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karkar892
4 Posts |
 Posted - 09/19/2007 : 17:25:36
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Hi everyone,
My first post. I am 27 years old and have been an anxious typical "TMS personality" type person for a long time. I had a 3 month bout with lower back pain a year ago and then another this past year. Also history of ulcers, headache, abdominal migraine, Reynaud's syndrome.
The latest is this. I have had two horrific panic attacks in the past 4 months. In the ER for the first one. Both times CONVINCED I had drawn my last breath. Both times I was not at home, and entertaining company (repressed anger?).
Does anyone know if panic attacks can be caused by TMS? Isn't being convinced that you are dying the ultimate distraction from emotions that are trying to escape?
My dr. wants to put me on antidepressants and I am resisting. But maybe there is no connection here?
Help! |
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stanfr
USA
268 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2007 : 17:51:36
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Im not clear what sort of help your looking for. You won't get medical advice on this forum, at least not from me. Not sure what kind of dr you are talking about but if your suffering from depression then you should probably take your drs advice seriously. Antidepressants are not necessarily incompatible with TMS therapy.
panic attacks are not TMS. Some have argued that anxiety and/or depression are psychological manifestations of the same underlying problems (repressed anger/fear/guilt etc) but they are not one and the same. I've had mild panic attacks on rare occasions, and i'm reasonably certain that they are associated with the same underlying issues that have caused physical problems, so by working towards a resolution of the underlying causes perhaps i can rid myself of both. But you are not being clear what "connection" you are talking about, and the reasons for your "resistence". You might get someone on this forum to tell you that a panic attack is a TMS "equivalent", but i personally don't think it's that simple. About all i can say with any confidence is that a panic attack is likely psychogenic. It is not "caused" by TMS, at best it may be related to the same underlying tensions. Hope this helps. |
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csmoon
USA
38 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2007 : 18:21:34
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Ihave had both at the same time. Anxiety over the pain led me down a slippery slope. I probably should've been hospitalized. It was minor and located in only onw spot in the beginning, but I would get spams that wouldn't release. That is the beauty of using the muscular system as a place to hide. I do agree with Stan that the underlying tension can and probably does cause both. Dr. Sarno tells a story in two of his books about a man who becameangry, then decided not to say anything, and imeediately had a panic attack.
What this ilustrates is not clear, at least not to me, but the doctor was trying to show how anger may play a more prominent role in TMS than anxiety. I don't know how anyone could ever attempt to prove that. I know there are people sick with anxiety symptoms who are just as debilitated as those in pain, perhaps moreso. The pervasive fear of another attack keeps them ever-vigilent, much like the chronic back pain patient tries to avoid his/her pain from flaring.
But panic attacks are generally easily brought under control if you realize early on when the symptoms begin how to defuse them. It requires practice and is not easy, especially if you are in a public place in a tight spot, like a meeting or something. Just realizing that panic attacks can't kill you and the symptoms aren't dangerous was enough for me to stop obsessing.
Pain continued after the anxiety stuff was mostly resolved, at least outward symptoms. I am still working through it, and although I have had some breakthroughs in forcing myself to do things, the pain is pretty much the same as when I began a few weeks ago. Meds may be good for you to manage the symptoms, but they are clearly not a cure. Many use them to get through a stressful time, then relapse when coming off them. |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2007 : 18:58:31
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If you view panic attacks as an extreme form of anxiety, anxiety is documented by Sarno as a TMS equivalent, so panic attacks would be an extreme form of TMS equivalent.
How you want to treat them, either for now or in the long run, is up to you. I've had a lot of anxiety, but not panic attacks, and I've found that it's essentially interrelated with the rest of my TMS symptoms and can be banished in the same way: diverting thoughts to other emotions, particularly anger, using interruptive techniques like breathing or walking around, etc. But having no experience with it, I have no idea if you could treat panic attacks the same way. One possibility is to try TMS techniques for your other symptoms (general anxiety and pain) and if you have success with the approach for other things, the pressure that causes panic attacks may be relieved.
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Wherever you go, there you are. |
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celloLWF
USA
49 Posts |
Posted - 10/01/2007 : 21:49:14
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"If you view panic attacks as an extreme form of anxiety, anxiety is documented by Sarno as a TMS equivalent, so panic attacks would be an extreme form of TMS equivalent."
yes. I agree...I have had lots of panic attacks. I see them for what they are...my brain creating a state of being in reaction to repressed rage. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2007 : 11:53:16
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Seems you've hit some sort of nerve with stan and I want to say that's not the kind of response you'll get from most of us...
Welcome to the forum first and foremost.
IN my experience the vast majority of us get the help they need here, or at least, a good portion of it...
Congratulations on finding your way here...It's really half the battle. |
Edited by - art on 10/02/2007 11:54:30 |
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lidge
USA
184 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2007 : 15:59:50
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Kar-
I too have had Raynauds' my whole life- I do believe it is due in part to the automnic nervous system being overactive and that too contributes to panic attacks. These days, doctors like antidepressants for anxiety and depression but Xanax is the most effective drug for true "panic attacks". I am older than you and started to have what seem to be panic attacks a few years ago and now all sorts of horrid health problems. I think I do understand what you are getting at. I am new to this forum too so I will leave it to the "experts " here to answer the TMS question. I do recall Sarno saying in his book that if one goes on ADs w/o addressing underlying
issues, physical symptoms will change or get worse. I wonder whether this is in fact, what has happened to me.
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renee
USA
12 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2007 : 18:35:38
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| Panic attacks are a form of TMS. I suffered with several forms of TMS for all of my adult life. I did not learn what is was until I read Dr. Sarnos book and applied the techniques. When I first learned about Dr. Sarno I was having back pain. I was able to stop the back pain within a few months then the pain moved to extreme pelvic pain. I then applied the same techniques and developed severe anxiety and phobia. The anxiety has been the worse by far, I welcome the back pain any day. I do notice that when my anxiety lessons, I have other issues to create a distraction/TMS. Using the Sarno work does help and keeps me going. Hope you are feeling better soon! |
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csmoon
USA
38 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2007 : 22:38:30
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karkar,
It is very interesting to me, and I am sure to others at how TMS is thrown around to describe things that Dr. Sarno goes to great pains to distinguish. He does not describe anxiety as TMS. He describes it as an equivalent, separate but equal, to coin a phrase.
If, as some suggest, the treatment outcomes are also equivalent, then the answer to your question is simple. If not, as in my own case and in the case of many who have posted here, (you may find their posts by searching on the word anxiety or panic attacks and reading for yourself), it strikes me as odd that on a forum on which many suffer from health anxiety at the very least, and perhaps bodily symptoms and ongoing struggles with insomnia, fatigue, and the like, all known manifestationsof anxiety, that TMS is not looked at in reverse as an equivalent or perhaps a result of anxiety. The condition of anxiety has been around in the literature for many, many years. Its manifestations in the body have been documented widely.
It is odd that Dr. Sarno gives anxiety scholarship only cursory treatment in his citations, focusing like a laser beam on rage. AnthonEE, a new member, touched on this recently with a thoughtful post about the role of anxiety conditions in pain syndromes. In the end, the path to wellness must be undertaken individually by nearly all of us, and I applaud anyone's attempts, successful or not, to overcome their limitations.
As for antidepressants, Dr. Sarno is not a fan, because they simply mask symptoms and do nothing to address the cause, which is emotional. I am in full agreement with that statement, having taken them for three months in the worst of my anxiety period. They merely made me a functioning dysfunctional. |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2007 : 07:04:52
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I have dealt with anxiety my entire life. I developed mild panic attacks about 10 years ago, in a very specific situation having to do with a horrible grad school experience. I would go into a panic attack every time somebody left (even my then boyfriend just going to work). Luckily, my body never went completely bonkers during them the way many people do. I would just get extremely agitated, my stomach start doing flip flops, my heartbeat would increase, and then I would start to cry or whimper.
It took about 5 years to make them go away. I did it with force of will. I would talk myself through them. "Nobody is leaving you. You are fine. You are creating this agitation. Therefore you can make it stop. Stop now. Stop now. This serves no useful purpose. This is programmed behavior."
Then there is my older sister, a TMS personality if I ever saw one. She developed panic attacks while driving, about 25 years ago. She has let them control her life for 25 years. That is insane. She has a really nice truck that her son bought her. She can barely drive it to the store and back, and usually won't. I call it her mini-storage unit because it gets driven maybe two blocks a month at best.
BTW, she also gets migraines, cluster headaches, has extremely painful joints, and is allergic to every single thing in the entire world. And boy is she angry. Her way of dealing with our horrible father was to take on all his speech and body mannerisms when she was in her twenties. It is really bizarre. |
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Panic Attacks and TMS?
