Anxiety Tms relationship

Iv read a few posts on here and I know it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, and maybe I'm over thinking this, but I feel I need to get it straight in my own mind.

I wondered if people thought this could be a possibility in my case. I believe anxiety is a learned behaviour (as per Claire weekes, Paul David etc) and can be unlearned. For me I think anxiety triggered tms in the following way.

1. Learned to deal with life events, feelings etc by becoming anxious (mum and dad very anxious when I was young), rather than feeling emotions and allowing them to pass.

2. Anxiety is a bit of a false emotion that causes other emotions to be masked and repressed

3. This repression caused tms

4. I hated the anxiety feelings, thoughts etc so start to fear anxiety

5. This causes it to persist and become main tms symptom and main focus for many years.

6. Life event triggers more stress and tips balance causing back pain

7. Fear back pain just like anxiety and it becomes new focus. Anxious thought is about pain. But pain replaces anxious feelings

8. Now they sort of yo yo. Stop fearing pain, intense anxiety starts and vice versa.

I just wondered if this seems plausible?

In a wierd way I'm making progress, as I'm becoming less and less scared of each symptom. Using Claire weekes for anxiety, Sarno for pain and mindfulness to help me accept and feel emotions. One day I'll not be scared of any

 

This sounds like a version of 'the crazy eight' to me. Imagine the number eight on its side like the infinity symbol. We can get locked into this cycle of careening around one side into the other and back again and again. I believe Anthony Robbins came up with the crazy eight with reference to depression and anger but I may have that a bit wrong.

So yes your idea seems entirely plausible.

 

Your post prompted me to look up the word "anxiety". I've been using it all my life, but today I realize I don't really know what it is. I still don't know after looking it up. Is it an emotion, since we feel symptoms of it in our body? If so, how is it different than fear? Is it what occurs when we try to repress fear?

What do you think, Forum Friends?

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply Plum

I know it probably sounds like I'm stuck in a loop and being too rigid.

Why it feels quite important for me to work out, is not so much having to know exactly what happened and when, but more so I can trust that the 2 main sources I'm using to overcome my pain/ anxiety can actually fit together (Weekes and Sarno)

All the good anxiety advice Iv taken says that Anxiety is a learned behavior that can be unlearned, and that a large part of that is overcoming your fear of the fear, accepting things, carrying on with life etc

The TMS stance is that anxiety is caused by repressed emotions and is an equivalent to pain, to distract us from painful emotions.

I know the treatment is pretty much the same, in not fearing, getting on with things etc etc (with some slight variations of having to dig up old emotions and release them). But I felt it important to try and fit everything together, so I can still have confidence in using both the Weekes and Sarno methods to overcome things.

I hadn't been able to work out how anxiety can be a learned behaviour and or, irrational fear of fear if it's really caused by other emotions that are repressed.

My Crazy 8 relates to my life, and I'm glad you think it's possible, cos it sort of links the 2 methods together and explains how it could work. In that Anxiety caused my emotions to be repressed and so on.

 

My understanding is that it's a natural response to danger that has been with us since primitive times, but can be triggered when it shouldn't in highly sensitive people or by things that shouldn't really bother us but that we wrongly learnt to respond to with anxiety (probably as children). It becomes a problem when we start to focus on and fear the actual feeling of anxiety, and it then becomes a disorder. I think it is an emotion, but when chronic is a sort of false emotion that can mask all the other emotions that we should be feeling. Sort of like a defense mechanism, that isn't really helping us.

But I could be completely wrong......

 

Hi Fernale37,

I've been using Sarno and Weekes together for anxiety and pain. It has worked very well for me. I am also learning about Mindfulness and I love the book "Peace in every step". In short, I have done many of the things you suggest and it has been very helpful for me. Pain and anxiety is down @ 85%. I've only had both for 9 months but these two methods have worked very well for me to contain it.

-AC45

 

Anxiety creates pain ie tms.... tms is pain ...creates anxiety of the pain. Its a circle.
For me the beginning was when i couldnt care about the pain it was minor compared to the issues i had to confront or deal with ...however you want to call it. The pain subsided when i decided that i wouldnt fear anymore and couldnt care less about it because now the REAL stuff, my past, personality...pressures were now up front. AND knowing after reading Sarno that it was not physical.