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Hi Mala,

I'm not sure if you were asking about how I stop expecting withdrawal symptoms from quiting smoke and alcohol or from general tms/anxiety symptoms. Either way, in my opinion I think they are the same.

The steps I used to over come "expecting" is:
1 - knowledge
2 - retrain my way of thinking.
3 - Don't give a sh.. about the symptoms.
Eventually I was able to revert negative symptoms to positive ones.

1 - From observation of my own symptoms, from reading mindbody books, from listening to mindbod experts, I recognize that most of my symptoms come from my expectation. It is a form of "conditioning". These expectation come from my brain automaticly without any control from "me". Example are: when I go over high bridge or thru a tunnel my body automaticly produced symptoms. When I went without smoke for more than a day, when I drink or eat anything with dairy products in it, when I fly in an airplane, when I visit my family in california, when I have to make a sale presentation.... My body automaticly produce symptoms. I recognized there are 3 things that caused this, two of them are produced by our brain automaticly, the third is mainly our own thinking. First, Sometime in the past, I had a symptoms attack when I was driving over bridge and tunnels, or when I was flying in an airplane, or when I was visiting family... somehow my brain "memorize" those event and "wrongly" thought that those events are dangerous to me. So when those events happen again the body just automaticly produce symptoms. I am a Pavlo's dog in these cases. Second, We heard it on the radio, we saw it in the news, we read it in magazine, we constantly expose our mind to "wrong" information all the time. Slipped disc causes backpain, chinese food caused ulcer, dairy products caused stomach discomfort to lactose intolerance people, rear end car accident caused whiplash, quit smoking will produce withdrawal symptoms, ... again, our brain "memorize" these informations and it will produces those "expected" symptoms. And when these events happened during time of stress the symptoms will intensified, then fear of the symptoms getting worse will prolong the symptoms. Third, our thinking, our own expectation caused symptoms. If you think running will cause knee pain then it will. If you think bending down to pickup a 5 pounds bag will cause back pain then it will, if you think going to see your inlaw will produce panic attack then it will.... We expected it, we will get it. Those thoughts are instruction to our brain to produce the neccessary chemical and physical changes in our body to produce symptoms.

side note: Dr Sarno wrote in his book that tms symptoms are usually epidemic. Car accidents in the US caused lots of "whiplash" but not in countries that have no insurance or widely available medical care. In the 70's, stomach ulcers were wide spread, 80's were carpel tunel syndrome, now it is back pain and foot pain.

2 - This retraining my way of thinking period is long or short depended on how strongly I believe those above knowledge are true. I believe them and now I have to act on them. I reason with myself that these are symptoms that were produced by my brain, my thinking, my "expectation", my being "conditioned" to different things... I have to think like Pavlo's dogs. Hey, this guys keep ringing the bell but don't give me food, I'm not going to salivate anymore. Hey brain, this bridge and tunnel, this cup of milk, this visit to the inlaw is incapable of producing symptoms, it is my brain thinking they do and so my body just complying with false beliefs that produced symptoms. Don't FEAR them, don't worry about them, if they happen don't think about it, eventually they will not happen again. Be yourself's best friend, explain to yourself that these symptoms is not dangerous and are just temporary. Don't give them any weight. It will take sometime but our brain will recognize that those symptoms are just there due to false informations and will not happen again once our brain accept the new correct thinking.
again, this will not happen over night, it will take sometime. So you got to be patient.

3 - Don't give a sh.. if you have symptoms. So what if they happen, so what if my back hurt or my knee hurt or if I have a headache or ulcer... They will be gone once I got back control of my brain. Start to catch those automatic negative thoughts (ANT's) and try to elliminate them one by one by replacing them with real, true, and positive informations. ANT's is a habit, a bad habit and we need to replace it with a new positive, healthy habit. Catch it, dismiss it, and replace it with new habit. Don't allow your brain to feed you with: Oh why is this happenning to me. Oh man this is not good, I'm having this and that...

Be strong, be positive, be confidence that you can stop these condition, retrain your thinking, take back control of your brain. It can be done.

Hope this help Mala.

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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience.

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