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Carolyn
184 Posts |
 Posted - 03/11/2007 : 19:47:29
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My TMS is active again after being pretty dormant for a while. I definitely recognize it for what it is and it is almost comical (it would actually BE comical if I wasn't also suffering). It's current incarnation is dry eyes brought on (perhaps legitimately-I'm not sure) by my current hormone imbalance. But either way, I became obsessed with the discomfort so it was serving the same purpose as TMS. As I went on drops to treat my eyes and they began to improve, my low back started to hurt, followed by rapid and fleeting wrist pain, pelvic pain, sugar binging and anxiety. So I know I need to get back to journaling and tame the beast again.
The funny thing is that I was visiting a hormone message board and inquiring about my dry eyes and someone asked me if I had dry mouth as well. I replied that no, thankfully I wasn't also cursed with that and sure enough 2 days later, I woke up and my mouth was completely, lips sticking to teeth, dry. Now this uncomfortable condition is the focus of my attention.
This is something I have noticed about myself throughout my life. I am very suggestible. If someone I know gets a specific illness, I will usually find myself with a similar complaint. Now, it seems that whenever I tell someone (like on this board) that I DO NOT have a particular problem or that I am completely over my pelvic pain, or whatever, that the symptom reappears at least briefly. It is pretty reliable. It has made me sort or 'superstitous' in the past about proclaiming that I am feeling well. It is the 'knock on wood' phenomenon. Anyone else have this or have any insight into what cause it.
Our minds are very strange places! |
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Bliss
Canada
33 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 10:52:22
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Hi Carolyn
I'm not sure if I'm prone to the susceptibility but when people ask me how I am feeling with regards to back pain I now ALWAYS answer that the pain is completely gone - even if it is not or I'm having a creaky-pain-type of day. To me answering this way does 2 things.
#1 I am re-conditioning myself
#2 I get another opportunity to, inadvertently, tell my brain to smarten up and that I refuse to give it centre stage - even a fake one.
Cheers,
Bliss |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 10:54:56
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Did you say you were obsessing about it? A good sign of TMS
*************
Sarno-ize it!
************* |
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Victoria008
USA
26 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 11:37:36
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I am sooo suggestible! As I have written before I have been dealing with TMS for about 3 years. Before the pain started I worked with disabled adults and one of them came down with TB. We all had to be tested. Mine was iffy. A little pink, I freaked out and began coughing like crazy. I was a wreck until I had a chest x-ray and it was normal. Still I worried. My fiance had bad back pain, I developed it. A co-worker had something wrong with his legs, mine have bothered me ever since. I could go on and on.
I am in a cycle right now, thursday and friday I felt fine. Saturday and Sunday I had chest pain, today my lower back feels completely out, it hurts to even sit here and type. I am trying not to go lay on the hot pad, I have so much to do, but it is calling me . I am going to get the Divided Mind as soon as possible, I am really caught up in this right now.
Victoria |
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carbar
USA
227 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 19:12:41
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Yup, I think that describes me. Even before my full blown TMS symptom (RSI in the arms) I remember an incident in childhood where my best friend had to have heart surgery for a genetic problem. Sure enough as soon as I found out about it, my chest started to hurt sometimes. I was so scared about it that I told my mom and she took me to the doctor. I think my mom had the foresight to link the two in this case coz the doc gave me a clean bill of health and then talked to me about my friends surgery. After that visit I was totally fine. Strange stuff, our brains!
Maybe you would enjoy reading the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. He is a psychologist and professor at the University of Penn. He helped found the branch of psychology called positive psychology. This book talks alot about the way we explain and understand what life brings to you. I personally thought this book helped me better understand my ways of thinking about things.
:D carbar |
Edited by - carbar on 03/14/2007 20:34:29 |
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weatherman
USA
184 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 21:59:52
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Carolyn
Interesting post, I had the same experience. Back around 1979 I had my first physical TMS problem in the form of chondromalacia, which I battled for years (now at age 50 it doesn't bother me a bit). Back then I had a book about running injuries that I read obsessively, hoping to find an answer to chondromalacia. Of course I read about lots of other "injuries" that I'd never heard of, among them achilles tendinitis. It sounded like a bad one. And guess what my next "injury" was after the chondromalacia had greatly resolved? Hard to believe it was a coincidence.
Weatherman
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Baseball65
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2007 : 07:15:45
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quote:
Originally posted by Carolyn
The funny thing is that I was visiting a hormone message board and inquiring about my dry eyes and someone asked me if I had dry mouth as well. I replied that no, thankfully I wasn't also cursed with that and sure enough 2 days later, I woke up and my mouth was completely, lips sticking to teeth, dry. Now this uncomfortable condition is the focus of my attention.
Anyone else have this or have any insight into what cause it.
Our minds are very strange places!
Yes I have it, no I don't know what causes it, besides the obvious that we all know ....TMS as in "The Mindbody Syndrome" TMS as opposed to "Tension Myositis syndrome" which it's not, because there aren't really any muscles involved.
I have been Painfree since spring of '99. However, I have had all sorts of 'odd' things happen to me at inconvenient times that ,as you said , would be funny if they didn't make me want to SCREAM !!!!
3 things I do about them that seem to speed up their departure.
#1. treat it like TMS
#2. Not talk about it.(ignore it...really just the 'don't treat it' part of #1)
#3. Laugh at it and challenge it to a fight in the parking lot after school.
This is no joke. Stryder posted up a link a loooooong time ago to a
website that dealt with anxiety attacks. They had this thing called 'the Miami protocol' in where they told patients that when they were aware that an attack was beginning, rather than fear it, they should egg it on.
"I really WANT to freak out...I want to totally lose control....I want to make a complete ass out of myself and sit in the emergency room for four hours with my head in a bag to be told that there's nothing wrong with me....come on baby..LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED !!!!"
It seems ridiculous, but than again, so did TMS when it was first presented to me. It's been thoroughly effective as a strategy and is a combination of 'talking to your head' and gestalt therapy,except you're not pretending the chair is your dad....it's TMS.
It worked so well at aborting almost all of my anxiety attacks that I have used it for all those 'mystery' things you've listed.Let's see.... Here is a short list of 'things' I've come down with AFTER I heard of someone else having them.....
Swollen glands
sore throat (Laryngitis...no illness)
dry mouth
tight chest
high blood pressure
sharp pains in the chest
acid reflux
That's just a short list off of memory......I have so many little one day and four hour 'crisis' episodes when I need to have one it's comical.
Right now drinking coffee relaxed in my house, it's easy to look at every single one and see what was going on at the time of the 'outbreak' and analyze it, but I can assure you while every single one was going on , I was scared and clueless.
Obviously ones like chest pain and breathing issues can be scary, but after your umpteenth time through your own head(and a couple to the emergency room), sometimes you just get sick of yourself and go punk rock....F-it!!
If I feel like I can't breathe...I go for a run
If I feel like I'm having a heart attack...I drop and do pushups , maybe lift something really heavy and strain.
If my glands are swollen, I go outside when it's 30 degrees out and play catch.
I sort of took the 'wisdom' from the anxiety protocol and applied it to the laundry list of other stuff.
If our Mindbody is pulling some crap because it's trying to distract us and we ignore that crap, it generally shuts it down...not unlike a little kid acting out for attention.
CAVEAT*****
I didn't start getting this cowboy about this until I was waaaay down the road with my TMS and waaaay convinced of the notion that my body never ever tires of these sort of ruses. I would never recommend ingnoring chest pain, or difficulty breathing to anyone else!!!!
...anyways...everything you posted sounds like the same sort of stuff that happens to me periodically. In fact, to be quite frank, I'm really selective about which posts I open on this forum and sometimes I just stay away.
I feel like since I got my life back I owe it to Sarno to 'testify' as I've had an amazing restoration, yet I also am as susceptible to suggestion as you've indicated and sometimes end up in a 'physician heal thyself' sort of place.
You are right on time.
-piggy |
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Carolyn
184 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2007 : 11:57:26
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Just to report back- my dry mouth seems to have decided to let me be- it just wasn't worth the fight I guess.
Baseball- first of all I hope your dry mouth doesn't come back after reading my post : ) I do use a similar technique to face down my symptoms but in a more subtle way. In my mind I feel how the symptom is making me cower or run from it and I just mentally stop and turn around and face it, stare it down. I can usually feel my own power growing and it shrinking and then the fear disolves. This is HUGELY effective against anxiety- a nearly instant cure for me.
I can also develop a sore throat or swollen glands when I hear someone newar me is sick and I get a headache anytime I hear there's a menengitis outbreak. I also battled chondromalacia for years after a friend had knee surgery. I had visibly swollen knees too. This hypochondriac stuff is real on some level. It amazes me just how much mental control we do have over our bodies for good or for bad. |
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Paul
134 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2007 : 12:28:58
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Reminds me of some info I read in some recent books on beating the Mind-Body "pain-body"...
*What keeps pain alive is living in the darkness. When we shed light on it, it becomes light. When you look at it and bring it out and face it, it fades away. TMS anyone? :)
Carolyn is right on. Avoiding pain or even fighting it both seem to cause tension in the body and mind and are based on fear. When you accept and stare it down, you are not being afraid (no fear) and you when you are in full acceptance, there is no resistance...and resistance is what fuels TMS.
I'm still applying this principles to pelvic pain but also going through anxiety and depression as well. A lot of it is based on life circumstances...but I keep moving forward. Maybe my mind doesn't like the fact that I'm focusing more on my thoughts and emotions. Who knows? But for now, I'm right in the middle of the battle and making the necessary changes. |
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carbar
USA
227 Posts |
Posted - 03/14/2007 : 20:38:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Baseball65
I didn't start getting this cowboy about this until I was waaaay down the road with my TMS and waaaay convinced of the notion that my body never ever tires of these sort of ruses. I would never recommend ingnoring chest pain, or difficulty breathing to anyone else!!!!
...anyways...everything you posted sounds like the same sort of stuff that happens to me periodically. In fact, to be quite frank, I'm really selective about which posts I open on this forum and sometimes I just stay away.
I feel like since I got my life back I owe it to Sarno to 'testify' as I've had an amazing restoration, yet I also am as susceptible to suggestion as you've indicated and sometimes end up in a 'physician heal thyself' sort of place.
Dang, piggy/baseball. You rock! Thanks for this post, it's really inspiring. I think I'm gonna have to "go cowboy" on my own lingering little syptoms. You wanna write a self-help pamphlet with that title? :D -carbar |
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Suggestibility
