Question for SteveO

Hi SteveO and Happy NY,

On page 284 of your book you mention proprioceptive loss creating anxiety. You mention two exercises to correct this: walking or running figure eight patterns and walking heel-to-toe. I do deep water running in the pool for about thirty minutes a day, do you think the figure eight pattern can be adapted to pool running? I've started doing the heel-to-toe walking and can feel the effect in my TMS/"arthritic" right hip. I'm hoping this will be helpful for it. Can you please elaborate on these two exercises or provide some sources for more info on them.

Cheers,
tennis tom

 

Hey TTom! Happy New Year to you too, it's good to hear from you. The proprioceptive loss is usually for people who have been down for long periods of time. Their coordination begins to diminish quickly. You seem to be much too active to even be close to that. But any change you do regarding physical movement in the pool or otherwise could break any conditioned responses you have. It might do you good to mix it up some with movements of varying angles, etc. But remember, as long as you do things "for your hip" you prolong the symptoms. Everything you do has to be for health sake only and not as physical therapy. As long as you try to heal your hip the pain will remain. You have to forget all about the hip and focus all your attention on other things.

If you always do what you have been doing then you always get what you have been getting.

I still believe it all stems from relationship, and of course memory.

Steve

 

Steve, you remind us of a great TMS maxim, that we should not exercise to heal a bad back or any other part of the body. If we do that. we prolong the pain. We need to exercise just for general health.

How did you get so smart? Have you already read Herbie's and my book? haha

 

Dear Steve,

My husband and I are reading your book. I thank you for this book and all we are gaining from it.

I am about half way and he is a bit behind me. We both have TMS. I always wondered about us both having TMS..and recently on a month vacation in Mexico (where we both were in a lot of pain) we began to have the same problems walking. Eventually we called ourselves Ben D Over and his wife Eileen Over!! Your book does a good job of explaining why this happened..and even why I developed TMS after he had back pain for a year. We both read Sarno's book in October and are slowly healing.

You mentioned early on in the book about a child of two TMS'ers being the only way someone could ..(not sure your words) get TMS from parents..or something like this. Our daughter has had migraines since she was 11 years old..very severe. Tom and I both have had migraines..mine chronic..(until I developed back pain) Could our daughter have TMS? She is now 27 and has tried everything for her migraines. I would give anything if she could be free from her headaches. I always thought her migraines were from hormones ....or our passing on a predisposition..But as I look back she was bullied when the headaches started. In fact her first headache was when she spent the night at the girl's house who was the ring leader. We have never looked at it this way and have always searched for a physical cure. Now she is getting botox and it has helped some. But, she called yesterday with a headache..and was emotionally upset over a flat tire and how someone treated her.

Any insight??

Pam

 

Hi Pam,

Everyone has TMS but few will admit it. Slow healing is the best healing because the deeper brain takes time to make the correct changes.

Migraines are almost always TMS, although there are of course exceptions. The migraine is a paragon of TMS. Plus it looks like you can trace her symptoms back to a prior rejection. Almost everyone I consult with can trace the onset of their symptoms back to an event or time--even a moment.

I was making a joke when I said that two TMSers mating can create a little TMSer, but the point is about environmental responses. TMS itself is not an inherited disorder, it's learned, or environmental through observing others' behavior. We are constantly mirroring each others reflections in a rotating hall of mirrors. People unconsciously mimic each others lives through memetics, or social contagion.

It is possible that we inherit the method by which we store tension, not sure we'll ever know or that it makes a difference.

So your daughter is in a situation where she is rejected, or emotionally abandoned, and she diverts her awareness to her body and away from those powerful emotions, in order to cope. The method or area, she chooses to obsess on is one that she has seen before, possibly from her parents. If she escapes that rejection or situation, ie, copes through it, then migraines become her brain's new auto-survive mechanism every time she feels tension. She now has a method for coping. But she can heal if she wants to.

Good luck

Steve

 

Just want to add that my first and longest TMS symptom was migraine headaches. I had my first at 4 years old, and they increased in frequency to a point where I was diagnosed with chronic migraine as I was getting at least 15 per month. I am now about a year into my TMS healing, and having a migraine is a very rare event. And if I feel the initial symptoms coming on, I am able to get them to leave before it becomes a migraine. There is no doubt in my mind that it is TMS and that TMS healing techniques work to eradicate this symptom.

So share your TMS knowledge with your daughter. She will definitely benefit from it. And have her join us here on the Forum

 

My mother suffered a lot from migraine headaches for years. I know now it was from TMS since she was
under a lot of stress and worry about finances, working hard at different jobs, and raising three active kids,
and Dad worked hard but gambled and drank because of his own TMS.

I don't get headaches often, but when I do I practice deep breathing and massaging my forehead and all
over my head and temples. I also laugh and tell myself the headache is from nothing to really worry about.

 

FYI, migraines were Dr. Sarno's own initial TMS symptom. A colleague clued him into that they were psychosomatic. That got him started thinking psychologically, and evolved into his TMS theory.