So about TMS Treatment

Hello everyone. I'm new here. I've had RSI in both arms for nearly 3 months now. My pain started in my wrist a few hours after using a drawing tablet on my laptop. I was nearly at my wits end as I've tried everything (rest, splints, massage, medicine) to treat it and it only got worse as it spread into my shoulder. I had to skip my college semester this year because the pain was so bad. Then I came across TMS today and decided to learn more about it. It makes a lot of sense to me since my wrist pain started in my left wrist even though I'm right-handed. I've always wondered why that was.

So anyways

1) The muscles in my fingers, wrists, and forearm have a habit of tensing up when use my hands. The pain also radiates to my back sometimes What could I do to over come that? In terms of my thought process?

2) In regards to the steps, is it necessary I do the steps in order? I'm trying to type again first after avoiding it for 2 months, but I haven't completely addressed to emotional repressing part of my TMS.

3) Is reading a TMS book necessary? Can I just use the tms wiki/structure program and learn all I need to know and still recover?

4) My body seems to get nervous as I use my hands for repetitive motions like drawing or typing even if I'm not having pain (sweaty skin, pins and needles sensation, lump in throat). Anyone else has this body response?

 

Rachel's RSI homage to Dr. John Sarno

RSI = Repetitive Strain Injury
My story, in a nutshell
I had RSI for about a year and a half. By random luck, a stranger (actually, two of them) referred me to The Mindbody Prescription by John Sarno. This was September 1999. I had chronic arm pain, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I treated my arms like they were made of fragile glass, I didn't type at all (I used voice recognition software to do most of my work). I saw myself in the book, but I was afraid -- afraid that if I believed in Sarno's theory I might get worse, might hurt my arms more, etc. Nonetheless, over the course of the next 4 months, I gradually became more and more convinced of his theory, enough to take a leap of faith around January 2000 by choosing to take a lot of classes rather than a few (i.e. coddling my hands). By May 2000 I was very confident and was not restricting my physical activity at all. I was typing, writing, opening doors, lifting weights, everything. I still had some pain. By September 2000, the pain was gone. I was working a full-time job as a programmer, in an extremely un-ergonomic workstation, and I was completely pain-free.

Whee!

Forgive me, but it really is a wonderful thing.
Your story
So you have RSI. If you're a hardcore case, you've probably seen some half a dozen doctors/PTs/specialists or more in the course of your injury. You probably have made extreme modifications to your life -- you don't type/write/dance/play your instrument/do needlecraft/rock climb/pick up the baby/lift weights, or whatever it is that you used to do. You might have a special keyboard, or software so you don't have to click the mouse, or maybe you eat bagels instead of cereal so you don't have to lift a spoon, or you've bought an electric toothbrush 'cause it hurts to brush. I've heard all these situations before.
What is this page about?
I'm writing this page because, happily, I'm out of the tunnel. I've been there, I found Sarno's book, and a year or two later I'm absolutely completely pain free. I've passed this book on to friends and acquaintances and I've witnessed amazing recoveries, most much faster than mine. The most recent one -- a friend I made at work had had an RSI for 4 years. A diehard programmer, he had switched to management because he couldn't type any longer. I gave him the book and a month later he was pain free and typing like mad. It's now nearly a year later, and he's moving from management back to programming. Amazing!

I started spreading the word to friends and RSI sufferer-acquaintances around spring 2000, when I was really convinced that this was what had caused my years of chronic pain. Since then, I've had the opportunity to talk to many people and explore what seems to work for helping them get better. I've lately found myself thinking "Damn! I should really put these ideas out on a webpage somewhere where more people can have access to them!" Et voila. This page contains my accumulated wisdom for how you can get better from your repetitive strain injury (or chronic pain, or whatever -- it's the pain and the distraction that's the important part) using Dr. Sarno's theory about TMS as your guideline.
What is Dr. Sarno's theory?
I'm not going to go into all the detail here. It's been explained elsewhere on the web (like here), and besides, it is a *must* for you to readThe Mindbody Prescription or Healing Back Pain if you haven't already.

Here is my summary of what I think is most important in Dr. Sarno's theory:

1. The mind and the body are linked. Classic example: the placebo effect -- your mind thinks it's gotten a pill that's gonna fix your body, and what do you know, believing that leads to your body fixing itself.

2. Not only can the mind-body connection lead to your body healing itself (as with placebos), it can also lead to the body harming itself, or creating pain.

3. Now why would your body do this? In my experience, people with chronic RSIs are, deep down, not happy. There is something eating away at them inside that they haven't addressed. The RSI is their mind-body's attempt to fend off the emotional problem. Because when you have a full-fledged repetitive strain injury, it permeates every area of your life. Your work, your friends, your peace of mind, everything. You think about it all the time. Want a glass of water? Ooh, that hurts turning the spigot. Damn this RSI, I wonder if I will have this pain for my whole life! Many people can't go 10 minutes without thinking about it. And there -- THERE -- is the driving force behind the RSI. It is so absorbing -- SO absorbing, the only parallel I can think of is drug/alcohol/food addiction (i.e. eating disorder) -- that you effectively don't have to think about other things in your life. In some ways you are living like a zombie: going through the motions, but not really living. The RSI is the only real thing in your life, your constant companion, your constant curse.


That's my take on it. Now, Sarno goes into extensive explanations about conscious and subconscious and yada yada. And I think that's all well and good, and good for him for trying to get detailed about it, but to me the crux of the theory is simply that an RSI is a huge, extremely efficient distraction from everything else in your life. I didn't realize it at first, myself -- sure, it seemed like I was living my life! But as I gradually began to realize what life would be like without the RSI in it, it began to dawn on me what a huge void its absence would leave in my life -- how for so long I had relied on it being a part of my life -- and what a huge hole existed without it for me to fill. Happily I preferred to start filling it than to leave it filled by the RSI.

Now, not everybody has the same experience that I did. Most of the people who don't identify with what I'm describing read the book and got better immediately, more or less by themselves! But I have met a number of people who had similar experiences to mine, who often require a little hand-holding in their recovery, and that is why I'm writing this webpage.

In case it's not obvious, let me mention that I have no personal stake in advancing Sarno's theory. I'm not getting any kickbacks, unless you count the pleasure of watching people recover from years of debilitating pain in the blink of an eye .
My suggestions for your recovery
1. Listen to other people's stories.

• Read the emails sent to me by two acquaintances I'll call X and Y. These guys kindly supported me over email and cafeteria food as I recovered.

• Listen to the audio tape of the information session that I and half a dozen other Harvard students gave in spring 2000. I explain Sarno's theory, each of us tells our "success story," then the audience asks questions. The sound quality is appalling in places but people have told me they find it useful. Thanks to Dave, you can download the audio tape in six segments.

• Check out the story of Olive which is a nice in-depth explanation of someone's recovery from TMS.

• Read Romain's account of getting better from what was diagnosed as carpal tunnel and plantar fascitis.

• Read Jonathan's story of having "tendinitis" for several years, and then recovering.

• The TMS Help messageboard has online discussions about TMS.

• Read the Amazon.com customer reviews of The Mindbody Prescription and Healing Back Pain.

• Here are some recovery stories that people have sent me, in their own words.

• Talk to people who have recovered. If you email me, I can put you in touch with someone. [Note: I am not currently able to respond to individual questions, however if you email me I will give you a list of people who will.]

• Read my "advice column."
  
  
  2. Begin to appreciate the extent to which your life revolves around your injury. Think about what this means.

• Set aside some quiet time and imagine how you'd feel if you didn't have this chronic pain. Go beyond "Yippee! I can type again!" and really try to imagine what your life would be like. Does it feel good? Bad? Uncertain? Would you feel safe? It's easy to forget this when you're dealing with a debilitating affliction, but there may be things you'd have to face if your arms weren't a source of concern that you're putting off right now, since your RSI is your main priority.

• Try spending half an hour without dwelling on your chronic pain. Before you start pick a thought-topic that you can focus on every time thoughts about your RSI come up. For example: your sister's upcoming wedding, taking your cat to the vet, a painting you like -- nothing too stressful but something meaty enough to focus on. Don't attempt to do anything too strenuous during the half hour (lifting weights, bicycling, typing if you restrict) but do do any basic task that you happen to come across, such as opening door knobs, lifting plates and books, etc. Rest assured that a half-hour of unrestricted casual activity will not cause any permanent damage to your arms, if you're nervous about that. You can try this at home in your bedroom or anywhere else. Every time you notice yourself thinking a thought related to your RSI, shift your attention to the thought topic you chose before. Do your best to avoid thinking about your RSI for a half-hour straight. The point of this exercise isn't to cure your problem of thinking about your RSI all the time or to get you doing physical activity -- it's for you to educate yourself about how often you think about your RSI. Try it and find out.

• If you're already convinced that Sarno's diagnosis is right for you, then try extending the above activity: when it hurts, think about something else.

• Do the mental exercises that Sarno describes in The Mindbody Prescription. Buy Dr. David Schechter's book The Mindbody Companion and try the exercises in there.
  
  
  3. Consider when and why it started

• In my case, RSI started as pain in my right hand, followed a week later by pain in my left hand. I then had this conversation with "Alice," another girl in my Computer Science class who had gotten RSI shortly before me:
  Alice: Has it spread to your elbows yet?
  Me: No...
  Alice: Oh man, that's when it really sucks.
  A week or two later my pain had spread to my elbows, where it stayed for the duration of my RSI. At the time I thought, "Wow, she really knew what she was talking about!" Now I look back and think she "spread" it to me by suggesting a place I could legitimately expect to have pain. What were people telling you about your kind of chronic pain before you had it?

• What was going on in your life when your pain started? Did your RSI start around the time some other ailment went away, or at a time of emotional stress? Psychosomatic afflictions can switch places since the root cause is something emotional that needs to be avoided. Equivalent ailments could include muscle/nerve/pain problems in another part of the body, stomach problems, frequent headaches, an eating disorder, OCD, or obsessive anxiety. I've met people who had a knee injury which conveniently went away just as their arm pain was beginning.
  
  
  4. Seek out some more hand-holding, if you want it.

• Find a doctor in your area who specializes in Sarno's theory of chronic pain. A starting point for finding a doctor is on the Tarpit website or on Dr. David Schechter's website. If your area's not on those list, I'd recommend calling Dr. Schechter for further suggestions or looking more on the web. Dr. Sarno sees patients in New York City last I checked.

• Take this quiz to see if you match the typical TMS type.
  
  
  5. Get more information. Sometimes hearing it in a certain way really strikes a chord.

• Read The Mindbody Prescription and Healing Back Pain. They're different and both worth reading.

• The TMS website at Tarpit has a lot of info.

• Nate McNamara recovered from RSI recently. Read his website for more suggestions for recovery.

• Read the mind-body section of the Harvard RSI Action Group site and read the handout that we gave out at our information session. By the way, the rest of the Harvard RSI site is written from the perspective that RSI is a structural problem -- just ignore it.

• Read Dr. Schechter's TMS website.

• Dr. Sopher also has a TMS website.

• Dr Sarno now has a website with a video for sale (I've never watched it).
  
  6. Take what your structural doctors say with a grain of salt.

• Doctors who treat via a strictly structural methodology may look high and low for a structural diagnosis when your only symptom is chronic pain. Do you have any significant structural abnormalities? (No, "micro-tears", which are invisible, hint hint, scar tissue, and inflammation do not count.) How do you test in your physical therapy measurements such as grip strength -- are you in the normal range? I came to realize that there was nothing measurably wrong with me and that my only symptom was pain. Note that if you do have a structural abnormality your pain can still be psychosomatic (Sarno observes that structural abnormalities are normal, common, and not necessarily at blame for pain). But many chronic RSI sufferers don't even have significant structural abnormalities.

• I once heard a wise quote along these lines: A multiplicity of treatments is a sign that the cause of an illness is not yet well understood.

• Don't get disheartened by loser doctors. This was the conversation that I had with the first doctor who treated my RSI, after he examined me:
  Doctor: So, what do you want to do when you grow up?
  Me: I don't know yet.
  Doctor: Do you think it might have to do with computers?
  Me: Yeah, maybe...
  Doctor: Well you better find something else! Because you're not going to be able to do computer work. Your body's not cut out for it.
  ...I should really pay him a visit...
  
  
  7. Just remember, your body is a workhorse.Just remember, especially if you're still in your 20s, your body is a strong, healthy beast. Nothing should take a year or more to heal,especially nothing as mild as tendinitis and inflammation.
  
  
  
  Thank you
  I'd like to thank the people who made this page possible to write. First, the healers -- the people who directed me to Sarno in the first place -- Justin and Soman, thank you. And second, the people who I have met who have taught me so much about this condition through their own healing -- Alex, Marisa, Jacob, Nate, Mookie, and many more whose names I've forgotten but who have amazed me with their brilliant recoveries. You rock!
  
  
  This website originally written in August 2001

 

Tom, that was a great post. Thank you for sharing it.
It's like a very helpful short course in TMS healing.
You are very caring to share it, as we all know you are.

 

Awesome post, Tom!

Swirlswirl, Grab yourself a cup of whatever you enjoy and take your time reading Tom's post. Lots of little nuggets there.

 

Hi Swirl Swirl,

Just checking to see if you're still with us? Or, is your mindbody swirrrrllling and whirrrrllling from all the great TMS info from Rachel's Homage to the Good Doctor? It would be good to hear from you if it was helpful or not?

G'luck!
tt

P.S. How did you choose your web-name Swirl Swirl?

 

Great post, TT - Thanks for taking the time to help all of us.