Why mind body disorder now and not in the past?

[dabatross]

One common theme Ive read in TMS books are things like "People worked on typewriters in the 20s and 40s for hours and hours a day with no pain and now all of a sudden starting in the 80s RSI is a huge thing for everyone." Another example would be scholars, people who read tons of books, I dont remember reading anything about people in the past who did lots of near work like reading and stuff having eye strain issues which is now called CVS. They blame it on the computer now causing the eye strain. The question is how come this has started only in the past 30 years or so? What changed in society that created mind body epidemics like this that wasn't there previously? Was it the internet and the easy access to information that people could talk about the pain they were having and start exhibiting it?

I remember reading on another forum a while ago that a guy wouldn't sit next to a radio thing on the ceiling at his job because he thought it gave off radiation. He was deathly afraid of this thing and the technician who put it in said its absolutely impossible for it to give off radiation but this guy was convinced positively of it.

There is a book called something like "Total Health at the computer" that i've read in the past that talks about computer vision syndrome and its from 1993... i had never heard about this book at all and ive been working on the computer for around 17 years until i started getting eye strain problems. i didn't even know this term CVS existed until this all started. So I think its the media and the internet that spreads these problems/syndromes like wildfire.. all you have to read is on one forum somebody else got pain from doing an activity, like working on the computer, and then you start worrying about it and begin to exhibit the symptoms yourself. What do you guys think about all this? Why now and not in the past?

 

[veronica73]

I absolutely agree. I think it's easier to get information on these conditions because of the Internet, etc. I also think there is a lot more uncertainty in the world right now--I think Dr. Sarno talks about the "9/11 Syndrome," a huge uptick in psychosomatic illness since 9/11.

There were psychosomatic conditions in the past too, but often different from what we have now. For instance, my grandmother often talked about girls fainting when she was growing up. I've never seen someone faint, but back then it was not that unusual.

 

[Forest]

What changed in society that created mind body epidemics like this that wasn't there previously?

I don't think anything has really changed. Psychosomatic illness goes back hundreds of years. It is just different symptoms. As Veronica mentioned it use to be fainting, and then Ulcers were really big in the 70s-80s. Once people started to understand that Ulcers were caused by stress they became rarer. Now hardly anyone complains of having an Ulcer. Instead it is back pain or some form of RSI.

Why do these symptoms change and others become "in vogue?" It all comes down to what people think is a structural problem. The unconscious will only create a symptoms that you think is a serious structural condition. The whole point of TMS is to distract you from your repressed emotions. If you knew that the condition was based in your mind then it's purpose goes away.

People always think that a new technology or event are the cause of their symptoms. Computers have taken a bad wrap for "causing" people all sorts of chronic symptoms, because people just don't know about TMS and the role the mind is playing in creating their symptoms.

Howard Schubiner wrote a blog post called What is Mind Body Syndrome which addresses this . In the article he writes

It is important to realize that Mind Body Syndrome is not a new diagnosis. When Dr. Sarno described Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) in the 1970's, he created a new name for a syndrome that has actually been known for hundreds of years. I agree with Dr. Sarno that we do need a name for this syndrome (and I will explain why in future blogs). However, when you look at the history of medicine you will find many examples of MBS. I highly recommend the book by the University of Toronto historian, Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Medicine. Dr. Shorter uses the term psychosomatic, which is commonly used in medicine, but a term that I do not prefer to use because it has a connotation of being unkind to the patients, implying that they are somehow less than normal, or somewhat “crazy.” As I often say, I know that people with MBS are not crazy because I have MBS and I know I'm not crazy.

In any case, the reason people get MBS, or physical (or psychological symptoms) due to emotions which are often unconscious, is that they are human. They have a human brain that processes emotions in certain ways and they have human existences that often cause great stress in our lives. That is why there has always been MBS and there will always be MBS. However, the type of symptoms that the brain creates in our bodies does change over time.

For example, we know (courtesy of Dr. Shorter) that a common manifestation of great stress and emotions in the 1600's and 1700's was the development of paralysis. A story that captures this is about a young man who was beaten, abused, and berated his whole life by his father. When he was approximately 25 years old, while being berated once again, he had a great surge of energy and suddenly went to hit his father with his fist. At that very moment, his arm became paralyzed and he couldn't move it at all. We know that he didn't suddenly have a stroke because he regained use of the arm fully within a short time. And therefore we know that the cause of the paralysis was a combination of emotions, which were all unconscious (i.e. he was unaware that he was feeling them), and the main emotions were anger, fear and guilt. In those centuries, doctors did not consider this type of reaction to be caused by psychological factors, but rather some kind of physical condition. In the 1900's, doctors learned how to tap on the tendons of an arm or leg and determine immediately if there was a stroke or some other severe neurologic condition. We now call these reflexes, the deep tendon reflexes, and use them all the time. When they are normal, in someone with sudden paralysis, we know that there is no neurologic condition and that the cause of the paralysis is due to MBS.

Since doctors have been able to use deep tendon reflexes, the number of people with paralysis due to stress and emotions has dropped drastically so that it's relatively rare. Why? The cause of MBS is in the mind, in our unconscious mind that is trying to help us cope with great stress. The unconscious mind will find some physical symptoms to use when necessary and it will choose a physical symptom that makes some kind of sense. And typically, it will choose a physical symptom that will not be seen as “psychological.” Since paralysis is now seen as psychological, it is rarely used by the unconscious mind. We are more likely now to get Back Pain, headaches, fatigue, and stomach pains, which are more likely to be seen as physical conditions and therefore more acceptable to our self and to the doctors.
This is one reason why there are so many people today with these chronic symptoms and often they do not respond to biomedical treatments. Since so few doctors are aware of MBS, they often are not treating the underlying cause of the symptoms and therefore the treatment is trying to cope with the symptoms of the problem and is less likely to be successful.

To your health,

Howard Schubiner, MD

 

[dabatross]

interesting forest i hadn't read that from shubiner before. that pretty much sums it up then. the symptoms just shift to different things over the years. since computers are a relatively new thing to society its a perfect place to put the blame for symptoms getting worse. typewriters 90 years ago didn't cause RSI but computer keyboards in the 80s all of a sudden did. people read books for centuries and i dont recall any accounts of having a syndrome of eyestrain like computer vision syndrome that we have today now with computers. they try to blame the computer monitor, being up close to work, etc. as the reason behind the pain. some people (i know ive heard this from enrique) can work on computers 8-10 hours a day or even more than that and have no eyestrain while other people like me get it from doing nothing.

 

[BruceMC]

It could be, however, that cyberspace, by its very nature as a medium, tends to simultaneously bombard the psyche with emotionally charged events that cause the TMS patient to over-react with the fight-flight-freeze syndrome that Peter Levine talks about. If you're constantly reacting to such information as news of catastrophes like a Tsunami or an earthquake or a flood at the same time you're receiving inputs about various heinous crimes and atrocities, cyberspace could be creating a perfect environment for the development of psychogenic illnesses. I'm just throwing this out there for the purpose of generating a dialogue and am not really certain that my thesis is correct, but there may be something to this me thinks. What's that Marshall Mcluhen used to say about the medium being the message? Seems like the computer does bombard us with all kinds of random bits of information that could, in susceptible individuals, trigger a trauma response.

 

[veronica73]

We now have unlimited access to information about everything in the world...and this is still relatively new so we might not know how to manage it. Just reading your post made me think of one of the "benefits" to the pain I thought was structurally based--it made me greatly reduce my time online so I was reading less of the news.