We sure do think a lot alike, Kozas. For better or worse. I wish I could get the belief. I do like that Alan Gordon says that 100% belief doesn't really come until one is better. Before that I was really beating myself up because so many people say "the only way to get better, you have to first believe 100%"

 

[eskimoeskimo]

YES, exactly! The quote, and what you wrote.

So I hope it makes sense now, that WHAT you are fearful of, obsessing over, worried about, depressed about, anxious about, etc doesn’t matter, it’s the repetition of that feeling that matters, because with that repeated feeling comes repeated chemical releases, and that is what keeps the body in a state of dysfunction.

The feelings/chemicals also influence the thoughts, which validate the feelings, which re-introduces the chemicals....and the hamster wheel is in motion. So we try and take our attention off our pain, but we start obsessing/worrying about other things. The brain doesn’t differentiate, worry is worry.

Alan Watts talked at length about this from a Zen perspective. He said ‘so you’re worried about money, and you think you’ll feel secure when you get it. But then you work hard and get it, and now you worry about your health. And if you feel healthy, you worry about losing your money, or the future.’

I’ll say it again, the thing doesn’t matter, the feeling matters, and how often we repeat it. And the circumstances that started the whole thing in motion were usually set up far before something ‘tipped the cart’ and the symptoms showed up.

Definitely interesting to ponder

I obsess over all manner of things, some really bonkers

 

[RogueWave]

I wish I could give you a ‘recipe’ to fix it, but like @miffybunny said, there isn’t one.

You have to find your own way. Use your acumen and intelligence to figure out what that is. Maybe you find a different way, and end up helping people reading this right now, going through what you’re going through. Maybe it’s something none of us have even thought of before!

I have confidence in you. If other techniques haven’t worked, throw them out, but don’t give up.

 

[Balsa11]

It's the simple things we overlook. Deep breathing. Feeling the breeze on our face and the texture on our skin. Getting out of the head and into the senses is a fun escape, especially during this tough time.

Also gently movement and body gratitude. Truly feeling what comes up, good or bad, better worse, and acknowledging your own lived experience in your body. Feeling establishes a sense of trust and comfort with your body, and feeling at home within it.

When I thought hard over different theories and scrutinized my own methods, when I forced my feelings or avoided facing them, I had excruciating pain and cried a lot. Still am a TMSer, still have thin skin (both literally and emotionally) but doing much better. Still want to get back to yoga after putting it off for a long time.

No more do's and dont's. No more faith vs skepticism. No more science vs spirituality, left brain vs right brain, laziness vs working too hard.

Just steady relaxation and self learning. Dancing with opposites.

I found by feeling calm indirectly/unexpectedly and letting the feeling flood me, I have a little buffer against future flares.

Tldr; watch cute animal videos and if you're curious about this mode of learning, try to see examples of neuroplasticity in non pain areas of your life and apply concepts there. Life is a neuroplasticity buffet.

If you really love being analytical, tutoring (especially in STEM) is so much fun

 

[Kozas]

@RogueWave
Thank you for all your replies, and without any doubt you're a resilient person, going through my posts written in my broken english
You wrote many interesting things, I have to think about it all. When it comes what I tried - Alan Gordon program, Nicole Sachs book(I journaled so much that I just don't have nothing left - when it comes to my present life everything is nice except for pain and acne), Schubiner program etc etc. I will be honest with you - in 2011 derm prescribed me yet another long term course(3 months) of antibiotics for acne - right at the end my upper stomach area and jaw/teeth started to hurt, and never stopped. I had plethora of tests, nothing ever came up really but I can't shake off this feeling that all this pain is because of antibiotics, my derm and well - myself and my error in judgement(treating acne with antibiotics is really stupid - but then again, I was young, foolish and with severe acne so I quess it was either that or Accutane)
Oh and btw @Balsa11 I'm actually computer science teacher so I quess it's not a shocker I'm analytical too

 

[eskimoeskimo]

@RogueWave

I'm familiar with epigenetics and gene expression, but I'm not seeing what about gene expression means that chronic pain is (usually I think you're saying) curable. Honestly I'm a little lost at this stage, as to what you're saying TMS is and what the treatment is. But it's been a long day. I'll read through again tomorrow. Thanks again for taking the time.

@Kozas

Again, the similarities abound. I too have had some acne and regretted taking antibiotics (now I think my worries there were unfounded and the anxiety has long since faded). I'm sure you've tried it, but FWIW tretinoin did help me quite a bit, but I think it's mostly down to stress. Also, I studied computer science too

 

[Balsa11]

Wow! CS is a tough subject for me, but I managed to get through the minimum requirements after retaking DS and Algo 3 times. Still about halfway through an ECE + art ugrad, but CS is important for both research and industry these days. Maybe you both could help people overcome their fear of programming bugs and tackle perfectionism through the iterative process of debugging. So many kids these days need support and encouragement, especially in math and other STEM classes

It's just TMS happens a lot more organically and the work is about providing positive right brain and sensory feedback loops. So it's less mechanical and more about feeling the feels.

 

[RogueWave]

It's the simple things we overlook. Deep breathing. Feeling the breeze on our face and the texture on our skin. Getting out of the head and into the senses is a fun escape, especially during this tough time.

Also gently movement and body gratitude. Truly feeling what comes up, good or bad, better worse, and acknowledging your own lived experience in your body. Feeling establishes a sense of trust and comfort with your body, and feeling at home within it.

When I thought hard over different theories and scrutinized my own methods, when I forced my feelings or avoided facing them, I had excruciating pain and cried a lot. Still am a TMSer, still have thin skin (both literally and emotionally) but doing much better. Still want to get back to yoga after putting it off for a long time.

No more do's and dont's. No more faith vs skepticism. No more science vs spirituality, left brain vs right brain, laziness vs working too hard.

Just steady relaxation and self learning. Dancing with opposites.

I found by feeling calm indirectly/unexpectedly and letting the feeling flood me, I have a little buffer against future flares.

Tldr; watch cute animal videos and if you're curious about this mode of learning, try to see examples of neuroplasticity in non pain areas of your life and apply concepts there. Life is a neuroplasticity buffet.

If you really love being analytical, tutoring (especially in STEM) is so much fun

Very well said, and thank you for sharing. After everything you’ve studied, you’ve found your own path, and that’s fantastic.

General Patton said: ‘Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.’

I think it’s probably harder for the trained, intensely analytical mind to break the TMS cycle, but not at all impossible, so keep being patient with you yourself.

Over-analysis of ANYTHING will keep the process going. All the thought processes like self-diagnosis, rumination, obsessing will all cause more biochemical releases that feed the cycle. The subject doesn’t matter, the persistent, reoccurring feelings and thoughts do.

You are breaking that cycle little by little. Dripping water will penetrate rock sooner or later!

 

[eskimoeskimo]

Yes, but what about
"I tried the TMS work and it didn't work!"
You: "Ok, then we can rule out TMS as a cause"

You know that body and mind is so complex that we barely know how it really functions... what if somebody tried anti-inflammantories but dose was too low? What if dose was okay, but he/she should take it for longer? What if those specific anti-inflammantories were not working, but other anti-inflammantory drugs would work? What if there was some other problem when the person was taking anti-inflammantory and that's why it didn't helped then, but maybe they would work now? What if there are new anti-inflammantory drugs that works better?

Exactly. With other treatments it's always "you tried that and it didn't work so we can rule out as a cause the thing that that treatment is meant to address," but with TMS it's always "keep trying, we each have our own journey to get there, but this is the only way to truly treat chronic pain by addressing its true cause"

 

[Balsa11]

Since we don't have awareness of what our cells are doing, the only factor we can control is our thoughts. Like the subconscious runs the machinery of the body, while the conscious mind is connected to the subconscious.

 

[eskimoeskimo]

Virtual high-five! Yes, exactly. The skewed internal environment of the body that comes from the repeated, altered emotional states prevents homeostasis from occurring. In other words, we stay locked in the past experiences.

No matter how amazing an engine is, if the gas and oil are dirty, it won’t function correctly.

So in my personal experience (and others as well), we just started living, acting, feeling and thinking in a new way, and stick to that, as often as you can, every day, even if we felt like garbage. All the focus goes into the new state, no wavering. Thought, feeling, actions, words all line up, consistently.

If the mind is trying to think anew, but the body is still stuck in fear, obsession, etc. nothing will happen, because the mind/body are in conflict, like 2 waves crashing into each other.

But if they line up, and both go in the same direction, they will add strength to each other, and they will produce something much stronger than either (so just make sure the thought and feeling line up towards the end goal!).

In oceanography, that is exactly how a rogue wave is formed .

I really don't understand by choosing a feel a certain way all the time. Isn't that exact opposite of acceptance?

 

[eskimoeskimo]

Thanks for the tone of this discussion as well.
This response will be shorter as it’s late I don’t want to keep repeating myself.

So first, I didn’t glance over type 1 diabetes. That’s included in the ‘born with genetic deficiencies’ group I mentioned.

Secondly, you are entirely incorrect about the brain being ‘malleable’ only to small degree. It’s more than I can type, but you want to look into neuroplasticity, psychoneuroimmunolgy, and epigenetics. They are all newer areas of science that point to mind/body connections and possibility.

To state it one last time, new pathways, thoughts, emotions are always, ALWAYS possible. The reason they don’t ‘stick’ is because the ‘you’ is so familiar, and so well-practiced, it functions like and addiction, and your brain is invested in the known as a survival mechanism. We keep stuck, and the brain will justify that the same way an alcoholic will justify drinking.

Look at your own life. How many thoughts, actions, words are repeated daily? Have you Ever even considered this? How many obstacles have you taken head on and overcome? How many uncomfortable situations have you put yourself in purposeful just for the point of growth? How may behaviors have you repeated deadly, unceasingly, without change? Be honest with yourself. The same actions, words, thoughts and feelings produce the same chemical releases, over and over. The body stays ‘stuck’ in the past experience, the environment is altered, and the problems start.

Do you see the ‘groundhog day’ now?

Can people make permanent, healthy changes? Oh yes. WILL they? Most won’t. The old neural pathways will win, usually.

I call it the ‘New Year’s Gym Syndrome’. Every year a bunch of people make a resolution to work out, and if you go to any gym in the world, it’ll be packed in the first few weeks of January. But usually after about 3-4 weeks the numbers dwindle. Why? Because the old pattern wins out and people go right back to the state they were in before. This is also seen with weight loss, trying to break addictions, etc. The new behavior sticks for a while, then people get right back go back to drinking etc. etc. New connections start to be made, then the old ones re-establish themselves, and the new ones are pruned away. It takes an intense, consistent effort to make the new ones stick, and most people give up.

I have had several patients who got stomach bypass surgery, lost hundreds of pounds, and within a year to eat through the surgery and gain it all back and then some. Why? Because the wait wasn’t the problem, the weight was the symptom of the underlying problem that was never addressed.

And so it is with many health problems. You keep referring to health problems interrupting homeostasis, but what we are trying to point out here is that most diagnoses are a SYMPTOM of the underlying problem, i.e. the body being in a chronically altered state.

Can the problem alter homeostasis? Yes, of course. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed by changing things so that the body can function correctly. It just requires a significant change over a very long period of time.

There was a study done in the 70s on stem cells, before most people even knew what a stem cell was. A researcher cloned a bunch of stem cells, so they all has exactly the same genetics. He took a bunch of them and put them in different solutions. And guess what happened? They turned into entirely different cells (different gene expression) depending on the solution (environment). They all had the same genes, but differentiated completely different depending on their environment.

We now know that a single gene can code up to 3000 variations of a protein. So a skin cell makes another skin cell, but how does it determine which of the 3000 it makes? Healthy or diseased, weak or strong? Environment.

So I’ll end with this, and that will be it, because we are going in circles yet again: Thousands of people have been cured from TMS. This was independently studied in the 90s, and at the time Sarno’s success rate was around 70%. Later he pre-screened patients, and the success rate went on even higher. So that alone shows that permanent change is possible.

You either accept TMS and work at it (find your own way if you have to. Use your own wisdom and maybe you’ll figure a new approach), or hunt down all the other possibilities.

Are there a few outliers out there with unknown causes for their pains? Sure, but those are very few and far between. It is extremely doubtful there you are unique in this regard. If you are hell-bent on it being a structural problem then only a structural approach will fix it. So find a good surgeon, or body worker, and I hope it works out. But if that’s the case, there is no need to post anymore.

You will never convince me at this point in career that these types of problems can’t be fixed in a large majority of the people. I have my own experience, and have helped many others through
this process. People can change, and they can heal, but the individual has to take the responsibility to do so.

You can stay a victim, stuck in the same reactive patterns, or you can get in the driver’s seat. Everyone I’ve ever met who is stuck only ever wanted to justify their ‘stuckness’.

‘My childhood, my genes, my family, my job, my unique body that is different than everyone else’s (I hear this at least a few times a week), my thing-that-isn’t-fixable’....it goes on.

Create anew, give the body an ideal internal environment on a regular basis, and absolute miracles can happen. Period.

I do not know what you mean by "give the body an ideal internal environment."

Is this choosing different thoughts and feelings? Isn't that the exact opposite of what Claire Weekes and Abraham Low advocate?

 

[RogueWave]

Thoughts, feelings, words, actions ALL come with biochemical releases (neurotransmitters, hormones, etc). Always.

These biochemicals (plus what you ingest and whatever is in the air you breathe) ARE what make up your internal environment.

Then the internal environment influences how you think. Full of adrenaline? You’re going to think anxious thoughts. Anxious thoughts cause the body to release more adrenaline. Keep going, uninterrupted, and it becomes habituated.

How to change the environment/biochemistry? Change the ‘you.’ @Balsa11 is doing this by teaching their body to relax, thereby causing less tension, and therefore less stress hormone release. And it perpetuates in a healthy way if they keep going. De-training the body out of a tense state, really.

Weekes and Low are also doing the same thing, just a different approach. Acceptance vs resistance. Shifting to acceptance IS creating a new state of being, which comes with a different set of biochemicals, which is a different internal environment.

Obsess, fixate, strain, fight, brace, worry, fear, etc...all cause bad biochemical releases that poison your internal environment, which then prevents normal functioning/healing.

Acceptance, letting go, relaxation, creating a more positive state...all flood the body with a healthy biochemistry, which support homeostasis and healing.

Stay stuck in the past thoughts, words, actions, and you will keep producing the same biochemistry over and over, and the same dysfunctions will persist.

Alright, I swear I’m done repeating this now

 

[miffybunny]

Yes it's a "top down" approach or "bottom up" approach...ideally both! The mind and body are one entity, so the more one can calm the mind and soothe the body, the faster the process. For anyone interested in the biochemistry aspect, Candace Pert's "Molecules of Emotions" is a great book. It's not an either/ or scenario. You know what IS an either/or scenario though? You either want to get better, or you want to defend your suffering and debate interminably. You either take responsibility, or look for reasons why everyone is wrong or why you are "different". Either cling to the victim narrative, or take the hero's journey. One can easily team up with other comrades in misery and wallow in the sufferers club. There are even t shirts for stuff like that.. "Fibro Warriors" for example. You can form a "Why TMS Doesn't Work" Wiki somewhere else. Wear it like a badge, or let the defenses and armor fall away. The choice is yours.