| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| JohnO |
Posted - 06/25/2007 : 12:34:04
Dave or anyone– When you have immersed yourself in everything Sarno for six months until you can recite from his books chapter and verse practically in your sleep and the pain abates some but ramps up again and again and you try to fight it off by telling it you’re in charge, etc. etc. but doesn’t go away and then that gremlin in your brain convinces you to go see the medical doctor and he says there is something physical and then you are all screwed up because now you are less than 100% convinced it is TMS and TMS approach will never work like that, how do you pull yourself back to believing? I am all screwed up right now. |
| 20 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| miehnesor |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 11:31:23
Art- For the majority of TMS sufferers starting Dr. Sarno's treatment your approach is probably the best one to take. Then I think you just have to see how the symptoms respond. Also for many folks that are living with toxic relationships which causes unhappiness that can keep them from recovery as well.
My comments about the IC stuff is really mostly geared towards people who on the more severe end of the spectrum. When Dr. Sarno's treatment plan does not do it then the patient, IMO, needs to try and go deeper into the unconscious and become familiar, as much as possible, with what is going on down there. Dr Sarno prescribes psychotherapy for patients who don't progress in the few month of so even after doing the work diligently. Certainly for me that was necessary.
For those people where psychotherapy is not an option I believe the IC work is the best alternative to discovering at least some of the characteristics of the unconscious which resides in the IC. I've had success with this on my own case and it has also worked remarkably well with others as well. |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 10:48:25
quote:
Originally posted by JohnO
Dave – Thanks for answering. I’ve done the TMS work faithfully until I can’t think of any more to journal or any more conceivable repressed emotions for seven months and it has been OK at times but flared up lately which pushed me to go see the doctor again.
Dr. Scott Brady in his book titled "Pain Free For Life" lists close to 85 questions you may want to consider, and there is enough there to fill several journals. I feel on those questions alone I could easily fill 3000 page and not even come close to the full extent of the real issues in my life. Sometimes it is necessary to journal about the same thing over and over, because you are never through dealing with any issue, but merely peeling away another layer to get at the next level. Yes, it is difficult and requires a lot of work. In fact, it will be the most difficult thing you will ever do in your life because you are making battle with your own brain and that brain knows you better than anyone else and will use every trick in the book to throw you off - it is always one step ahead of you. Dr. Sarno advises to talk to your brain. Say - outloud- exaclty what you feel. It sounds silly, but Dr. Sarno insists it works for many people.
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| art |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 05:02:00
quote:
Someone may cure some conditions with a mere cognitive nod in the direction of his symptoms being caused by emotions.
This actually pretty much sums up my experience. And while I don't consider myself 100 percent cured (way too much hubris, that) I've got the sense I'm on the right track...
Not surprisingly perhaps, I've argued many times around here that there's too much (how much is "too much?" I dunno, let's say for the sake of discussion "3 bags full")emphasis on "feeling the feelings." What I mean by this is I see people tying themselves up into absolute knots in increasingly desperate efforts to somehow feel more deeply, or feel more "accurately."
I believe this can be quite harmful to those who find themselves struggling..."I must (so goes their thinking, a thought process which begets much support on this board) be doing somehting wrong, otherwise I'd be well already. I'm not journaling enough, I'm not feeling enough. This causes much needless stress and anxiety, which as we all know is as counterproductive as counterproductive can be...
My first reading of Sarno was that the cure for TMS is essentially intellectual. There's nothing at all in my own experience to contradict this..My sense of those who are not getting better is that their lives remain toxic....harmful relationships will do it for one example. Unhappiness is not healthy.
For those having difficulty, it's not what we feel that counts so much in my opinion, nearly as much as what we do.
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| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 03:01:15
quote:
What do you guys think? Just because the healing process can often take the form of working through a reservoir of rage, is that grounds for saying that it "exists" as such?
Well, after studying this for many decades with many hundreds of people and hundreds of myself, I'm quite convinced that there are unresolved masses within the human entity. They are sometimes thought of as existing within the "body" but though they are conscious impressions in the so-called-body, more like tumors on the soul, where energy has beome fixated or looped in a certain closed system. in my work we call them Fixated Attention Masses, and we aim to dissolve them back into source. Calling them reservoirs of rage works, too. The most resisted aspects of them are rage, since sadness and fear are more acceptable.
Someone may cure some conditions with a mere cognitive nod in the direction of his symptoms being caused by emotions. But unless he is willing and able to go in and feel what hasn't been felt, the underlying condition - resistance to one's own emotional reality - has not been resolved. Perhaps your back ache will go away. Perhaps depression will replace it, or beating your wife...
Just telling emotions how to think is a kind of oppressive chauvinistic control habit from the male mind and spirit towards the female body and emotions. we need bothway communication..
I'm crazy tired and may be rambling like a crazy woman who took her 3rd Ambien of 2007 not long ago. Oh yeah, not supposed to post after that. But it's all so INTERESTING...
Back to beddy byes Katie
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| miehnesor |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 22:49:25
There seems to be a wide variation in severity of TMS as well as a willingness or lack thereof of the psyche to abondon the need for TMS symptoms. Those people that simply read one of the good doctors books and almost like magic the symptoms disappear have perhaps a more mild case of TMS. Then there are others who need to address the sources of the rage to get better. Then finally there are those that have to connect with the feelings to get better.
I believe that chronicity of the psychological hit has a lot to do with this as well as the degree of parental functionality through a child's developing years.
I recall a conversation on this forum where I was learning from AnneG about how she recovered and her case had a lot of similarities to mine. She underwent a 6 month intensive therapy period were she got in touch with her anger and expressed it and her symptoms finally subsided. She also said that she was numbed out at a very early age, although perhaps not as early as in my case. My case seems to be even more stubborn than her's and I was able to get information from my folks that I was emotionally disconnected and unresponsive at 4 months old presumably because of an adverse reaction to a vaccination. I believe that that very early hit in infancy has a lot to do with the difficulty my mind has in giving up the TMS. An infant's ability to handle discomfort is very limited and the overflow gets repressed.
What in interesting about my case is that I actually had no symptom improvement until I started experiencing the repressed rage. It was the most incredible experience to realize that even though I seemed to be calm and peaceful consciously I was in fact over the top with rage unconsciously. Now what is also interesting is that my symptoms didn't actually recede until months of processing this rage had passed. Ultimately I had to get into a lot of therapy where I would do the same thing each time- try and feel that rage. I am still at it and I still have TMS. I may have it for the rest of my life but the important thing is that it continues to ease with work so the reservoir analogy seems correct in my case.
So in my book Dr Sarno is right that what is in the basement is rage even if the vast majority of folks don't have to feel it to get better. |
| floorten |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 18:53:03
I do indeed believe all that I wrote, yes. To me the human mind is a blank slate of creative potential and that potential doesn't have to end up creating patterns of negative anxiety and worry. But I'm cool with agreeing to disagree. I feel we both explored our arguments pretty fully!
Take it easy,
Greg.
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| art |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 18:43:10
Floor,
I guess we've reached that juncture where we're just going to have to agree to disagree...I felt the need to make my arguments as explicit as possible in response to the charge of nonsense, and think I've done that reasonably well...
I continue to think your view of the human mind is simply not realistic. To seriously believe that our hypothetical caveman is going to be lying awake at night thinking about the lions outside in some cold, calm, and dispassionate manner, as if he were trying to figure out some problem in algebra is simply not real world...Can you really believe that?
As human beings we are driven by fear, chiefly the fear of death and annihilation. If you're at all interested in reading further on the subject, I wholeheartedly recommend Becker's book "Denial of Death."
It's quite remarkable in its way and I found it utterly riveting.
Be well...
A. |
| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 16:08:30
Sarno actually doesn't think the reservoir has to be processed for someone to be healed. There are many stories of "instant healing" from the knowledge. So that would in fact point to something more like a change of beliefs, though a totally different belief.
--
Wherever you go, there you are. |
| floorten |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 15:23:09
quote:
Originally posted by miehnesor
Wavy- I really like what you have said here and believe it wholeheartedly. The deeper the stuff inside is the less conscious control we have of it. Also the analogy of a reservoir and not a river is very appropriate. Feeling our feelings can slowly empty the reservoir.
The concept of "bottom up" healing has been the basis of my ongoing recovery.
This is a very interesting point, and one I'm quite divided on.
Sarno and my own experiences point to the concept there is such a thing as a "reservoir" of pain/anger inside a person, which can be dissipated gradually by recalling it and processing it in one way or another.
On the other hand, many spiritual teachers I'm learning from, including Abraham, A Course in Miracles, the NLP-ers and to a large extent Tolle too, all say that the "subconscious" doesn't really play a large part, and it's your beliefs in the here and now which really matter. According to them healing could *theoretically* be instant if you could drop all the resisting beliefs which hold the pain in place. I have also seen evidence in my life that this can be true too, even though it seems to contradict the Freudian view.
What do you guys think? Just because the healing process can often take the form of working through a reservoir of rage, is that grounds for saying that it "exists" as such?
Or is it merely the deep-seated belief in a subconcsious reservoir holding us back, which prevents us from healing much quicker?
Could it not be the meditative presence required to get in touch with the feelings which is the actual healing process and nothing necessarily to do with any "reservoir" of stored negativity? Would it work just as well to focus on a packet of m&m's instead, if we truly held the belief that doing so was "processing past traumas"? Clearly belief plays a large part, because those who have seen Sarno directly seem to have much better success than us stragglers who didn't have his typical six-week cure. Maybe we just needed a medical authority to tell us we're not making this all up and everything is gonna be all right...???
Well, I dunno. I'm just putting out ideas here...
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| floorten |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 15:10:43
Hey, thx wavy - good point, and I did try to keep this in mind when
writing, so I hope I didn't come across too "holier than thou". That's always the problem when talking about so-called "spiritual" matters (though what ISNT spiritual in life?!)
Art - it seems to me that we're talking at cross purposes, and that
what I mean by worry and what you mean are not the same.
I quite agree that the caveman with the ability to predict future
predator attacks is at an advantage. I don't see that this has to
entail "worry" though. It's simply an intellectual planning exercise.
Worry to me implies excessive mental projection of irrational fears
and is accompanied by constant negative feeling. On me this has a
"rabbit in headlights" effect, actually reducing my capacity to react
as the imaginary fear takes over my responsive abilities.
In terms of coming up with effective, inspired plans for future
advantage, I've noticed that the effect of worrying actually reduces
my capacity for this. The worrying makes too much of itself in my mind
and I feel shut off from the clarity and inspiration which normally
accompanies my acts of creative intelligence. If this is not the case
for you, then I think that your definition of worry is probably wider
than mine, encompassing things like concern. What do you think?
In terms of what I've learnt from my favourite "spiritual" teachers of
the time (Abraham, Byron Katie, Tolle and ACIM), I see fear as an
innate nervous-system response to threat, and worry as an egotistical
mind-based obsession, so they're quite different entities for me. I
quite appreciate that words are unreliable carriers of meaning though,
and I suspect that what you and I are both saying are actually not too
far apart after all! :-)
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| miehnesor |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 12:07:56
quote:
Originally posted by Wavy Soul
Actually what I'm really saying is what I've said often here - the real growth happens in a kind of spiral between changing our thinking and feeling our feelings just as they are and it's messy. It isn't all "top-down" (i.e. thoughts creating feelings). There are some limbic codings which seem to emerge bottom-up. Baby monkeys separated from their moms freak out and get depressed or die. That limbic stuff is DEEP and not all susceptible to mental control. A lot of spiritual teachers I know have obvious TMS accompanying their "enlightened mental clarity," because they don't know they have a reservoir of rage.
And... it IS a reservoir (i.e. finite), not a river, even though daily life will always be potentially enraging. But when we clear up a lot of the backlog, things sure do seem less worrying...
Wavy- I really like what you have said here and believe it wholeheartedly. The deeper the stuff inside is the less conscious control we have of it. Also the analogy of a reservoir and not a river is very appropriate. Feeling our feelings can slowly empty the reservoir.
The concept of "bottom up" healing has been the basis of my ongoing recovery. |
| Hilary |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 11:04:04
Very interesting discussion.
I think what you say, Wavy, is absolutely spot-on. I saw BK this weekend. I'm a big fan of hers, and have absolutely found that her system can work to help me let go of thoughts that worry me and start to feel a sense of distance from my own thoughts.
At the same time though, there's a problem that people who are already prone to perfectionist thinking can end up becoming obsessed with ONE way of doing things, and then feeling that they're not getting this (whatever it is) right if they're not doing it all the time and getting the "right" results. The "this" could be Sarno, BK, Eckart Tolle, psychotherapy, meditation...whatever.
I guess what I'm saying is that everything has to be handled with a little lightness of touch. And knowing when to use which tool, as much as possible. Otherwise the perfectionist cycle can set in all over again and before you know it you're worried that you're worried that you're worried. And on and on.
ETA: This is fab:
the real growth happens in a kind of spiral between changing our thinking and feeling our feelings just as they are and it's messy. |
| art |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 08:23:44
All very interesting. Love you Wavy, but you've gone beyond me I'm afraid. I'll try not to let it worry me however....
I don't want to be a skeptic, but my take on worry is that it's so ingrained, so fundamental, so human, that unless you're some sort of highly trained Buddhist monk, during times of stress it will always tend to rise to the fore.
As they say, nothing concentrates the mind like a (in this case) figurative hanging.
That the non-worriers among us are so rare, speaks volumes it seems to me as to it's central place in the human psyche, but then again, it seems you've signed on to that..I think
Ever get the feeling that forum discussion is akin to trying to put socks on an octupus?
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| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 06:14:30
quote:
I've been worrying a lot less recently for sure, now I've realised what's at the root of worrying. I never said I've stopped worrying, but there are grey areas, and I'm certainly moving towards less worry now, so yes, perhaps congratulations are in order ;-)
I'm worried about you guys, Art and Floorten!
Seriously though, I am with you Floorten on what you are saying. And in my own experience, especially very, very recently, I have been accelerating into an ongoing presence and connectedness that has removed a huge amount of worry habit.
There is a cognitive shift that can be made into a new way of thinking. Some famous, popular guides on this are Abraham teachings ("does this thought feel good?") and Byron Katie ("is it really true?"). Anyone who hasn't explored this possibility actively might want to try it (my current fave is the late, great Joel Goldsmith's work btw). After all, TMS work is all about changing our thinking.
The reason I said that I'm worried about you guys (even though I'm not), is that if this cognitive shift isn't accompanied by compassion and humility, or if it isn't perceived as so being, it can make others defensive and feel made wrong. Being okay with reality as it is in this moment means, perhaps MOST importantly, being okay with the way others are believing, feeling, creating, experiencing it.
I had a very rough experience with Byron Katie (whom I greatly admire nonetheless). I didn't study with her except in one seminar, but she is a friend of a friend and knew my story. When I had just recently lost my ex partner (to betrayal, not death, but in fact this might feel worse), and couldn't stop crying on and off for days, intensely grieving, she came up to me and said "sadness is a tantrum against reality."
She was right, but... throughout my whole process of loss I had, through long practice (though not specifically through her work) been questioning and releasing all my thoughts. But when challenged with a limbically primeval experience like loss of the intimate one, my whole being and nervous system was erupting in a grief process that clear thinking only partially alleviated. In retrospect, it felt as though she wasn't okay with the current reality of my sadness and was making it wrong. Of course, this is just one of my thoughts...
My point is that when we are making the shift from worry (a kind of thinking addiction, for sure) into enlightened safety, we need to do it without "stinking of enlightenment." Because the covert belief that "some people are getting it and others are not" is just a way to cover up the greatest fear or worry of them all, something like "I'm not okay." One way to feel more okay is to make others less okay.
I want to say that I totally get the point of view that "it's human to worry," AND the point of view that says "it's just a crazy Western habit." This extraordinary enlightened largesse makes me better than either of you.
;-)
Actually what I'm really saying is what I've said often here - the real growth happens in a kind of spiral between changing our thinking and feeling our feelings just as they are and it's messy. It isn't all "top-down" (i.e. thoughts creating feelings). There are some limbic codings which seem to emerge bottom-up. Baby monkeys separated from their moms freak out and get depressed or die. That limbic stuff is DEEP and not all susceptible to mental control. A lot of spiritual teachers I know have obvious TMS accompanying their "enlightened mental clarity," because they don't know they have a reservoir of rage.
And... it IS a reservoir (i.e. finite), not a river, even though daily life will always be potentially enraging. But when we clear up a lot of the backlog, things sure do seem less worrying...
xxx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| art |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 05:42:47
I never said or implied that I thought worry was good, at least in excess. At the same time, surely you can see how in human beings, the one animal with an imagination, hence the ability to project himself forward in time, worry is the mechanism that motivates him to forestall dangers and solve problems...
Your breezy dismisal ("just so much nonsense") of the usefulness of worry in a primitive world totally misses the point. Say caveman Bill is lying in his cave, sawing wood to beat the band despite the lions he saw lurking about earlier. But caveman Joe, (my great, great, great great, great great great great grandfather) is lying in the same cave, his eyes wide open. He's filled with worry and fear, both for himself and his family. Sometime in the long cold night of tossing and turning he comes up with a plan to elude the lions..
Now which caveman is more likely to survive, and in that survival pass on the tendency to worry?
Worry and fear are different aspects of the same emotion. Fear is more visceral, more direct. It's the same thing that all animals feel. Worry is what happens when that fear is filtered through the evolved human brain. Worry is an exercise of the intellect and of the imagination. It is uniquely human in my opinion and not nearly so easily dismissed as you seem to think.
A human being without the capacity for worry is in my view a strange human being indeed. |
| floorten |
Posted - 07/09/2007 : 04:51:35
I've been worrying a lot less recently for sure, now I've realised what's at the root of worrying. I never said I've stopped worrying, but there are grey areas, and I'm certainly moving towards less worry now, so yes, perhaps congratulations are in order ;-)
Regarding any external situation which causes you to worry, the answer is always the same, though the difficulty of staying present and not worrying may increase proportionally to how serious you believe your situation to be.
Worrying will not add one single minute to a cancer-threatened life, pay off a single cent of debt to the bailiffs knocking on your door, or kill a single termite with its bitterness. Once you truly appreciate the truth of this, and see worryness for what it is - an insane ego mind structure which is intent on renewing itself through conflict and believes that its own negativity has the power to magically change the world - the worrying will gradually abate. Maybe even one day to the point where you are almost always at peace.
"Natural" isn't really the issue. We can call anything which occurs a lot in humans natural. It may be natural to worry about your father, but it can't be productive and it can't help him or you. A better question is always "is this helping?". If not, you are free to choose a different thought, though I quite appreciate this is VERY difficult to do initially.
Another good question is "does this feel good?". Seriously - worrying feels awful, right? For me it's really reason enough to change those worrying thoughts just because of how BAD they feel each time I think them.
Regarding the whole evolution thing, I see worry and fear as quite different mechanisms. Fear is a productive response to something we can do something about in the here and now. Worry is a non-productive imagination about things we are powerless to change here and now. I see fear having a large role in evolution, but worry having a very negligible one.
Worry, in my mind, has come about with the change of lifestyles in modern times which require us to be less and less present in our day to day lives. There are ever fewer physical tasks demanding our presence, ever fewer real dangers to bring us back into sharp consciousness. In the absence of these demands on the mind, it goes a bit loopy, creating its own negative dramas and then trying to solve them again purely by mind power. In this sense, I see worry more as a negative side effect of past evolutional mechanisms than something that has a role to play today.
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| art |
Posted - 07/08/2007 : 15:30:52
quote:
Worry is the malfunction of a mind which isn't aware of its own natural connection to Source and instead is trapped in ego delusions of being constantly at war with reality.
HUh?
You've lost me I'm afraid. If you've personally evolved beyond feeling the need to worry, I congratulate you. It's quite a feat, given how ingrained it is in the human psyche.
However, next time you're stricken with a serious illness, or someone in your family is, or your job is in danger, or your house becomes infested with termites, let us know how you do on the worry front.
My father is in his mid-eighties now and increasingly frail. He shouldn't drive, but continues to. He should be using a cane, if not a walker, but refuses to do that as well. Last time he was here he almost took a header off our front steps. Are you telling me it's not in some sense completely natural and human to worry about him?
If you maintain it's not, then fine. End of discussion. If on the other hand you agree that there is in fact a very human tendency to worry about our loved ones, for just one example, then you have to ask yourself where this tendency comes from. Since I don't believe in "intelligent design" I'm left with evolution as a means to explain it.
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| floorten |
Posted - 07/08/2007 : 14:44:35
Worrying brings nothing in terms of evolutionary benefit. This whole argument that we worry because our ancestors were scared of lions is just so much nonsense IMHO.
Caution and alertness would be an evolutionary benefit. Worry would more likely be a hinderance as it impedes rational and appropriate response by absorbing too much attention.
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| floorten |
Posted - 07/08/2007 : 14:38:32
Worry is the malfunction of a mind which isn't aware of its own natural connection to Source and instead is trapped in ego delusions of being constantly at war with reality.
We may never know if we are "hardwired" to worry. What can be known and experienced is that with deep presence it is possible to live a life virtually free of worry. There have been many people who have demonstrated this over the centuries. They are commonly characterised as being "enlightened", which only means they have learnt how to wholly accept reality and worry about no part of it.
--
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| art |
Posted - 07/06/2007 : 18:19:26
I've never met a human being who doesn't worry. |
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