Armchair Linguist
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Post on 10/22/2007
I do feel that throughout my recovery the constant has been to trust myself. First to trust my instincts about whether I had the syndrome, then to figure out how to best treat it for myself, and since then, in how to pursue emotional work and in just trusting my emotions, in many ways for the first time in my life. Recovering from TMS has been a true liberation for me in both physical and emotional senses.
I ended up essentially doing concurrent pain-challenging and emotional exploration, which I think was an approach that worked well because it strengthens identified connections with the emotions while giving back positive reinforcement through the physical success. I've been pain-free for over a year now (since May 2006) and am still doing ongoing emotional work through therapy and journaling, which has led me to do a lot less repressing in the first place.
I hope you also find a positive path from here on!
Post on 10/27/2007
One, going for a long walk or exercising for several days is not causing injury. You really need to change this view that activity = injury.
Second, muscle-tightening/tension is related purely to the TMS process and does not cause injury or make one prone to it. I have a theory (not really verifiable through simple means but highly plausible) that reduced oxygen flow to the muscles causes the muscles to tighten and knots (trigger points) to form. Trigger points are activated by TMS or stress to create pain. They are not injury, do not make you prone to injury, and you don't have to get rid of them (loosen up your muscles) to return to 'health'. As soon as I started challenging the pain, my pain went away, but physically speaking many of my muscles are still a bit tight and have trigger points in them.
As vikki said, your pain's relation to activity is through conditioning. You expect pain and therefore get it. This is the part of TMS that is actually most difficult to overcome when it is particularly ingrained, and I recommend checking out Fred Amir's book if you need some help overcoming conditioning.
If you are having trouble accepting the repressed emotions stuff, I actually would recommend doing some journaling of the form 'what pressures am/was I under', not omitting small things or things that you think you are happy about. I think you'll find it pretty informative how long the list can get.
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