Tendonitis as a gardener

Welcome to the forum, @Joosje - and I do think you are in the right place. Significant relief of symptoms just by learning about TMS theory is the main clue that this is the journey for you. Also - congratulations to you for figuring this out at an early time in your life! Many of us here were well past middle age when we discovered Dr. Sarno!

From your description, it seems like you have not done anything except read Dr. Sarno's last book (which is also the one I first read, and which remains the one that I recommend). I also experienced at least 75% reduction of pain symptoms immediately upon finishing the book, and this is quite common. However, it is also quite common that the pain relief does not last, because you did not go any deeper at that time. You accepted the truth of his theory, which is an important start - now you have to "do the work" as we say here - which means doing the emotional work that Dr. Sarno talks about.

The easiest (and free) way to get started is to hang around here and read people's posts and the replies they receive. Also, read some success stories (in the Success Stories subforum) to get an idea of the many different symptoms that people have recovered from, and how they did it (because every person's journey is unique). Then start working our Structured Educational Program (SEP) on the main tmswiki.org site. The program is free and doesn't require any kind of registration or signup - you just go to the first page and start doing it. It is broken down into very time-efficient "Days".

The most important advice I can give you about doing the SEP is to take it slowly, and do not let your brain urge you to race through it. One or maybe two sessions per day, not every day. Along with some time to read posts here on the forum, this is enough. Trying to get through the SEP too quickly will NOT result in faster healing, I can assure you. Take it seriously and let the information have time to sink in. Above all, when you get to the writing exercises, do them with a commitment to be 100% honest with yourself. Your fearful TMS brain will try to convince you that you can ignore things that come up - do not let it do that, and write them down anyway, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, and no matter how unimportant they appear to be. You'll need to keep your "lists" for a short while so that you can write about the topics, but you don't need to keep any of your writing. It is called "journaling" but it's not actually "keeping a journal". By throwing away what you write, you can give yourself the freedom to write whatever comes up from your unconsciousness repressed emotions and memories, without editing it - and that's the goal.

As I personally experienced when doing the SEP, it's important that you do not skip over something as "not important", because even small things from our childhoods have significance for various reasons. Finding those things and relating them to your role in the adult world, especially your current stress, is the goal. My own experience of doing the writing exercises in the SEP is that I did not uncover anything shocking or horrifying from my childhood, but I did figure out how my lifelong anxiety developed, and I was able to identify times when I felt isolated due to the way my childish protective brain interpreted childhood experiences and family dynamics.

Good luck - you can do this!

~Jan

 

This is totally normal, and to be honest, doubt is always the first thing to surface with any new symptoms (and there will be new symptoms over time). It never really goes away completely. You don't need to be 100% free of doubt to do the work. And the more you do this work, the faster you can banish doubt as you gain recovery skills!

This could be very helpful, in fact. Check out Georgie Oldfield who is in the UK here: Georgie Oldfield - Your Pain Specialist. You may be able to find an online consultant (close to your time zone) through her or her site. She was a long-time colleague of Dr. Sarno when he was still with us.

This is good. Many people here have found IFS (Internal Family System therapy) to be extremely beneficial. Acknowledging and accepting the existence of our anger - or rage, as Dr Sarno (via Freud) said - is a powerful part of recovery. The hardest part is being willing to direct our rage where it belongs, which is sometimes at the people we want to love, or sometimes at people we think we're supposed to love. It's usually our parents, because even if they were good parents, they were never perfect, not in the mind of the small child. It's possible to have both love and rage at the same time.