Celayne

So, three and a half years into TMS healing on the Wiki, what have I learned?

1) It's a process. I thought I would find a magic bullet answer that would suddenly rid me of pain and anxiety and anything icky in my life. Wrong! It's more like 8 steps forward and 2 steps back. Which is still progress. I'll take it.

Sometimes you don't even feel like you are doing anything positive as far as TMS healing. That in itself is A Good Thing. At least you aren't going backwards and even if that happens, you can always find your way out.

The smallest steps take you in the right direction. Eventually, those steps all add up to living in a whole new life.

2) We are not alone. No, not talking about alien visitations, although that can be a fun topic. I'm talking about the community of people who make this wiki and all the other TMS resources out there possible and who share the experience of dealing with MindBody symptoms. Before coming here, I thought I was a total medical freak, the only one in the world who had pain that a doctor couldn't find a reason for, who had pain that moved around seemingly at random. Spoiler alert: there are many, many, many of us who have similar experiences. The fantastic news is that so many people have found a cure for their symptoms by following the MindBody methods taught here. None of us is so special that if they have TMS, they can't be healed of their symptoms.

3. Life is Beautiful! Am I 100% pain free? Nope! I actually felt like I was so close to that and then the Pandemic hit and like many others, I felt anxious and fearful and I had a spike in symptoms. Things were improving and then my nine year old dog, Buster, died very suddenly of cancer. I had no idea he had anything wrong - and I am a vigilant Dog Mom. His death completely blew me out of the water and I had worse physical pain than I ever remember having.

Life goes on though, and there really is a way out of the fog of pain, fear and anxiety. You just have to slog through it sometimes but there is always hope and anticipation of a better day coming.

Stick with it and your countless baby steps will take you far. Trust me.

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Update: Six months after reading The MindBody Prescription and The Great Pain Deception, I have made a lot of progress in healing from my TMS pain and anxiety. Anxiety is almost non-existent now. This is excellent news, as I think I was born anxious. The pain is different now. I'm in Extinction Burst mode, I think.

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I started having chronic, frightening shoulder, neck and back pain after suffering a traumatic emotional shock in 2009. I also had a couple of physical incidents that caused some of the pain around that time but it kept getting more intense and adding symptoms such as anxiety, depression, horrible skin problems, chronic exhaustion, food allergies/sensitivites, chronic nausea.

Every time I visited a doctor, they would run blood tests, say there was nothing with me when the results came in. One urgent care doctor prescribed Vicodin when I went in because a pec muscle was so knotted and painful I was nauseous. My regular doctor prescribed an antidepressant, which made me nauseous.

At the start of my TMS symptoms, I went to a chiropractor, thinking that would solve back, neck and shoulder pain. I totally picked the wrong chiropractic practice to visit, as they had me going in three times a week, snapping the same places over and over and making an already sensitive body feel like it was dying. I was terrified. That experience didn't help the situation and in some ways made it worse but I thought I would improve once I stopped the chiropractic. Wrong!

I have tried alternative healers of all kinds. Temporary relief lasted anywhere from the length of the session to a couple of weeks afterwards but the pain and other symptoms always returned. With one exception, these people were caring, and wanted to help, and some even encouraged a mind-body diagnosis but it was never enough. At Christmas 2016 I would have described my condition as 'okay' with few really awful flares and some very good days.

Last December, while packing for a move, I tripped over some boxes and fell twice in the span of about a minute, first landing on my back and the second time face first. After that, everything seemed to go downhill. Moving while recovering from a traumatic physical injury was bad enough but there were a lot of emotional stressors, too, so even after the move was over I kept getting worse and worse. I started up my cycle of visiting chiropractors, massage therapists and so forth but of course nothing really helped. I began physical therapy because my insurance pays for some of that. The therapist is great and is one of the few people I have seen that understands about trigger points. That's helped somewhat. He's open to new information and I loaned him my copy of The MindBody Prescription. I have at least one more visit with him - I know Dr. Sarno says to stop PT and such but the treatments have made me feel a little better.

Since reading MindBody, I have been working with Dr. Sarno's ideas and I can see there is a way out of this pain, anxiety and fear, but it seems to be a long process. I've been seeking a Miracle Cure for eight years and while I am very, very tired of feeling this way, it will be worth it in the long run to conquer this bastard once and for all.