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Glad you asked, Forest. I think your comments about past events are right on. The reason I chose to explore my past traumatic childhood events is because I could clearly see how they were affecting me STILL in the present. I am not generally in favor of the notion of digging up past events just for the sake of doing it. I think it should only be done when they are clearly repressed and are causing repression in the present, as in my case. For example, my husband, who had a difficult childhood, had years of CBT. His therapists decided that they would not disturb those memories, just help him deal with present issues. This approach seemed to work for him, although perhaps not completely, because he has a lot of trouble sleeping and constant unpleasant dreams.

To answer your question, I did some journaling, but not a lot. EFT helped tremendously. I finally think that I have successfully got the TMS under control (I say under control, but I will always be prone to it) by really believing in the concept that my emotions are creating the pain, the pain is harmless no matter how the symptoms shift or how bad or scary they appear, and FEELING and ACKNOWLEDGING my feelings no matter how unacceptable they are to my conscious mind. I really had to face my "shadow" and allow it to exist, realizing that I am only human with all my faults. This is not easy to do. Perhaps I can provide a recent example. I have been pretty much pain free for the last 5 months, with the exception of some short recurrences of pain/other symptoms (the symptom imperative). These relapses would last from 15 minutes to several hours. But they always disappeared. Basically, the unconscious employs a pain strategy to distract and I have developed a conscious strategy to deal effectively with these relapses. I recently am dealing with worries about my husband's diabetes, one of my dogs was killed by a car, and my 2 other dogs are both chronically sick, mostly due to genetic problems. I also think they stress because of my emotional issues. Anyway, I had a terrifically bad relapse last week after we had to drive almost clear across Panama to meet a Costa Rican surgeon who could potentially help our one dog with a tumor in his mouth. Travel is a big stressor for me anyway. But I am please to report that the TMS attack only lasted for about a day and a half, after both back pain and allergies returned. Here is how I did it.

I completely accept that the symptoms are TMS related and are harmless. So when they returned, I expected it because of the stress I was under. I was not at all fearful and did not look for physical causes, just told myself this was just more of the TMS. To accomplish this, the belief in the TMS origin of symptoms must be unshakable. The minute you start extrapolating the symptoms beyond the current moment or begin to feel fearful, you are starting to lose the battle. You must believe completely that, just because you are experiencing symptoms in THIS moment, the next moment/hour/day can and will be different. This belief in constant change must be unshakable. Even if you get different symptoms in the next moment/hour/day, this represents forward progress. I also needed to completely allow all of my attitudes and feelings, although extremely conflicting, to surface into consciousness and give them space. For example, part of me is saying that I will do anything, no matter how inconvenient or expensive, to save my dog and help my husband. Another part is saying that I don't need this aggravation in my life, let's just put the dog down so we don't have to deal with this and my husband is to blame for his diabetes because he won't stop eating sweets. The former, of course, is completely unacceptable to my conscious mind and would normally produce guilt, which would also be repressed. I allowed space for that too. In other words, I allowed myself all of the divergent emotions and attitudes into consciousness, looked at both the good and bad sides of me and accepted all of it. I realize that I am not a perfect being, but who ever said we were supposed to be perfect anyway. We just should do the best we can, given the flaws in our nature. I think for the first time in my life, I am really not trying to be perfect. I realize how futile that is no matter what others have to say about it. Others are not perfect either, although they may be good at deceiving themselves that they are or strive to be. The next morning, I awoke without symptoms. I noticed that I was without symptoms, instead of recreating them again by looking for them. I realized for the first time that, in the past, during periods when my TMS symptoms were bad, that I often awoke without symptoms, but didn't notice because I would always immediately bring them back by looking for them or feeling fearful that they would be back. Now I don't particularly expect them back and I don't FEAR them coming back. If they do come back, they come back as a friend, not a foe, as a warning and an opportunity for further self knowledge to happen. Either way, I am a winner. You cannot fear or deny symptoms, you must allow and work with them for the self knowledge they have to offer. If you can do this successfully, you will never fear them again.

I still think I have a lot of emotional problems, but what has changed, because of my experience with TMS, is that now I am willing to clearly see and deal with them so that they won't ravage my body. I have probably beat the TMS, but it has taught me that there is still a lot of work to do.