How to find focus and structure on my healing journey

Hi everyone,

I've been dealing with chronic generalised back and muscle pain for 12 years and have recenly started to focus on a mind-body healing approach, in particular trying to focus mainly on PRT. My challenge is finding some structure or routine.

I've read "The Way Out," "Unlearn Your Pain," checked out the Curable app, tried the free part of the SIRPA program, checked out Alan Gordon's TMS wiki, spoken to a PRT specialist, and have been listening to podcasts, following YouTube channels, and practising pain-related guided meditations and somatic tracking sporadically.

While each has been informative, my extensive research habit has left me feeling overwhelmed and without a dedicated path to follow. Particularly in terms of the execises I’d like to be doing regulary, such as somatic tracking.

I feel i’m past the stage of understanding the non-physical nature of my pain. I think it’s now about focusing on specific exercises, establishing a routine, and finding consistency. "The Way Out" introduced several tools, but I need more structured routine. SIRPA's paid program offers a weekly planner, and the Curable app seems user-friendly for guided exercises. But i’m finding it hard to know which route to go or find one that feels like a good fit.

Essentially i’m looking to cut out all the background noise and find some focus. Streamlining and trusing the process without putting myself under additional pressure to do this!

I would greatly appreciate your insights and suggestions.

Thank you for your time and help!

 

Hi @surface_area
I believe this is two things. Both of them are protective mechanisms of TMS.
Your brain is protecting you from emotions. That is the entire tms story. I’m turn you are distracted by pain. Your brain may also use anxiety and overthinking (symptom of anxiety) as other distractions.
You can’t commit to a path because you are still in problem solving mode “fix it”. Busy mind, learning, thinking, absorbing and actually avoiding doing the work. It’s all protective to keep you from the actual difficulty of the task… and that’s pretty common for some folks.
How do you deal with it?
Accept you do this out of protection from the emotional stuff. Soften to it.
Accept that you can try the tms “things” but not all may work for you.. however you’ll have to give them a good few weeks trial to see if they do.
Notice the resistance, but don’t judge it - when you resist its often perceived danger around the activity. Keep sending messages you are ok.
Make the commitment. You have to make it, even against all the resistance and avoidance. You are worth this work. This work is hard. You have to do it with all your heart and soul and it will be painful. It will stir stuff up. My mantra became “emotions pass. I will experience them in my body for up to 90 seconds then they pass. I’ll be fine”. You have to learn to be uncomfortable in body and mind and know it’s gonna be ok.
Start a program. ANY program. Your first step is do deal with that resistance with kindness. Do some work in the program every day. This is not your time to pick and choose the activities you like or want to do. Do them, learn from them.
Take time, be kind to yourself. You may struggle to do these activities for weeks or months. It’s ok!
Know you have learned enough about programs. Stop searching, begin to remind yourself to “think psychological”. If you can’t do the Way Out simply from the book, do Alan’s program here. They are fairly identical, but you get more structure with the program here.
Good luck.

 

Thanks so much for your advice. I think that is probably a big part of it, and even just recognising this might hopefully help me move forward with it!

I definitely feel like I have been stuck in problem solving mode, which is part of my nature anyway.

I looked again at Alan's program on here earlier and realised it is very much similar to the book with more structure. So this might be the best way to go. As long as I am following one thing daily the rest will hopefully happen naturally.

Thanks again

 

Problem solving mode is anxiety and hypervigilance. - so part of your “nature” has been anxiety and being hyper vigilant.
It is important to recognize and accept that these have been (past tense!) your operating system. You are used to being stuck there but can move forward to finding inner peace without having to overthink, figure out ( people who worry do this and worry = anxiety). It is incredibly important to begin recognizing these traits in yourself (Sarno talks about elements of personality and tms) and how they contribute to inner stress and tension.
This is exactly what I mean by doing this with your heart.
These are all learned defense mechanisms as a child, which is why doing the emotional work is important - you want to recognize the patterns (triggers) which cause tension so you can accept the emotions around them and soften to them instead of mentally and emotionally bracing.

 

Thank you. This is making a lot of sense and aligns with my recent (2nd) session of CBT, where she pointed out my constant hyper vigilance. Comparing my my body's defense system, which should be like a soldier "at ease" to a sniper constantly searching for threats.

I've decided to work through the Alan’s free program here, but back this up with the paid version of Curable for exercises I can do spontaneously on top of this.

Making the decision to focus on those alone for now will hopefully get me out of "problem solving" mode.

I'm also being reminded I need to be kind to myself and not put myself under pressure!

 

This is very relatable, I have this issue too, and the same issue applies to other things I try to approach and learn too.

 

I relate to this. I also got bogged down in searching / fixing / looking for new solutions as I just couldn’t find the structure I needed in a lot of the mindbody resources. I also think this is not always a distraction (although problem solving and intellectualising genuinely can be at times!) but sometimes the nature of how the resources out there are organised.

I finally found this program: https://www.painreprocessingtherapy.com/healing-workshop (Healing Workshop - Pain Reprocessing Therapy Institute)
which was started very recently.

It’s a series of 1,5h healing workshops run by Alan Gordon’s centre in LA, focusing on PRT techniques. We do a different topic each week, get PRT related homework and then discuss it in the group (the meetings are on zoom). The group has only 6 other people so it’s a nice atmosphere, and it’s nice to be able to ask questions too. I am now on week 6 and I’m making good progress. I’d really recommend it

Once I’ve finished the course I might do a separate post on it, as it’s unfortunate not more people know about it. There is a new cohort in January, so you might be just on time if you wanted to sign up.

Good luck!

 

My most recent bout of TMS consisted of searing, excruciating sciatica pain. I found that persistently following the suggestions on Dan Buglio's daily, short videos helped me the most. Two months ago, I was 12 on a pain scale of 1 to 10. Now, I'm about a 2 or 3 and improving daily.