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So I recently posted this as a response to a thread on the forum. But I wanted to share it with everyone as well, so I will copy and paste it below. Hope this helps.

Here is a list of the most important things ive learned about tms and healing from your pain.

1. First step is to rule out anything structurally wrong. In my opinion its a good thing if you have been checked out by a doctor, had an mri and they cant figure out what is wrong. Once you have ruled out everything else, all thats left is TMS. When your doctor tells you to be wary of someone curing your chronic pain, he is simply saying "Well I cant figure it out so theres no way someone else can help you." This is the beauty of this website and all of the TMS literature. We have proof that thousands of people have ignored what their doctors have told them, stopped all the physical therapy and pain medication, and attributed their pain to TMS and healed 100%. Not that its his/her fault, but dont let your doctor's ignorance to the true method of healing chronic pain keep you worried that its something else.

2. The absolute best advice I have received from anybody on healing is from Steve Ozanich. (He wrote the book "The Great Pain Deception" which is a must read if you have chronic pain.) I had a 3 hour skype session with Steve and the one thing that really stuck with me was him telling me to FIX MY LIFE. Now, this doesnt mean remove all stress from your life. We know this is nearly impossible. What it means is start doing things that make you happy. Fill your life with excitement and joy day after day and keep your mind concentrating on how happy you are instead of how much the pain sucks.(Dont mistake this for repressing your emotions. Continue to be aware of, and work on your inner anger. But also let yourself be happy, and start enjoying life again.) Be grateful for everything you have and everything you can do. Things could always be much worse. Steve is a great example of this. For years he would spend much of his time crawling around on the floor with sweat pouring off of him because the pain was so bad. He had pain in every place imaginable. Yet he is now completely healed and living a very happy life. When he first told me this I thought to myself, "How can I do things that make me happy when im in so much pain?" The answer is to do them anyway. Do whatever you want to do, to the best of your ability. This leads to point number 3.

3. Working on outcome independence. Stop worrying about your pain every time you do anything that involves moving or causes pain in general. Go for a walk because you want to, and tell yourself that it doesnt matter whether or not it hurts after. Success isnt measured on your pain level after your walk. Success is measured on how little you care about your pain. If your in really bad pain, walk for a few minutes the first time. Do this for a few days and then try walking for 10 minutes. If it hurts a little more, so what? you just walked further than you have in a long time. Be proud of that. Gradually increase the distance every day until before you know it your walking a mile, and still not caring how much it hurts after. The same goes for things like sitting or even sleeping on your sides if you normally can only get through the night sleeping on your back. The key is to not care about the pain. Dont let it stop you from doing what makes you happy. Eventually youll be doing these things without even thinking about it. This is very important in the healing process. When you first start dealing with chronic pain, you are worried and give in to the pain. From there you start convincing yourself that everything you do hurts. After a while you have trained the neural pathways in your brain to be conditioned to expect pain from anything you do. It takes a long time to condition your brain to think this way, and it takes just as long to decondition your brain to stop thinking this way. This is one thing that Dr. Sarno got wrong. He gives examples of people healing in a week or two, or maybe a month. These are rare cases. Healing from TMS takes a while and you must work at it. Everybody is different. We all vary in terms of how afraid we are of our pain, how easily we can accept TMS as the cause, how long weve been in pain, and how much effort we are willing to put forth in order to heal. (BUT, dont try too hard. Do the emotional work for a while, and then work on FIXING YOUR LIFE so you can stop thinking about your pain every 3 minutes.)

4. This advice comes from personal experience. Before I learned about TMS I was completely depressed, in a serious amount of pain, and extremely confused as to what was wrong with me. I am in great shape and im only 24. Of course your early twenties is an extremely stressful period in life and now I was also deathly afraid of being crippled by this pain for the rest of my life. I spent most of each day laying in bed and when I wasnt laying down, I was standing up with ice packs on my back and hip and taking about 10 pills a day between vicodin and muscle relaxers. I was also going to PT twice a week just to stay mobile enough to do little things around the house. Literally everything I did hurt. Reaching out to turn on the faucet hurt. Talking loudly hurt. Sitting was impossible. Bending over was impossible. Lifting anything was impossible. One day while I was laying there desperately searching online for ways to cure chronic pain, I luckily found Dr. Sarno's book "Healing Back Pain." From that day forward my life had changed forever. I was lucky enough to truly understand what he was trying to say in his book. In the next week I read all of his books, and the week after that I read Steve Ozanich's book. After a month or so of following the instructions that they both gave, I had made enough progress to start lightly running and working out. This was amazing to me as I had felt completely useless for almost a year. I couldnt believe how quickly I had made that much progress, which turned out to not necessarily be a good thing. From that point on I expected to keep healing at that same pace. I thought to myself, "Wow, at this rate ill be completely healed in a couple more weeks!" WRONG. From everything I read on this website, it seems that its very normal to make a lot of progress quickly, and then you hit a wall. That is when the real work starts. For me, like most people with TMS, I am very perfectionistic and I wanted my pain gone ASAP. I also wanted to know exactly what to do in order to get rid of it. This was a mistake. You must expect that you will have good days and bad days. You will have good weeks and bad weeks. You may heal in a couple months. You may heal in a year or more. Everybody heals at their own pace. Everybody heals in different ways. The key for me is taking the time to recognize that although it may be slow, im still continuing to make progress. I still have times where I let the "what-ifs" occupy my thoughts. But the more you train yourself to not think this way, the more progress you make. Every couple of weeks I realize "Hey, it doesnt hurt to sit down anymore"..."Wow, a month ago I could barely touch my knees, now I can bend over and touch halfway down my shins!"..."I just realized I can get in and out of my car without it hurting anymore."..."No way! I just ran a mile!." Of course until your fully healed, you will be aware of your pain multiple times throughout the day. But looking for these improvements is very helpful when trying to fully convince yourself that your on the right track. Focusing on how little youve healed day after day doesnt work. Letting time take its course and realizing here and there that youve made more progress is how TMS healing takes place.

I like to compare TMS healing to going on a long hike. The hardest part is getting yourself up off the couch and on the trail. Once you start, theres no looking back. Some parts of the trail will be harder than others. Sometimes things will go smoothly. Sometimes youll think "what the hell am I doing out here?!" Sometimes youll turn a corner and think, "I must be almost there!" And then you hike another mile and again think, "Ive got to be close!" But you just have to keep going until you finish the hike. Once your there, you can look back at what you just accomplished and feel amazing about yourself. I will be there soon, and so will many other people. Be kind to yourself. Keep the faith. Your on the right path.