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Bradrowesf
2 Posts |
 Posted - 12/29/2005 : 03:01:34
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Hey everyone!
I've been working with this TMS theory for quite awhile now without much to show for it. The stumbling block, I believe, is that I can't seem to discover the underlying repressed emotion that the pain is distracting me from. It's not that I don't have things that I'm angry about. And it isn't that, in the process of self exploration and journaling, I haven't discovered other issues (or new wrinkles on old issues). It's just that becoming aware of this anger hasn't produced much of an effect.
So my question is how do you know when you have uncovered the purpose behind the pain? Is there some sign that lets you know that you are on the right track? Should your pain change in some way? Is there some other indicator?
I just feel that I could continue this emotional excavation forever if there isn't some way of knowing that I've found the solution. If you don't experience the "instantaneous cure" that some describe, what would lead you to conclude that you have arrived at the end of your searching?
Any insights are welcome. Thanks in advance.
-- Brad |
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JohnD
USA
371 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2005 : 05:11:11
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quote:
If you don't experience the "instantaneous cure" that some describe, what would lead you to conclude that you have arrived at the end of your searching?
quote:
refer to the post titled "Treatment is a Process, Not a goal" |
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atg
USA
50 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2005 : 16:39:09
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Hi Brad,
I could have made this exact post several weeks ago. For me, I believe that it is my need for control to find "the right solution", or "the one true answer." Dr. Schechter's TMS CDs ofton talk about this need for control among TMS patients.
I can tell you that I had my first real experience of success and I still do not know. Is it my fear of failure, sense of shame/inadequacy, anger toward my parents...? I believe that my desperation to know WHY was more a consequence of my perfectionistic personality and had little to do with my reduction of pain.
My first successful experience with my symptoms, rather, was due to looking at all the evidence and finally, truly accepting the diagnosis viscerally. I realized that I felt the pain every time I sat was because I expected to feel the pain.
Although I still feel the drive to figure out what specifically is THE issue behind my pain, I think that that is due to my need to be successful and not because it is the path to eliminating my pain. Most likely, it is more than one issue anyway.
Alan |
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miehnesor
USA
430 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2005 : 23:35:26
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| For me it was actually feeling the fear and the rage that I knew was there but could not feel. My situation was perhaps simpler than many others because I knew that my TMS case was driven by early pre-conscious memory experience. So I eventually took the plunge and started acting as if I was angry even though I didn't feel it consciously. It was sort like acting at first. Once I took this action I immediately came face to face with the unconscious fear and immediately saw the symptom modulation. I knew I had arrived at something very big indeed. |
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ralphyde
USA
307 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2005 : 00:30:20
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I tend to think that the underlying emotions are totally repressed events or conditions of childhood, such as parents' divorce, loss of a parent, abuse, neglect, or other things like that. They have been so thoroughly repressed that you may not have the slightest conscious awareness of them or that they are affecting your life, but they may be trying to come to the surface to get resolved.
My own grief from the loss of my mother at age 11 was not even begun until I was 32, and it has still not finished affecting my life in various ways.
Ralph |
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Bradrowesf
2 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2005 : 02:28:58
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Thanks for your responses everyone. Let me see if I understand each of you correctly.
Alan: you are focusing less on trying to discover the emotional genesis of your pain and more on excepting the validity of the TMS diagnosis.
miehnesor: you knew the likely source of your pain, in spite of the fact that you had no immediate emotional connection with it. However, by acting as though the emotion did exist, you made the connection. Here it was the symptom modulation that indicated you had found the source -- or at least a source.
Ralph: your description is a little bit more confusing to me. You believe that the underlying emotions exist beneath consciousness, making them extremely difficult to access. But -- and this is where I become confused -- you now seem to be aware of the source. My question to you would be: how do you know this to be true?
In my own quest, I have been looking for the symptom modulation that miehnesor describes above. To be clear, I'm not looking for a single solution, or an easy one for that matter. I'm fully prepared to accept that my personality type has collected many different cases of emotional repression that drive my condition (RSI, to be specific). Moreover, I am attempting to accept the diagnoses as fully as I can.
However, I am by nature a skeptic. And because of this trait it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to accept this theory and abandon all others until there is at least some evidence to indicate its validity.
(As an aside, I should note that I am equally skeptical, if not more so, with regard to structural explanations. I may not have completely accepted the psychological explanation, but it exists on a comparable footing with other yet to be proved explanations.)
At any rate -- it appears at first blush that symptom modulation is the indicator that I am looking for. I'd love to hear that I'm reading this correctly -- or, frankly, any other thoughts people might have on this subject.
-- Brad |
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ralphyde
USA
307 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2005 : 11:04:38
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Brad, I understand your skepticism for a healing system that can't really be validated. That reminds me of John Stossel's brother, the doctor, who couldn't accept Dr. Sarno's approach because it seemed too simplistic to him, so lived with his back and neck pain instead. (See the very persuasive 20/20 segment at:
http://www.goodnewsbroadcast.com/sarno2020.ram )
With me, after my mother's death when I was 11, it's as if my emotional life went into the unconscious for 21 years, and I developed into a very rationalistic unemotional person, one-sided but not knowing it, until my emotions came to the surface just three months after my father died, and I went on an emotional roller coaster for several years integrating this new aspect of my personality. I studied psychology to understand it.
My interest in TMS is because of my wife's chronic back pain (4 1/2 years), and her extreme resistance to accepting that it may be emotional. She's got the profile, and the childhood history of divorce, abusive stepfathers, alcoholic mom, but can't accept TMS and continues to seek physical healing.
So I've been trying to understand TMS from several direction, reading five books on TMS, and others on healing such as: Carolyn Myss, Why People Don't Heal, and How They Can, which emphasizes spiritual principle such as forgiveness, and Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion, which uses the biochemical world of peptides and receptors as the physical foundation of emotions showing how they can affect the body.
But it seems to come down to the pragmatic approach. It works if you can accept it. This article asserts that 90% of all back, neck, and limb pain is TMS, and that 90% of those who can accept the TMS diagnosis get healed. (My wife still can't accept it.)
http://www.wholehealthmd.com/news/viewarticle/1,1513,6,00.html
Ralph
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miehnesor
USA
430 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2005 : 11:46:15
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Brad- Yes I think you understand what i'm saying for my particular case. For me the repressed emotion was totally hidden and therefore it was very confusing to me for years. I would ask myself why I can't feel this as it is clearly wrecking havoc with my body. I did a lot of dialoging and could feel some sadness but never the fear or the rage. I had to just act as if I was angry and it was very unnatural at first. I felt kind of silly and awkward and to be honest quite guilty that I was even doing it. But the fear I felt was so intense that it very quickly became clear that I had discovered what I was looking for. It was very bizarre to feel those feelings of fear and to not really know where it was coming from. It took me a while to finally get that it was fear of the approaching rage as the cause of the fear.
I now understand that the fear of having the rage is really all about the fear of abandonment if the rage comes out. So TMS was just as Sarno says- a defence mechanism to protect my small self from abandoment (which for a small child is survival). So for me feeling the rage and realizing unconsciously that I will survive is the basis of how I am treating my TMS which is slowly but steadily getting better.
Keep in mind that it took me a long time to make these discoveries and to start getting better. It takes a lot of patience and for deeply seeded problems such as mine I believe it also takes help from either a trained therapist or someone that you feel safe with and comfortable with. Also remember that you repressed emotion because it was too dangerous to have it. That's why you may need to provide an environment of safety for the feelings to come out of hiding. The safety comes from empathetic validation of what you went through.
It's hard to change deeply engrained beliefs especially when they are established very early in life. I've found that the fear of my repressed rage is still there and I just have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. But the fear is slowly subsiding and with it the symptoms.
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Purpose behind the pain
