TMS plus Anxiety

I was rewatching Dr Sarno's lecture and at one point he says that anxiety or depression is a TMS equivalent that does not occur at the same time as TMS pain. As far as I can tell, I have pain and anxiety at the same time. From reading the forums over the years I think many people are in the same boat as me. Also, I feel like as a TMSer there is always that voice telling you that you don't have TMS or why it's fake, etc. We tend to focus on why we might not have TMS. I think of this voice as being part of the TMS defense mechanism. How should you deal with these contradictions in your own experience versus what you read in Dr Sarno's books? Thank you.

 

Hi Xiao,

Part of the TMS learning experience for me was to become flexible in my thinking and become a better problem solver.

Just because in most cases pain and anxiety don’t occur at the same time, it does not mean that it does not happen.

I highly recommend to all TMSers to have some exciting goals and dreams that helps them look forward to a bright, fantastic future and helps them break away from obsessing over TMS.

That is one easy way to produce a lot of positive emotions to counter negative ones and break the cycle of negative thinking.

 

I’m just thinking about it logically; if a person has pain that scares them over a long period of time, wouldn’t it make sense that anxiety would probably accompany the pain? I know I have both.

 

The anxiety that ensues as a result of pain takes on a life of it's own and people get caught up in pain-response-avoidance loops. The pain that started originally (at the onset) was due to emotional processes outside the conscious awareness. The anxiety regarding symptoms becomes a huge distraction form the anxiety covering up emotions. It's also a way that the body speaks for us and expresses those emotions. We have to get the mind out of the body, so to speak, which is a phrase I stole from Joe Dispenza that I like.

 

Would you say that one would get their mind out of the body by meditation and generally calming oneself? If you can expand on anything you wrote it would be appreciated.

 

Yes the 2 ways to get the "mind out of the body" are: 1.) Feel your feelings so your body doesn't do the talking for you through the somatic pathways of pain and symptoms. This involves awareness and allowing the feelings to come up and letting them pass through. 2.) Challenge triggers that cause symptoms by facing those fears and tolerating them head on. You can do this gradually. When you stop avoiding things that make you anxious because you have a conditioned response to those triggers, and you engage in those triggers, you neutralize and disarm them. They lose their power over your thoughts and mind. No trigger = no more physical response.

To recap: feel your feelings and lose the fear of triggers.

 

Just want to add that meditation creates a space between you and the symptoms and you and the thoughts. Hence it's a modality to help calm down the brain and body. It's a tool.

 

Thank you Fred for the advice. This is extremely helpful.

 

This makes sense. I've noticed even though the pain and anxiety are always there their intensity does wax and wane. I'm just going to treat it all as TMS.

 

If you haven’t already, take a look at my interview with Omar Pinto.

He is the host of very popular Sharing Helps Addicts In Recovery (SHAIR) podcast. He invited me to offer a drug-free option for pain relief and making plans for a better future.