Day 8, my first post

Hi Cheri and Welcome to the Wiki,

It is great to hear that your back pain was able to go away in a matter of days, but I do understand that it can be frustrating to still have other symptoms. Sometimes one symptoms will take longer to heal because we worry about more or think of it more serious. You mentioned that your severe sciatica prevents you from walking, which makes me think that you focus on it more and worry it about more.

I can relate to having severe leg pain. I had severe knee pain which also prevented me from walking more then a couple minutes, but now I am fully recovered. Have you been reading the sciatica success stories. Reading stories from other people have been really helpful to a lot of people. One thing that I noticed that helped my leg pain more then anything else was to be active. I started to push myself and took up playing broomball. At first, I was a little nervous but I just reminded myself that I had TMS and I did not have to limit my activity. My symptoms didn't get worse. Sometimes I didn't even have pain when I was playing. It just sort of faded away. Nothing helps the TMS message sink into our unconscious then being active. It may be helpful for you to start walking a little bit each day. You can start off small, by just walking around the block and gradually build up from there.

Lastly, keep postin updates here. There is a lot of great information on this forum and on the main website. I found a lot of benefit from posting on forums and reading about what worked for other people, so I encourage other people to do the same.

Best,

Forest

 

Hi Cheri:

Just to let you know this is what happened to me. My lower back pain and some new shoulder pain were both about 80% gone the day after I finished my first Sarno book last fall (Sept. 2011) and it wasn't long for them both to be totally gone. But the dizziness and neck pain stuck around. I realized that I had to address my anxiety, which was greatly helped by reading a book by Claire Weekes - Hope & Help For Your Nerves. I also started the Structured Ed Program, and discovered things from my past that I didn't realize were still stuck in my psyche. Even tiny, small events, once I let go and wrote about them, were very revealing. I can't exactly remember how many weeks later it was, and I wasn't through the Program, but one day I realized it had been several days since I'd felt dizzy. I decided about then that I was done with having a stiff neck, and started doing things that in the past I was afraid to do because they would make my neck hurt. And my neck didn't hurt!

I've had many other varying symptoms over the years that I won't even list here - some never came back, others come back when I'm stressed. And there are relapses. I'm having a relapse right now, in fact, with the dizziness/lightheadedness, so I have to go back, finish the Ed Program, and figure out what it is about my current stresses (and there are many of them) that is triggering deep emotions, and also figure out what those emotions are.

Many of Dr. Sarno's success stories tell about people who experience the "book cure". We don't see those people on this forum - or should I say, we don't see them until they relapse, or start experiencing a new symptom that's harder to eliminate! I think what we need to accept is that our basic personality traits, the ones that Dr. Sarno identified so well, are the traits that make this a life-long journey. And I used to use the word "struggle" but that just doesn't feel right anymore, because it really is a journey of discovery.

Keep working on it - and above all, be totally honest with yourself (no one else is watching) as you're doing the work. That's essential. And it's also the hardest thing to do, because your brain is dedicated to preventing it.

Jan

PS - you're right about the video, which is a bummer - I got to watch it last fall. We would love to figure out how to archive some of these outside links on the wiki, but it's probably copyrighted material Peg's story is still on the old wiki profile page here: http://tmswiki.wetpaint.com/account/Peghanson but this site is not being updated or monitored, I don't think so, anyway. I'll discuss this with the admin team.