Freedom from TMS: 2 years onwards

For six to seven months of my life, I was experiencing disabling pain 24/7. It started out with back/neck pain and a short term case of RSI several years prior. During the latter half of 2019, these symptoms would continue, as well as manifest into many other symptoms like pain in my feet, among other things.

After a while, I noticed there wasn't a consistent correlation between my symptoms and the physical activities I was doing. A critical thinking mindset is what led me to discover TMS in early 2020. Someone had linked Scott Brady's book Pain Free for Life in a post about their TMS success story. Within weeks of reading and applying the book, I was already resuming activities that I previously stopped, due to TMS. In late 2021, I also read the late John Sarno's book The Mindbody Prescription, which is another massive eye-opener.


I haven't felt this good since childhood. Within the past 2 years, I have completely overcome these symptoms:

• RSI
• Back/neck pain
• Pain/clicking in my feet
• Clicking in my knees
  
• Headaches (above my left temple)
• Needing to use the bathroom an unusually high amount of times every day
• Tinnitus
  
• Unexplained tightness in parts of my body (such as my legs)

I have also managed to massively reduce these symptoms. Many of these I've had since I was a kid:

• Eczema/dry, cracked skin
• Itchiness
• Getting an upset stomach
• Hay fever, getting a runny nose
• Other allergies (such as cat fur)
  
• The amount of anxiety my brain produces
• Other random, temporary discomforts in my body

Here are some tips I have for this community in overcoming TMS, based on my own personal experiences:

• Don't take everything you see/hear for granted. Even if the viewpoint seems rational, I encourage you to always look at the other side of the argument. Through this, you may find that many arguments that reject mindbody logic have holes in them. My own TMS symptoms were initially caused by me only having one perspective on my symptoms.

• Get on with your day. While this forum and many books written on TMS contain invaluable information, in my opinion, reading about it shouldn't take up too much time. Even if you have significant symptoms, I recommend you live each day the best you can. Your symptoms will disappear before you know it.

• It's difficult to get friends/family to accept the TMS diagnosis. So while you might feel discouraged by their rejection of the mindbody explanation, remember that you yourself, were probably like them before discovering TMS. I believe it can help if you build up confidence about your own TMS diagnosis before you openly tell others about it.

• Look for TMS in the people you know. See if you can identify what their symptoms are and how their present stresses/past repressed emotions could've onset their symptoms. From my experience, this can be a very powerful exercise.

Thank you for reading. I'm looking forward to my own future success. I also hope this inspires at least one other person on their journey to recovering from TMS.

 

I do this quite often. In fact, I can't help but do it often.

I see this in myself as a bit of a "sophomore" (i.e. wise fool) attitude in that I like to diagnose friends, celebrities, athletes that I see demonstrating TMS symptoms. At least I have the restraint to keep all those diagnoses to myself. I've found almost no one wants to hear it, and I see that reflected in a lot of others' posts here as well.

I think the truly "wise" approach instead is to walk the walk, and then let those individuals that need help come and seek me out. You can't help anyone unless they are willing to be helped.

 

Exactly. There are many stories of people who only tried these strategies, because nothing else stopped their symptoms. Including myself. It goes down differently if you're explaining TMS to people that have faith in the body medicine logic/treatment.

 

It's easier to notice TMS in others than handle pain when a flare up arises

 

I've noticed there isn't as much information on this forum about skin disorders compared to pain. So I thought I'd update this post with my recent successes.

I've managed to make a lot of progress on my skin this year. After not having much eczema during my teenage years, it slowly returned in early 2020, at the same time that my chronic pain was disappearing.

Like other people on these forums, I recommend the free eBook 'Skin Deep' by Ted Grossbart. Through the book, I've identified that my main issue with skin is that certain areas can get really itchy, especially in my sleep. This has often led to me unconsciously scratching the areas, causing bleeding. Already most of the itchiness and scratching/skin picking has stopped, thanks to the journal logs/written exercises.

As mentioned in the foreword, the treatment is "not a panacea, but a very useful methodology to be utilized in conjunction with conventional dermatologic therapy." I do know that with a mainstream approach, my symptoms have always returned, even if moisturizing creams caused them to disappear. So I will see whether or not I need to resume using them, and to what extent, going forwards.

It's also a good idea to rule out the potential causes of your skin disorders. It was challenging, but I was eventually able to rule out dairy products or soap. I will continue to do general checkups to diagnose any new, unexplained symptoms as well.