TMSWiki:About What Helped Me The Most
A "What Helped Me the Most" page is a special kind of User Page in which someone who has made substantial progress in recovering from TMS/PPD describes what helped them the most. Success stories do a great job of inspiring and giving hope, but people who are still in extreme pain want to know what works. A "What Helped Me the Most" page is a page where you can share what worked the best for you and the lessons that you learned along the way.
Since different things work for different people, these pages are designed show those differences, and to help people find and connect with others who see the world the same way and who have struggled with and overcome similar problems. By sharing our experiences and the wisdom that we have gained from them, we can help guide people to the approaches, techniques, and mindsets that are the most helpful.
Unlike other pages on the wiki, these pages are written in the voice of an actual person, and your "What Helped Me the Most" page can be seen as a complement to your success story. People reading your success story or your forum posts may want to learn more about what worked for you. Likewise, if they relate to your success story, they may be very eager to read more about approaches that helped you the most.
A great example of a a "What Helped me the Most" page is What Helped Me the Most, by rdgray. Another good starting point is Relapser's curse - there is hope, by Skizzik in that it conveys what was most important in Skizzik's recovery. Interestingly, it is consistently one of the most popular user pages on the wiki, probably due in part because of how real it clearly is. Even more interesting is the fact that the type of wisdom that Skizzik had to gain in order to get to where he is now is the type of thing that can't be gotten from books. Many books helped him out, but it was his own synthesis of those ideas, combined with an understanding of his own psychological make up that finally bought him peace. It wasn't book knowledge for him, but a personal journey that helped him the most.
Not everyone will have a recovery story as complex as Skizzik's. Perhaps you just read Dr. Sarno's books and were cured. Or perhaps you read his books and struggled with accepting what you read before taking it to heart. Either way, others can benefit from reading about what helped you the most. In fact, pretty much no matter what you struggled with, chances are there are other people who struggled with the same things and will want to know what worked for you.
The current goal is to get about 5-8 of these "What Helped Me The Most" user pages, from people who have read and thought a lot about TMS. If we can do this, this will be "a first" in the TMS community--a well organized and detailed exploration into what people with TMS say works the best for them, and, as such, it could be useful for training practitioners a well. By comparing the different "What Helped Me The Most" essays, readers could find an approach that will work well for their own challenges and their own personality and personal history.
Here are a few tips and guidelines designed to help someone write a "What Helped Me the Most" page.
To make a User Page, go to the User Page section and click the "add a new page" button at the bottom of the scroll box on the left side of the screen. Regardless of how quickly or slowly your recovery takes, your story is still important and can be a quality User Page. A person does not need to be completely recovered in order to write one of these pages. Simply make a page describing what is or has worked for you before. Focus on the techniques that you found helpful. Write the page in the first person, and try to put yourself in the page. Describe any interesting techniques or variations that you did, and explain how other people can do them. Discuss how your understanding of PPD and chronic symptoms changed throughout your recovery Write about what books/websites you read, how those materials helped you, and how they differ from other resources. You can also write about how your life has changed after you learned about and recovered from PPD. The TMS community does a great job of highlighting the very quick recoveries. People like writing up success stories after amazing transformations, and such stories go well in books as well. Stories like these are helpful in recoveries, but it is just as important to highlight other stories where people have slower progress.
| DISCLAIMER: The TMS Wiki is for informational and support purposes only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations. See Full Disclaimer. |
