are we doing this all wrong?

hi, fellow TMSer here. currently undergoing treatment with positive results thanks to the awesome structural education program on here.

however, i just started reading The Divided Mind and have learned about the phenomenon of hysteric disorders. how they were first recognized in the 19 century as being psychological in nature, and how they were, as we now know, consequently increased in popularity. So sometime between the 1800's and now hysterical disorders were cured because theyre not as common any more.

of course we all know how common psychosomatic disorders have become. As Sarno mentions in the book, they have the same psychological roots as hysteric disorders, just a different manifestation. so we now seek to educate ourselves and those around us about TMS and often find ourselves cured.

but isnt this exactly what we did with hysteric disorders? we brought them under the spotlight, the popularity skyrocketed because they were in vogue, and then we eventually changed common thought enough to accept the condition as being psychological in nature and fixed everyone. story ends there, right? hysterical disorders are at large, gone. success!

but could the emergence of psychosomatic disorders be blamed on the disappearance of hysterical ones? are we actually just on a mary(merry?) go round where once we go through this same exact process with psychosomatic disorders, something else will take their place?

is it possible to consider the entire direction of our treatment to be shortsighted, and in the even grander scheme of things (rather than just OUR lives), ineffective?

Could it be that we need to look deeper into this rather than only being focused on treating TMS? im not well learned enough on the subject, but could there be a deeper solution than just looking at how our psychological problems affect our bodies? its just like how we all know that the structuralist medical community looks at symptoms of chronic pain and uses symptomatic treatment, which is a tragedy. we take it one step further and inspect the psychological cause of the symptom. is there another step we should be taking beyond this?

im not sure exactly where im going with this. but its like the creator of this Wiki and many others have said, making ourselves more aware of our TMS by staying too active on this forum can often increase our symptoms, and true relief is often found when we stop thinking about it so much. which is great.

but is there more that could be done other than simply curing our TMS? like, are there geographical consistencies on a global scale in terms of its emergence? its been proven with whiplash. and looking at another dimension, rather than location, how about time. how have our lifestyles changed, in terms of living conditions which affect what we know causes TMS - internal grappling with our inner child, over the centuries? i would guess in the distant past when we were more primitive, we were perhaps less restrained by society as well. were psychosomatic and hysterical conditons less prevelent at this time? is there any way to know?

could it benefit us even more to go past what we have found to be the known roots of TMS and inspect what factors influence THOSE roots, and attempt to address that? i guess im implying that we could maybe change the way we live and look at things as a broader and more effective solution, which is kind of silly because that is precisely what we are doing when we treat TMS. I believe its my own lack of knowledge of what the next step is thats leading my wording to trend this way. but what im really trying to say is, could there possibly be another step that we are overlooking here?

 

Hi, Adamrex. It looks like you a person who analyzes TMS and Sarno a lot more than I did. I am a former newspaper reporter and learned to write in simple terms, and I guess I also thought in simple terms. I am not able to help you with psychosomatics, but can tell you that I healed from severe back pain just by believing in the TMS philosophy of the MindBody connection, and I added faith in the Lord and the pain went away. I hope others can give you more input on psychosomatics. I am more like the humorist Robert Benchley who said, "Leave your mind alone." Haha and have a great day. Hope you can hug someone today, Valentine's Day.

 

Maybe this will be helpful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria