Seasoned TMS warriors: Is this true?

Is TMS healing like moving a giant locomotive? You are pushing and pushing with all sorts of efforts and techniques, and even with time, and then one day it finally starts rolling? And once it’s rolling, it all starts to get easier and the healing comes?

Just curious…because I hope so.

 

I think Sarno's daughter said it best in the essay she wrote about her father. She said it's about psychological "insight". "Insight" is the perfect word and one I haven't used nor do I see it used on the Forum. For me it was an "a-ha" moment, like the light bulb going off in an old cartoon. I think it's that moment when the conscious mind glimpses what's going on in the unconscious. But it's not an intellectual understanding. I see lots of people here digging and digging for the right realization or memory that will flip the switch. It wasn't like that for me. It's more like a connection taking place. "Oh, I get it now", though I can't articulate what the "it" is. It felt like magic the first time I experienced it, and I've spent 10 years since trying to articulate what it was and how it happened. I see many recovered TMSers doing the same. Maybe the brain cannot fully understand itself.

I think commitment is a better word than effort. Too much effort gets in the way. The pushing creates too much tension. The constant self evaluation, "how am I doing today" is too much scrutiny for insight to occur. It's like the child in the backseat of a car ride constantly asking "are we there yet" while totally missing the scenery. Belief plays a role in that it allows for the "insight" to take place. Belief removes the blocks that the conscious mind has erected as defenses. To work on my belief, I listened to Sarno over and over and read Success Stories. The techniques only work on a foundation of belief. And belief is much deeper than intellectual understanding.

 

@Ellen, Phenomenal answer! Taking it to heart. Thank you!

 

One more thought: Insight might be what occurs when a new neural pathway becomes fully functional-- to bring in another TMS model.

 

"You are pushing and pushing with all sorts of efforts and techniques"

I feel that is exactly what did NOT help me make early progress. That is putting a LOT of effort on the "doing" the "curing" and tons of self pressure to learn and master "techniques" because of this "effort".

I am making MUCH more progress by just being. Being patient, accepting days that are harder with grace and being at peace with them, noticing when I am putting that "effort" in gear... and as @Ellen states so well, keep on with my commitment to myself to keep the skills I've learned going, ingrain them and let them become the default habit instead of reverting back to hold habits.

 

This sounds great, Cactusflower! I’m going to really think about this.

Oh man, I DO know this! Soooo easy to lose sight!

I am starting to see how incredibly hard I am on myself. I literally feel worthless so easily. I know this is from childhood issues. I run scared from it 24x7 in a million ways. I think this urge to “fix” my TMS as soon as possible is an offshoot of that. If I can get better, I can drive myself working nonstop again. This was my distraction before. Now, TMS is the distraction. This book I’m reading on anxiety says to sit with the feelings of worthlessness and just feel them. No more scrambling. Yikes. That’s a tough one! (TMS is really a gift in disguise. It really is. Because if you survive it (joking!) you will become someone you always wanted to be. At peace and whole.

 

You can be "someone you always wanted to be" now. It only happens in the "now". It's a choice of acceptance of ourselves as we are, warts and all, TMS and all. We are all perfectly imperfect.

 

@Diana-M I like your questions because they almost always get me thinking about and then understanding more regarding my own TMS 'journey' .

The profound progress I have made is, I believe, down to my stopping some habits and changing other habits by gradually making new and more appropriate habits, which has altered my brain through neuroplasticity (regarding this @Ellen's and @Cactusflower's replies are so wonderfully put and spot on imo).

As we know, to 'cultivate' a new beneficial habit takes time, repetition and patience. As with growing plants (with no apologies for the hackneyed gardening analogy) we sow the required seeds and then 'miraculously' the plants and then the veggies and flowers appear, very rarely overnight, some after a while, some after quite a long time and some when we least expect them to.

All we can do is lovingly tend to our garden (brain) by regularly watering and feeding those seeds we've planted in order to get the results we want, and to keep resowing the basic seeds as necessary.

I know for sure that viewing my brain as a garden that I need to tend to - with unhelpful habits being weeds that I need to replace with garden plants - has enabled me to relax my approach and stop the sense of urgency and 'pushing' to recover that I had always previously felt, and this in turn has released the tension of it all... and, of course, TMS is all about tension.

 

Thank you, @BloodMoon! ( sorry for the late response. Somehow I missed this.) Wonderful analogy! And it helps me picture the timing and patience involved. I can see how impatient I am to heal. I wouldn’t go out to my garden (if I had one!) and stomp my foot for the seeds to sprout. Nor would I think all the weeds would magically disappear. I’m growing a beautiful brain garden right now. And someday when it wants and how it wants to, it will change what it’s doing. Thank you!

 

No worries, @Diana-M (there are a lot of interesting threads going on atm and it's hard to keep track of it all). I'm glad you like the gardening analogy and believe it will be helpful to you. I forgot to say that brain gardening can also, of course, involve thwacking the weeds and brambles and tearing up fibrous roots as necessary (ties in with Michael Coutts' "blow them up or kill 'em with carrots") and imagining that you are in a garden is also a good place for mindfulness and meditation... the analogy goes on and on and on...

 

The need for speed and the impatience for improvement is absolutely why you need to brush aside the old growth and look for the tiny sprouts that arise, the ones you might be missing in the desperation for physical sensations to subside. The biggest yet most overlooked change is the acceptance of what we thought we knew to be fact may, in fact not be what we thought was true. This is the first thing we learn with the pain science side of TMS.

 

@Cactusflower,
This advice makes the process so much more exciting. I truly am making steps. I am peeling back layer upon layer of denial. And I’m realizing that lying to myself is very rage inducing. The more I see the truth in every relationship I have, the more I can decide how to take the right measures for my own happiness. And also, I can purge out this very old rage that has decided to settle into my feet.

 

Yes and no. I thought many times that locomotive was rolling, only to experience another setback. But there was a period (not a single moment!) when it started feeling easier to push it. And then I stopped thinking of the locomotive for good, the thought slowly faded away.

 

This is it! At some point psychological thinking (aka insight) becomes automatic, subconscious, belief, part of you - whatever term suits you better - instead of being an intellectual construct.

 

I am a big fan of the Hidden Brain podcast. This episode may be helpful to understand how a conscious rational pattern becomes a "flow" and how it may be helpful in TMS healing:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1...brain-why-trying-too-hard-can-backfire-on-you