Hi all...
EXCERPT FROM A RESPONSE I SENT TO A FELLOW TMSHELP FORUM MEMBER THAT I THOUGHT MIGHT BE USEFUL FOR GENERAL CONSUMPTION-- THE Q POSED: WHAT TECHNIQUES WORKED FOR ME?
First thing I want to tell you is that you can (and will) get better. So don't be discouraged.
In my case, there were a number of different factors which allowed me to recover fully from TMS:
Firstly, it was owning my own diagnosis. When my problems began, like most other TMS sufferers, I had never heard of Dr Sarno and his research. As a result, my natural reaction was to 1. think it was a physical overuse injury (RSI), and 2. seek professional/semi-professional diagnosis on that basis. I'd say I spent probably a year bouncing around various doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors etc. who all thought it was something different and tried to apply their own physical treatments without success. On the whole they were not really interested in it being anything else (let along a psychological root cause) than what their own specialisation could, in their minds, fix. It was only through trying and failing at these treatments and becoming discouraged by the medical industry as a whole did I eventually take it upon myself to read as widely as possible on what my issues could really be and find Sarno and his books. The TMS forum was the #1 source for this so you're in the right place.
Secondly, some brutal self appraisal. I mean both in terms of 1. reflecting upon what kind of personality you are: are you a stresser? a perfectionist? Do you place a LOT of pressure on yourself to succeed etc?, and 2. looking at external factors: do you hate your job? are you bulled by someone at work? a recent death in the family? financial problems? marriage/relationship issues? etc. In my case, I am and always will be a type-A perfectionist and major, major stresser/worrier. It's just who I am. While I kinda always knew this, reflecting on this as Sarno suggests and starting to consider whether this may be as reason for my issues made me realise that I was a prime candidate for developing TMS issues. There is definitely a personality type that fits this diagnosis more than others. At the time I was 25 and had just upped and moved to a new country for a new job. On top of that I had major homesickness and was supporting my girlfriend who couldn't find work. The inner child in me WANTED me to fail, turn tail and return home, while my conscious self refused to accept that and just ignored it. Bad idea. While I did a great job of internalising these stresses for a while, I realised that they were still having a strong negative effect on me and my personality just exacerbated the problem. This eventually developed into my psychosomatic TMS issues. Just accepting that this was true and consciously acknowledging and accepting that this stress was causing my physical symptom really helped.
Thirdly, some plain old rational thinking about my symptoms. As I mentioned, I'd say the period from the beginning of symptoms arose to where I would say I was 95% cured spanned 1.5 years. When you really think about it a broken leg will heal in 2-3 months. So what the hell in the way of a truly physical injury could last for that long? pinched nerves? slipped disc? RSI? Pretty much nothing when you actually think about it rationally. Once you realize that the possibility of a psychosomatic root cause actually begins to make a whole lot of sense. Along the same vein, there was also a bull**** filter I applied to my symptoms. In my case, initial symptoms were RSI wrist/forearm pain in my mouse arm. At first I was OK sure, this is clearly RSI- has all the hallmarks. However, when I switched to using my other arm to let my RSI recover it took less than a week for the symptoms to occur in my other arm as well. Could that be RSI or anything physical? Did my arms just decide to stop working all of a sudden for a legitimate physical reason? Bull****. It's a common trend for TMS sufferer symptoms to move around the body and/or change the way they feel etc. Has this been happening with you at all? To me it was a clear sign that it had to be psychosomatic.
Fourthly, keeping an open mind. I'm not sure where you are on the spiritual spectrum but as a card carrying atheist, cynic and believer in nothing spiritual, it really took some time for me to even accept the fact that I, strong, independent Brad, was suffering from weakness of the mind and being too much of a wimp to deal with life's problems. Once you get over yourself and realize that everyone deals with it and it's not weakness at all (some base understanding of Freud really helps validate this), it made it a lot easier to accept.
The good news is once I applied all of the above and sincerely believed these things, I got better quite rapidly. In a matter of weeks I was 90% better and 100% in I'd say 3 months. This turnaround, after over 12 months of persistent pain and physical problems was really a validation in the strongest terms of the fact that I was suffering from TMS.
I also suggest Sarno's audio books if you've not tried them. For some reason, audio really seemed to work for me better than just reading (and re-reading) his books. |
Techniques that worked for me
Posted - 06/07/2014 : 13:13:10
