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stiwa
Germany
16 Posts |
 Posted - 01/05/2013 : 07:05:06
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Hi everyone,
one of the most important actions you can take to finally get rid of TMS is to repudiate the structural diagnosis. For me, this was easy when faced with my tendonitis. I got active again and told myself that I would get well eventually. However, when I am faced with other problems I seem to get stuck. I tell myself that it is TMS and that it will pass but then I start worrying that it might be something else when the symptom persists. The nut I haven't been able to crack specifically is insomnia. I know that it is symptom substitution but still I awake every night after 3 to 4 hours of sleep being totally alert and incapable of going back to sleep again. It's crazy.
And then I start thinking that maybe it's my thyroid. I have low thyroid hormone levels but I am convinced that this is TMS, too, because doctors have been unable to find a cause. ("Your thyroid gland is in an excellent condition. It is just a bit lazy." Go figure.)
Anyway, back when I first started to work on my tendonitis I would sit down and write "My joints are healthy. My joints are healthy. This is all from repressed emotions." for a zillion times. I would also repeat this mantra when I would go jogging. However, it doesn't seem to work with insomnia. I am wondering whether I should stay in bed or get up and do some TMS work. What would be more like treating it as a physical symptom: staying in bed trying to sleep or getting up? I am not sure.
Any advice will be appreciated.
Stiwa
PS: I have made some major progress in identifying what could be going on inside my subconscious. I know that I am unhappy with my profession. I know that I haven't tried much stuff in my life for fear of not being good enough. And I know I have stuck with a man who did some very enraging things to me - all because I thought I'd never meet someone as good as him. (I must admit that he might have done those things out of despair about my constant nagging and bathing in my inferiority complex - which I realize was such a silly thing to do in the first place. Such a waste of time.) |
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Birdie78
Germany
145 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2013 : 09:44:35
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Hi Stiwa,
I am from Germany, too and have serious trouble with my tendons. I have had insomnia, too and still have, but the tendon pain is bothering me much more.
Wasn't able to find any contact data in your profile but would like to contact you.
You can email me: seidentaube@hotmail.com
Schönen abend noch ;-)
Kind regards from Germany sends Birdie |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2013 : 16:22:40
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Hi Stiwa, I have been an insomniac all my life. I believe I have this because I never learned to control my mind well enough to shut it off when I am ready to go to sleep. For long periods of time I medicated for it, antidepressants, trancs, etc. I also have had attacks of TMS most of my life. I did finally find a medication that controlled the insomnia all the time and stayed on it for 15 years. I then decided to try to control it without meds. The only thing I still take is a very small dose of an antidepressant, but I am hoping to get rid of that soon.
I seem to finally have made progress with chanting and prayer. I am not a very religious person, but I read a really good book about studies done on the brain when a person engaged in meditation, chanting and prayer. The studies seemed to indicate that you could control your thoughts and moods by stimulating certain areas of the brain and not stimulating others. I have made a lot of progress in the last 3 months to where I only experience difficulty getting to sleep once or twice per week. When I am ready to go to sleep, I give my mind a chance to settle down on its own and if I start to think about stuff, then I either chant or say the rosary for about 20 minutes. Some nights, my mind settles down easily and I can go to sleep after that. However, about two thirds of the time, I find myself thinking again. Often my mind tries to get a thought process going in the background while I am chanting or praying and I have to really try to shut that out. Often, my mind will cause me to start itching, which is a little distracting, but I try to get through that as best I can. Sometimes, It will give me a hot flash. I try to persevere. I know that part of my mind is doing these things because it does not want to settle down and go to sleep. It just wants to think and think. If I allow it to do this, it will get the adrenaline going in my body and I will no longer feel tired at all. Sometimes this chanting and rosary saying goes on for hours if I am having a difficult night. I find that I am sleeping better all the time, even when I finally get to sleep. It is not easy. But I think it is also helping my TMS symptoms. I find that I have less backache during the day and feel better rested.
I really hope I can stick to this plan to teach my mind that thinking about stuff while I am trying to go to sleep will not be an option. If we are going to be awake, we will be chanting and praying.
If you are interested in the book I am reading, please let me know. |
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pspa123
672 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2013 : 17:14:35
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| Maybe it's an inappropriate suggestion on a TMS forum, but I have found melatonin to be helpful when I can't settle down. |
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srinid
India
3 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2013 : 23:47:38
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Hi chickenbone,
I too have problems with sleep, I could see that I'm not able to calm
my mind down.
Can you please share the good book that you were referring to?
Thanks,
srinid |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2013 : 05:10:24
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| I got by on 4 hours of sleep per night and have for years. |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2013 : 08:01:05
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This: balto Posted - 02/24/2012
quote:
Broken, segmented sleep is normal according to this article at BBC news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
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Edited by - tennis tom on 01/06/2013 08:10:51 |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2013 : 20:59:19
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Hi srinid,
The name of the book is How God Changes Your Brain by Mark Robert Waldman and Andrew Newberg. Andrew is a Neuroscientist.
Tennis Tom - Many thanks for the link. I can use all the help I can get.
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 05:11:42
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Resume Physical Activity
Perhaps the most important (but most difficult) thing that patients
must do is to resume all physical activity, including the most vigorous.
This means overcoming the fear of bending, lifting, jogging, playing
tennis or any other sport, and a hundred other common physical
things. It means unlearning all the nonsense about the correct way
you are supposed to bend, lift, sit, stand, lie in bed, which swimming
strokes are good and bad, what kind of chair or mattress you must
use, shoes or corset or brace you must wear, and many other bits
of medical mythology.
The various health disciplines interested in the back have
succeeded in creating an army of the partially disabled in this country
with their medieval concepts of structural damage and injury as
the basis of back pain. Though it is often difficult, every patient
has to work through his or her fear and return to full normal physical
activity. One must do this not simply for the sake of becoming a
normal human being again (though that is a good enough reason
physically and psychologically by itself) but to liberate oneself from
the fear of physical activity, which is often more effective than
pain in keeping one#146;s mind focused on the body. That is the purpose
of TMS, to keep the mind from attending to emotional things. As
Snoopy, that great contemporary philosopher, once said, "There's
nothing like a little physical pain to keep your mind off your emotional problems." Charles M. Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, is clearly a perceptive man.
I now believe that the physical restrictions imposed by TMS
are much more important than the pain, thus making it imperative
that the patient gradually overcome them. If patients cannot do this they are doomed to have recurrences of pain. A few pages
back phobias were mentioned. The pervasive, universal fear of
physical activity in people with these pain syndromes, especially of
the low back, has prompted me to suggest a new word#151;
physicophobia. It is a powerful factor in perpetuating low back
pain syndromes.
It should be noted, parenthetically, that the advice to resume
normal physical activity, including the most vigorous, has been given
to a very large number of patients over the past seventeen years.
I cannot recall one person who has subsequently said that this
advice caused him or her to have further back trouble.
I suggest to patients that they begin the process of resuming
physical activity when they experience a significant reduction in
pain and when they are feeling confident about the diagnosis. To
start prematurely only means that they will probably induce pain,
frighten themselves and retard the recovery process. Patients are
usually conditioned to expect pain with physical activity and so
must not challenge the established programmed patterns until they
have developed a fair degree of confidence in the diagnosis.
One of my patients, an attorney in his midthirties, had an
interesting experience in this regard. He went through the program
uneventfully and in a few weeks was free of pain and doing
everything#151;except one thing. He was afraid to run. He explained
to me later that it had been drummed into his head for so many
years that running was bad for your back that he simply couldn#146;t
get up the courage to try, though he could do many things more
strenuous than running. After almost a year he decided that this
was silly and he was going to run. He did, and his pain returned.
Now he was at a crossroad; should he continue to run or back off?
He called for my advice but unfortunately I was on vacation and
he had to make his own decision. Wisely, he decided to bull it
through. He continued to run and he continued to hurt. Then one
night he was awakened from sleep with a very sharp pain in the
upper back, but his low back pain was gone. Knowing that TMS often moves to different places during the process of recovery, he
decided that he had probably won, and he had. Within a couple of
days the upper back pain was gone too and he has not had a
recurrence of either upper or lower back pain since that time.
One has to confront TMS, fight it, or the symptoms will
continue. Losing one's fear and resuming normal physical activity
is possibly the most important part of the therapeutic process. -- (Healing Back Pain 80 - 81) |
Edited by - shawnsmith on 01/07/2013 05:12:56 |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 13:09:36
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Yes, you are right, getting over the fear of physical activity is so difficult. I have been told in the past by some doctors not to twist, not to sit too long, not to lift weights. My husband is a doctor and he looked at my X-rays and doesn't think I have any condition known to cause pain.
I haven't done anything with weights recently so I started using them again during my water aerobics. Nothing bad happened. |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 17:41:26
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quote:
Originally posted by chickenbone
...My husband is a doctor and he looked at my X-rays and doesn't think I have any condition known to cause pain.
WOWIE ZOWIE Batman, your hub's a doc! So what does he think about all this TMS malarkey, it's all in your head stuff? Do you'll have an interesting marriage? |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 18:41:30
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Hi TT,
Yes, my husband is a retired Chief of Urology from a big hospital in New Jersey. And yes, we have a very interesting marriage. He doesn't think TMS is malarkey at all, he thinks it is very real. He has not read Dr. Sarno's material himself, but we have discussed this many times. He thinks many, many people have mind-induced illnesses, especially those involving autoimmune disorders and pain. He treated a lot of cancer and doesn't think that people who get cancer have any particular personality types, but he thinks that cancer, as well as many other illnesses can be brought on by the mind. He thinks that I, specifically, am very prone to TMS because my early childhood abuse and unsupportive parents. He has been very supportive of my efforts to learn about TMS and to try to recover.
I used to trust doctors in general until I married one and heard the stories he had to tell. I have always been a bit of a hypochondriac, way too interested in medical issues, partly because it interests me and partly because of my health anxiety. He always told me that I need to be really careful about seeing doctors. He thinks a major health hazard is getting medication or an operation that you do not need, and ending up with problems that you did not begin with. I hear him loud and clear. |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 20:14:03
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quote:
Originally posted by chickenbone
... He thinks a major health hazard is getting medication or an operation that you do not need, and ending up with problems that you did not begin with. I hear him loud and clear.
Yes, I agree with him, that's why I'm so reticent to undergo the knife, it's only tennis, outside of being a hobbling step slow, life is good. Played in a tournament today and only got asked about five times by well meaning folks why I don't get a THR--I answered to a couple of them, "Because I'm an IDIOT". Have three more "THE BEST" surgeon to add to my file.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply CB, sounds like you have a Good Doctor of your own. I always wondered what kind of dinner conversations come up being married to a urologist, "Anything interesting come up at work today dear?" "Could you pass the Viagra please." Must be a lot more stimulating table talk then being married to a proctologist.
Cheers |
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Repudiate structural diagnosis - how do you do it?
