• Alan has completed the new Pain Recovery Program. To read or share it, use this updated link: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/
  • Welcome to the new TMS Wiki server! Things aren't finished yet: email is not set up, so notification and password-reset emails don't go out, and new registrations are paused until email is installed. Details and updates are in this thread (click here). Locked out? Email tmswikisignups@gmail.com from the address where you receive TMS Wiki notifications.

Day 35 What part of PPD do you think is frustrating or silly?

JoeB1

JoeB1

Peer Supporter
Is there something about the theory you don't accept? What personality trait do you think makes you feel this way?

Actually, PPD couldn't make any more sense. It fits perfectly and like most of us here, I saw myself on every page of Healing Back Pain.

The frustrating part is that it hasn't sunk into my subconscious mind yet. It's been fighting for it's life ever since I started the SEP. But there's no question, I am definitely doing much better than when I first started out.

The silly part is this tactic of the subconscious mind. The body is supposed to work for survival, but PPD kills the spirit. That part makes no sense.
 
JoeB1 said:
The silly part is this tactic of the subconscious mind. The body is supposed to work for survival, but PPD kills the spirit. That part makes no sense.
Click to expand...
Tell me about it, Joe! I've been working on this one for four years. Let me know what you think of my thoughts:

1. Our brains are still very primitive - they have not kept pace with the development of modern society, security, safety, and health.
2. Back in primitive times, mere survival was a daily struggle which took all of our energy. If you spent time and energy thinking about negative emotions, you literally might not survive. The brain as it evolved (and who ever said evolution was efficient?*) somehow recognized that negative emotions were life-threatening, and it came up with a method for repressing them. Pain! Pain keeps you alert, a little bit on edge, and not bogged down "in your head".
3. Back then we only lived long enough to breed and raise the next generation - age 30 would have been old, and TMS symptoms wouldn't have been particularly distracting during those few years, not compared to the daily struggle for survival.
4. Neuroscientists tell us that our primitive brains are still constantly scanning the horizon for danger. This does not serve us well in the modern world. It does, however, explain why we get so upset when we're driving.

* Evolution may be inefficient, but the bumper sticker I've always wanted would say "It may have been designed, but what makes you think it was intelligent?"
 
Haha, ultimately, I still believe in intelligent design, though, and more that it's the world today that is punishingly flawed. And those are some interesting ideas there, especially number 4. Something occurred to me recently after listening to one of Alan Gordon's recordings on the recovery program. He talks about how one of the clients were not soothed as a child and that they learned that world is not a safe place. What I realized was, (while watching the news because it's always on during lunch at work) that after seeing nothing but horrible things on the news for years and years, that that's how my subconscious "learned" that world isn't a safe place. And I wonder how many of our subconscious minds here have also "learned" that the same thing from the same place.
 
JoeB1 said:
after seeing nothing but horrible things on the news for years and years, that that's how my subconscious "learned" that world isn't a safe place. And I wonder how many of our subconscious minds here have also "learned" that the same thing from the same place.
Click to expand...
Put me on that list, Joe.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top