What to do after pain is gone

Okay, so I’ve gone through what is now my third major lapse of pain. The first round was a year of thinking physical and believing I was injured etc etc and found Sarno and it all made sense. My second issue of back pain came 3-4 years later and it was a challenge of getting it resolved. I’ve been dealing with another lapse of pain since January and it’s fading the more I have been accepting what it is and journaling. So I am at a point where the pain will fade at some point and I know it will, but what I am realizing is that I am not changing my ways of thinking to prevent issues in the future. I was initially under the belief that me knowing what TMS was would be enough to solve the issues, but after this second relapse I’m realizing that I do nothing with getting out my unconscious rage. It builds up aver the course of time then I have pain again.. does anyone have a structure program they do journaling when feeling well, or do you set aside time and just think about things in the unconscious perspective... kind of curious because while I know what the pain is, and the cause of it, it doesn’t stop it from happening. I know it will fade, but I feel like constant journaling maybe a better approach of getting out the issues instead of allowing the repression

 

Yes. I use the 4th step on resentment/fear/relationships from the big book off AA...as a maintenance tool and when I have an issue as well. Officially when it's maintenance it's called the 10th step, but its the same thing.

this is one of the better explanations of it: http://www.bigbookrecovery.com/index.php/step-four (Big Book Recovery - Step Four)

the TL;DR is who I am mad at, what they did, how it affected me and where I was to blame. I use that regularly and haven't had any relapses in a long time....TMS or drinking. As an added benefit, it has kept me in a pretty good place in life in general.

 

Hey Dharn,

Sorry that it keeps coming back but you know the reason.

For me it was mainly miscommunication with my wife and overbearing parents. I talk about the steps I took to deal with both in the last chapter of Rapid Recovery from Back and Neck Pain. Once I resolved those issues, it's been good for the past 28 years.

You need to look at internal sources as well as external sources of your anger that cause tension and pain.

Do you worry a lot? Do you have negative thought patterns that keep repeating in your head? Do you say to yourself, "If that has not happened, this wouldn't have? These are some of the mental habits common among TMSers that leads to tension and pain. You can do a self assessment to determine some of your sources of internal tension using this TMS questionnaire I develop based on working with TMSers for many years.

Questionnaire | rapidrecovery (fredamir.com)

I explains how you can eliminate the 5 most common ones in my new book, Vanquish Stress. Here's an excerpt:
Excerpt | rapidrecovery (fredamir.com)

As for external source of your tension, you need to determine are they at home, at work, and so on? Once you determine that what you can start looking for better ways of dealing with them.

TMS was a great learning experience for me. I saw it as an opportunity to learn and grow in ways it would not have happened it I had not gone through disabling chronic pain.

Hope you too will discover more effective ways to deal with internal and external sources of tension in your life.

 

I love both these responses.

I think it is important to look inside, see your reactions to external events, feel more, write more about them.

And, as Fred implies --to my read, how can you handle things better, directly with others. There will always be conflicts and the TMS personality is very identified with the danger of confronting, or being itself with others. So part of the long-term solution, in my opinion is to gently practice more freedom and truth of expression of yourself with others in your life. This might or might not mean changing things too. But the start is being willing to be more honest with yourself, then let this go outward as needed to clarify relationships, and then if changes need to be made, they will come.

This basic work is so important ---and life affirming, and not easy! These elements are important along with the cognitive behavioral "I know about TMS, my tension, etc" that you already have operational from your long experience.

 

I would second what @Baseball65 and others said. You need to develop that mindful approach and keep reminding yourself to examine your life as you go. It is so easy to go back to usual ways of doing things.

The best rule I have established for myself is to take a pause in every stressful situation before reacting, even if it is just 15-30 seconds. Breathe, slow down, think about what is happening in your mind at this moment and whether there are other options to handle the situation. It reduces my catastrophic thinking significantly. Sometimes I am amazed what an impact it makes on how my life situations turn out. The more you practice it, the better you get at pausing yourself.

 

Thanks for all the reply’s, I’m understanding more about the actual process of TMS and understanding it as well as my own emotions more and more this time around. I get how I keep the pain around once it arrives by giving it attention as well as ignoring it instead of focusing on the emotional side and this just causing more issues. I’ve worked more on the emotions this time around and understand how the emotions lead to the start of the symptoms but how you handle them is what gets them to fade. I’m almost at a point though where I’m beginning to think that by letting the pain rise up in the first place I’m not addressing something that happens daily in my life, it’s almost as if my reservoir takes a long time to fill but when it does finally reach its tipping point the pain is going to run its course no matter how I address things. I noticed that my first run of all of this I easily cured myself after having the pain for over a year, the second time it took a solid 6-9 months for things to start to get close to better then it all faded away slowly, it’s been 6 months now and things are way better and better each day. I’m noticing that if I have an up tick I can find the emotions in the moment causing it, now I’m just trying to find a good routine that can help me just not let the reservoir fill… I plan on trying to journal more consistently and think of my stresses as well as think about how the unconscious would see the things that aren’t considered stresses in my life. Up until this time I never really got the emotional aspect of all of this and instead just understood and grasped the concept of emotions causing the pain, so my belief just got things to fade, so I’m hoping if I’m more mindful of the emotions through the unconscious lenses I can prevent future relapses of pain