To anybody looking for advice.

So I recently posted this as a response to a thread on the forum. But I wanted to share it with everyone as well, so I will copy and paste it below. Hope this helps.

Here is a list of the most important things ive learned about tms and healing from your pain.

1. First step is to rule out anything structurally wrong. In my opinion its a good thing if you have been checked out by a doctor, had an mri and they cant figure out what is wrong. Once you have ruled out everything else, all thats left is TMS. When your doctor tells you to be wary of someone curing your chronic pain, he is simply saying "Well I cant figure it out so theres no way someone else can help you." This is the beauty of this website and all of the TMS literature. We have proof that thousands of people have ignored what their doctors have told them, stopped all the physical therapy and pain medication, and attributed their pain to TMS and healed 100%. Not that its his/her fault, but dont let your doctor's ignorance to the true method of healing chronic pain keep you worried that its something else.

2. The absolute best advice I have received from anybody on healing is from Steve Ozanich. (He wrote the book "The Great Pain Deception" which is a must read if you have chronic pain.) I had a 3 hour skype session with Steve and the one thing that really stuck with me was him telling me to FIX MY LIFE. Now, this doesnt mean remove all stress from your life. We know this is nearly impossible. What it means is start doing things that make you happy. Fill your life with excitement and joy day after day and keep your mind concentrating on how happy you are instead of how much the pain sucks.(Dont mistake this for repressing your emotions. Continue to be aware of, and work on your inner anger. But also let yourself be happy, and start enjoying life again.) Be grateful for everything you have and everything you can do. Things could always be much worse. Steve is a great example of this. For years he would spend much of his time crawling around on the floor with sweat pouring off of him because the pain was so bad. He had pain in every place imaginable. Yet he is now completely healed and living a very happy life. When he first told me this I thought to myself, "How can I do things that make me happy when im in so much pain?" The answer is to do them anyway. Do whatever you want to do, to the best of your ability. This leads to point number 3.

3. Working on outcome independence. Stop worrying about your pain every time you do anything that involves moving or causes pain in general. Go for a walk because you want to, and tell yourself that it doesnt matter whether or not it hurts after. Success isnt measured on your pain level after your walk. Success is measured on how little you care about your pain. If your in really bad pain, walk for a few minutes the first time. Do this for a few days and then try walking for 10 minutes. If it hurts a little more, so what? you just walked further than you have in a long time. Be proud of that. Gradually increase the distance every day until before you know it your walking a mile, and still not caring how much it hurts after. The same goes for things like sitting or even sleeping on your sides if you normally can only get through the night sleeping on your back. The key is to not care about the pain. Dont let it stop you from doing what makes you happy. Eventually youll be doing these things without even thinking about it. This is very important in the healing process. When you first start dealing with chronic pain, you are worried and give in to the pain. From there you start convincing yourself that everything you do hurts. After a while you have trained the neural pathways in your brain to be conditioned to expect pain from anything you do. It takes a long time to condition your brain to think this way, and it takes just as long to decondition your brain to stop thinking this way. This is one thing that Dr. Sarno got wrong. He gives examples of people healing in a week or two, or maybe a month. These are rare cases. Healing from TMS takes a while and you must work at it. Everybody is different. We all vary in terms of how afraid we are of our pain, how easily we can accept TMS as the cause, how long weve been in pain, and how much effort we are willing to put forth in order to heal. (BUT, dont try too hard. Do the emotional work for a while, and then work on FIXING YOUR LIFE so you can stop thinking about your pain every 3 minutes.)

4. This advice comes from personal experience. Before I learned about TMS I was completely depressed, in a serious amount of pain, and extremely confused as to what was wrong with me. I am in great shape and im only 24. Of course your early twenties is an extremely stressful period in life and now I was also deathly afraid of being crippled by this pain for the rest of my life. I spent most of each day laying in bed and when I wasnt laying down, I was standing up with ice packs on my back and hip and taking about 10 pills a day between vicodin and muscle relaxers. I was also going to PT twice a week just to stay mobile enough to do little things around the house. Literally everything I did hurt. Reaching out to turn on the faucet hurt. Talking loudly hurt. Sitting was impossible. Bending over was impossible. Lifting anything was impossible. One day while I was laying there desperately searching online for ways to cure chronic pain, I luckily found Dr. Sarno's book "Healing Back Pain." From that day forward my life had changed forever. I was lucky enough to truly understand what he was trying to say in his book. In the next week I read all of his books, and the week after that I read Steve Ozanich's book. After a month or so of following the instructions that they both gave, I had made enough progress to start lightly running and working out. This was amazing to me as I had felt completely useless for almost a year. I couldnt believe how quickly I had made that much progress, which turned out to not necessarily be a good thing. From that point on I expected to keep healing at that same pace. I thought to myself, "Wow, at this rate ill be completely healed in a couple more weeks!" WRONG. From everything I read on this website, it seems that its very normal to make a lot of progress quickly, and then you hit a wall. That is when the real work starts. For me, like most people with TMS, I am very perfectionistic and I wanted my pain gone ASAP. I also wanted to know exactly what to do in order to get rid of it. This was a mistake. You must expect that you will have good days and bad days. You will have good weeks and bad weeks. You may heal in a couple months. You may heal in a year or more. Everybody heals at their own pace. Everybody heals in different ways. The key for me is taking the time to recognize that although it may be slow, im still continuing to make progress. I still have times where I let the "what-ifs" occupy my thoughts. But the more you train yourself to not think this way, the more progress you make. Every couple of weeks I realize "Hey, it doesnt hurt to sit down anymore"..."Wow, a month ago I could barely touch my knees, now I can bend over and touch halfway down my shins!"..."I just realized I can get in and out of my car without it hurting anymore."..."No way! I just ran a mile!." Of course until your fully healed, you will be aware of your pain multiple times throughout the day. But looking for these improvements is very helpful when trying to fully convince yourself that your on the right track. Focusing on how little youve healed day after day doesnt work. Letting time take its course and realizing here and there that youve made more progress is how TMS healing takes place.

I like to compare TMS healing to going on a long hike. The hardest part is getting yourself up off the couch and on the trail. Once you start, theres no looking back. Some parts of the trail will be harder than others. Sometimes things will go smoothly. Sometimes youll think "what the hell am I doing out here?!" Sometimes youll turn a corner and think, "I must be almost there!" And then you hike another mile and again think, "Ive got to be close!" But you just have to keep going until you finish the hike. Once your there, you can look back at what you just accomplished and feel amazing about yourself. I will be there soon, and so will many other people. Be kind to yourself. Keep the faith. Your on the right path.

 

Hi, interstellar. Your post is full of great help to everyone. I especially like the 2nd section on FIX YOUR LIFE.
Steve has it right. If we spend more than 15 or 20 minutes a day journaling and otherwise thinking about the
causes of our pain, it's too much. We shouldn't even think about our pain. Instead, enjoy every minute of every day.
That means living in the present, not the past or the future.

Today is Good Friday, a day Christians reflect on the death and resurrection of Jesus, and their own mortality.
It's a good day even for non-Christians to meditate on issues important to them.

We're all looking for that "magic bullet" that cures us of our pains and makes us healthy and happy.
Many are now finding it in TMS, which Dr. Sarno calls "TMS Penicillin," while others, like me,
are finding it in a combination of TMS belief and spiritual faith. I add what Jesus told us regarding healing
and other wants and needs: "Ask and you shall receive."

 

I am one week into my tms journey and am discovering new things every day

Thanks for this post very realistic and sensible advice

 

Hi, Patrick. I'm glad you're discovering new things about yourself and TMS.
It's a fantastic journey.

 

Thanks for this post interstellar.

 

You are very welcome.

 

wow! Great post,
Thanks interstellar for shearing,
And I love the book you mentioned, although it's very hard for me to go through it - I'm an ESL person but I try to read 20 pages every day. But also I try very hard not to be perfectionist about it good luck at the end of your hike!

 

Glad you liked it! I realized people needed a more realistic view of how TMS works and how to heal. I want to help others heal as much as I want myself to heal haha. Also if you can only do 20 pages a day that's fine. Just make sure you absorb those 20 pages as much as possible and really take in everything he says. I assume your talking about Steves book, which I can't say enough about it. I would also recommend watching some TMS success videos. Those are very powerful. Keep up the good work, your on the right path!

 

Yes! I meant that book. The language is challenging somewhere.
Thank you.
My way is much longer then dr.Sarno said. I try to make an appointment with TMS doctor, what was recommended in the book you mentioned. But I'm getting there. No rush.

Can you please give me links to the videos? Or some titles?
Thank you,
Have a beautiful day!

 

That book is full of wonderful information. What Steve went through should give every chronic pain sufferer hope that they will heal. I just read your story and you seem to know exactly what is causing your pain which is great. Also what a great update! 70% healing is fantastic and should be celebrated! Im slightly further along in the process than you are so I know how amazing it feels to be able to be active again. BUT, dont get too carried away just yet. I work out and run a few days a week now and I still get sore as well. Of course once you make as much progress as we have, you cant stop yourself from wanting to be active again! But its important to slowly ease back into this. By now you know that you cant hurt yourself any further from using your wrist, which is a fantastic feeling. But I had an interesting conversation with steve the other day and he told me to back off a little bit from exercising. Instead do it once or twice a week, and spend the rest of your time doing other less strenuous things that make you happy. Go for a nice walk once a day. Spend time with friends. Read a good book. Play with your daughter. Now that youve done the emotional work and made good progress, its time to start being happy again! Stop thinking about the past and what you cant do, and focus on how bright your future is! Write down ten things every day that your grateful for. You seem like a very nice person so I wouldnt see you having much trouble with any of this. Your on your way!

In terms of seeing a TMS doctor...
If you dont have to worry about the cost of seeing someone and you have a TMS doctor close to you, I would suggest going. Its not that you need to see one because your obviously making great progress without doing so. But seeing one can really help get rid of any remaining fear of something structurally wrong. I battled with the thought of going to see a TMS doctor myself for quite some time, but I just knew deep down that I had the ability to do this on my own. I will also say that once I really sat down and thought about how much progress ive made and what im able to do physically without hurting myself any further, I realized it was silly to think that anything could be structurally wrong with me. This was a few weeks ago and ive made a good amount of progress since then. This shows me thats its very important to have confidence in the TMS diagnoses and to lose all fear. At the same time im getting better and better at finding happiness in life again. I am grateful for this experience as my body was trying to tell me that my life needed fixing. It is very important to realize that you arent experiencing this pain because you are bad person or have done anything wrong. Healing from TMS is not only a time to heal physically, but mentally as well. It is a time to grow as a person and find out how to truly make yourself happy.

Here are a few of the links to videos that I really liked.


(seven separate videos)




(six videos)

Be happy. Be patient. Be kind to yourself.

Ohh, and you should change "If I could only carry her without pain again" to "I WILL carry her without pain again!"

 

Thank you for the great advice and reply!
I will watch the videos, some of them I know already.
It is hard, I went to yoga few days ago and I think it was too early...Thank you for advice, I try to focus on future, not past. I've recently got my employee authorization so I'm going to work on Wednesday. Hope my hands will be ok with that...Only part time for the beginning but few months ago I wouldn't even think about it.

And thank you for tip - I'll think about it, I don't think I believe yet...it's sill painful but at least we both enjoy that!
Take care,

 

From reading your responses it seems like you still don't fully accept 100% that the cause of your pain is TMS, and you also seem to still fear your pain. This needs to change in order for you to fully heal. You have to believe 100% and lose 100% of your fear. I believe I discussed outcome independence in my first post. That is something you should really work on. You've healed 70 percent through knowledge of TMS when nothing else helped you. Nothing else even makes sense! Your doing great. Lose your fears and do things that make you happy. You'll be fine at work.

 

I accepted the diagnosis, after the doctor preformed muscle and nerve study in my both hands I know it's TMS.

And you're right about the pain. I try, some of the things I can do painless (dancing, driving) and some of them I'm still afraid off (running, weights lifting) . Usually when I push myself too much, healing takes a week. So I read books, do SEP again and try to smile to pain every time it shows up. Always in stressful situation, but I thank him for taking care of me and trying to distract me from my stress. Sometimes I think it's even cute! - He wants to takes my mind away from the stress by causing pain - how childish is that! The fact is that it's very effective. But I know he is doing it to protect me. I put too much on myself...through all my life I have been doing it.

It's hard not to feel fear. Sometimes I'm so scared when I look back and count my days with TMS and how many I have in my future... Now at least I have the knowledge and that is why I need to see TMS doctor. I need a TMS Stamp, that Steven describes in his book. The one that I found (thanks to this forum) it not calling me back even thou I left a few messages. I try with the second one but he specialize in back pain- I have TMS in my hands.

Thank you for your support, interstellar. Its priceless, knowing that someone was in the same spot and can understand how it feels.

 

Thanks for the post interstellar, I used it today as I did quite a bit of reading mark Sopher's book. & I took a lot of notes as well from a couple of the chapters, things that were pertinent and that really made sense as to show how pain would make a person with TMS see how there's nothing wrong with them structurally and how society, perpetuates such things as whiplash and chronic back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome all those maladies. So after doing a fair amount of reading and taking notes I thought about this post that you had put up and I read it again and once I'm done with Mark Sopher's book, I will go and read Steve's book from top to bottom and keep on keepin on. I think I will begin cutting down or tapering off pain meds soon. So thanks for the post mark

 

What area are you in? Have you found the list of TMS physicians in your area in at this forums practitioner's directory?

 

I'm in Washington.
Yes, dr Storm in recommended on this forum but he is not answering my messages
http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Find_a_TMS_Doctor_or_Therapist#Washington