New Member - My Story

Hi everyone. I have been reading the posts on this site for a few months now and finally feel as though now is the time to join in on the conversation.

I would love to say that my journey with TMS is an interesting one, although if this work has taught me anything, as much as my mind wants to tell me my case makes me a special snowflake, I seem to not be the only fish in the pond. Flashback to the tail end of my college years, I found myself fixated on certain events from the past, unable to loosen my minds grasp. Like a Chinese finger trap, the more I struggled, the tighter the thoughts clung. I reached a breaking point, like most do, and with the help of my dad, sought out a diagnosis. Enter OCD. These days I don’t define with the diagnosis, as I see the term as more of a verb (obsessing) than I do with my identity. Thanks to some serious ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) therapy I put OCD in the rear-view mirror.

Around three years ago, after playing a basketball game, I started to feel a shooting pain in my lower right leg. A quick google search led to the word I would be fixated on for the next few years, Sciatica. From then on, it was all about fixing this problem. Because let’s face it, my brain loves fixing problems. It thinks it can fix up more things than Chip and Joanna Gaines. Over the next three years, I would spend my time in Orthopedic offices getting steroid injections, MRI’s, chiropractic manipulation, you name it. Oh how I miss you, money.

Somehow, at the bottom of this pit, I fell into the work of Alan Gordon and his book, the way out. I read it but didn’t think too much of it. I remember telling the doctor before he injected my l4 l5 nerve pathway that I had been reading this book and that I thought maybe this pain could be coming from my mind. He said, this certainly isn’t coming from your mind, which engrained that belief system we are all trying to break free from even more. Alan Gordons work led me to the app, Curable, which led me to Dr Sarno’s Healing Back Pain. It has become abundantly clear during this journey that all paths lead back to Dr. Sarno.

I was disappointed after reading Dr. Sarnos book. “What the hell” I thought, as I finished the book and it still hurt to stand up. I thought you were supposed to heal through information. What a hoax. A few months went on and I picked it up again. Again disappointed. Everyone else was saying that they read themselves on every single page. I felt like I was reading myself on 60% of the pages. OCD is often called the doubting disease, and because I wasn’t 100% sure this TMS diagnosis was for me, the doubt continued and so did the pain. But that doubt was all about to change.

Two hours – that’s how long my zoom session was with Steve Ozanich, the author of “The Great Pain Deception”. For what its worth, I cant say enough good things about Steve from my short visit with him. He made it very clear right off the bat: I had to embrace the idea that all my struggles were thanks to TMS. What then ensued is what really clicked for me, and this statement has come up from various others doing this work, citing what Dr. Sarno told patients at the end of appointments: “Now go live your life, there is nothing wrong with you.” Telling someone in excruciating back pain that nothing is wrong with them is only for the bold, but I took the information differently. To me the statement meant, stop looking all over the place for the next cure, the next thing. I liken it to the stress and frustration you feel flipping the house upside down for your car keys when they have been in your back pocket this whole time. There actually was nothing for me to do. Do less, that was the prescription. So, I ditched the endless cycle of scouring YouTube for TMS tips, pouring my soul out in journals, and sitting silently in meditation sessions (although I do benefit from a still mind). Because here's the kicker: when there's nothing to fix, the pain starts to fade away. Why? Because it realizes there's no job for it to do.

The discomfort I experience in my back comes and goes. I can’t say the pain is 100% gone, but at this point, I think I am on to something. I’m living day by day with the motto: You can have any thought or feeling and still do an action that aligns with what you value.

Be well everyone.