New Program Day 6: The Fear Matrix

The financial fears make me the most crazy. These are the ones I have the least control over. Now I'll have to go watch "Frozen" again......

 

yes yes yessssss.... honestly i think that the whole looking into emotions and becomng the best you blah blah stuff screwed me up more than anything. I get that it's so you don't focus on the symptoms now. Every other time i had PN issues it would literally be like a week and go away because i didn't give a shit about it. Now it's training my brain to get back into that mode. My biggest issue is when i get home.... its like im scared of being home because that means downtime = thinking.

 

The matrix metaphor is so apt. It's catching the fear before it gains momentum, like Keanu Reeves catching a bullet in midair. The Zen of it!

I have found the concept of the "adversity bias" to be helpful in this regard. If we were to survive in ancient times, we had to have the ability to predict when we were in danger and escape from - or fight - it. By selective processes, people whose brains were good at sensing impending doom survived and then bred more people who were good at sensing danger. Sadly, this survival instinct is pretty useless to us in the First World. It's like we are seeking suffering.

If we are like this, rather addicted to fear, the TMS recovery is seeing the pain or the negative thought as the Matrix bullet and we catch it before it hits us. Lovely! Especially when we can laugh together about what we do. I have friends and patients I have tried to teach this concept to; a few have gotten really angry because their defense is so thick. They jump to the conclusion that you are telling them it is in their "heads" - that they are malingering, making it up.

From my perspective, TMS recovery is not a one-size-fits-all miracle cure. It's not a level playing field. I have seen some instant recoveries even in people with complex trauma, but for me I find it deeply enriching to understand the Why of it. I have weighed in on this a few times over the years. The male linear brain is usually content to know something and move on. Sure, there are females in The Matrix and... still, the female brain is made of some different stuff and we connect deeply with one another about the why of things, the stories, the meaning.

90% of fibromyalgia cases are women. I don't have statistics on how many come from complex trauma. I do know that when I meditate and connect with the terrified infant self within me, I am more able to give care to the part of me that awakens frightened and vigilant, more able to give myself tender loving kindness than I was when I was not in touch with my innermost and frightened self.

Trauma therapy ought not re-traumatize us. My wish is that this path be a broad one that includes the cognitive shifts and the deeper - sometimes sudden - enlightenment that comes about from psychoanalytic discoveries.

 

Thank you, I've read it. Hope this is the reason for increasing pain.

 

I seriously hope you're referring to "anti-vaccine" propaganda. These are scientific people here and anti-science vaccine "skeptics" make for anti-science ignorance.

 

Hi Nele,
you are not alone......I too face many difficulties, but now I feel there is hope for me to get pain free, manage by problems, and live my future in better shape.

 

Thank you Shira, so do I - feeling there is hope.

 

I didn't mean to ignite a debate here (and trigger my own TMS). Let's nip it in the bud here!

 

yes there is hope..............for sure!. Nothing great is achieved overnight or without great effort.......the trick is to stay aware and stay focused on what you want to achieve (even if setbacks occur).......and that is 'pain free' and wellness

 

Good question, I'll be covering this in tomorrow's section.

Hi grateful_mama, that's an astute question. Our brains are neither smart nor stupid, they've simply evolved to be maximally adaptive for a given environment. For most of human history, we lived in environments with many physical threats, so the mechanisms we've been discussing have been generally advantageous. Modern civilization is a relatively recent development.

As an analogy, think of cars. Cars are pretty great methods of transportation if you want to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. But if you're dropped in the middle of the Andes with a Ford Taurus, this tool that was great in one environment isn't the best fit in another.

 

Why would the Fight or Flight response (reacting to danger, unsafe feelings) turn on TMS symptoms such as disabling muscle spasms, intractable pain that make fight or flight difficult or impossible?

Everything else we know about the Fight or Flight system says it assists fight or flight: increased blood flow, respiration, etc.

Logic suggests the Fight or Flight response would turn off TMS symptoms when under threat to make it easier to fight or flee the tiger.

This is where the fight or flight theory breaks down for me.

 

This makes a lot of sense is really reverses the whole way I have been thinking about pain and my thinking and it's been both fascinating and helpful to try it out over the last few days.

Question: What about when the fear seems to come from nowhere? (Nowhere conscious, anyway?) For example, I was sitting in a cafe with my youngest child the other day having a really nice time and them I was suddenly flooded with a sensation of fear. I immediately went to my thoughts to see what thought had generated it but I really couldn't come up with anything. I was having 'good' thoughts, in the moment and then fear came anyway.

 

Fight, flight or 'freeze' causes TMS to BE the symptom. You are trying to interpret this in in the literal sense as if there were a tiger. But there isn't. The subconscious mind has mis-trpeted a very strong emotion "as if" it were the tiger. It now causes a distraction protecting you from the strong emotion which is seen as a threat. Which Sarno or other books have you read?

 

Thanks for responding. I have read all the Sarno books but long ago. I realize the mind misinterprets say fear of giving a speech as mortal danger. I find it curious that the flight or fight response would simultaneously prepare for fight or flight and block the ability to flee or fight.

 

You are still looking at this as if you can see a tiger. Or that you are about to give a speech and are "obviously" frightened. This is about repressed rage, fear and emotions. In so many cases it's trauma from maybe even decades prior. Think about when the pain began. What was going on then? Dig deep.

Many people read the Sarno books over. My favorite is "Mind/Body Preacription." Don't listen to me...go pick it back up.

 

I still don't get this. I 'm trying to teach this to others and it makes no sense to me that our flight or fight response triggers pain that makes fight or flight impossible. How can I teach that? (For the past many decades I've always taught Dr. Sarno's protective diversion explanation of TMS symptoms.) Consider:

Situation One/Mortal Danger: If I were threatened by a tiger, my body would prepare me to fight or flee but it would NOT turn on TMS symptoms that prevent fighting or fleeing.

Situation Two/Psychological Danger: If I'm taking the bar exam, my body misinterprets my anxiety as a mortal threat similar to the tiger above, turns on the same fight or flight response but in addition throws in horrible TMS symptoms???

Why such radically different results from the same primitive autonomic response system? I can't do the mental gymnastics needed to square these two cases.

Dr. Sarno's working hypothesis (until a better one came along, he always said) was that TMS symptoms were the brain's attempt to distract us from painful repressed emotions. This makes sense to me and helped me defeat my TMS 35 years ago and teach many people in the interim. Has this hypothesis been discredited or proven wrong?

Is the flight or fight/danger hypothesis supposed to replace Sarno's protective diversion hypothesis?

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

 

Hi Hambone,
In situation 1, it's entirely possible that TMS symptoms would be triggered as well. In fact, I've had people with a history of TMS symptoms tell me that physical symptoms would pop up when they did think they were in danger.

These physical symptoms wouldn't necessarily prevent fighting or fleeing.
Sometimes the need to escape danger is so immediate (whether the danger is escaping from a tiger or pulling your hand out a fire) that our brains don't have time to identify the nature of the threat.

In situation 2, your brain could misinterpret a psychological threat for an external physical threat (tiger) and give you anxiety, and internal physical threat (prospective tissue damage) and give you pain, or even both.

 

Thanks Alan.

Does this danger theory replace Dr. Sarno's theory that pain is created to divert our attention from unpleasant emotions? Trying to see how, if, the two ideas fit.

 

Hi Hambone, I cant speak for Alan but my understanding is that they are the two sides of a coin. Alan's theory says that danger signal(pain) is turned on when a threat is perceived. You can say that Dr. Sarno's theory is the same, subconscious mind finds unpleasant emotion scary and threat full and to protect the conscious mind, pain is created.

 

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