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Funny you mention that...That is the last piece of advice given to me by Dr. Sarno himself after we exchanged letters a few years back. I'd written him asking his opinion on the relationship between my steadily worsening TMJ & TMS. He suggested I track down a good analytical psychologist to help me break the cycle & win the game of 'Whack-a-Mole', because he was confident that the pain in my jaw was another example of the 'Symptom Imperative', a phenomenon I'd unfortunately become intimately familiar with.

I began having panic attacks about 2 weeks after 'curing' my low back pain with Dr. Sarno's methods. Unfortunately, it took nearly two more years to reach the conclusion that seems so obvious in hindsight. At the time I didn't really know what 'anxiety' felt like, and blindly entered the mental health industry, which turned out to be not all that different from the modern back pain 'industry'. I was misdiagnosed over and over again, gave the psychotherapy a really good shot, but was only able to overcome the condition when I decided to use the same approach that'd fixed my back. I simply educated myself on the physiology, sources, etc. of Panic Disorder, and once I was able to convince myself of the benignant nature of these attacks, and where they were coming from, I made them disappear.

I tried therapy again more recently, attempting to focus solely on the mind-body connection, but it just didn’t take. I’m not one of those people that dismisses psychotherapy out of machismo or avoids it because of any lingering perceived stigma. I’ve given it a really good shot, with more than one provider, and have just concluded that it just isn’t helpful in my case.

On a side note, while I do believe TMJ is another TMS equivalent like Dr. Sarno theorized, yet I can’t explain why I began grinding my teeth as a toddler. Some doctors have suggested I was already internalizing any stress in my environment, even at that young age – or even absorbed my mother’s tension in the womb or as an infant. I had to call bullshit on that line of thinking, and just can’t wrap my head around the idea that I had repressed rage when I was a child.

There is definitely a psychological process that is very blatantly preventing me from really getting serious about following a TMS recovery program.

I am not a lazy person. You’d think that after 8-9 years of suffering that I would be relentlessly seeking to duplicate my past success. Re-reading Dr. Sarno’s books, etc., but my ‘ADD’, yet another TMS-equivalent, has me chasing my tail. I used to be a voracious reader, but over the last few years I’ve just watched my Amazon wish list grow and grow. I borrow library books again and again, yet allow them to expire without reading a page. I went out and bought ‘Zero Pain Now’ by Adam Heller (made it to chapter 3), along with the companion workbook (still filled with blank pages). I picked up ‘Unlearn your Pain’, just to name a few. I completed a month-long coaching program with Fred Amir (which I half-assed), and the list goes on. I bought a journal app and a symptom tracker, but eventually stopped keeping up with that too. I keep telling myself that I can’t complain about the pain or consider any kind of new treatment until I am doing absolutely everything I can to treat the TMS, but for some reason I can’t seem to summon the discipline. I have so much trouble concentrating, and once I’m finished with my work for the day, I just can’t get my brain going, and wind up just staring at the boob tube. So of course, I am extremely critical of myself for this, and generate a whole new round of rage/tension/perfectionism that feeds back into the TMS.

At this point I’ve missed so much of my life because of this back pain that every time I feel even just a little better, I find scramble to catch up. I tend to apply this losing philosophy to pretty much every aspect of my life, and it has turned into an unfortunate pattern I keep repeating year after year. My back feels better so I need to hurry up and get back into shape or enjoy my favorite sports/hobbies, which are all active & require physical strength. I then inevitably overdo it and wind up with some kind of stupid injury because my body doesn’t tell me when I’ve done too much at the time – it won’t be until the next day that I wind up crippled. Or I’ll obsess over work, and in my rush to ‘catch up’, I’ll neglect my body & spend too many hours SITTING at the computer and stop taking proper care of myself - eating bad takeout & not getting enough rest.

This is of course a losing proposition, and the concept that I’ve ‘missed out’ due to illness, whether TMS or the Crohn’s Disease I’ve had since age 6 is definitely a primary root cause of my TMS & repressed rage. Unfortunately, this time around, acknowledging the issue or ‘accepting the diagnosis’ isn’t enough to eliminate the pain.

I spoke to my pain management doc yesterday (he himself has undergone back surgery, though just based on what he’s told me, I’d say there is a significant chance he also suffered from TMS & his operation was unnecessary. I reminded him on several occasions that lots of people have ‘herniated discs’, but they don’t all develop chronic back pain. I did relent and agree to have a new imaging study done, mostly just to see if there has in fact been any kind of change in the pathology that can be identified as consistent with the progression of my symptomology. I am, however, terrified of what the radiologist will report, and am struggling to figure out the best way to prevent whatever horrifying diagnosis he comes up with from providing nourishment and strength for the TMS monsters inside my subconscious.

Just a quick side note to acknowledge what a truly special human being Dr. Sarno was. I recall being just blown away simply by the fact that I received a reply to my letter. It'd been a few years since I'd seen him in his office, and I live 2500 miles away. I nearly fell out of my chair when he called me directly to follow up. It is yet another example I wish more 'traditional' doctors would emulate. These days I consider it a small miracle to even get a call back from a medical assistant working for a local doctor's office where I am a current patient.

Wow, I’ve really rambled on a bit here. Thanks so much for all of the thoughtful replies. A special thank you to anyone that’s actually read this far! I scheduled my MRI for next week…