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I’ve been doing a ton of reading on TMS and related material (Divided Mind, Healing Back Pain, Unlearn Your Pain, Rapid Recovery, Back in Control, Hope and Help for your Nerves, Power of Now, Curable, John Stacks material, Dr. Zaffreidies, Alan Gordon, Monte Hueffle, etc) as well as going through the boards and doing a ton of posting. There is a ton of good advice and the community is very supportive. Being an overly analytical person I find myself in the pattern of trying to gather as much information as possible, see what resonates with me, and putting “the best plan for me” into action. The issue is I’m also searching for “that one cure” and what is the “best” approach to healing (even though I can tell via success stories and peoples advice it is definitely a matter of different strokes for different folks).


Here are some of the “contradictories” I see in the community / literature (or it could be I am misinterpreting or misrepresenting some of the ideas):

• Your repressed emotions from childhood or recent past cause symptoms vs. your day to day way of treating yourself
• TMS simply is anxiety in the physical form (the cause) vs. anxiety is just another manifestation of TMS (an effect)
• TMS symptoms arise and stick around because of your hyperfocus on it vs. TMS being a deliberate strategy that can cause pain wherever and however it wants
• Relaxing (focusing) into the pain, “talking” to it telling it your understand what its doing vs ignoring it and paying it no attention whatsoever
• Being part of a community of individuals in the same situation (this board) vs. others in similar situation just exacerbates your problems by reminding yourself of your situation
• Repressed rage / powerful emotions that you aren’t aware of cause this vs. your strong emotions that you have to much of and wont let go of (anger) are driving the tension and anxiety which create
• You are not engaged in the world enough and need to get back into living vs. you are too type A and need to take a break and chill
• Distraction helps the pain vs Distraction is running away from the situation and will catch up to you and make things worse when you run out of gas
• Need to find your purpose vs. nothing really matters, be free of any sort of purpose pressure
• Working on your irrational thinking (CBT) can be very helpful vs. only emotional based therapies are helpful
• Doing physical exercise like stretching shows you that your body is strong and healthy vs doing physical exercise like stretching takes your mind away from the TMS healing approach

I’m sure there are more but these are the ones that come to mind.


Ultimately I suppose I need what approaches work best for me, but I worry I won’t know what approaches work for me. I image I won’t see an immediate change. I don’t want to not give methods enough time to work but nor do I want to go down a path that isn’t going to be effective for my situation.