How do you deal with lack of support?

I’m still working on my PPD issues and I am a firm believer in this work. I try not to let one factor bother me however, which could also be an issue as I repress these concerns. I have an issue with the people in my life who are not on board with my PPD/TMS work. Whenever I explain it to close friends and family, they look at me like I have five heads, or they accept it as long as it’s working for me. However, they don’t really get into it, or ask how it works or what it’s about. It makes me feel subconsciously crazy a little. That is why I seek comfort in reading through this forum regularly.

I think this also links to my long term personality traits. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt different, and not necessarily in an out of this world kind of way. By different I mean, as a little kid I questioned the norms of society. I didn’t like doing what everyone else liked to do, but I did it anyways. I tried to change this way of thinking in high school and college to just fit in and be like everyone else, but it only made me miserable. Now as a young adult, I don’t do that anymore and I am doing what I want to do when I want to do it, and many of the people around me are noticing that. While I am okay with just being me, at times I still have that doubt factor in my mind. Why did I say or do that? Why can’t I just like and do what they want to do? Why do I always have to think so differently? And it’s a constant battle in my mind. The same process goes with TMS. I was quick to believe in it, but everyone else in my life just thinks it's bologna.

So I guess my question is, how do you deal with the skeptical people in your life, or the people who don’t believe in TMS? All I really want is support, not critics.

 

Hi Hopeful,
I understand what you are saying, and I think it can be part of the TMS learning journey. One level this happens is seeing how we doubt ourselves and beat ourselves up for our true inner desires and experience, what we want, and how be behave. So that is Inner Bully work or Superego work plain and simple. We have to discern what is inner rejection, and what is outer rejection. Then we have to work with the inner rejection more and more skillfully, rather than projecting this on others, or accepting this as "just the air we breathe."

The other level, and it coincides with the inner life, is how we perceive others perceiving us as we are more and more ourselves. Can we tolerate their rejection? Can we chose to be around people who are not critical? Can we stand in our truth as they stand in theirs? Why do we compromise our truth?

In my life, over the years, I speak my truth, do my thing more. And chose who I spend time with more and more selectively. As real autonomy grows inside, I care less what people think, and I also find I want the support you are asking for. I want to be seen more and more clearly exactly as I am. (And this desire to be seen for who I am is also a reflection of the inner relationship to self: to become more real with me. This is an inner intimacy that does need support from outside.)

I become less interested in the relationships which don't support me, and more interested in the ones that do, and in developing the ones that I feel have this potential. I want to be more of myself in relationships, and ask for what I want from the other. So part of this too is having more intimacy with the people I spend time with. I can't do that if I feel I am being judged, especially if the other person is not owning their judgement as judgement, instead of "just the truth."

I see your desire to clarify your life around this as very wonderful, and healthy, and part of aligning yourself with more and more of the truth of your experience. This can be a very important part of TMS work. Good luck in this.

Andy B.

 

This is a great question! Truthfully, I rely on this community for the majority of my TMS support. For many years I was in chronic pain and I had very little support. I felt like such a burden to those close to me. I could see them trying to understand and be supportive, day after day, week after week and at times I dreaded the question "how are you feeling?" I wanted so much to be able to say "much better, I am feeling great!" That day never seemed to come and as hard as it was to wake up in pain every day, I know it is also hard to live with someone who is constantly in pain. When I first started working on the TMS and was trying to change my relationship to the pain, one of the things I consciously did was to stop talking to my husband about how much pain I was in. I was attempting to change my constant monitoring of the pain and I felt like talking with my husband about it was only reinforcing my focus on the pain. So it wasn't about hiding something, or faking it, or not being truthful, it was about my commitment to think about something else. My husband was really relieved to have me not so focused on the pain and I began to see how helpless he had been feeling to make things better for me. I have often thought as a parent how much harder it is to watch my children be sick than to be sick myself. My husband does not really embrace TMS. He says he understands it and "gets" it but I am not so sure. But the better I am and the happier and less pain I am in, the less it makes any sort of difference how much he embraces TMS theory. The hardest part for me is that I have a very difficult time feeling anger and my husband reacts very poorly to expressions of anger. If I am visibly angry, he immediately thinks I am angry with him(and often I am) and he gets very defensive. I have had to learn and develop strategies to acknowledge and feel my anger without igniting a chain reaction of conflict with my husband. I do this by writing and expressing my anger more privately without taking it out on my husband. Well, to summarize, try not to let lack of support be an obstacle to your TMS work. It would be wonderful if those close to you truly understood TMS and could help support you in such a way to make your recovery less difficult. It is probably more common to not have people around us who understand TMS because they have not been in chronic pain. I remember when the disc in my back first ruptured and I went to the doctor 20 years ago, he told me that it might be 3 weeks before my back would heal. I couldn't believe it, it did not seem possible that anyone could live in that kind of pain for 3 weeks! Months later I would have been so happy if a doctor told me I would be out of pain in three weeks! You will find the support you need along the way, and you will learn how to give yourself the support you need without needing it all the time from others. So much of the TMS recovery is about learning how to listen and pay attention to what you really need, and then feeling deserving enough to give it to yourself. As far as I am concerned, those critics are not the ones living with the pain and I have explored and experienced the solutions they have to offer first hand. It brought me nothing but more pain! TMS work brings true results and lasting relief, that is what matters the most.

 

Usually when someone close to me doesn’t want to hear it,it's because they want me to follow through! However I have often wondered if following through something very difficult was for them instead of me.....since my fall into chronic pain, I have come to realize that what people want for me is what's best for them,because if I change than they have to as well. So they may secretly wish I don't succeed. If I got well, would I want that frienship"that relationship? Etc.

 

Hi Hopeful,

After having my back pain cured 100% by reading Dr. Sarno's book, I would preach about TMS to anyone I encountered with various aches and pains that sounded like they could possibly be TMS (Like Dr. Sarno, I did always say they need to see a doctor first to rule out a real injury). Nearly everyone would listen politely, say it makes sense, and then continue living in pain. Their loss.

The hard part for me is my wife. She doesn't believe in TMS at all. When I mention Dr. Sarno, she basically says it's all B.S. She watched for years as I suffered with bouts of crippling lower back pain that would randomly pop up every few weeks. She watched as I had tests done at the doctor's and was told I have advanced degenerative disc disease. She listened as he told me I'd need to stop lifting heavy weights and avoid lifting dumbells straight over my head or doing exercises like squats where I had a bar of heavy weights on my shoulders. She then watched as I learned about TMS and read HBP. She saw my back pain disappear within 3 weeks. She has seen me 100% back pain free for over 7 years now. She has watched me at the gym now squatting with 230lbs of weight on my shoulders and lifting 50lb dumbells straight above my head with no pain and no worry. And do you know what? When she complains about all her aches and pains that constantly pop up and move around her body, if I even mention to her that it might be TMS, she gets angry and says she doesn't believe in that garbage.

So what do I do to deal with the people in my life who are not on board with TMS? I ignore their negativity about it and smile when I think about my victory over pain. I think how it's sad for her that she lives with aches and pains but it's her loss for not wanting to even try to accept the facts about TMS. You can't make other people believe, so just make sure that you are a believer. Believe 100%, because doubt will keep you from being cured. Good luck!!

 

A few family members and couple friends close to me listened to what I was learning and said very little about it. I wasn't sure if they believed it or not. But it didn't matter. I wholeheartedly believed what Dr. Sarno told me. And when I was up and walking and being "normal" again, pain-free, without the surgery I was told I needed by an orthopedic surgeon, well, they really couldn't argue with the results.

I do understand the need for support. But when you are desperate (like I was) the support I got was reading Dr. Sarno's books and stories of those who had healed w/o medical intervention.

Also, we need to accept that everyone does not believe that our emotions impact our health--more are learning this as the western medical world is acknowledging that things like back pain, stomach aches, IBS, and other common ailments are indeed stress-related. Others don't have to believe it though; only I do, and I will be the one who benefits. Truly though, I do believe that more and more people are seeing that we have the ability to heal ourselves--of any ailment.

Wishing you much success.

 

I have not been fortunate at all in this manner, in 13 years of chronic pain,and seeing Drs, And all the meds I've tried, other than some financial support, I've been completely on my own, even regular Dr's can't do much. My own Dr. Admitted that "we don't cure anyone". Now that I've found TMS or what I call mind/body illness I don't feel hopeless but, I do still feel alone in the healing process.
I guess it's just a test....this too shall pass

 

Hi, all. You are not alone. You have the support and caring of everyone in the TMSWiki. From Dr. Sarno and
Forest who runs this wiki and from the many friends of this wiki such as Steve Ozanich.

I don't talk about TMS to many people, family or friends. Most of them just roll their eyes and say they don't believe.

Besides support from other TMSers, we all have our own support from ourselves, and from whoever we pray to.

 

Wow, thank you all for the responses and support! I will definitely take in each of your input and try to apply it to myself. You all have given me a little more hope, and I am super thankful for that! Good luck to all of you as well.