1. Alan has completed the new Pain Recovery Program. To read or share it, use this updated link: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/
    Dismiss Notice

Dr. Schubiner The Role of Triggers

Discussion in 'Mindbody Blogs (was Practitioner's Corner)' started by Forest, Apr 22, 2012.

  1. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    I think a lot of people have certain things that trigger their TMS/PPD. This can be meeting with our boss, having lunch with critical family members, or almost any other thing. Understanding our symptoms is very important, so I was really glad to see that Howard Schubiner focused on triggers in one of his blog posts. It made me start to wonder what are other people's triggers?

    I included his article below, with his permission. The rest of Dr. Schubiner's blog articles can be found at Howard Schubiner's Blog Posts.

     
  2. veronica73

    veronica73 Well known member

    This is great--conventional medicine teaches us to avoid the triggers but they aren't the true cause of the pain.
     
  3. BruceMC

    BruceMC Beloved Grand Eagle

    I was surprised this March when I came down with a cold that seemed to come out of the blue and just kept getting worse until I went in to Kaiser and got some antibiotics to treat it. Well, it was odd the way it came on when I was feeling so good and improving so much in my workouts and bicycle rides. In fact, I hadn't had so much as a sniffle in three years. The doctor said I'd caught a virus and then after it had worn me down, a secondary infection developed in my upper chest. However, one day after I'd started the antibiotic run, I recalled that March was the same month my father had died in 1997, so I went to check the death certificate in my file of important documents. Imagine my surprise! The very day that I had first started clearing my throat (but not yet feeling sick) was the same day that my father had passed away, March 9th. But the time the symptoms had first began was also the same time in the morning that the hospice had called me with the bad news, around 11 a.m. Of course, I was aware of the role of triggers before reading Dr. Schubiner's piece above, but I'd never observed such a direct correlation before between the clock in my subconscious and physical symptoms. I speculate that the memory of receiving the bad news affected my autoimmune system in such a way that a virus that would ordinarily be unable to break through my defenses could then invade my body.

    Another similar experience I had perhaps involving psychological "triggers" occurred when I had a TMS relapse in 2007. I was sitting on a stool in the breakfast nook of my late parents' house on X-mas morning when I suddenly developed spasms in my lower back that developed into a major TMS episode. Some time later, after reading Dr. Sarno's HBP, I remember that it was when I was sitting on that same stool in the breakfast nook that my father always came downstairs and gave me an ear-full when I was cornered in a position where I could not escape his attentions. And of course it was always at X-mas that he was most enraged about anyone taking attention away from him as 'Master of the House'. X-mas by its very nature was always a psychologically loaded time in my family because that was when my late father always complained about the gifts we gave him not being good enough. Not so nice and neat as my cold this March, but certainly an example of psychological "triggers" being associated with physical situations and the layout of the family home.

    What is that famous essay that Freud wrote about the "psychopathology of everyday life"? Sure sounds like unconscious meaning is always lurking beneath the surface of mundane domestic objects and ordinary family situations.
     
    veronica73 likes this.
  4. veronica73

    veronica73 Well known member

    I usually feel worse on the weekends...I think it's mostly that I have more downtime so I'm more likely to start obsessing about things, but there might be a connection to weekends being tough for me when I was growing up too. Sunday especially can be tough.
     

Share This Page