Clay Warnick TMS Story

A couple of months ago I posted a link to a newspaper article about how a journalist overcame TMS. Well, the author of that article, Clay Warnick, was recently interviewed and he talks about TMS and his recovery. I thought I would share the you tube clip of it.



Personally, I thought he was really courageous to discuss his symptoms in such a public forum. He does a great job at going over the basics of TMS and touches upon several key issues on how to get better. The main one is that knowledge is key to recovery. Clay recommend reading Healing Back Pain and the Great Pain Deception. Like a lot of other people, he thought HBP was Sarno’s best book and thought GPD was a moving memoir of someone who was able to recover.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview was that Clay mentioned that you do not need to do psychoarcheology to get better. I thought this was really interesting and something that is pretty similar to my own experience. You don’t have to actually find the major thing you are repressing, but just by going through the process of finding it, you will signal to your brain that you don’t need to have symptoms any more. I never tried to uncover the main event/emotion that I was repressing. I really just tried to gain knowledge and challenge my beliefs that I was fragile and injured. I just tried to be more open and allowing and I got better. This doesn’t mean that journaling is not effective. Journaling is a key part of exploring your emotions, but you don’t need to use it to dig up deeply repressed events or emotions. It can, however, be really effective at understanding why you started repressing and the patterns in which you do repress. Recovering is not about finding that specific thing, but more about understanding how your past influences how you react to situations today.

I also really liked that Clay said You have to get off the couch. This really reminded me of my own recovery in that my biggest progress came when I started using the computer again and being active. Clay mentioned that

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“Whenever my arm would hurt, I would go play the piano. I would engage that area to show the brain, ‘I know what’s going on, it’s not biological, it’s psychological.”​

This is such a great way to view your symptoms and why I have always felt that being active is so key. It seems odd to say when my arm hurts I am going to go use it, but doing so really does tell our unconscious mind that you know what’s going on. Actions speak louder than words, and being active and not avoiding the pain, really does tell your mind that you know you have a psychological issue.

The one thing I really related to the most, though, was when Clay talked about having flare-ups and relapses. He mentions that he would have these symptoms pop up from time to time and always think that this is a real biological problem. I have noticed little symptoms pop up, and the first thought I always have is that it is a biological problem, even though it is just TMS. This is how TMS works. It will only create a symptom that we will think is a physical problem, so we are very likely to always try and treat it physically at first. Part of this may have to do with our personality and how TMSers just don’t want to admit that they have repressed emotions.

We have to continue to remind ourselves at how tricky TMS is, and when we have a new symptom we need to remember, how it works. Part of this involves being around people who know about TMS. There is a lot of benefit in interacting with other people who are familiar with TMS. Just because we have recovered once, doesn’t mean that we won’t develop new, smaller symptoms in the future. For me, interacting with this community has really helped me think psychological about new symptoms and to view them as a sign to investigate my emotions. Our community can help people as they first learn about TMS, but also give them an outlet to continue to think psychological and explore their emotions in the future. At least for me, it has taken away the stigma of having psychosomatic symptoms.

Anyways, I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this clip. It is kind of long, but is really moving.

Forest