Exhibiting the symptoms you worry about

Getting to the point of not caring about the pain begins and ends with accepting 100% the TMS diagnosis. Some kind of self talk can be helpful in getting to that point. I am starting to really like the idea that Enrique mentioned in the I'm a TMSer Triathelete about writing out scorecard where you write down reasons you have TMS. Reading over something like this everyday will really help the message sink in.

I have also been a really big fan of Dr. Sarno's Daily Reminders. You don't need to make affirmations very complicated. Sarno's daily reminders are very simple and reading through the them a couple times a day will be beneficial. If you haven't seen it yet, I would also recommend checking out the wiki page on Affirmations.

Veronica and Dabatross, both - what have you done to specifically address your anxiety? Last year, after I read the Divided Mind and started the Structured Ed Program, I read Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes, (recommended by a number of wiki users) and I think it really helped me in combination with accepting the TMS diagnosis. She wrote the book years before Dr. Sarno started writing, but she addresses all of our weird physical symptoms, as manifestations of anxiety.

There's a lot of chicken-and-egg discussion about anxiety and TMS - but it doesn't really matter. They both cycle on each other - making each other worse in one direction, helping each other get better in the other. As far as I'm concerned, they go hand in hand, and I believe that someone with chronic anxiety will not recover or improve from TMS unless the anxiety is reduced or eliminated (oh yes, that's a goal, all right!).

Just last weekend, I listened in full to the webinar with Alan Gordon (having missed a lot of it during the event) and I was suddenly able to identify my inner bully, or inner terrorist (Alan used both terms, they are both great): and it's clearly my anxiety! Not only that, I immediately had a visual picture of my anxiety, which is "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. As I mentioned to someone in another post, that's not much of a stretch, as it's a very famous work of art, and it creates a pretty visceral reaction in most people, I think. And it was recently in the news. I got to see one of the originals in Norway when I was 24, but I remember I wasn't able to look at it directly for very long, it made me so uncomfortable. But the image is clear in my mind, and I get a gut emotional reaction just visualizing it.

So now I'm working on confronting my anxiety, as that image, when I have symptoms. It's hard, though - my short-term goal is for that confrontation to become an automatic response, instead of something that I remember occasionally!

Keep up the good work

Jan

Veronica, you brought up isolation in another post today - I remember that Forest quoted you back on it. I'm envisioning Alan asking you to examine what happens in your body - what is your physical reaction, what are you feeling - whenever you think about this isolation, or your fear of isolation, that comes up so frequently.

I'm envisioning Alan doing this because I'm trying to ask myself these questions when things come up over and over, but I like imagining him asking them, and I keep hearing him encouraging Annie, or Ginger, to stop and feel the physical reaction.

Heh - hard to keep up on several threads at once, since you sort of answered the questions over at that other one...

re anxiety: I believe that TMS can create anxiety, but that they work hand in hand to reinforce each other, rather than anxiety simply being just another TMS symptom. I also believe, especially for myself, that chronic anxiety - the kind that someone (ie, me) might have from a young age, will naturally result in TMS - again, I feel that they are always working to reinforce each other in a constant negative spiral (ramping upward or degenerating downward, depending on how you think of it).

Someone not prone to anxiety might develop TMS as the result of emotional or physical trauma or abuse. Someone with chronic anxiety will probably develop TMS without major trauma - that's me.

As far as I can tell, I was born with anxiety, probably because I was the first-born child of a 30-year-old mother who'd had a miscarriage, who had no siblings, and who had never had any significant exposure to small children. In her European boarding-school upbringing, she'd never had an opportunity to go babysitting. She was really a very good mother and I had a very caring and secure childhood, but my parents had no idea what to do about my anxiety, and by the time three more kids came along, they had no time to deal with it.

I recently (last month) re-read the chapter in H&HFYN where Dr. W talks about that secondary anxiety - that's good stuff, very helpful.

Anyway, which comes first: TMS or Anxiety, is a frequent chicken-and-egg discussion amongst TMSers, but personally, I think it can be either. And once you have both, I think it's moot!

Jan

Veronica, I just (literally, last night) started reading Steven Ozanich's new book "The Great Pain Deception" and he makes a really good case for anxiety being a TMS equivalent. I may be re-thinking my assumptions. Oh look it's time for chat! I think we're going to try to chat about this book that's why I was trying to get started on it (it only arrived a couple of days ago).

Dabatross, I've read about this more than once, the most recently was just today in Chapter 1 of The Great Pain Deception. Steve Ozanich says that one common occurrence of TMS symptoms is AFTER a period of stress rather than during it. I also remember being told years ago that it was very common for people to wake up with a headache on Saturday morning, after being headache-free during the work week.

A few days ago you posted this:

Steve O says that you've got to believe 100% that your symptoms are TMS, that they are harmless, and that their only purpose is to distract you from dangerous emotions. (This assumes, as always, that you have been medically cleared of having a pathological condition.) This belief is essential, but your brain is really good at creating doubt, because it does not want you to feel what's going on emotionally, it's much safer to be physically distracted. Steve uses the term repression, which resonates with me. You've got to access the repressed emotions so that the brain loses its purpose in continuing to distract you from them.

Self-talk IS helpful, particularly to reduce anxiety and perhaps allow you to have a different relationship with your symptoms, but it can only take you so far. The ultimate goal is to uncover the repressed emotions so that they lose their power, and the brain has no more reason to hide them from you.

Steve does a good job hammering this concept home, and it's only Chapter 1!

Jan

Dabatross, you're on the right track - that's what our brains do to fool us, we get conditioned to expect certain symptoms. I struggle regularly with dizziness, but it comes and goes.

There are so many different ways to approach this. First, have you done the Structured Ed Program on the wiki? That particular resource not only gets you started on the emotional work, it also exposes you to all kinds of resources. Monty Hueftle, for example, who tells us to "Think Clean", which is his take on Dr. Sarno's mantra: "Think Psychological, not Physical".

You might start listening to Dr. Peter Zafirides who often posts here when he has a new podcast. I just listened to one today which was really powerful, and maybe it will help you to understand what is going on in your psyche:
http://www.thehealthymind.com/2012/04/18/existential-therapy-how-anxiety-leads-to-physical-pain/
He has many podcasts and many articles on lots of different subjects that relate to mind-body disorders, so be sure to check out the whole library. It's like having a little personal mini-session with a psychiatrist, although you have to do your own work and ask yourself your own questions :^)

The reason for symptoms AFTER the stress? If it's TMS, the answer is simple - you're distracted during the week by your responsibilities and activities, so the brain doesn't need to create more distraction, because you don't have time to think about dangerous emotional feelings. As soon as you're in danger of relaxing and perhaps letting those emotions come to the surface, the brain steps in and distracts you with your symptom.

Steve Ozanich, in The Great Pain Deception lists four different ways in which people experience their TMS symptoms. This type, where they occur during times of relaxation, is just one of those ways.

Which is why there is no one answer for everyone, because we are all different - although the general theory applies to every human being who ever existed.

Jan

And as far as diagnosed conditions go, I personally believe that even if you have a condition, you can retrain your brain to lessen the symptoms.
LiveStrong.com has a short article about this concept: http://www.livestrong.com/article/10601-train-brain-reduce-pain/

Well, D, you've got the blocks in place intellectually - what's it going to take to make the emotional commitment?

It's sad, frustrating, and enraging how much money and time and effort we've all spent on therapies and treatments that did nothing for our conditions. But relief from TMS means that you get to walk away, let all of that go, and look forward to a very different future. But you do have to let go.

The multitude of diagnoses you've received should really help convince you of the truth about this particular reality.

I honestly think that Computer Vision Syndrome is yet another example of Tension Myositis Syndrome, and that like RSI (another condition blamed on computers) it only exists as long as the fear of it exists. Getting new glasses might indeed bring relief to someone with the right level of belief in the diagnosis, just like carpal tunnel surgery will bring relief from RSI for a while, but if that person actually has TMS, the CVS, like RSI, will either come back, or their TMS will exhibit as something else. Or, in your case, do nothing at all for the original symptoms.

(ack, too many acronyms!)

In reality, like Dr. Marc Sopher says, it just doesn't make sense - we are not that fragile, and our eyes are very resilient.

I don't see how such low-power glasses can do any harm - or any good, for that matter. I have a story about that which might resonate with you: I was prescribed very low-power reading glasses (maybe .25) my senior year in high school, to help ease eye-strain, and they did help. But halfway through college another eye doc said to stop wearing them because they would make my eyes lazy - so I did stop wearing them and didn't experience any more eye strain - not until I really did need reading glasses in my late forties.

So what does this tell us? It tells me that my original eye strain was really TMS (aka senior year stress). And that even though it was relieved by low-power glasses (a fun alternative distraction), the mere suggestion that using them was bad for my eyes was enough to allow my brain to give them up two years later without a problem.

Dr. Sarno says we have to give up our "crutches", our special pillows and devices, our potions and meds, and all of our therapies, and replace them with a belief in the diagnosis, to which I would add: and a desire for a normal and active life. The question you have to ask yourself is - what's it going to take? You might start by repeating the mantra: "Think Psychological, Not Physical" and see what comes up.

Pulling for you,

Jan