Day 1, Accepting Diagnosis

[write a short post about the level of acceptance you have of the TMS diagnosis, and of any doubts or worries you may have at this point.]

I just watched the 20/20 video, which I came across earlier when researching Dr. Sarno, and read the success story. I'm probably 95% accepting of the diagnosis, now that I have spent a few weeks journaling, reading about TMS and looking back on the past year. The lingering 5% doubt is probably because I did have a slightly abnormal reading in the EMG/NCS study. But it was only one point off, in the nerve that connects to C5/C6. I do have that herniated disk, but I'm not worried about that now.

So I can write all this, but still not get to the emotional and mental stuff. Focusing on the pain is such an ingrained habit now. Thank God my friend remembered that I had neck pain as a very young child. When she said that, I couldn't remember it, but it felt familiar. She also remembered me getting dizzy and having headaches. The dizziness I do remember. It was stressful to be an emotional young girl with a mercurial, alcoholic father.

Today I experimented with Alan Gordon's idea of outcome independence and not tying pain levels to how I feel about my day. I moved forward on revising a big chunk of my novel and guess what, when sitting at the computer, I actually let myself slouch instead of obsessing about perfect posture.

Oh dear, so much for a short post...signing off now.

 

Mara you write beautiful post. You are a very smart person , why not write -- your a writer. Thats what we do. I am so glad that you are getting your book done, I want to be the first one to read it when you get it published. I know it will be awesome. We have many, many writers here. You will see and learn as you go along your journey.
When the pain is in one area of your body, just focus on another part of your body that doesn't hurt and you will soon break that focus conditioning ok.
Bless you