Deep Knowing & Hypnotherapy

I finished Dan's book and I give it a 5* review. Dan is my Sarno v2.0 and whilst I may not be cured the book has provided me with much needed answers to my symptoms. Dan's video on 'Deep Knowing' hit me really hard this morning. It's when you feel a deep understanding of why and what happened to you (i.e. not just an intellectual understanding of what is happening). It dawned on me that my body is resilient and has an amazing power to heal itself. I'm nearly 50 and never had a serious illness like cancer, heart disease, ms etc. I've got colitis but even then I've never had major complications from it and, even then, I now believe a significant component of it is TMS from trauma. That hit me really hard i.e. my body is actually okay and is resilient. I also thought about what doctors told me i.e. you've just got anxiety, you are a hypochondriac etc. It never felt like a correct diagnosis as I do not worry or ruminate too much about future threats and neither do I worry too much about small symptoms here and there. I mean I do but not to the extent where it's taking over my life. I then thought about what Dan said about Fear and Perceived Danger. Fear isn't anxiety and I think medical doctors don't understand the difference between the two which confused me at the time. I realised that my first symptom was severe insomnia, something triggered it and it may have been a bad infection. The severe insomnia created severe fear then that fear snowballed overtime with other fears which then created more symptoms and thus more fear ... more drugs ... more withdrawals ... more fear then more symptoms then more fear ... the cycle continued. It then dawned on me this morning that the cause of all my CHRONIC ailments is FEAR (everything else like rage just compounds the issue). The acute root cause for the insomnia I'm certain has gone away and now I'm dealing with FEAR. I see it now ... I see FEAR as a cancer of the mind (the software) instead of the physical body. Bam, that hit hard. It hit hard because I never saw myself as a fearful kinda guy. I've hiked up dangerous mountains, I've snorkelled with dangerous fish, I've sailed in storms etc ... what me? Fearful? But then I realised each symptom that I experienced created such a fearful response ... the fear of being powerless against my symptoms which are very much real. It's not an anxiety i.e. I'm perceiving something dangerous right now (although it's not dangerous just very 'uncomfortable' to experience). I've started to use mechanisms now to reduce the fear response but I'm wondering ... I've heard that hypnotherapy can work on fear. Has anyone that you know of, including yourself, used hypnotherapy to reduce/eradicate fear based on false pretences? I'm not sure why Dan didn't mention hypnotherapy as a potential tool in his book. If hypnotherapy can reduce fear and less fear means less TMS and, as a consequence, less symptoms then that may aid recovery and healing.

 

Hi, Mike,
I love how you are piecing together your story. That’s exactly what I did this time, and it took me quite a while. It’s really a good feeling when it all comes together in clarity. I wanted to understand how I got to this place.

I don’t know how it makes you feel, but it makes me feel like my body isn’t my enemy after all. It just did the best it could with what was happening. It finally had to turn on the fire alarms— too much fire!

TMS is kind of a natural breaker system. When the system gets overloaded and overwhelmed, it forces you to change your life. And the changes you make you would’ve never made without the symptoms forcing you to do it. In that way, TMS is kind of a salvation. It locks you down until you figure out what’s hurting you. And that’s what you’re doing —figuring it out!

I don’t know anything about hypnotherapy. Maybe it’s good? If you try it, let us know. You might want to also explore meditation. There are so many ways to do it. Over time, it has a huge impact.

Years ago I had the worst issue with panic. It was so bad I was trapped in the house— and even in the house, I was terrified of my next panic attack. I honestly didn’t know how I was going to live. Call it divine intervention or what you will, something prompted me to try meditation. I had no idea how to do it— I just sat quietly every day, closed my eyes and tried to quiet down. Every time a thought came into my head, I would just gently push it back and try to have no thoughts.

After a while, I started meditating on an image. I would picture I was way up in the hills over Bethlehem on the night Jesus was born. To me, that’s a very holy night and it gave me such a good feeling to meditate on this image. I made the sky a brilliant navy blue with stars twinkling. I had angels in the distance, and I was quietly with the shepherds. I could smell the fresh winter air. I could see the sheep all around me. It was like a beautiful virtual Christmas card!

I ended up meditating for a year, actually more than a year. As the year progressed, I was able to meditate longer and longer. I went from 10 minutes a day to two times a day— often 30 minutes each. By the end of the year, I could easily meditate for an hour— and looked forward to it. I used it as a kind of drug. It was very soothing and calmed me down. It also made me feel better when I was sad or depressed. But the biggest thing it did is it cured me of the anxiety and the panic. No more panic attacks!

Meditating takes a lot of discipline and you also need to have a quiet space alone to do this. I really should consider doing this again. I know it can really bring down the fear. Maybe you’d like to try it? I’ll join you if you want!

Onward and upward, brother!

 

I think fear and anxiety are so interlinked because they both put that nervous system in fight/flight.
I’ve also found fear similar to anxiety in that it is a default coping mechanism to keep us “safe” and small.
It is also similar to anxiety in that it is more about thought than emotion though fear often covers up rage (coping mechanism) and has a close relation to shame and/or guilt. I’ve been overcoming fear by recognizing that like an emotion, it has physical sensations I’ve judged as unpleasant, and simply tried to quickly get rid of -avoid, repress etc. so feeling those sensations and simply letting them be has gone far in overcoming fear. So is acknowledging it, accepting it with curiosity “owning” it.
Early on I asked a friend about hypnotherapy (she is one) but she said it’s very specific so you need to tackle each individual fear in a series of sessions.
I went the EMDR route, which has some similarities to hypnosis but is far more generalized over time. It works best a few weeks to months after treatment ends and your brain, subconscious (or whatever) can sort things out and fear seems to fade somewhat. Triggers become less intense.

 

What worked best for you for fear? Is it allowing the emotion (feeling it/owning it/accepting it) AND EMDR? Is there anything else? I try to send genuine messages of safety to my brain with the hope that it will feel that I'm not in present danger.

 

What works best has been giving it time.
I was in extreme fear, because the first round of this particular brand of TMS had me bed ridden and giving hideous outcomes many years ago. So when it returned (when internal stress built up again), I was terrified. So it's taken and taking me a long time to chill out. I've been having a flair up, and it's an opportunity to work with the fear again, which I am actually not afraid of.
EMDR worked well for me personally because I recognized having life long fears since I was 6, that are unrelated to symptoms but are TMS. That is anxiety which, I never fully recognized. I think it's important to be able to see that and own it. Fear is just part of the anxiety, and frankly, I suspect you have a level of anxiety you're probably so used to, it seems normal to you - it's become your baseline. I think that's pretty typical of TMS personality folks....and it's not to be feared! (and I could be totally wrong, but judging from posts you've written, I suspect it's true).
What worked for me was first recognizing that I was fearing the physical sensations of fear. So I would just take a few minutes per day and sit with them, much like sitting with an emotion. This took me months and didn't stop while going through this process. I needed to retrain my brain to begin to chill on initial fears so I could begin teaching it what was a "real" fear and what Dan B. calls a "perceived" fear.

It was then, once I began sensing the physical sensations I began to take a breath when they arrived. It's a pause so I could learn to respond instead of react to them. I wanted to break the fear of the fear and show myself that I had a choice.

Once I noticed the sensations and could take that little pause, I could then tell myself STOP when I had thoughts associated with the fear. I could recognize the OCD like quality of those thoughts and "forcefully" (but with kindness) turn my attention elsewhere. I'm still in this process, daily. It's just that instead of doing this 1,000 times a day for two years I do it maybe 20 times a day now. This is absolutely where patience and kindness come in, and decided to stop worring about timelines and "fixing" and doing things right. This is subtle, because you don't want to put up your dukes and fight with yourself to barrel through symptoms, but over time I stopped overthinking or overly re-assuring safety because after awhile, you realize you're just focusing on the symptoms when you do this, but again, you start by giving yourself messages of safety, and you work towards ACTING like you are safe. I gradually stopped self-talk, and the STOP method for fear of symptoms. I use STOP for fear of other stuff now. When I have a flair, I can bring back self-talk and STOP for a time to get back to the level of confidence I want to have.

The STOP method makes it sound like I'm sort of pushing away or repressing the fear, but I'm not. I feel it and allow it all but don't allow my myself to think the thoughts around the fear.

Does this help?

As for EMDR - that helped me with a life of fears. In the subconscious they are a jumble without any time table, and utilizing TMS work (I did the SEP and worked with the fear) and the same time I was doing EMDR helped my brain file and organize that deep stuff. After each session, when my therapist asked me to chill out and relax, I'd go do something I was afraid of...

 

Mike,
Helmut has a great technique. He says you do this daily:

1. Spend 1 hour a day bathing your nervous system in dopamine. He does this with an hour of meditating on a great memory, in elaborate detail. Or, of the future great life that you want, in great detail.
   
2. Welcome your fear like an expected guest. Tell it to come on in and stay a while; “have tea with it.”
   
3. Then, daily, do something scary or hard despite the fear. Tell your fear, “I’m going to do such and such. You can come along.”
4. Be a “safety tour guide” to your TMS brain. SHOW it that things are safe by doing them. Talk to your brain and say, “See? This is safe.”
   
5. After a while (who knows how long. It’s different for everyone) your TMS brain will recalibrate what it thinks is scary. Each time you challenge with an activity, you are reprogramming your brain to accept more things as safe. He calls it “an exorcism.”

This process worked to get rid of his 70 symptoms over a two-and-a-half year timeframe. He said all hell broke loose before then. New symptoms—some moving around—some getting worse. But none of that was an indication of how close he was to healing.

This video rambles a bit, but it explains it. Start at the beginning: (I’ve listened to this about 10 times!)

https://www.youtube.com/live/pMPl55WKF28?si=b_cFivPyDT2p5fPR

 

Great, Cactus! Love this! These are my favorite quotes.

 

How do you see yourself now?

 

Ohhh, so right. Vulnerability! Ooof!

 

Well, this is the thing. My psychologist has seen a running theme of powerlessness in my life. I agree, the powerlessness against my symptoms is huge for me but that is slowly changing. She using EMDR to change memories of being powerless to that of being in power.

 

Indeed, Cactus. The Insomnia made me experience vulnerability so severely as I had no control over sleep + no doctor could help. I indeed felt powerless.
BTW with the fears and anxieties that you experienced, were you able to sleep or did it not affect you when in bed? I feel fear when lying in bed, especially in the morning, but I don’t know exactly what I’m fearful of. It’s just the emotion without an associated thought like “oh, I see a bear, run!”. I know the fear is in the mind and it’s TMS but I still feel vulnerable about it.

 

Morning anxiety was strong, and with this weeks flair, it returned.
Please know that fear is not really an emotion. Like anxiety, it’s a state. Emotions flow through the body, where as states eg. Depression, fear, anxiety tend to get stuck hence the term “living in fear” or “being in a state of depression”. Stuckness makes us think of helplessness. However, fear can also be allowed to flow through us if we treat it like an emotion.. probably because it’s so associated with underlaying rage, shame etc.
I don’t fight the anxiety. I recognize the fears, and literally label them as “thoughts” notice how they make me feel: tense, maybe buzzy, maybe wanting to hide and notice that anxiety and move along with my day. I don’t dwell much during the most challenging times of the day.
You asked about insomnia. At first I slept a lot, but lightly. I’ve spent much time in my life running on very little sleep due to work. Now I can have insomnia but it isn’t a stressor for me, it doesn’t worry me so it hasn’t become a TMS symptom. Definitely a function of anxiety but it’s not chronic and I don’t hyper focus. Seems like the mind can pick and choose where we’ll pay the most attention.