Tagging is an easy and important way to help this community

I'd like to take a moment to introduce something that is easy to do but can make a big difference for our community and help spread the word about TMS.

What am I referring to? Well, after the first post of each thread, you may have seen something that looks like this:

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Tags are just keywords that we can attach to threads that makes it easier for Google users and people on our site to find the threads. I'd like to encourage people, once you've read a thread, to take a look at the tags and see if you can make them better.

Here's how you do it: to add a tag, click on Edit Tags. Start typing your desired tag. Related tags should appear in a drop-down menu. For multi-word tags, you should be able to start typing any of the words in the tag and it will show up. For example, if you want to tag a post with "john e. sarno md" you could start typing "sarno" instead of "john" and the tag would still appear.

Click on the tag you want. If you want to add multiple tags, add a comma. This indicates to the tagging software that you are done typing your first tag and are ready to start entering a new one. Although it is not necessary, I would recommend adding a comma even if you are just using one tag.

There are only a finite number of tags (237 as of this writing), so if you start typing something and no options pop up, just try again with a synonym. It may take some persistence at first, but it gets easier as time goes on and we'll be rolling out tools to make it easier.

Once you have chosen an available tag, your tag should appear inside a blue box, like so:

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Click Save Changes to apply your tag(s) to the thread. It should show up instantly.

But why would we want to do this? Well, fundamentally tags are about making it easier for people to find threads that can help them. This is because tags are a hand-curated list of the best threads that we have on a whole host of topics. To see this for yourself, click the following link, which brings you to a list of all of our tags:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/tags/
By clicking on any of the tags, you can see threads related to the subject of the tag. Of course, you might not see many threads for some tags right now (especially the ones with the light background). However, that is exactly why we need your help - to make our tags a better resource for all members of the site who need help. Some day, that person who needs help might just be you!

You might not have seen tags around much so far, but over the coming years, you will see them more and more. We've been working on the tagging system for about 18 months now, and they are an important for the continued growth of our community.

One of the reasons why they are so important is that not only do they help people on our site find our threads, but they are also very good with helping people find our site. If we carefully apply appropriate tags to our best threads (not random tags and not to every thread), this teaches Google to send more people to our community, which helps us show more people that the mind-body connection can help them.

Overall, we'll want to exercise some restraint when tagging. We don't want to apply every tag to every thread. For example, if someone starts a thread about healing their back pain but doesn't really discuss Dr. Sarno himself, you wouldn't want to apply the "john e sarno md" tag to it because the thread is about a specific person's back pain rather than being about Dr. Sarno. In general, we want to apply more tags to our best threads and fewer tags to threads that would be relatively less interesting to third parties. In general, when you are considering tagging a thread, ask yourself the following question:
Will this tag help someone find information relevant to their search?
Returning to the example above, if someone was searching our site for "John Sarno" there would be other threads that would tell them more about Dr. Sarno than would the thread about someone's back pain, so the thread about the specific person's back pain shouldn't be tagged with "john e sarno md."

In fact, if people get overzealous, you may even want to remove some tags (sometimes people misunderstand how tags are meant to be used and apply every tag they can think of to a rather pedestrian thread). To remove a tag, just click "Edit Tags" and then click on the x mark, shown circled in red in the graphic below:

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In general, though, if you think that someone who was searching for a given tag would be happy to find that thread, go ahead and tag it! Over time, we as a community will learn more about tagging and which tags are best to apply to a given thread. However, right now we just want to dive in and start using them. One of my students once said, "It's time to get our learn on," and, well, that's the way it is.

Eventually, I'd like to ask people who are committed to this site to join me in what will be called the "tagging team." Our community is volunteer run (thanks to @Ellen and @PamD who have been helping out hugely for a while), and my goal is to divide up responsibilities into very small tasks in the spirit of "many hands make light work." Being on the tagging team just means two things:

1. A commitment to, after you read a thread that you like, take a moment to think if it needs tags or if the tags it has need to be adjusted.
2. A commitment to read this post and the one following it, which will have a bit more information about tagging. (I'm trying to rush the current post out before volunteer day on Wednesday, because we'll do some tagging then, but it may take a bit before I figure out what to write for the intermediate material in the next one. I want to make it as simple as possible, but that can be hard!)

My hope is that these two things will be easy enough that people might end up being members of the tagging team without even meaning to. I mean, if you visit this forum regularly, you're probably going to want to read the post anyway. And it doesn't take but a minute to think about which tags can go on a thread.

What makes this community so very special are the incredibly generous members who keep coming back to help others in pain. I don't love writing myself (you'd never guess it!), but I always love the terrific advice that I see posted in this forum and am inspired by the compassion that goes into posting it.

It may take weeks or even months, but I look forward to building a tagging team with the same enthusiasm as we see in the replies to threads. This will help the newcomers find the help they need, lift the overall discussion because we'll have easy access to the best old threads, and last but not least, bring new people into the conversation because they are able to find our site via Google and other search engines.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below!

 

I'm reserving this post for some additional information about tagging that will help make tagging easier and make decisions a little more clear cut. There will always be some grey areas, but there is no harm in that.

 

This post has a list of all of our current tags, divided up into categories. Looking it over may help you to get a sense of which tags are available. I'll update the list with some comments as time goes by and will try to keep it up to date. The master, uncategorized (alphabetical) list of all tags can be found at:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/tags/

People
Alan Gordon LCSW
Andrew R. Miller MFT
Arlene Feinblatt PhD
Candace Pert PhD
Claire Weekes DSC
David Clarke MD
David Hanscom MD
David L. Schechter MD
Derek Sapico MFT
Eckhart Tolle
Eric Sherman PsyD
Frances Sommer Anderson PhD SEP
Fred Amir REHS
Gabor Mate MD
Georgie Oldfield MCSP
Herbert Benson MD
Howard Schubiner MD
James Alexander PhD
John E. Sarno MD
John Stracks MD
Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD
Lorimer Moseley PhD
Marc D Sopher MD
Michael Brown
Monte Hueftle
Nicole J. Sachs LCSW
Peter A Levine PhD
Peter Zafirides MD
Richard H Rahe MD
Scott Brady MD
Steven Ray Ozanich

Books
8 Minute Meditation by Victor Davich
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Back in Control by David Hanscom
Back Sense by Ronald Siegel and Michael Urdang and Douglas Johnson
Chronic Pain: your key to recovery by Georgie Oldfield
Evolving Self Confidence by Terry Dixon
Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley
Freedom from Fibromyalgia by Nancy Selfridge and Franklynn Peterson
Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
God Does Not Want You to Be in Pain by Eric Watson and Walter Oleksy
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John Sarno
Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
In an Unspoken Voice How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter Levine
Mind over Back Pain by John Sarno
Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine by Candace Pert
Pain Free for Life by Scott Brady
Paths to Health and Resilience Manage Stress and Build Coping by Richard Rahe
Pathways to Pain Relief by Frances Sommer Anderson and Eric Sherman
Rapid Recovery From Back and Neck Pain by Fred Amir
SIRPA Recovery CD by Georgie Oldfield
Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks
The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders by John Sarno
The Great Pain Deception: How Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse by Steven Ozanich
The Hidden Psychology of Pain: the Use of Understanding to Heal Chronic Pain by James Alexander
The Master Practice by Monte Hueftle
The Meaning of Truth by Nicole Sachs
The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body Healing the Pain by John Sarno
The MindBody Workbook by David Schechter
The PEAR Process by Olivia Stefanino
The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell
The Presence Process by Michael Brown
The Solution aka The Pathway by Laurel Mellin
The Warrior Mind by Jim Pritchard
The Way of the Journal by Kathleen Adams
They Can't Find Anything Wrong by Dave Clarke
Think Away Your Pain by David Schechter
To Be or Not To Be...Pain Free by Marc Sopher
Unlearn Your Pain by Dr. Howard Schubiner
Use Your Mind to Heal Your Body by Stephen Conenna
Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shed Helmstetter
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Mate
Writing to Heal by James Pennebaker

Symptoms/Diagnoses
Acid reflux and gastroesophageal reflux disease - GERD
Adrenal fatigue
All the Rage – a documentary about Dr John Sarno by Michael Galinsky and Rumur
Allergies
Anxiety
Arm Pain
Asthma
Back pain
Bodily Distress Syndrome - BDS
Breathing related symptoms such as hyperventilation and shortness of breath
Bursitis
Buttock and gluteal pain
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome - CTS
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - CFS
Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome – CPPS
Coccydynia and other tailbone pain
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome – CRPS
Computer vision syndrome - CVS
Depression
Dermatalogical and skin problems such as rashes and eczema
Diversion Pain Syndrome - DPS
Eczema
Elbow Pain
Facial pain
Fatigue
Fibromyalgia - FMS
Foot pain
Generalized Anxiety Disorder - GAD
Groin Pain
Hand Pain
Hashimoto's Thyroiditis
Herniated disc
Hip pain
Hives
Insomnia and sleep problems
Interstitial Cystitis – IC and other bladder problems
Irritable Bowel Syndrome - IBS
Joint pain
Knee pain
Leg Pain
Lyme disease
migraines and headaches
Moving pain
Muscle Tension Dysphonia - MTD
Muscle tightness
Myalgic Encephalopathy - ME
Myofascial Pain Syndrome
Myofascial Pain Syndrome – MPS
Neck Pain
Nerve damage
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - OCD
Panic attacks
Pelvic pain
Peripheral neuropathy - PN
Piriformis Syndrome
Plantar Fasciitis - PF
Raynaud's Phenomenon
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy - RSD
repetitive strain injury - RSI
Restless Leg Syndrome - RLS
Sacroiliac SI joint pain
Sciatica - low back butt and leg pain
Scoliosis
Shin Splints
Shingles
Sinus infection
Spasmodic Dysphonia - SD
Spondylolisthesis and Spondylolysis
Temporomandibular Joint Disorder – TMJ
Tendonitis
Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - TOS
Tinnitus
Tooth Pain
Vertigo and Dizziness
Vision Problems
Vulvodynia

Geographic
Australia
Boston
Canada
Chicago
New York City
Los Angeles
United Kingdom

Special categories of posts
Forum moderation
Advocacy - awareness raising - outreach
Inspirational progress
Success story
YouTube and other free videos
What helped me the most

Terms for TMS
Bodily Distress Syndrome - BDS
Mind Body Syndrome - MBS
Tension Myoneural Syndrome - TMS
Tension Myositis Syndrome - TMS
The Mindbody Syndrome - TMS
Psychophysiologic Disorders - PPD
Psychosomatic Disorders
Somatic Symptom Disorder - SSD DSM5
Stress Illness - SI

Techniques and Approaches
Accepting the TMS diagnosis
Alexander Technique
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - CBT
Discussions about journaling and journaling techniques
Emotional Freedom Technique and tapping - EFT
Existential therapy
Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing - EMDR
Focusing and Eugene Gendlin
Imagery and visualization
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy - ISTDP
Internal Family Systems therapy - IFS
Mindfulness and being present
Mindfulness meditation
Psychoanalysis
Self compassion
Self monitoring
Somatic Experiencing and Peter Levine
The power of laughter
TMS Recovery Program by Alan Gordon
TMS Wiki Structured Educational Program – SEP

Stressors
Aging and getting older
Goodism
Holiday stress
Inner bully or inner critic
Life changes transitions adjustment and readjustment
LGBT and sexual orientation - lesbian gay bisexual transgender - homosexuality
Motherhood fatherhood parenthood children
Parents children and family as a source of stress
Perfectionism
Traveling

Concepts
Automatic Negative Thoughts – ANTs – and mental chatter
Conditioning
Extinction burst - behaviorism
Outcome independence
Placebo effect
Reservoir of Rage
Symptom imperative and symptom substitution
Thinking psychologically
TMS personality traits

Other
Discussions of the TMS recovery process
Emotional triggers
Fear and anxiety about physical injury
Inner child
Inner parent and the superego
Medically Unexplained Symptoms - MUS
Musicians and playing music
Neuroscience - brain science
Overcoming issues from childhood
Public figures such as actors musicians media politicians athletes
Relapse or setback or flare-up
Repressed feelings or emotions
Repressed memories
Reprogramming
Resistance to the TMS diagnosis
Resuming exercise sports or other physical activity
Self-harming
Surgery
The impact of childhood or other early experiences
The power of fear and anxiety

 

Awww... thanks, North Star! I really appreciate your support.

I went through and tagged a couple threads from the general discussion subforum this morning and was surprised at how easy and fun it was. Together we can build up a wonderful resource that will be of use to our whole community.

 

Thanks for your help with this, everyone. It has been great to see new tags appearing on threads. The tags that you add now will be helping people not just for weeks or years. Tags may seem new at the moment, but with your help we can make them a core part of the "TMS Wiki Experience."

It's 100% fine if not every thread has a tag, as the important thing is the great threads that we add tags to, not the threads we miss.

Keep it up!