Can you improve without 100% belief?

I had surgery for lower back disc herniation 20 years ago. I was aware of Dr Sarno at the time and tried for several months to apply TMS thinking to my back pain with no reduction in my pain. So I had surgery. The surgery reduced my pain some, but I still had severe chronic pain in my back for years after the surgery. After the back pain finally resolved, I started experiencing other chronic pain conditions, including panic attacks and anxiety. I didn't really connect all the pain syndromes other than feeling a little desperate that there always seemed to be something wrong with me. Over many years I did start to believe that I was inherently unlucky or there was something basically wrong with me. And yet I always kept searching, hoping... Three years ago I developed a severe neck/shoulder spasm. It was also connected to right sided occipital neuralgia that I had experienced off and on over the years. But this pain was more severe and more stubborn than anything I had experienced since the disc rupture in my lower back. I had a cervical MRI and it revealed multiple herniated discs. Surgery was recommended again. I was very hesitant because of my previous experience. I also read Dr Hascom's book "Back in Control" about this time. I asked the doctors if I could safely postpone surgery for 6 months and they said yes. I did not 100% believe that the pain was caused by TMS, but I desperately wanted to believe. I wanted a way out, without surgery, drug addiction, suffering and sadness. I wanted so much to live my life without it revolving around what my pain level was on any particular day! My TMS recovery was a long, painful roller coaster of persistence fueled by desperation, but in the end, it has paid off! My belief came slowly. And even now my nervous system occasionally convulses with ghosts of pain conditions from the past, or even occasionally comes up with something new. But overall, I now have what I desired the most. For the most part my thoughts and pursuits reside in the world around me. Today(after I finish this post) I am restoring some cool old vintage chairs for my office, drinking carrot juice and playing with my little Mi-Ki puppy. It is hot in Texas in August but life is good!!

 

I think the 100% belief thing is a tall order to expect of someone new. It's really a process, as Forest and others have noted.

In AA they say "I came." "I came to." "I came to believe."

It's a process. In the beginning, I really, really, really wanted to believe. And I sort of did believe, but I still had some little nagging doubts. I stuck with it and did EVERYTHING they suggested to get better.

I am truly pain-free and it transformed my life. Now I'm a kool-aid drinking, true-believing, TMS evangelist!! Halleluiah!!!

 

There are people in my community who have never know about tms. They completely cure their mind body syndrome with only the power of pray. yes, praying to their god. They brought all their trouble to god in pray and completely leave it to him/her.

There are people who were cure of their tms by acceptance. Total acceptance of their fate. They just give up their fight and go on with life as if they were born with the disease. A miracle happen after that, all their FEAR subside and their symptoms slowly but surely just disappear and gone for good.

Time. Yes time. Time will cure or greatly reduce just about any mind body syndromes. Study found that most lower back pain will disappear or greatly reduced after 5 years without doing any thing. Most sufferers will find a way to go on with life. With enough time they just naturally become more acceptance of the symptoms. They just choose to focus more on other things in their life.... and then one day they just forget they have a symptoms. Or they just let it happen without mentally bother by the symptoms. An example is tinnitus. Tinnitus is a tms symptoms. Many people suffer from it and learn to live with it. It is still there but it no longer bother them. Sometime they don't even notice it is there.

 

My dad in his 70s became so entrenched in his pain that he would talk about it in detail to anyone who would listen. The less empathy, the more pain, the more fear and isolation. He had never recovered from my mother's death, yet he remarried to a woman who I think felt cheated because his pain--his TMS--kicked in. So he went around to Doctors (that merits a capital) and took medications, and weakened, and became confused along with his anxiety, and he died. This can be what happens without someone skilled and knowledgeable in MBS, To me it seems obvious that I had two parents with TMS--not with a series of maladies I am doomed to inherit, This lightens up my mental state immensely.

 

Just like disc pain, piriformis syndrome is TMS too. I had piriformis syndrome BAD for almost a year. At times, I couldn't sit for more than five minutes without pain. I did acupuncture, ART, stretching, rolling. Most of them helped a little because it was bringing bloodflow to the area, but I still suffered with it. Once I realized it was TMS, it got better and went away. It didn't happen overnight, and I'm only a few months in to this whole TMS thing, so I'm currently dealing with a flare-up of TMS trying to shake my belief again, but I KNOW I'm fine. I got past it before, so it's just proof that it's just my brain trying to trick me.
The point here is that even if you find a doctor that agrees with piriformis syndrome, you're still in the same boat- you're still in pain. So try to work through the TMS steps and have faith that you will feel better. I will say that the thing that has worked best for me has been resuming normal activities. This has helped me more so than journaling and trying to figure out the exact emotional cause. I will wake up stiff and sore some mornings, but as soon as I start running on my eliptical, my brain realizes it hadn't succeeded in tricking me and it lets go of the grip it has on my body.

 

I am doing my best to get active again. I can't stand up straight so I walk all hunched over and that wears out my back. But, I really felt like walking would help and finally realized I CAN walk with the stroller because I can lean on it for support.

I can't find a lot more to journal about, and I scored about a 45 on the life stressors test. And my pain is always there so there isn't something "setting it off". So hopefully just being active and not worrying about when I will be better will help. Meditation has also helped, especially with sleep and settling my mind.

 

The greatest thing for me in this endeavor is the lowering of my fear and anxiety about the future. TMS makes absolute sense to me, given my history and the development of pain. I can see it developing in my young adult daughters though.

 

Do you feel like a strong person? Not just strong physically, but strong mentally and emotionally? When I forget my strength or let someone make me doubt myself, I tend to have a TMS flare-up.
When I'm having a TMS pain attack, I sometimes lay down on the floor- either flat on my back or in child's pose to stretch the muscles along my lower back- and I will BREATHE breath into my sore/tight areas. I will literally picture oxygen flooding into these areas and rejuvenating the tissue again. I will just lay there quietly and breathe.
Anyway, I had just done that, and I was still laying in the floor when I wrote my last reply to you. I was writing about how I had overcome TMS before and I knew I would overcome this latest flare-up. I don't think I had definitively said that to myself since this flare-up began, and just writing it made me feel stronger. I realized that some events last week made me feel weak and that was the reason for my flare-up. I got up from the floor right after that and felt different. The pain was reduced, I had a little more mobility, and I felt determined. It was the kick in the butt that I needed to say, "TMS sometimes tricks me and it may always linger in the background, but that doesn't make me a weak person. I am strong. Just the fact that I've kicked it before is evidence of that. I will kick it again. And again and again, if I have to." Speak strength. Feel strength.

 

I haven't ever really thought about feeling strong mentally or emotionally. But I am definitely adding that to my self-talk affirmations. I think that will help my conscious mind take more control over my subconscious mind. Thanks for the tip!

 

Hi, zero. I believe you can heal a lot without 100 percent belief in TMS, but it really helps to heal completely with total belief.

I think a positive mantra will help you. Maybe something like "I believe 100 percent in TMS and it is healing me."

Your pain is really a good thing. It has led you to know about TMS emotions causing pain. Now just discover what those emotions are.
You don't have to solve any emotional problems. Dr. Sarno says just learn what they are and recognize them. Your subconscious is
satisfied with that and will stop the pain. It's all in the head. We worry ourselves sick and in pain. We can think ourselves out of it.

 

Here is what it says on our site. I have a bit of a problem with it.

"Have you struggled with chronic pain or another medically unexplained symptom for a long time? Have you tried everything to alleviate your pain, but nothing worked? Have you had doctors tell you they "just can’t find anything wrong?"

Then you may have Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). TMS is a condition that causes real physical symptoms that are not due to pathological or structural abnormalities and are not explained by diagnostic tests. In TMS, symptoms are caused by psychological stress."

This is not how I understand Dr. Sarno, who clearly wrote that often in TMS doctors DO find something wrong- disc problems or scoliosis or nerve damage. The TMS process kicks in when people become afraid of the diagnosis. The FEAR and PREOCCUPATION over the pain indicates TMS. The structural abnormalities that I do have been mildly painful, but I became preoccupied by acute flare-ups, which made things worse.

Dr. Sarno started writing about back pain, but extended his theory to incorporate other states of illness. It gets really tricky when you start pulling in illnesses like cancer. Mindfulness can help recovery in many ways, but cancer is not caused by repressed emotions.
I think that my own recovery will come with a redirection of my thoughts and emotions.

 

Riv44, can you quote citations from the Good Doctor's latest book where you found these thoughts?

 

I will try._-

 

Hey Zero,
I am 30 days into the program and have the same thoughts as you. I have the same story but with degenerative disc disease. Doctor wants to do surgery but I am very much against it. Tms makes perfect sense to me. I took picture of daily reminders in HBP so I can look at it daily. It helps if I can just talk my way through each of them. Hope and Pray this helps.

 

Zero76, have you considered seeing a TMS physician?

 

Chris - my story is exactly the same. Degenerated disk and the Ortho doc recommended surgery. It took me around 4-5 months of doing the things that Dr. Sarno recommended, but I eventually was fully pain-free. I've been that way for eight years now.

 

Tom, I don't believe there are any TMS physicians or therapists near me. However, I have seen improvement since my original post. I'm also more accepting of the fact that complete healing may take a while.

 

I think patience is important zero76. I tend to be the type that just thinks, "well I KNOW it's TMS, so why isn't it immediately better?" Even now, during my current flare-up, I have trouble being patient and dealing with the pain ebbing and flowing. I feel like it should just go away because I know it's just TMS pain. But I think our minds and our bodies get into a cycle of fearing the pain and expecting the pain, and that makes it harder to shake, even after we've accepted it's TMS. Congratulations on making progress! You're getting there! Just keep having faith that a complete recovery IS in your future!

 

Have you looked at the TMS practitioners list here? What state are you in?

 

I haven't been on this forum in ages but I have to say that I believed 90% and although my pain subsided dramatically, my quality of life didn't improve at all as I was still babying my back/legs. Now I believe 100% and my pain is 100% gone, I have an amazing quality of life now. My pain does come every now and again, mostly in my other leg and not as severe. Secretly I love it because it isn't that bad and I love the feeling of the pain completely subsiding an hour later when I talk to my brain; it makes me feel in control of my body and lets me know I have repressed anger. Take this from someone who was suicidal, your pain is 100% TMS, I promise you, herniated discs don't mean a thing. It's normal wear and tear, the same way that our hairline recedes and our teeth discolour as we get older, there is no way that something so small could be so debilitating. You know this to be true. You can get a discectomy if you wish, but this only works as a placebo, and since you know this, it will not have any positive effects on you, and even if it does then your TMS will just move to another part of your body. I think deep down you know TMS to be real, you just need to embrace it. It has worked for me and many many others. Good luck!