TMS for life?

Hi All,

I was wondering why there seem to be two different messages on here about TMS. Sarno says that you can be cured of it completely. And also the PPD website and recent study also say you can have a complete cure. So, I'm wondering where this idea comes from for some that it is something you have to live with for the rest of your life? The main thing that Sarno states in his books from decades ago, is that once you know how TMS works, your symptoms will go away permanently.

I'm curious to hear from both sides about where their belief comes from about this.

Thanks!

MariaK

 

To echo what Jan has said, a friend had TMS hip pain, that has gone. Since that time she has has non-chronic pains, chronic sciatica and illnesses. So original TMS pain can subside but sometimes other symptoms come up. I think there are times that we don’t always recognize those as TMS. The TMS coach I used to learn calming skills has never had another chronic major TMS symptom after her healing.
I think the pain does not always return when we can reliably recognize and feel our stressors when they happen, understand our personality traits which can create internal stressors and generally generate far less inner self tension.

 

My "guess" is that for the initial things Sarno was treating they can be "cured" completely. End of story.
For the expanded use of Sarno-like treatment for other issues, it's more of a reduction of symptoms, etc.

For the moment some of the post-Sarno expansion on his theories don't always resonate with me.
I think that tends to happen when a lot of people become the next round of "experts" in the field.

 

The New Times Magazine published an article titled The Lives They Lived that was about some famous artists, innov0tors, and thinkers who died in 1917. The very first such famous person was Sarno. That piece was written Sam Dolnick, the associate managing editor of the New York Times. Years earlier, Sarno had cured him of persistent low back pain. Much of the article was about Sarno on a personal level, and he noted that Sarno suffered from his own recurring symptoms, namely, "an irritable stomach, itchy skin, shrieking headaches.” Sarno wrote about his irritable stomach in Healing Back Pain, where he called it heartburn, and in The Divided Mind, where he called it gastroesophageal reflux. Here is what he said in Healing Back Pain: “I have learned that heartburn means I’m angry about something and don’t know it. So I think about what might be causing the condition, and when I come up with the answer the heartburn disappears. It is remarkable how well buried the anger usually is.” Notice that there was not merely a reduction of the heartburn when he came up with the answer. Rather, the heartburn disappeared--until next time. In The Divided Mind, he wrote about going on a long trip with his wife, who loved to travel, and he suffered from gastroesophageal reflux. He said that he and his wife both recognized that the cause was “psychosomatic, and we tried to figure out what was making me unconsciously angry. . . . We obviously didn’t hit on the right answer because my symptoms continued unabated for the whole trip.” It was only after they got home that he realized that he was angry at his wife for having to go on a trip he did not want to take. As he put it, “My psyche wouldn’t permit me to be consciously furious at my wife, and neither would my reasonable self--so to be absolutely sure the rage remained unconscious, the brain dished up the severe gastrointestinal symptoms.”

As far as I’m concerned, the skepticism implied by your quotation marks around “experts” is fully justified. But I wonder if you would be willing (whether here or elsewhere since I don’t want to highjack this thread) to expand on who or what does not always resonate with you?

 

Thanks, Duggit. That's a great Sarno anecdote.

I think it's probably best for now that I keep my opinions to myself on the next generation of practitioners. I don't want to disparage anyone and I definitely don't want to derail anyone who is finding benefits from various therapeutic approaches.

Plus I'm still new to these various schools of thought and even though they might not resonate with me or I may be skeptical and think they are the wrong approach doesn't mean that I'm right. Maybe down the road when I've had more time with all of this I'll share more thoughts on this topic.

 

Thanks everyone, who has responded so far. Now I understand it better. And you've given me a lot of food for thought. And thanks, @JanAtheCPA for explaining that he had revised his thinking in 2006. I did not know that.

 

@JanAtheCPA I really love reading your posts. I also feel that living with anxiety for so many years makes progress more difficult. And I also felt that pandemic made me feel a big setback after a period of good progress.