Dealing with symptoms

Hi Tennis Tom...
What you say makes a world of sense to me and is somewhat of a relief. We, TMS personality types (or maybe I should only speak for myself...) are very analytical and endlessly, exhaustively searching for the perfect answer, that "a-ha moment" that always seems just beyond our reach in an ever elusive hide-and-seek game. (fun as a kid, not so much in THIS adult version..)
I think I've dug into myself a little too much in the past week or so and actually aggravated my symptoms. They do move around alot, which seems evidentiary for TMS.. but mine seems to gravitate to locations where previous real injuries occurred.
I overthink EVERYTHING! I wish I could just soothe my frazzled mind amd nerves!
I might add, for the record that I've had some major upheavals in the past yr, including a move, and a job loss, medical issues, financial losses, and my roommate (who was like family) of 20 years left to go to work one morning and never came back.. Holmes-Raye is the stressor list, correct? I think my recent situations may qualify... So much sadness and truckloads of anxiety.

 

LL, everything you've said correlates with TMS--it's ALL in the books! Keep reading the books and the AV materials until you can recite them by rote--then sleep on it and let it soak into your sub-c.

You are suffering from "paralysis by analysis"--too much being in the mind. For soothing get some daily aerobic exercise to lower your "rage/soothe raio". It will help to strengthen your mind to deal with the TMS symptom shit and plow through them.

You do NOT need to do psycho-archeology to discover the "aha-moment"--TMS is a combination of a lifetime perhaps of mis-conditoning with great help-not of the collective meme and miss and dis-information from the medical/industrial/walgreens complex that profits at every turnstile as the patient goes down the assembly line of reacting to symptoms and not the causes of chronic pain.

All your bad recent life events are on the Holmes-Rahe list--there's the science behind TMS--take a look at the list.

Cheers & G'luck!
tt

 

My darling, in the end all roads lead to Rome. As @Tennis Tom explains, we may never really know what the heck is going on. Every now and then different people give the TMS school of thought a robust shakedown and it survives every time because at heart it is bang on the money.

Here is a comment I left on a thread the last time we kicked the theory about. The OP was contesting the validity of neuroscience:

***
"Sweetheart, Sarno couldn't espouse neuroplasticity because the field of neuroscience barely existed at the time he wrote. It was a subdivision of medicine with a nod to the psychological but there were pioneering doctors writing about the effects of emotion and tension on the body way back in the 40's and 50's.

I found an old notebook recently in which I wrote out a couple of quotes from The MindBody Prescription. Sarno is writing on the subject of conversion disorders and suggests they have the same underlying processes as TMS. It reads as follows:

"The crucial point is that the symptoms are not the result of damage or disease of specific body parts. They are perceived as weakness, pain, numbness or blindness only because the appropriate brain cells have been fired off...one set of brain cells is stimulated by other brain cells, in this case the stimulating cells are those having to do with powerful unconscious emotions...What's important is not the method the brain uses to produce symptoms; it is the fact that the brain is inducing symptoms...keeping Dr. Perts work in mind...it is only difficult to explain at a fundamental level, the level of the black box."

The accompanying diagram begins with The Limbic System and breaks down the process, passing through "the black box" through activation of the hypothalamus and onto the Autonomic system. At this point Sarno's own diagram says TMS happens.

What neuroscientists and pioneers like Schubiner and Hanscom are doing is simply explaining the black box that Sarno described. They have gained access and are exploring the magnificence and mystery of it and I am sure John Sarno keeps a friendly, interested eye on the discoveries. His brilliance is not diminished by science, only enhanced.

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift and it is wonderful. It is also wonderful that more and more people are healing due to these insights. This is cause for celebration.

Cast your eyes upward to the title of this forum. It is called The Mindbody SyndromeDiscussion Forum. Not the Tension Myositis Syndrome. All contributions are welcomed and embraced because they all add to our understanding of the black box and in so doing we are able to translate the wisdom of these discoveries into healing."

***

Sometimes people need a more expansive healing path or they need a more scientific basis on which to place their faith and for these folk the neuroscientific explanation works well. Neurological issues are not strictly structural and emotional elements are not wholly psychological, there is a huge and mysterious interplay.

Theories aside our woes are caused by our habits of thought (a.k.a. beliefs), our experiences and subsequent reactivity, our stress levels, our emotional repetoire and our general state of well being.

Psychological or neurological? Treat both these imposters the same because the healing remains the same.

Plum x

 

I love what you said about the "medical industrial Walgreens complex".. I feel wrung out and disillusioned by Western Medicine, countless drs, PTs (With the exception of MindbodyPT on this forum whose approach to physical issues incorporate both the MIND and body) ERs, nurses.. Even some of the counselors I have tried. None have really helped and if anything instilled and completely embedded major fear, and uncertainty about diagnosis(those damn MRI reports are terrifying!) and recovery, giving rise to my anxiety and general mistrust of doctors on top of the chronic pain and now... Depression with a generous dollop of panic attacks.. My "new normal"... Hating it.
All I can do is reach out for support from others who may have been stuck like this and pray for improvement... Trying to learn meditation as well. My brain doesn't want to cooperate... It's odd to refer to one's brain as though it's a separate entity, I always felt it was fully within my control. A bit frightening to think overwise.. (sub-c..)

 

I'm UOTE="plum, post: 79190, member: 1340"]My darling, in the end all roads lead to Rome. As @Tennis Tom explains, we may never really know what the heck is going on. Every now and then different people give the TMS school of thought a robust shakedown and it survives every time because at heart it is bang on the money.

Here is a comment I left on a thread the last time we kicked the theory about. The OP was contesting the validity of neuroscience:

***
"Sweetheart, Sarno couldn't espouse neuroplasticity because the field of neuroscience barely existed at the time he wrote. It was a subdivision of medicine with a nod to the psychological but there were pioneering doctors writing about the effects of emotion and tension on the body way back in the 40's and 50's.

I found an old notebook recently in which I wrote out a couple of quotes from The MindBody Prescription. Sarno is writing on the subject of conversion disorders and suggests they have the same underlying processes as TMS. It reads as follows:

"The crucial point is that the symptoms are not the result of damage or disease of specific body parts. They are perceived as weakness, pain, numbness or blindness only because the appropriate brain cells have been fired off...one set of brain cells is stimulated by other brain cells, in this case the stimulating cells are those having to do with powerful unconscious emotions...What's important is not the method the brain uses to produce symptoms; it is the fact that the brain is inducing symptoms...keeping Dr. Perts work in mind...it is only difficult to explain at a fundamental level, the level of the black box."

The accompanying diagram begins with The Limbic System and breaks down the process, passing through "the black box" through activation of the hypothalamus and onto the Autonomic system. At this point Sarno's own diagram says TMS happens.

What neuroscientists and pioneers like Schubiner and Hanscom are doing is simply explaining the black box that Sarno described. They have gained access and are exploring the magnificence and mystery of it and I am sure John Sarno keeps a friendly, interested eye on the discoveries. His brilliance is not diminished by science, only enhanced.

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift and it is wonderful. It is also wonderful that more and more people are healing due to these insights. This is cause for celebration.

Cast your eyes upward to the title of this forum. It is called The Mindbody SyndromeDiscussion Forum. Not the Tension Myositis Syndrome. All contributions are welcomed and embraced because they all add to our understanding of the black box and in so doing we are able to translate the wisdom of these discoveries into healing."

***

Sometimes people need a more expansive healing path or they need a more scientific basis on which to place their faith and for these folk the neuroscientific explanation works well. Neurological issues are not strictly structural and emotional elements are not wholly psychological, there is a huge and mysterious interplay.

Theories aside our woes are caused by our habits of thought (a.k.a. beliefs), our experiences and subsequent reactivity, our stress levels, our emotional repetoire and our general state of well being.

Psychological or neurological? Treat both these imposters the same because the healing remains the same.

Plum x[/QUOTE]
As usual, Plum leaves me in awe with her compassion and wisdom all delivered in beautiful eloquence... Thank you Plum. You know? It may not be my place to say, but it's intended only as a heartfelt compliment. You may have missed your calling. You would have been a superior counselor, motivational speaker, teacher... So many possibilities... You have a gift.
How gracious and kind you and all the others on this site are to give, not just of their time, but of their hearts... To help others, whose pain is sometimes beyond description.. I'm grateful to you for soothing some of my fears away and helping me cling to that mustard seed of hope..
With love, Nancy

 

Nancy,

Bless you for those wonderfully kind words. I am very touched by your compliment. It echoes something my partner said to me last night for the umpteenth time, a comment made after I spent over an hour talking with a woman who suffers greatly with pain and many mysterious health problems. People gravitate to me. My partner jokes about the way he'll leave me alone for a minute and when he comes back I am knee-deep in intimate conversation with a stranger. This is how it is...and I love it. I can only describe it as the fulfilment of a sacred contract. Those who need some reassurance or help naturally come to me without all the rigmorole and constraints of professional relationships. Mostly though my passion is to support (and be supported by) the huge and invisible army of kin-carers/caregivers who so silently engage in the safekeeping of those society deems an inconvenience. It wasn't always this way. I struggled with caring for a long time because it obliterates who you were and the life you had, yet this is nothing compared to the wretchedness inflicted upon your charge. At heart this circles death and our cultural refusal to embrace it intimately. Everything I am and am becoming is because I am getting braver at looking death in the eye and seeing reflected there the tragedy of choosing not to love. Sorry if that sounds a little grandiose but it is the ultimate truth and we can distract ourselves with booze, movies, work and pain or we can love deeply, hurt deeply, live deeply. This is the gift of TMS and the good souls here who so graciously give of their time and wisdom know this well.

Much love xxx