Help im confused

Hi Danie, and welcome to the forum and the SEP.

Dr. Sarno himself acknowledged later in his career that anxiety and depression are both forms of TMS. They are yet another distraction, but in my opinion they are very evil ones, because they cause the vicious cycle that you describe, where the depression makes other symptoms worse, which makes the depression worse, which makes the symptoms worse.... and on and on. Is that what you're talking about?

I had anxiety all my life, which was getting much worse before I discovered Dr. Sarno - and then for the first time in my life (at age 60) I experienced real depression, and it scared the living daylights out of me. Truly evil - but it was also truly another symptom of my TMS.

It's important that you understand that this depression, especially the thoughts that you can't do this work if you are depressed, is your fearful primitive brain trying to get you to stop doing the work! Seriously! Your brain wants you to keep repressing the negative emotions, because it believes that you are safer if they are repressed. That's the first thing you must do, which is to accept this truth, and to see that it's nothing more than a brain trick. But it is a very difficult brain trick to overcome.

Therefore, it's equally important for you to understand that you have a choice, which is to fight back against the irrational fear of your primitive brain. Fighting back is not easy, I know, because after I started doing this work and had some success, the depression suddenly came back and tried to take over. I described the last time I had a depression incident and fought back, here: http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/bookmarks/608/view-item (Bookmark | TMS Forum (The Mindbody Syndrome)). Maybe it will help.

Also, feel free to view my profile, where I list a bunch of my favorite resources and forum posts.