The Foundation of Recovery

Hello friends!

I wanted to talk about two concepts that accelerated my recovery and will, without a doubt, accelerate yours. I truly believe that at the core of every success story—every recovery from TMS symptoms—there are two fundamental aspects: first, acceptance, and second, allowing

How you feel about the word *acceptance* is a wonderful indicator of how accepting you are of the life you’re living and the symptoms you’re experiencing. Acceptance means accepting your current situation in this moment in time. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year. It also means accepting that these symptoms—no matter how colorful they may be—are what you’re dealing with right now. If you can first accept your situation, you’ve already won half the battle.

But the real work begins when we begin to allow.

Allowing is truly the elixir for TMS symptoms, and here’s why.

Pain—whether structural or nonstructural—happens at the level of the brain. Pain is a protective mechanism designed to keep us safe from perceived threats. When we develop brain-based or neural circuit symptoms, it’s a software issue, not a hardware issue. Our brains aren’t broken—they’re simply very good at predicting danger, even in the absence of real danger.

Brains change through a process called disconfirmation. And disconfirmation can only happen when we change our response to pain and symptoms. That’s where allowing comes in.

Allowing is both an active and passive process. You are choosing to let your symptoms behave the way they choose, without trying to change, fix, or control them.

There’s a huge difference between the brain and the mind, and it isn’t talked about enough. The mind is the programmer; the brain is the machine. And the brain doesn’t speak language. You can talk to it until you’re blue in the face, and most of the time it won’t change your symptom experience. The brain speaks emotion. And emotion is where the greatest influence over your symptoms lies.

Our symptoms become a feedback loop because we continue engaging with them. None of us would have persistent symptoms if we could truly stand back with indifference. Allowing is the practice of building that indifference. It’s strengthening the muscle that lets you stand back while your body feels like it’s going insane—and doing nothing about it.

At a brain level, this sends a powerful message: you are no longer interested in the alarm.

Symptoms often get worse when you begin allowing because allowing is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Your dominant habits are resistance and solution-seeking. But if you continue allowing, over time you’ll notice your thoughts soften—and your symptoms will too. You’ll begin to experience moments where symptoms fade into the background while life moves forward.

Allowing is uncomfortable, but it’s the way out in almost every recovery story. It has been the foundation of my own journey.

When you put down the fight and the resistance, you step back and allow your body to do what it already knows how to do.

I have so much love for this community. But I also believe that tough love is still love: you have to actively work on ditching resistance as much as you can. Put down the constant search for books, tools, reassurance, and symptom comparison. It may feel like acceptance and progress—but it’s often just another form of resistance.

It’s fixing.

And recovery begins when you stop trying to fix.

With love,
SA xx

 

Very good. There are a number of coaches out there going down this less dogmatic and more empathetic way of healing. Part of the suffering is only natural, we're all human. Acceptance doesn't mean giving up, that's just your control-freak-ego speaking.

 

Completely agree - the one thing I would add, and you've probably assumed this (given the platform we are on), although I still so many people stuck on this:

If you still have major doubts around it being TMS - then allowing on that basis is not in my view going to turn off the alarm, because a brain that still thinks there's damage is biologically and evolutionarily not supposed to feel safe (it would be like trying to allow and be indifferent in a cage with a lion).

If you have the foundation and believe in the evidence, then for sure allowing with that knowledge and getting to indifference is the way out

Agreed

 

I'd also add acceptance and allowing are not things that will be there for granted. It's a continuous work and there are days when the work is hard.

 

LOVE THIS!!!! The allowing and acceptance step is taking me a long time because I did have some doubts about my symptoms. I felt like I could have been a special case and maybe it wasn't TMS. Now that I'm deep into recovery I 100% believe this is TMS and am working on this now.

 

I agree about acceptance and allowing being key parts of recovery. I’d add though that recognising, acknowledging, fully feeling, and safely expressing our emotions is just as vital.

For many of us, symptoms took root when emotions couldn’t be safely felt or shown, so allowing goes even deeper when we actively permit those emotions to be seen and released. That’s when we begin to feel more at ease in our own skin again.

 

This is so well said Adam!

 

Totally! When I mention allowing I mean allowing everything and putting down the need to control what we experience and this includes emotions - the language of the body. Great point!

 

As someone who has really just begun their TMS learning and therapy, I really appreciate this post. I'm struggling, however, with the full extent of the 'Allowing' portion. For instance, when Dr. Sarno references talking to your mind/brain and letting it know that you know what it's up to...that's not exactly a passive process of allowing the pain. It's a fairly active response. Likewise, he also mentions more than once (as do many of the experts since Dr. Sarno) that taking meds for the pain is acceptable - when that pain is debilitating enough to interfere with any kind of meaningful living/coping. Taking meds is certainly a way of controlling the pain; if not a temporary 'fix'. What am I getting wrong or not understanding? I feel a bit lost now, lol

I'm definitely well down the road of acceptance; as I'm also currently being treated since January for Generalized Anxiety Disorder; where we learn about the concept of 'Radical Acceptance' for one's condition and situation.

For the 'allowing' part: to a certain extent I'm learning when I get a flare-up to 'allow' it to happen without letting the pain ramp-up my anxiety level. I'm learning to 'allow' this thing to happen and see where it goes before I rush to take an extra pain killer or even a regularly scheduled pain med. I'm learning to 'allow' this pain to happen without rushing to my bed to lay down and 'rest' my back. I've a feeling that's still a long way off from the kind of 'allowing' that you and others are talking about?

I'd love to understand more of what you mean! Tnx

 

One way I look at "allowing" is that I'm not developing and telling myself a sad victim story about what is happening. I don't fall into "poor me" and "my life sucks because I have this pain" or "life is cruel and always will be" etc. It's a form of mindfulness where you just experience non-judgmental awareness of the situation and sensations.

I think Sarno's practice of "talking to your brain" helps because it is your higher, more evolved brain overriding your lizard brain with some logic and facts. I find it most effective when I talk to my lower brain like a misbehaving child (which in many ways it is) "Oh, stop catastrophizing.! You're fine."

 

Ahh, that's really great. Love that, Ellen, thanks. I've been learning very similar concepts in my ongoing virtual inpatient therapy program for anxiety. The notion of non-judgemental awareness...in partnership with the concept of 'radical acceptance'....really resonates. Catastrophizing is something that I was doing constantly at the start of my anxiety therapy - in large part because of my ongoing lumbar back pain. I've been learning to control that with skills like the 'Wise Mind' exercise - where your emotional mind gets a good 'talking to' by your logic mind; in the hopes of achieving a balanced (wise) mind.