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Okay, confession, I wrote this question myself.

Here's the deal. During group supervision last week, we were talking about the importance of outcome independence in overcoming conditioned responses (a conditioned response is when a symptom becomes linked with a specific physical position or activity...back pain with sitting, knee pain with walking, etc.)

One of our superstar interns mentioned that she has had hand/wrist pain every time she types or texts, and that this has been going on for two years. She'd previously overcome several different symptoms from a TMS approach, but for some reason she found herself feeling on a gut level that this one might be structural.

So we looked at the evidence:
A.) She has a history of other TMS symptoms.
B.) The pain came on when she was going through a very stressful time.
C.) The pain came on in both hands simultaneously.

The third point is the biggest tip off. The extremities evolve independently from each other, and, with the exception of a physical trauma, the chance of pain developing in both hands at the same time is very low.

So we knew it was TMS, and even though she may have been doubting that on a gut level, intellectually, she was sure of it. This is important, you need to have confidence in the TMS diagnosis before outcome independence will work.

Anyway, I did a 7 minute outcome independence exercise with her, having her type while I was talking, and by the end of it her pain had completely disappeared!

Unbeknowst to me (hence all the swearing...) one of our other interns recorded the whole thing.

So here it is, possibly my favorite audio clip we've recorded:

The Successful Integration of Outcome Independence in Overcoming Long-Standing Conditioned Responses
aka
How To Get Rid of Your Pain in 7 Minutes

Click here to download the mp3 audio file​

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