What healing looks like/the way forward

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to share a recent experience of mine, which ties into what I consider being “healed” from a TMS/mindbody perspective. Hopefully this provides encouragement in terms of flares

For some context, I have healed from six years of chronic pelvic and back pain, and have been symptom free for about a year and a half, until two weeks ago! This, however, was a completely new symptom which I have never had before in my life, being urinary frequency and urgency.

The first thing I did was… freak out! As Alan Gordon says in The Way Out, it is an inevitable part of the process, regardless of your knowledge or experience. This is especially the case with a new symptom. I had all the regular thoughts “I thought I was done with this crap forever”, “why me, again?”, “surely I know enough for this not to happen”.

Next, again being especially important with a new symptom, I went to the doctor. I know that this can be very triggering given medical gaslighting, but I believe it is vital to rule out anything sinister (an infection in my case especially).

Once I got the all-clear medically, I felt a lot more confident in this being another TMS manifestation. Whilst I couldn’t really pinpoint any major emotional trigger or event, I began to think psychologically.
I won’t go into great detail as I don’t want this to turn into an essay (maybe it already is), but here are some of the things I did/strategies:

• I had noticed that symptoms were a lot worse/triggered when I was driving. Before getting the medical green light, I was tempted to explain this physically (I.e. because of the position or the seat). Thinking psychologically, however, this was just a conditioned response driven by the fear of being stranded away from the bathroom.
• By re-affirming that I was fine physically and reintegrating driving (I had avoided it whilst awaiting my test results), I was able to break the conditioned response and remove the major trigger.
• By opening myself up to the psychological, I was able to reflect on certain pressures and changes going on in life that contributed to the environment of symptom onset. This is very hard to conceptualise when you are focusing on the physical (and was therefore inaccessible to me before my test results). Awareness and acceptance of these emotions, coupled with self-compassion, contributed to my healing.

Most importantly, this experience solidified for me why my pelvic and back pain became chronic. My symptoms have completely gone after two weeks, but they could have easily persisted for 5+ years had I not known what prior experience taught me. There's never a risk of going back to square one, because you're automatically in a thousand times better position with knowledge of TMS.

My next notable symptom may be next month, next year, in 10 years or never (never would be rare - life happens and symptoms happen) – the point is that I now know how to deal with it – and that is how chronic symptoms become a thing of the past. You're then chronic symptom free.

Any questions please let me know and I wish everyone all the best

 

Good for you, Adam! How wonderful. This was encouraging to me to read as I'm in a flare right now of an old symptom from months ago that is very painful. Very, very tempting to link it to positioning and activities. I can use every reminder to think psychologically. Waking up in lots of pain this morning, as I was when I went to bed last night, after about an hour of telling myself "all positions are safe, all activities are safe" it was considerably lessened. Thank you for the reminder that a big flare sometimes takes a little time to go down.

 

Thank you so much! And absolutely we all need reminders and can never get enough of them Awesome job reinforcing the safety in the midst of a flare, I know how hard it is to do!

 

Thanks for your success story, Adam! I am finding this same strategy is helping best to ease my flares too. I tried the anger approach, and the yelling at my symptoms, but none of that worked. If I just gently say to my child within, “what is it? what’s bothering you?” And then just let the symptoms express themselves— I think of it as my inner child crying— then it will subside. Usually not immediately. It might even take a day or two— it depends on how big the issue is. It’s usually something that triggered me. I talk to myself gently and I wait patiently. It helps a lot!

 

I agree! The more you either ignore or lambast the child too they will just cry and shout louder (the symptoms). I am the same

 

Thanks, Jan! Yes, I do this some, but I need to do it more.

 

@JanAtheCPA I did this that next night and I slept in for the first time in months. It really helped.
Then last night of course I had blowback insomnia and a big instance of symptom imperative in the night. But repeating "I am worthy of acceptance, I am worthy of love, I am worthy of freedom" each time I awoke with the pain relaxed it greatly and put me back to sleep.
Thanks for the reminder!