Howard Schubiner's Blog Posts

Howard Schubiner

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Dr. Howard Schubiner hosts a blog on his website. He is one of the foremost experts on TMS, and his blog posts are excellent. All of them are listed below, by subject heading. (With permission.)

1. Hello World: This is the introduction to the blog written by Howard Schubiner. In this post Dr. Schubiner explains the purpose behind the blog, and what he will be focusing on.
2. What is Mind Body Syndrome? Part I: This two part post explains the nature of TMS, and why it manifests in certain people. These two posts serve to educate people on what TMS is and tells the reader how to effectively treat their symptoms.
3. What is Mind Body Syndrome Part II: This is the second part of the What is Mind Body Syndrome post, in which Dr. Schubiner explains what is really causing chronic symptoms.
4. Psychological aspects of MBS: In this blog post Dr. Schubiner discusses the ways in which a person's unconscious mind can affect their physical body. Primarily he discusses how simple tasks can create MBS pain. He says the reason for the pain is to send a signal to our bodies to slow down and take care of itself.
5. Modern Medicine's Blind Spot: Modern Medicine has made great advances in recent in understanding several major diseases and conditions by treating the symptom or problem area. However in MBS there is no structural problem with the symptom therefore treating the symptom is futile. Schubiner argues that modern medicine will continue to have a blind spot until it begins treating the causes (psychological) of MBS.
6. Mind Body Syndrome is contagious: There is a connection that the MBS symptoms a person has may be the result of knowing someone else with who has MBS. Our unconscious minds will recognize the symptoms of other people and give us that symptom when we have an emotional trigger.
7. Letter to Dr. Schubiner from Paul Mazzafero, Davie, Florida: Here a patient of Dr. Schubiner discusses a relapse he had and how he recovered by journaling.
8. Genetics and Mind Body Syndrome: Here Schubiner explains the differences between genetic diseases and MBS. The primary difference is that in genetic diseases you get the disease because you have a specific gene, however there is not a MBS gene, and therefore not something passed down through a family. However, Schubiner does mention that MBS is contagious, meaning that a person may manifest a symptom exhibited by a close friend or family member.
9. Mindfulness Meditation: In this post Dr. Schubiner discusses the practice of mindfulness meditation. He discusses what it is and says that it helps people with MBS learn to live in the moment and allow all thoughts to arise and occur.
10. Letter From D.R.: Saving the Only Live I Could Save: This is a great success story about a woman who wanted to be the perfect wife and mother. It describes the hardships she went through because of her pain. Dr. Schubiner ends the post with a commentary on how perfectionist tend to have MBS.
11. Back Pain 101: How Modern Medicine Gets it Wrong: In this post Dr. Schubiner tells it like it is. Primarily that using MRIs to diagnose someone is bad medicine because MRIs can not show if a person has pain. He also mentions how people who live in rural societies have less back pain then people in modern industrialized societies, which proves that physical labor and activity do not necessarily cause back pain.
12. Back pain: the truth and the science to prove it: Have you ever wondered why you have pain? In this post Dr. Schubiner explains how people develop chronic pain, and what factors lead to it. It is very interesting and can help anyone understand the psychological connections to chronic pain.
13. How deep have you gotten? Layers of health in coping with TMS/MBS: Some people are able to recover from TMS just by reading one book, but for others it takes more time. This post describes what a person can do if they are having trouble recovering. This is a must read for anyone who is thinking, "well if I haven't recovered yet, do I have TMS?"
14. Dealing with doubt, thoughts and emotions: A lot of TMSers have a tough time accepting the diagnosis. This is especially true when people have a slow recovery. This post discusses not only the need to accept the diagnosis, but also gives a few tips on what to do when you begin to have doubts about the diagnosis.
15. Mind Body Syndrome in Musicians: There is a tendency for people who work in fields that use their hands a lot, such as computer technicians or musicians, to blame their pain on their career, even though it is actually TMS. This post shows that most of the time this pain is not caused by repetitive strain injuries, but TMS. A musician tells her story and how her pain was triggered by fear, frustration, and co-workers.
16. Why does MBS occur more commonly in women?: Here Dr. Schubiner gives his thoughts as to why TMS tends to affect women more than men. He suggests that part of this is due to a tendency for women to try and be all things to all people, i.e. the perfect mother, perfect spouse, perfect employee.
17. Why symptoms move and change? A look at symptom substitution: Almost everyone who had TMS has at sometime had some form of symptom substitution. For some people symptom substitution leads to doubts about the TMS diagnosis. This post examine why the symptom substitution occurs, and what can be done about it. One interesting point Schubiner makes is that if a person's symptoms begin to move around then it is a clear sign that they have TMS.
18. The role of triggers: The things that trigger TMS symptoms are different from triggers of other illnesses, in that they are mainly psychological. Dr. Schubiner defines a trigger as something that triggers a TMSers symptoms, but would not trigger the same symptoms in someone without TMS. In this update Dr. Schubiner explains the need at recognizing what one's triggers are, and then he gives a brief explanation on how to overcome these triggers.
19. Emotions: What you don't notice, can hurt you: For this post Dr. Schubiner examines what recent work by experts on human emotions means for TMS. The overall message is that there is a growing number of Americans who are repressing emotions, and thus developing TMS. Schubiner mentions the growing number of chronic pain patients who are veterans of the military as a case study. Schubiner ends this post by suggesting that the only way to limit the severity of TMS in America, the rest of the world, is to encourage people to express their emotions.
20. “A rose by any other name…”: The importance of the name of an illness: What's in a name? This post discusses how naming an illness or medical condition can help a patient understand what they have. However, Schubiner also points out that misdiagnosing can have serious affects on a person as well. This post ends with a brief discussion on the name TMS, and its relation with other labels for the syndrome, such as MBS.
21. TMS Stories: Understanding the depth and breadth of The Mindbody Syndrome: Here Dr. Schubiner gives several stories of how the events that attributed to a person getting TMS. There are several stories here that help clarify the numerous ways past events can cause TMS.
22. Confronting Fear Head On: Brad's Story: This post is a success story of one man's battle with chronic back pain. The story describes how Brad saw a large amount of relief from reading TMS books such as Mind Over Back Pain.
23. Understanding and Overcoming Fear: In this post Dr. Schubiner elicits the sources of fear, the meaning of fear and offers some thoughts and methods on dealing with fear.
24. The “disease” of TMS/MBS: Lori’s story : This post discusses on one TMSer overcame fear of her symptoms, and how she became cured.
25. Jacob's story: The relationship between OCD and Mind Body syndrome: This is a story of how Jacob's OCD developed into chronic pain, and how he had to deal with his OCD to overcome TMS.
26. Update on social contagion and Mind Body syndrome: There has been a lot of information on how TMS can be contagious. In this post Dr. Schubiner cites research that showed that back pain drastically increased in East Germany after reunification with West Germany. The study shows that people can have back pain, if they are around other people with back pain. In terms of TMS this hints that if a person sees someone else with back pain, their unconscious mind will also manifest TMS pain to deal with repressed emotions.
27. Joe's story: A journey towards wisdom: This is the story of one of Dr. Schubiner's patients who went through a long battle with TMS. Joe discusses how he overcame doubts about the diagnosis, even when other people had "book cures."
28. Report on a Mind Body Syndrome retreat at Kripalu Institute: Developing innovating treatment techniques is key to helping people with TMS. Dr. Schubiner writes about how he proposed an innovative TMS treatment retreat at the Kripalu Institute, and the success he had in helping people understand TMS.
29. Cause and effect: The controversy about vaso-constriction and persistent soft tissue injury in Mind Body Syndrome: In this post Dr. Schubiner discusses what causes TMS and people's symptoms. He argues that the most effective treatment involves focusing on reprogramming the brain from sending pain signals. Schubiner writes "When therapeutic energies are focused on changing the brain in order to change the symptoms, successful outcomes are more likely.
30. Long time, no hear: Recent events regarding MBS This blog post is an update of recent mind/body-related events, such as the publication of Dr. Schubiner's Unlearn Your Pain and the second annual mind-body conference.
31. The King's Speech as Mind Body Syndrome
32. The Black Swan and the Pursuit of Perfection
33. The Hero’s Journey (guest blog by Jared Egol)
34. Can tics be contagious?
35. When the cure is worse than the disease: Exposing medical myopia
36. The bio-technological approach to back pain: Dangerous road ahead
37. Medical myopia and common sense: In this post Dr. Schubiner discusses the lack of common sense medical professionals and the medical community have when it comes to the concept that stress could account for chronic symptoms. He summarizes news stories of various physical conditions clearly caused or influenced by stress, emphasizing his point that in many cases it is simply common sense to link stress to a symptom or condition, yet when it comes to treatment, modern medicine often discards this common sense.

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