| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| LuvtoSew |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 05:57:52
I'm 52, not considered old by no means but remember our parents and grandparents. they all complained of their achy backs from time to time and neck aches. Most of them probably had x rays at one time, but as we know x rays don't show much. I don't know anyone from long ago who ever had back surgery. Still they went to work everyday it seems.
As a nurse looking back now when I worked a lot in a nursing home, how many of those seniors complained of their back pain, not a lot, some but not as many as you would think, still some of them walked hunched over. Remebering their medical histories too, I don't think many of them had spine surgeries in their lifetime.
In my mind I just know that suring the last two osteopathic treatments she did something awful to my my back and neck cuz thats when it started hurting, although I had bulges in both places anyway. But its just the remembering of those treatments, a month ago, that I can't quit thinking about. I wish I could just forget those last couple treatments.
something to think about. |
| 17 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Shary |
Posted - 05/16/2007 : 09:22:44
Shawn,
Thanks for your words of wisdom. I am definitely working toward a happier, more peaceful, more joy filled life. Regarding repression and my experiences with it, I think I'll start a new thread. |
| wrldtrv |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 23:42:27
I've heard just the opposite about seniors and back pain. Supposedly the worst back pain occurs during the high stress working years (30's-50's) and then levels off considerably. |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 14:02:49
Shary
We can only offer you advice based on our own experience and reading. Ultimatley you will have to come to your own conclusions as to what the soruce of your suffering is. Indeed, as noted by the Oracle of Delphi Dr. Sarno, daily stressors are a common source of internal rage. Remember, the anger you feel consciously is not the source of your pain. It is the repressed rage - that which you are unaware of and which your pains are diverting your attention from - that is the source of your problem. I hope you find what you are looking for.
Always remember, it is the seeking which is the source of your recovery and not the finding per se. Keep you mind focused on the pyschological / emotional realm of your being and away from the physical symptoms. See yourself for who and what you are- normal and completely healthy with no serious medical problems. Hooray for you.
Try to make you life simpler and filled it with joy and inspiration and other soothing activities. Doing so will speed up your recovery.
*************
Sarno-ize it!
************* |
| Shary |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 12:36:05
ACL & Shawn,
Thanks for your input, which is always respected and appreciated, but I think my TMS is more a result of daily life stressors.
To clarify a little, I probably did resent picking up after my brother (and/or taking care of him) when I wanted to be doing something else. But saying it's repressed rage is putting way more emphasis on it than it deserves. Shawn, I HAVE explored that and many other possibilities, both as an adult and also from the standpoint of what I remember feeling as a child. As an adult and parent, I can that my mother needed some help and therefore pressed me into service. I may not have quite seen it that way as a child, but I do see it now, which would tend to neutralizes the issue.
As for subconscious feelings always being inaccessible, I'm afraid I can't buy into that theory. It may be true for people who have suffered grievous trauma or abuse, or with people who, personality-wise, are just not in touch with themselves. But I doubt that it's anything that's carved in stone. I've actually had pretty good luck ferreting out feelings I didn't know existed. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had success in this area. |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 11:31:22
quote:
Originally posted by Shary
Mizlorinj, thanks for your views.
I can't suddenly conclude that I was mistreated many years ago as a child, when, at that time, I didn't feel mistreated at all.
That is the point Shary, you would not have felt it as it would have been repressed. You may, however, be correct that there are no issues in your childhood which have contributed to your repressed rage. The point, however, is to at least explore and entertain the possibilty that such rage may exist. To think pyscholically and at least imagine the possible sources of rage, even when they seem far fetched, is one important path on the road to recovery.
Socially defined sex roles may not have been a source of rage for you personally, but they most certianly played a role pissing off a lot of other people- hence the rise of the women's movement and feminism. I personally object to being expected to do or not do something just because I happen to be a male.
*************
Sarno-ize it!
************* |
| Shary |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 11:18:05
Mizlorinj, thanks for your views.
I think it's far-fetched to attribute my current physical pain to minor childhood incidents because it isn't important now and it wasn't important then. It was just the way things were. Girls had female roles and boys had male roles. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to get angry about it. Things are different now; roles have changed and become more unisex, which is probably better. But as a present-day adult, I can't suddenly conclude that I was mistreated many years ago as a child, when, at that time, I didn't feel mistreated at all. |
| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 11:03:46
Shary, the point is that rage is under all the other feelings, both for childhood and current pressures. The inner child is enraged because we have to cope with all of these difficult things and it just wants to have fun, be taken care of, be left alone, do whatever it wants. Not to take care of all our adult obligations, not to have had to take care of others long ago when we were still children ourselves.
I think that we all have a welter of repressed emotions that go along with our current and past life pressures, including sadness, fear, loneliness, etc. But under it all, I do think there is a great deal of rage. I think this is a very important concept of Sarno's that is key to his theory and to success with TMS thinking. The rage is REPRESSED. We are not aware of it. We don't feel it. We generally reject that we could possibly feel rage about the issues in question, because it is usually about people we care about. Sarno mentions that mothers sometimes feel repressed rage toward children, which must be almost impossible to admit or even contemplate. Likewise, we have difficulty believing we could be in a state of rage (even unconsciously) at spouses or parents. We want to believe we love these people. And we do love them. But we may also be angry with them because we experience pressure. Rage-creating pressure can come from very positive things. Sarno doesn't advocate avoiding pressure or even seeing it as bad, just acknowledging it.
Even if we think about what might be angering us, a lot of the time we will not find the anger itself and will not feel it. Nevertheless, it is important to think about it, because it is by directing the thoughts in that way, thinking psychological, and acknowledging the intense pressure that we feel, that we overcome the TMS gremlin.
--
Wherever you go, there you are. |
| mizlorinj |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 09:59:08
Shary, Dr. Sarno also mentions sadness, fear and guilt. But rage and anger the most.
Why do you think it's far fetched to think you are angry you had to pick up after you little brother as a kid? I can see how I'd be angry about that--then and now!
I can't stress enough to everyone how important writing about these things is! Just a few sentences sends me into pages of feelings. I wrote "feelings letters" to people (no intention of mailing them) and told them off or how I felt about something they did, etc. I actually heaved sighs of relief when I was done with some of them so I know they served their purpose of relief!
When I started making my list, one thing would trigger something else. Or while I was writing about one topic it would trigger something else from the past. Past hurts do remain in us and are triggered by current events.
-Lori |
| LuvtoSew |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 09:20:05
Shary,
I agree with you, up till a bit ago I never worrried about aches and pains. I am having a hard time grasping that everything is tms. I know stress can cause a lot of physical problems and make muscles tight but sometimes surgery is necessary.
The only anger I feel now is at myself for going to all these treatments that weren't working anyway. |
| Shary |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 08:57:15
Falling apart at 28? Hopefully common sense usually kicks in to refute such hare-brained theories. When I was growing up we had a neighbor who pulled weeds and mowed her own lawn at age 95. She eventually did have to go into a nursing home...at 102. She was from Greece and didn't believe in doctors.
Off on a tangent, am I the only one here who doesn't think repressed rage is the sole cause of my TMS? Given the overflowing plateload of heavy-duty issues I've been dealing with the last few years--ongoing worry regarding a handicapped son, an S.O. who is frequently a pill, a case of insurance/investment fraud in which I could have lost much of my net worth--I don't think rage is even a minor cause. Sure, I've been angry about some of these things, but I've gone over all of it repeatedly; it hasn't been repressed. In view of all these adult problems, the idea that I'm subconsciously enraged because, as a child, I had to pick up after my little brother strikes me as being pretty far-fetched.
Sarno does indicate in MBP (page 8): We are all under one kind of pressure or another. We all have internal reactions to those pressures, and all of us will have physical symptoms in response to those inner feelings. What I'm saying is, we TMS-ers have a lot of character traits in common, but we all have different stressors in our lives. Rage may be the culprit for some, but for others it could be fear, anxiety, overpowering saddness, etc. It could also be that we are just flat maxed out mentally and emotionally and have lost the ability to cope. I see these things as a cause of TMS, not just an equivalent. Our brains, perhaps fearing for out sanity, must then compensate by giving us something physical to think about instead.
Any ideas/comments on this? |
| LuvtoSew |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 08:55:23
Ha Ha I will be 53 in a little bit. But I should remain 52 while I can. You guys are right I'm obsesssed about this. It started with tmj issues and the tmj dentist sent me to the osteopath , they work together, she does the cranial osteopathic stuff. My last two visits with her I would leave and have periods of dizziness and my R. leg would go numb. I also have a humming in my right head. I am having a neck mri today and a mra of head and neck next week. They feel I have, besides the bulges in my neck , vertebra compression on the vertebra vessel that runs up throught the spine. Not to mention I have MS so they thought all my symptoms were from that. If I do have compression in my neck I'll have no choice but surgery, but if I just have the bulging disc I doubt I'll have surgery. I have been to the er twice in the last few weeks for like stroke like symptoms, but no stroke signs in my head so they feel its coming from the neck.
We'll see. Also since the last treatment my neck hurts and is real stiff. |
| sonora sky |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 08:17:18
LTS, the structural abnormalities you bring up have nothing to do with pain.
There is a good story in Dr. Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing about the myth that structural 'abnormalities' are the cause of pain. The story involved a comparison of two patients' x-rays. One patient's x-ray showed his spine to be perfect (i.e. normal). The x-ray of the other patient displayed a whole slew of structural abnormalities--you name it, he had it. Here's the clincher: one patient had severe back pain and the other had no back pain whatsoever. Can you guess which was which? The patient who had come in complaining of severe, crippling back pain was the one whose x-ray was normal. The patient who, by our western medical presumptions, "should have been" crippled by pain--the one whose x-ray showed numerous, significant 'abnormalities'--had no pain at all and had never experienced back pain in his life.
This story, and countless others like it, clearly demonstrate that the origin of pain is not dependent on the structural/physical state of our bodies.
In order to free yourself from pain, you must begin to dispell your previous assumptions and beliefs about health and dis-ease. Read as much as you can about alternative healing--there are numerous resources out there--doctors, studies, and patients that all demonstrate and support the psychosomatic roots of pain and illness.
ss |
| sonora sky |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 07:55:47
quote:
Originally posted by shawnsmith
It appears to me that the message being conveyed to seniors by the medical establishment is that as you get older you will become weak and live a life of chronic pain as your body deteriorates, and thus you can expect a miserable existence. They offer little home and no reliable treatment except pain medications. This is a powerful message that becomes ingrained in our thinking.
And it's not just seniors who are receiving this message. One of my good friends went to see a doctor last year because she was having back pain along with an assortment of other psychosomatic equivalents (she still has yet to accept that her pains are due to TMS). This doctor told her that these problems were normal for her age, that our bodies start deteriorating and things just start "falling apart." My friend is 28. What a powerful message. I could strangle him.
ss |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 07:23:23
It appears to me that the message being conveyed to seniors by the medical establishment is that as you get older you will become weak and live a life of chronic pain as your body deteriorates, and thus you can expect a miserable existence. They offer little home and no reliable treatment except pain medications. This is a powerful message that becomes ingrained in our thinking. The teachings of Dr. Sarno- and other TMS practioners- offers hope to those who suffer.
*************
Sarno-ize it!
************* |
| mizlorinj |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 06:56:32
Luv to Sew, it appears to me (and I could be wrong) that you are putting far too much emphasis on physical issues. TMS is not due to a structural problem. I have a herniated disc ("large herniation" as Dr. Sarno put it) yet when I faced my issues and followed his treatment plan, the pain went away. I'm sure the empty herniated disc is still there but it was NOT the cause of my pain and does not hurt at all now.
May I suggest doing some (more) journaling? Perhaps writing about your feelings about these pains, your fears about the treatments you had, etc., fears about aging, (52 is NOT old!!).
Also, Dr. Sarno says it is "anatomically impossible" for your back to "go out" (from another post). He says that is a manifestation of TMS working as your brain wants--your brain has made you think it's something you did that is causing you pain.
Best wishes,
Lori |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 06:56:03
LuvtoSew
Here's a miracle:  you have gotten a year younger (52) than your age in the last thread (53)!!
Woman gets one year younger after 2 days on Forum!
So that just shows how important it is to think confidently.
I am about to turn 56 and if you check me out you would never believe it. I absolutely believe that I am getting younger and stronger all the time. I'm not buying the aging mythology. I'm not just saying this stuff as an affirmation. it feels deeply true - in fact I can barely hang out with most people my age because they are constantly repeating these toxic beliefs about aging which I know ABSOLUTELY are really beliefs about the result of so many years of suppressed feelings and unexamined thoughts.
xxx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 06:23:41
Back pain in elderly people is common but, for the most part, is not due to any physical reason. According to Dr. Sarno many times is this back pain due to repressed rage over getting older and all that is associated with that. Many seniors are neglected by their families and are instead placed in nursing homes where no one comes to visit them. That has got to be enraging. Getting older also reminds one of their mortality as well as loss of virility.
*************
Sarno-ize it!
************* |
|
|
