Some success!

I've been on the structured recovery plan and I'm around day 10 now. I've also been reading through Alan Gordon's program and am reading Dr. Sarno's Divided Mind book.

So far some methods are working for me. I have been doing the journaling work and I have found it to be very helpful. Writing about painful experiences that I have gone through in my life (abuse, neglect, divorce, and many others) have brought up many different feelings that I have been repressing my whole life. It has helped so much to feel these feelings while writing about them. Sometimes while I am writing I put my pen down and just sit with my emotions for awhile, whatever they may be.

The TMS pain happens for me when I am running. I have been working through it using many of Alan Gordon's techniques. Mainly feeling the pain objectively. For instance, I have had knee, foot, and Achillies pain simultaneously. Ridiculous. The knee pain was the worst, so I worked through that first. It came on after a few km and was really quite painful. I challenged it, told myself there was nothing wrong, and worked through it. I almost fell a few times. Then it subsided. I have ran 3-4 times since then and today it was hardly there at all. The foot and achilles pain is barely there. I am finding that it works better for me to acknowledge the pain objectively than to try to ignore it.

Something that I don't fully understand yet is what psychological stresses are causing the pain. The stresses that I put on myself, things that have happened in the past, or pressures that I have in my life right now. The knee pain started before the holidays where I knew that I would have unpleasant contact with certain family members so it could be that but I'm not really sure. The foot pain happened late last summer, but I have no idea what brought that on. Hopefully these will be more clear the more that I learn about myself.

 

Sounds like you're doing everything right, @runfromit and I'm happy for you that you're able to go running and challenge the pain and work through it.
It is hard for me to identify the psylogical stressors also. With pervious bouts of TMS it was "easy" unpacking traumatic childhood events, negotiating adult relationships with my family, and finding a new path in life. However this time I'm having to dig really deep into my subconscious. I'm thinking alot about my id and what that illogical and selfish inner child feels. Then I'm trying to be accepting and ok with whatever that feeling is, no matter how abhorrant to my superego. It's making me think about the kind of person I really am vs the kind of person I work so hard to portray to the world (perfectionist goodist people pleasing etc).
Very interesting stuff!
Good luck and thanks for the encouraging post - it's always wonderful and inspiring to hear about others' successes!