TMS Pain and Aging

I have been on the Sarno and Brady plan for a month now and have felt less back pain in recent weeks but am not completely pain free. I think that is because I have not totally accepted the TMS being psychological and have still had about 10 percent of thinking the pain is from aging. I am 82 and have been thinking some of the pain is from normal disintigration of muscles or vertebrae.

So no wonder the pain is not completely gone.

Today I've started to believe TSM 100 percent and tell my subconscious I am only 25 and healthy
and that the pain is entirely from anger, guilt, rejection, etc. I have identified enough reasons for those emotions and have journaled about them.

I've been walking farther each day and this morning may have doubled that. Some pain, but I told my subconscious it's psychological and not from aging. Maybe I'm finally on the way toward being pain free. Maybe this will help others, too.

Any suggestions, advice?

 

Good for you, Walt! Sounds like you are doing all the right things. I've heard of many people in their 80s running, bicycling, swimming...doing all sorts of physical things without pain. Keep reminding yourself of this. You're making excellent progress in a month. Wow!

 

Thanks for the good words and encouragement, honeybear424. I hope you experience pain relief too.

 

Walt, you sound amazing. It's like a double whammy, the belief in structural problems combined with the belief that problems are "normal" in older people, but you are overcoming both. A great role model for those of us facing getting older. I'm 61, but thanks to this program helping me to become active again, I am feeling much younger. Keep up the good work.

 

Walt, my late grandfather could do back flips when he was 80, worked out everyday with weights, and walked 3 miles each morning. He also worked outside as a pipe-fitter in West Yellowstone, Montana until he was 79, sometimes walking to work when it was -50 F. One tough sucker! But (and this is a big but), he never had any pain whatsoever. He never got too worked up about anything either. Never a perfectionist, just realistic. So that just goes to show that pain and growing old are not inextricably linked. By the way, he never went to a doctor and just got sick a couple weeks before he died in the hospital at 104.

Like yourself, I too believe that the greatest hindrance to my recovery from TMS lower lumbar pain and sciatica has to do with my inability to accept the psychological diagnosis. But just think about it: If you feel pain, you're conditioned by the scientific materialistic world view of our culture to assume there's something physically wrong, some tissue injury, that's causing your pain. Based on my own experience, the difficulty of accepting the psychological explanation of TMS pain is the hardest thing to overcome, and the one thing likewise that you must do if you want to overcome your TMS. I know. I know. Easier said than done!

 

Thanks, Terry. A 61, you have many years of pain free health to look forward to.
I'm not out of the woods yet. My subconscious must not like me telling it I'm winning, so it's giving me a
little more back pain tonight than earlier today. But I expect that for a while.

I look upon the pain as a blessing, leading me to discovering Drs. Sarno, Brady, and others and that
TMS is the cause of my back pain.

Good luck with your journey to become pain free.

The TMS Wiki people like you are amazing.

 

The same for me MorComm. I am a psychologist, and firmly believed I had already done the work on my psychological "stuff." My pain was always left sciatica and it never budged for 20 years. Since starting TMS work five weeks ago I have resumed activity, have less sciatica pain, and all sorts of never before seen symptoms are coming, and now I know just how much buried "stuff" there is! I believed it was true for other people, but not in my case. I am a convert.

 

Hi Walt, I like the blessing idea, I think the same. Life is one never ending mystery. By the way, I work with a lot of older clients, and they usually have so much more trouble changing than younger ones. You are quite amazing breaking out of society's mindset about pain at 82.

 

Terry, it's great to know you're a psychologist and working with older clients with TMS. I have now switched to telling my subconscious I believe
100 percent that my pain is TMS and in no way from aging. It may take a while for that to "sink in" to my subconscious,
as Dr. Sarno says in HEALING BACK PAIN, but I will keep yelling at it. It seems the angrier I yell the more it helps. I just have to be careful I don't scare my darling dog. Yes, it is quite a learning adventure. I like myself more for taking it on.

 

Nope, just a psychologist, not a TMS psychologist. Maybe some day if I'm free from pain for a few years ...

I'm always interested in people who have success with the yelling at their subconscious thing. I can't quite do it. I tell my subconscious that it's been useful in pointing out that there are issues to be dealt with, and now pain is no longer necessary, but I can't seem to yell at it. Either I was yelled at too often as a child and can't do it to myself, or I'm just too much of a goodist!

 

Terry, it's great that you're a psychologist, period. Helping people is a wonderful calling. -- Walt

 

Walt and Annie, a 70-pound lap dog.

 

Yes, the scientific materialist world view is quite pervasive. Alfred North Whitehead called it "misplaced concreteness": the only thing that's real is matter in three-dimensional spacial temporal coordinates. We are immediately incredulous of any phenomenon (such as TMS pain) that falls outside that narrow definition. When you're trying to deprogram your pain pathways, you're really challenging some of the most deeply held beliefs in our culture, so, sure, it's going to take quite a bit of effort on your part to think psychologically about your pain and other symptoms.

 

Some time ago I lost confidence in our medical profession because doctors seem to just
think in terms of pain killers, MRIs and CAT scans and other tests, and operations. Dentists want everyone to get root canals.

So it is not hard for me to tell my subconscious that my TMS pain is psychological. I hope it's listening.

 

Amen, Walt! I notice that the big name doctors at Kaiser-Permanent really think they have lower back pain covered with a spinal degeneration diagnosis caused by aging. They give you that smile like they know it all. But if you point out that the statistics don't match their theory, they just act like you're daft or something. They're just itching to buy a new Porsche with a spinal fusion operation. Same with shoulders, hips and feet.

I agree with you that the whole root canal-implant industry in the dentist's chair is also a bunch of bunk designed to strip you of your life savings. For forty years, from the time I was 11 years old, I went to a WWII era dentist who'd gone to school on the GI Bill way back when and only had one root canal. The minute a young dentist just out of the University of California with a huge student loan bought my old dentist's practice, she just started going berserk in my mouth with implants and root canals and reductions, all in the name of 'saving my teeth'. No problems in my mouth until I got a modern dentist just out of dental college with a marketing plan to pay off her loans, start a family and buy a new house. She even had a con man's smile!

It's odd how after switching to a new dentist whose financial situation was better that the number of procedures performed in my mouth went down and down and down. Yesterday at my bi-annual checkup, no problems! I used to always trust my family dentist and doctor. Not any more!

 

It's really kind of funny. Friends tell me their dentist said they need a root canal as if they're proud f it and to them it's a new status symbol.

My dentist told me five years ago that I needed five new fillings for at least $100 each.
I said no teeth hurt and I'd wait until one did. Five years have passed and not one toothache.

 

That's truly funny Walt. I know a weight lifter at my gym who was also told he needed five new fillings and he said 'No way, my teeth don't hurt'. Now, five years later, still nothing wrong with his mouth. I've heard the way to lower your dental bills is to always select an old white male dentist whose kids have gotten through college and who owns some rental property too. That way he only does what needs to be done, instead of going on a "crusade in your mouth". Lower income/higher debt, more dental procedures. Higher income/less debt, fewer dental procedures. Seems like some kind of law, doesn't it? Wonder if the same "law" holds true for orthopedic surgeons?

 

Speaking of dentists back years ago, retired dentists were brought back during World War II
so younger dentists could practice on the GIs.
Our Chicago neighborhood dentist went to war and was replaced by an old timer who
only had a foot-powered manual drill. Ouch.