What else is there - Seriously

I think he meant it like an intuitive identification of a personality type, not literally astrology. The Western system is very logical and rational. But this process isn't precise. It's always intuitive, changing, fluid, holistic, and imperfect. Even if pain still moves around, it's nice to chill with a friend or book and enjoy being in touch with your gut instincts.

 

I understand but Personality Theory is one of the sub sets of the science of Psychology. There are even "Personality Disorders" detailed in the DSM. Psychology is not "logical" or rational because human beings are not always "rational". We have EMOTIONS. By its very nature, psychology is amorphous and people have the ability to CHANGE. That's what makes it so fascinating and wonderful! This approach is not for most people. The majority of people are conditioned to go to the medical industry to "fix" what ails them. But what if there is actually nothing wrong with them to begin with??? What if it is anxiety? There's no surgery or PT for that. Anxiety is a cover for emotions and it's part of being human. Until those are addressed and mindset is changed, one will stay stuck. We are not science projects or robots. We are HUMAN and we have this shared humanity. It cannot be overstated.

 

I have not seen evidence of anything approaching 'millions' of successes. Maybe they're out there. I hope they are. But I haven't seen them.

My point was to suggest that if the way out of pain is to stop caring about the symptoms and move on with life, then why are there so many people who do just that but don't lose their pain. You are suggesting that that's because they haven't gotten to the root cause, but that just begs the question. I was responding to suggestions that the root cause is fear and fixation on the symptoms. And so not fearing and not fixating on the symptoms should lead to their resolution. Therefore, my question is why is it (or why does it seem) that that is so often not the case? If your answer is that that is not the root cause, fine. But that's what I was responding to.

Saying that if someone hasn't gotten better they haven't addressed the root cause is also question begging. Who says there is in every case an identifiable and addressable root cause. I know that you believe that most or all chronic pain is resolvable, so if someone hasn't gotten better they haven't gotten to the crux ... but that is very much the question I'm still trying to find the answer to. In good faith.

I did not say what you're saying I said about psychology as a field so I'm not going to respond to that. Honestly I don't know why you insist on taking issue with every one of my posts and accuse me of all these things. Especially when you don't seem to have read my posts very carefully. Just because I have questions and doubts, and don't take your explanation of TMS as gospel, does not mean I'm trying to bring other people down. It seems a lot of other people share my frustrations and doubts, and we're looking for answers.

 

Thanks Marls, I appreciate it. Wishing you wellness

 

I was talking about Healing Back Pain and the reliance on a Freudian theory of the subconscious, repressed emotions, and personality types. I was not referring to the field of psychology generally. In fact that's sort of my point - the field of psychology, for the most part so far as I can tell, doesn't take that stuff seriously

 

I'm not suggesting there aren't personalities or personality disorders, only that playing the personality type game that Sarno plays in HBP strikes me as not very serious. That's my opinion.

 

@eskimoeskimo ,

It's not productive engaging with you but I take tremendous issue with the fact that you come here for the sole purpose of disproving the theories/approach and coming up with justifications as to why you are "different". There is a massive difference between asking questions, exploring doubts, describing your struggles and coming here to undermine an entire community of people looking for help. You are not helping yourself and you are undermining all the efforts of others who are trying to help members here. Your posts are destructive and disguised as discourse. They are not. There is a latent undercurrent to all of them. If you think Dr. Sarno was superficial this is not the right place for you. If you think this is a "cult" then the is not the way to get "converted". I will also counter you every single time you spread misleading or inaccurate information that could discourage others. My "insistence" stems from caring about the people reading here.

 

I'm sorry you think that's what I'm doing. I agree that it is not productive the two of us engaging. I was responding to @RogueWave and am only now responding to you because of the frankly quite caustic things you insist on saying about all of my posts (eg "Your posts are destructive and disguised as discourse"). But I'll refrain from responding to those remarks either from now on.

 

Whether you realize it or not, your comments are destructive to others for the reasons I enumerated. We can't know what effect they are having on people or how many, for that matter. I know that when I was going through hell, the types of comments you write,... listing all the reasons why TMS doesn't hold any water, would have devastated me and set me back. It's a shame because there were a lot of insightful, illuminating comments here by others that members could benefit from greatly. Hopefully they will focus on those instead.

 

Just curious to know if you have an idea of how many people have truly attained indifference to their pain but still have it. The fear brain will distort reality in its favour and keep one preoccupied with depressing falsehoods.

 

I’m not sure. It seems like a lot, but I don’t really know what’s going on in people’s heads. I was thinking of many posts I’ve seen on here, but also of people who aren’t familiar with TMS per se, but don’t obsess over their aches and pains and instead get on with life. I feel like I’ve met dozens of people like this. They function a lot better than I do, but their pain doesn’t go away. That’s a level of acceptance I can only dream of at this stage, and yet the pain is still there. If the behavioral approach is right, I don’t see why they should have to know about TMS or ‘believe’ anything in particular to get better, so long as they aren’t fearful or preoccupied with the pain. I don’t know how to square that with what I observe.

 

Maybe they have a higher pain tolerance. In any case, it's better to remind yourself of people that have recovered- it's good to get out of some flares.

Plum's advice about soothing helps keep the relaxation response going which reduces a lot of discomfort. Also you might have moments in the day when your adrenaline is higher.

It also helps to stay away from external sources of negativity (news etc.) and being connected to positive things

 

Not being fearful is knowing that it's TMS. Calling it out and being aware of it gets you out of the fear cycle.

 

First of all, thank you for your posts. they are raw, genuine, and well-written. This a forum for people dealing with chronic pain, as well as other related issues, so don't ever feel the need to apologize for your frustrations for your lack of progress. Anyone who has put as much work into it as you have, and hasn't seen much in the way of reward, would feel the same way, and I am certain you are echoing the sentiments of many 'lurkers' here who read these threads repeatedly but don't post. I'm sure this is validating for them, so please continue to post whatever you need to.

This will probably be another long post, so don't say I didn't warn you

In response to one of my posts, you said 'who said the body wants to heal?' As someone working in medicine for 16 years now, I can answer that easily: the body.

I give all patients with chronic pain the same talk, and t's all about homeostasis. If you cut your arm, does your body say 'eh, nah, not going to heal that today.' No, of course not. We are all programmed for survival, and as part of that the body will always try and heal itself. ALWAYS, even battling a severe disease, to your last breath (not to be morbid, but it's true). Take in too much potassium for example, and you'll urinate the excess out. Why do blood labs have ideal ranges? Because the body is trying to keep you in a perfect state of being! You don't consciously know what's in your blood right this second, but your brain and body do, down to the tiniest fraction. Years ago, a study was done where 14 supercomputers were hooked together to co-compute, and that setup couldn't reproduce the function of the human brain for more than 1 second. There are literally millions of processes going on in your body that you thankfully have no conscious awareness of. It's on auto-pilot, but it absolutely can be influenced....more on that later in this post.

Is some pain structural? Of course. Like a broken bone, and yes, *sometimes* disc issues can cause pain, although this is extremely rare. Dr. Sarno himself stated that he had a rare herniated disc patient here and there that required surgery. But again, it was very, very rare. And that can usually be determined with imaging, and the response to treatment. Most back pain surgeries fail to some degree within a year or 2. So we can clearly see that if repairing the structure doesn't fix the problem, then the structure is probably not the problem, yes? If you want to pursue this further, I also usually give patients this (all these people with structural 'problems' but no pain). I have links to plenty of studies on this as well.




Often patients won't listen to the TMS suggestion, so I 'challenge' them to go to other doctors to try and determine what is really causing the problem. Once cortisone and PT fail, they usually end up back at my office.

So the first thing I'd say to you is 'what else do you think could possibly be causing your problem?' Take a good, hard look at it. Consider all options. This will help take any doubt out of your mind about TMS, if there is any doubt left at this point.

Disclaimer: *That being said, I live in the Northeast, and Lyme disease is rampant here, so I'd tell anyone to first get a Lyme test just to be on the safe side. Infections of various types can cause pain, but again, that's not going to be most people with chronic pain.*

You also said 'With cancer, for example, we can't just say 'the body wants to heal' and then get out of the way.' Ah, NOW you're on to something. So let's look at this a different way. Do you know everyone has cancer cells in their body? Normally the immune system cleans them up, but why is it in some people they run rampant?

IMO this needs to part of a big shift in modern medicine. Medicine looks at cancer as the problem, and just wants to kill it, cut it out, etc. The same goes for how pain is looked at. Numb it, surgery, whatever method you choose. But what if we look at the cancer, pain, or whatever as a symptom of the body not functioning properly, instead of a separate problem?

The analogy I use with patients is that it's like weeds growing. The weeds can be cancer, pain, migraines, etc. For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to keep this generalized so it's easier for everyone to follow. So you can pluck the weeds all you want, and in some cases they won't grow back. But if the soil isn't tended to, there is a far better chance they will return. Or other types of weeds will grow.

So why does the body not heal in some people? Obviously, there are some things people are just born with, like Type 1 diabetes, where they just don't make insulin. That is not what I'm talking about, because those congenital types of diseases only make up 1-3% of health conditions.

The one-word answer to why some bodies heal or don't, and why cancers grow in some people but not in others, is 'environment." Environment determines if the immune system can do it's job correctly, can heal, digest food, and so forth.

The body is made up of 70 trillions cells all connected, and it's always in a state of flux, but it is the chronic, persistent environment that allows dysfunction to occur.

(1/2)...Part 2 coming up

 

This is the biggest problem with the modern medical view as I see it. The focus is on the symptom, and stopping that symptom, by any means necessary. Rarely is environment considered. This is evidenced mostly by the fact that nutrition, which is a big part of the body's internal environment, is barely an afterthought in medical school. Only the very basics are required. If you want to learn how to heal a body, shouldn't the fuel the body is using be the first consideration?

But I digress, back to environment.

This is essentially what Sarno 'discovered' although it has been known in various ways for millennia. The body's internal, persistent environment is what allows dysfunction to persist in most cases. Substances, food, chemicals in the environment all contribute to the body's internal state. They are important, but in my personal experience with healing myself, and helping others to heal, the psychological/emotional states are the most critical.

This is where the idea of the emotional addictions come into play. I have plenty of info on how/why this happens, and if you'd like it, just DM me and I'll send it to you. But the details are beyond this discussion.

You said you've had anxiety and depression since your teens. I'd say the process that caused them was probably existing for quite some time before that period. Something gets the ball rolling, and eventually it surfaces. Like a cancer, it is found one day, but the environment that created it has usually been there for a long time before it starts growing.

In pain cases, the body is usually stuck in a state of tension, restricting blood flow to nerves, muscles, etc. The pain is therefore neuropathic, but the underlying environment is what keeps it going.


So now, I've written all this to lead up to this point, and I think this might the one thing you are missing. BTW I mean that in the most loving way possible, as I completely feel for you, having been there myself! If the environment is allowing the dysfunction to occur, and the mind/emotions contribute most of that input, how do we change that? For some people, reading Sarno's books was enough (this happened my first time). Again, I think healing occurs in these cases because people lose their stress/fear about the pain, thereby taking the body out of it's tense state (i.e. changing it's environment), and homeostasis can occur.

But other people like you and I, who have far deeper roots in this, it will require more. Some people can get help/healing from therapy, meditation, and any other technique you can can name, but when TMS reared it's head on me again several years ago in a far more severe form, none of those things helped, but now I know why. And reading all of your posts multiple times, I think this might be the case for you as well.

I wrongly assumed that if I read enough, convinced my subconscious enough, meditated enough, or anything like that enough, that my severe TMS symptoms would just go away. Understandable, considering my bad back pain went away at 23 years old after reading TMS books several times.

But for deep cases, that usually won't be a correct approach. I don't know how to say this other than to say that in order to change your internal environment (which should be your goal, and healing is just an effect of that), you have to change who you are as person, for a majority of the day.

It is the recurrent thoughts and feelings the produce the environment, and they need to change. The problem is we wait for the problem to be gone to change how we think and feel about it, or about anything for that matter.

So as TMS people, are taught to not focus on the pain, because it is a stress. And if we don't focus on that stress, the TMS should stop. But what very few people talk about is what are are thinking and feeling about ANYTHING the rest of the day.

So for example, I decide I'm not going to complain about my pain. Great! It still hurts, but I'm going to push through it, right? It'll just go away! But if I'm being aware of my own mind, am I complaining about something else now?

The thing you are complaining about DOESN'T MATTER. The complaint matters, because with it comes chemical releases, which skews the internal environemnet and feeds the cycle yet again.

Worry, fear, depression, anxiety...this list goes on. These feelings come with biochemical states that alter your perception of life in general. But we unconsciously habituate them, and end up thinking and feeling the same, over and over, without realizing we are doing it. The environment remains skewed, and the dysfunction persist. Then we wait to feel better, for our lives to change, our depression, pain, headaches or whatever to go away to feel differently about all of it. Or we sit in meditation, go to therapy, and feel good for a little while......until the old 'you', with all of its thoughts, feelings, and maladies resurfaces, so we immediately fall back into thinking, feeling, and being exactly the same. And it's groundhog day, over and over. We practice it unconsciously, over and over, and the dysfunction cements itself in.

To break this cycle requires 24 hour awareness. It is not a game, and can't be taken lightly. All familiar, shitty thoughts about your pain, your life, your diagnosis have to be thrown out. This is harder when you're smart, and as I noted before, I know you are . But it's not impossible. Books, forums, counseling, meditation, etc can all help, but unless this is taken on daily as creating an entirely new state, it usually won't fix the problems.

I had a severe stress happen recently, and after years of being symptom free, had a minor TMS re-occurrence for a couple weeks, but got rid of it quickly doing exactly what I'm about to tell you, and I know it sounds very weird. But at this point, you've tried everything else, so why not give it a shot?

You can do this right now, or sit down in meditation to really get into it. But ultimately, you have to think and feel as clearly as possible as if you're pain free, anxiety free, or whatever you want to call it. What would that feel like? How would you think differently? Do that now, as if it already happened, and try to maintain that throughout the day. This will feel very weird, and not 'you'. But if it was familiar, that would mean you've done it before, and if that were the case, you can expect that same state of being.

Don't wait for the pain to be gone. Change the thoughts and feelings now, immediately, about EVERYTHING. Again the subject of the thoughts and feelings isn't important, it's the thoughts and feelings themselves that are important.

If I've lost anyone at this point, here is the simplest way to state this: Most of us are living reactively. Experiences happen in our lives that shape how we think and feel, and we think that's just 'who we are.' If we keep thinking and feeling things repeatedly, it functions like an addiction in the body. Our brain will try to keep us in the familiar state of being, even if it's awful, but it's only concerned about survival. If it knows what to expect, it has a better chance of keeping you alive. So it's invested in resisting change. But the same thoughts and feeling produces the same chemical releases over and over, which re-influence the thoughts. The 'hamster wheel' starts, and if nothing changes, nothing changes. We are taught from the time we are born to change the exterior (how we look, what type of things we own, etc) to change how we feel, but that is a losing game. Sooner or later, the 'you' resurfaces, and with it all it's physical and mental states.

Change yourself throughout the day, and you change the environment. If you meditate, go to therapy, or whatever, you will have a change for a little while. But most of the time, our typical way of thinking and feeling comes right back, and we are back at square one.

This is why this has to be taken on with all seriousness. You may not think about your pain, but if you're thinking and feeling stressful things the majority of the day, you will just keep yourself in that skewed internal environment, and nothing will change.

This is exactly what Hillbilly did, and exactly what I did to fix these problems. You have to make yourself anew, every day, in thought and feeling. Stop living reactively and start creating an entirely new state of being INDPENDENT of what is going on in your body, or in your environment. After that, it's repetition until it becomes who you are. No excuses, no wishy-washy, no 'but' or 'I can't' Create the new with ferocity. With an intention so firm that nothing will prevent it. And stop thinking so much (as Alan Watts liked to say 'sooner or later, all you have to think about are thoughts themselves, and where does that get you?)

And with that comes far greater physical and mental health, I assure you, because that is exactly what happened to me.

 

Hi @RogueWave ,

I just wanted to add to your point (for the benefit of others reading here...there are 7,895 views on this thread), that this is not simply a "behavioral approach". If a person is still harboring the belief that there is something wrong or damaged physically, they can do all the meditating, journaling, reading and researching they want but it won't make a single difference. CBT, ACT and mindfulness techniques used in the absence of accurate diagnosis is a "coping model". These standard pain models do not address emotional dispositions. They are not emotions focused therapies. Therefore, the TMS approach is not like CBT or mindfulness alone, which focuses on reducing symptoms. With the mind body approach, it's ALL about reducing fear by allowing the emotions to pass through. Viewing these emotions as safe. It's not about the symptoms at all, because it's based on the premise that there is nothing "wrong" with you to begin with. There is nothing that needs to be "fixed". The diagnosis is different, the premise is different and thus, the execution is different.

 

Agreed. I will also note though, that not everyone will find/create healing exactly the same way (one of my mentors liked to say 'different door, same room!').

I think we are both saying the approach needs to be comprehensive, but in that idea there are many ways to achieve that.

 

Yes exactly. The principles and interventions are the same (knowledge, emotions, pain reprocessing (cognitive/behavioral), mindset, daily life stressors (practical changes)) but an individual's journey is unique. There is no cake recipe here. Personally I never meditated or journaled and still got better, which ultimately translated into cessation of symptoms.

 

It's amazing when your brain finally recognizes and remembers again that joy is homeostasis, but it takes practice to stay that way. Pay attention to when it happens

 

Sometimes other are even more similiar to you than you expect. My pain started at 21, but I'm 31 too, and due to covid I've returned to my parents and live temporaly in my childhood bedroom. My pain is also 5/10(or rather 6/10) at it maximum, and yet it so distressing too! It's not back or neck though, but abdominal and teeth/jaw pain. From what I understand you have constant pain too? I have this little theory of mine, that people with constant pain have harder time to recover, I don't even remember how it is to live without pain. From what I read you already tried everything, but if you in TMS for a 8 years maybe it's worth to try again classical medicine approach? Either doctors will find something and maybe help you or clear tests will help you with TMS. It's hard to believe you can recover after so many years, I can understand it as I have pain for 10 years and had only minutes at best of pain free