dizziness

Yes it does sound the same. This all started 7 months ago. I felt totally spaced out with major brainy fog. It honestly felt like I was recovering from a stroke or something. I didn't feel like myself. But I also got a lot of migraines and still do. They have reduced significantly but when I do get them I feel like they are deep within my ear. When I don't get them, I am dizzy and especially dizzy when I move my head around. That's why it's so weird. Ok, I understand having a migraine can make you dizzy but not having a migraine and still being dizzy? I also have extreme sensitivity to loud noise and my eyes have changed too. I have light sensitivity and when I am in the aisle in a grocery store, it's just hell. It's like I'm on a psychedelic drug or something in terms of the funny things my eyes do. But at the same time, anxiety also can cause light sensitively and ear changes and I know I have anxiety.

I am leaving on a trip on Friday without my kids . I have a 16 months old that I feel terrible leaving for only 4 days. This thing is revving up because 1. I am scared to be dizzy while away and 2. I have extreme guilt. But im also depressed because during all of this, I also have bppv and had the true spinning which is so traumatizing.

 

You are in luck! Migraines were Dr. Sarno's very own symptom that lead to his TMS theory. A colleague of his tipped him off that they were psychosomatic. Do some research in the books or search or google Dr. Sarno and migraines and see what you find.

 

Thanks Jan, I think you are right.

I had such quick, almost overnight, success with pretty much eliminating all my carpal tunnel-like symptoms. I couldn't understand why I couldn't apply the same logic to the floaty feeling. But I think it's a much bigger challenge and will involve some 'deep work'. I started the SEP, did 6 days and then fell into classic 'It's not helping, it's never going to work' thought processes. I know I need to stick with it and give it time.

I will start again, thank you for your advice. x

 

Here's a post regarding migraines I accidentally came across from years ago referring back to TMS :

http://www.migraine-aura.com/content/e27891/e27265/e42285/e42442/e60757/index_en.html

 

Do you feel dizzy when you turn head? I get dizzy looking left or right or if I move my head too quickly.

 

Thank you. I am going to have read!

 

"The TMS diagnosis and treatment protocol are not accepted by the mainstream medical community because they don't comply with the standards of evidence-based medicine. Critics in mainstream medicine state that neither the theory of TMS nor the effectiveness of the treatment has been proven in a properly controlled clinical trial. Considering the application of the TMS diagnosis to phenomena of migraine aura, more specific objections can be made. From a neuropsychiatric viewpoint, Sarno's notion of TMS is modelled after Sigmund Freud's doctrine of conversion, a defence mechanism whereby emotional stress is repressed and "converted" into physical symptoms (Freud and Breuer, 1895). However, in migraine with aura, stress just acts as trigger or precipitating factor, not as cause. Migraine is not a psychological or psychiatric disease but one which results from biological and physiological alterations. Therefore, Sarno's interpretation of migraine aura in terms of a conversion disorder, and its expansion to include persistent aura, have to be rejected from a neuropsychiatric point of view. Moreover, as Sarno has included lack of known physical cause among the diagnostic criteria of TMS, the making of this diagnosis to explain either transitory or persistent migraine aura phenomena can be rejected on the grounds of Sarno's own diagnostic criteria, as the neurological disorder migraine with aura has to be considered as a known physical cause which is an exclusion criterion for TMS."
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---> I don't buy this. Migraine is TMS like many other disorders.

 

Thank you for this. I've been checked out. I've had an MRI, CT scan, detailed blood work, ear tests and all is normal. it makes sense not to focus on it as that is the point of TMS in the first place

 

I'm by no means a TMS expert, but my first instinct (before I read Jan's reply) was that it probably won't help either of us to compare the details of our dizzy feelings. Ironically, I was doing okay(ish) with it before I knew about TMS. Then I got the carpal tunnel thing, found out about TMS and cured the hand pain.

But since then I have felt the dizzy feeling get worse because I have been focusing so much on it. That's the most frustrating thing about my journey so far. That it's actually temporarily making the dizziness worse. But I know that's because I am thinking more about it. And I need to push through.

My point is that we can't worry too much about the specifics of our dizziness. That just increases our focus and solidifies it's purpose as a distraction from what is really going on.

If you're anything like me, you probably have some level of health anxiety now. And it feels like sitting around worrying and thinking and researching and monitoring every change and symptom of it will help. And is somehow productive because if you're not paying it attention how will you ever fix it or find a 'cure'? That's why TMS is so effective, because the opposite is true.

You (and me both) need to keep switching our focus to the EMOTIONS. And disregard the physical. If the dizzies were going to hurt us, they would have done by now. And the other worry, that they're going to last forever, is exactly what is causing the FEAR that is the ultimate distraction. As I said, I'm not a TMS expert, but I'm beginning to understand the concept pretty well. It's just the putting it into practice that I struggle with.

Like you, I've had every test under the sun and there's nothing wrong with me. This has to be our answer

 

Hi, for me dizziness sometimes comes with fainting/collapsing. As I have Dysautonomia and sometimes drops of BP when standing, it is hard to tell whether it’s related to stress/anxiety or it’s physical. General lightheadedness for me is triggered by eating sweets, carbs on empty stomach, certain foods and certain chemicals as well as barometric changes.
Having said that, I noticed that during the 2 weeks latest lumbago - lower back pain spasm- while in excruciating pain and in bed obviously, I didn’t feel dizzy, nor for the 2 subsequent weeks when trying to walk again. I think what they say about ‘energy goes where attention goes’ is somehow true. The body cannot deal with many things at once it prioritizes. So perhaps when the back pain subsides the other problems are felt more again?

 

@emmastath This is an old thread from back in 2017 and very sadly Walt (to whom you have replied) passed away in 2021.

Either it has to prioritise or it simply doesn't need more than one symptom if a single symptom is doing the job.... In Dr Sarno's view our brain's aim is to divert our attention and keep it diverted to a symptom (or symptoms) to stop us from expressing anger because it perceives expressing our anger to be potentially dangerous to our wellbeing and survival (e.g. raging at our boss and possibly hitting them on the nose could risk us getting hit back, and losing our job and stability).

Same goes for our brain being fearful and feeling unsafe in the modern world because our brain remains primitive in respect to interpreting modern day stressors and stresses (e.g. being stuck in traffic, work deadlines etc) as if they are lions and tigers about to attack us.... If just one severe symptom is doing its job by keeping us housebound or bedridden and away from those stressors, then job done, our brain can drop the other (perhaps more minor) symptoms it was created. (Sometimes the brain doesn't drop those though... I was rendered bedridden by extremely severe buttock and back muscle pain and my brain only dropped one of a myriad of symptoms that I was experiencing at the time; my brain well and truly wanted me to be 'hobbled' from going out into the big, bad, dangerous world!)

 

I am so sorry about Walt. :-(

For the rest of the reply, at some level I agree, but I still have many questions regarding how the whole system works. I am saying this despite the fact of having grown up in a family that believed in psychosomatic illness and the subconscious mechanisms that may produce the sumptoms of illness or even accidents. For me it went a bit too far and into negative magic thinking and didn’t make sense really. For example when I had an accident at school and three thoracic compression fractures which landed me in hospital for a week and a body cast for 3 months, I couldn’t understand my father telling me “so you did all this for not to have to go back to Greece?”, we were living in Belgium at the time temporarily.His theory was that because I didn’t want to go back, my subconscious mind ‘provoked and accident to immobilize me’…

He believed the same for illness and muscle injuries like back pain, from which he suffered himself frequently. By the way I think he also had EDS. So in general, illness and accidents were seen as something deliberate that our minds create for x’y’z reasons. That didn’t make sense to me as a child, and I felt let down by him, especially because he didn’t really help me understand the whole thing, just dumped responsibility on me and the expectation that I should mae sense of it all. Well, I didn’t…

So, now, I find it very hard to revisit the same line of thinking, even though I do believe there is some truth to it, my problem is to be able to see where the line between reality and negative magical thinking is.

 

@emmastath
I hear how deeply invalidating and confusing it must have felt as a child to have your real accident (those thoracic fractures sound brutal) framed that way by your dad—like you subconsciously orchestrated it to avoid Greece. That's not just unhelpful; it dumps unfair responsibility on a kid already in pain and a body cast, and almost certainly fearful at some level, especially without real guidance. No wonder it left you wary of psychosomatic ideas.

That kind of thinking echoes Dr. Sarno's TMS theory, which drew heavily from Freud—positing repressed emotions (particularly rage) as the hidden driver of pain. It's a similar vibe as your dad's take: everything boils down to the unconscious, which can feel like "negative magic".

Modern neuroplasticity views, like pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), frame it as your brain's protective wiring amplifying pain through learned threat responses. Real injuries like yours happen, but ongoing symptoms can persist via stress-emotion loops without implying you "chose" them.

To protect my energy in these threads (past family dynamics hit close to home for me too, but in a different way), I'll keep it practical: if you haven't already, check out The Way Out by Alan Gordon. It's a straightforward workbook blending neuroscience with steps to rewire brain-driven pain—addressing doubt head-on without Freudian aspects.

The way I look at it is that, for whatever reason, the brain gets fearful, and my job is to help it feel safer. That simplification has worked for me—getting from bedridden and housebound to functioning pretty well by comparison.

 

is this correct now?I left the quote and quote, beginning of ( and end ) and wrote underneath

 

LOL, no worries, it’s OK. I’m just new here and trying to figure this out. Thank you.