Confused...Please help...

Hi VKA,

If you have the opportunity to see Dr. Schechter or any other TMS physician I would recommend doing it. While you don't have to see a TMS doc to recover, doing so may help you accept the diagnosis and overcome any doubt you may have.

For the most part journaling is designed to help you tap into your repressed emotions. Not every journaling session will have the same emotional response. The key is to just be present and allow whatever emotion or feeling you may have rise to the surface and feel it. It may be helpful to try and place yourself back in the event you are journaling about to help you tap into the emotions.

You could try to think back to the event and write down three things that make you angry and three things that make you sad about it, and then write a sentence or two about each one.

Don't worry too much if you don't have an emotional response. It is not that you are necessarily doing anything wrong. Recovery is a journey. If you are patient and consisent in your approach you will recover.

 

We are not docs here either, so take what we say with a grain of salt. I have heard that people who have been diagnosed with a possible iliotibial band syndrome and Sacroilitis recover using the TMS approach. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that there are a whole list of things that can pop up in an MRI that do not necessarily cause a structural problem. A lot of physicians will point these things out just because they don't have another explanation.

@VKA - It is completely normal for symptoms to increase when being active. This is usually because our unconscious mind knows that we are on to it, so it will increase the symptoms to get us to think about our symptoms more. One of the best ways to overcome this is to think psychological and to not focus on your symptoms. I know this is really hard to do when you are in pain, but the sooner you can begin to change what you focus on, the sooner you will recover.

 

First, a lot of people don't actually need to identify what the exact repressed emotion is. For most, and I include myself in this, simply understanding that we have repressed emotions is enough to heal. I have always intepreted this part of Monte's approach as being in response to how some people obsess over finding THE major, very deep, repressed emotion causing their pain. The idea here is that if someone journals long enough or thinks about their past long enough then they will gain some sort of enlightenment about their repressed emotions and will be healed immediatley. For one, I see this as looking externally for healing, i.e. through journaling. Journaling is great, but it alone won't heal you. You have to accept the diagnosis and change how you view your symptoms. We all have a tendency to be obsessive and perfectionistic in regards to our treatment, but this only keeps us in pain. In order to recover we need to let go and be more allowing.

Sarno always described the process as being 1/3 childhood/past, 1/3 present stress, and 1/3 personality, and I totally agree with this. One thing to keep in mind though is that the past influences how you react to situations and stresses today. It invovles understanding how your thoughts were developed. For more on this check out the June 9th Webinar with Alan Gordon. Can current stress create pain? Yes, but the way you react to it is determined by past events.

One thing the webinar link above discusses is changing the negative and chronic thoughts we have. This is something that I believe Monte calls the chronic patterns of type A personality. Others simply call this TMSing. This can be so many different things from, ignoring your own needs, thinking you are worthless, thinking your are broken or a number of any things that keep you in pain. The key to overcoming this is to understand what your negative thoughts are, and begin to identify when you start TMSing. When you notice that you are thinking you can't do something or catestrophizing, take a breath, ask yourself how you feel, and then change your thoughts to something more positive. One technique you could try is Guided Imagery, Mindfulness, or Conscious Breathing. Any of these will help you bring your focus back to the present and turn your thoughts to something more postive.

I want to also add that if you have TMS, you have repressed emotions. You can repress stuff in the past and in the present. Understanding that these repressed emotions are causing your symptoms is the key to recovering.