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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
 Posted - 01/05/2008 : 14:35:42
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Here is a communication I had with a former TMS board member back a couple of months ago.
Shawn
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I didn't say you should abandon Sarno. I just think your rigid adherence to every word in his books is creating and perpetuating your tension. It clouds the issue. If you were to get off the forum and stop reading the books, you might find that you find something else to enjoy in life to take your mind off pain treatment for a while. Dr. Sarno says he recommends no more than 30-45 minutes a day for doing your reflecting, and doing the daily reminders should not become ritualistic. Shawn, your incessant appearance on the forum is the definition of what not to do. That's why I left. I had to kick the crutches out from under me if I wanted to take the next and final step, which is for me returning to all activity. I already do a lot I didn't do two months ago. I have the concepts in my mind. So do you. Now figure out how to live without fear. Just decide to brave it. No more books. I've read 20 or more books on this subject. I used to wake up in the morning and reach for a book, and go to sleep at night reading, then spend all day at my computer job searching around for "cures."
The obsession is the illness. The obsessive part of the mind is the hook, and the fear is what keeps you locked in a cycle of pain. If you have read any of the letters of recovered patients or the success stories on the forum, you will note that they didn't necessarily follow the program exactly. They got the concept, then went about their lives. I see few fully recovered people on that forum .Some say they have 90% recovered, whatever that means, but they still have pain and still come out on the forum, largely to defend themselves against maverick theory-bashers. Please pull up my posting history and see that I never once said Sarno was wrong about anything. I merely pointed out that because I and many others who came to TMS on our own were led to it because we have or had anxiety, and that ourpain started either at the same time or just after we got better. I took the simple approach, which is working for me. I am certain that Drr. Sarno would applaud my approach as I am fuly aware of every traumatic incident in my life and its effect on me. Their is no rage in my unconscious of which I am unaware. This complicates the process and sends many people searching around in their past for "unknown or hidden" events and emotions that may not be there when in reality all they have to do to get better is get back to their lives and stop fearing the symptoms.
I'm really a decent guy, Shawn, and I am embarrassed about how I behaved yesterday. I don't think you'll abandon your habits of being on the forum easily, especially given the fact that you admit how terribly fearful you are of even small doubts. Rachel Podolsky said she was scared of the void left when she didn't have to think about her pain anymore. The time the pain took up for me was simply immense, and I have decided that my family deserves more of my time and my pain deserves ridicule. I had to stop erecting monuments to my pain to get better. I'm not all the way there, but I'm close, and more mentally than physically. Mornings are terrible, as I wake up really stiff, but I can do anything I want. So I do. Best of luck!
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I am finished with the board. It is a crutch. I don't see any use for it in my recovery. Again, I think once people get the concepts they need to stop carrying around a book and reading and reading and reading to try to convince themselves. This is totally counter to application of the principles. My bet is that Sarno would be mortified if he knew one of his patients lived on the TMS forum hours each day. He would ask them what they feel they need to avoid!
I'm curious: In the months leading up to your pain onset, were you worried and anxious about something or things that you felt you couldn't handle or maybe you thought you could handle them but they were straining you emotionally? I did, and it was all boredom. Mine is a very lively mind, and it doesn't like inertia. I read voraciously, have since I was seven. And I really like hard labor. I like building things, decks, swingsets, cabinetry. I like lawn work. I think I like working hard it because, as Albert Schweitzer said, it occupies the troubled mind productively.
I hit a point at 38 where I was out of shape and knew it, and though I wanted the end of health and fitness, I dreaded the means by which to get there. I also am not a fan of debt, and for the first time in my life we had two car payments and a mortgage. Easily handled with our income, but I wanted more disposable money for investment. I started to get mild GI problems, like recurrent diarrhea (no biggie, that one has happened to me throughout my life when stressed). But I started looking around on the 'net. And boy was that a mistake. It became an obsession. I worried about bowel cancer, but I feared going to the doctor. I'd always been healthy. Then one night a week or so later, I took my BP at my in-laws' house and it was a bit elevated, like 135/87. AND I FREAKED.
That incident led to all this. I fed myself so much fear (such a common thing in mid-life for healthy guys, look at AnthonEE's story) I was physcially ill. I remember my first panic attack. It happened the day my shoulder blade went into spasm and since that day, I haven't had a pain-free day. I fought it, I constantly moved and twisted and stretched it, rubbed it, kneaded it with anything stiff and hard. I could deal with the pain, but not the thoughts of it not ever going away. AND THAT IS THE SYNDROME. THE COUP DE GRAS, THE ESSENCE OF TMS. The fearful thoughts of not ever getting better are the fuel that makes it go.
I made the connection between the anxious time and my pain, but there wasn't anything in mainstream literature about it. One doc told me he thought I had somataform pain disorder, which is exactly TMS, fibromyalgia and CFS by another name. The emotions somehow turn the autonomic nervous system on and rev it into overdrive. Then it takes a long time to come down, provided no more major upsets are waiting. But we upset ourselves thousands of times each day by hating our pain and worrying about when it will go away.
If Claire Weekes or Abraham Low had included back pain as a specific symptom of nervous disorders in their books, their treatments would be mirror images of Dr. Sarno's with one small exception: the emphasis of Sarno on Freudian psychology, which both the others rejected outright. and I agree. I still don't understand why Dr. Sarno has never cited or acknowledged cognitive changes to combat fear. It could be because he isn't a psychiatrist and got most of his info from Stanley Coen and some of the other classically trained therapists. Shawn, for a guy who hates the way the medical profession steals dollars and does little to help patients, you should be furious that the doctor points patients to psychoanalysis when adjunct CBT may be all that is needed, perhaps as little as 6-8 sessions. Psychoanalysis often takes years, is very expensive, and woefully poor at treating anxiety. That's all it took for me to stop obsessing about the tingling and weakness and bumping heart and muscle twitches and thousands of other benign but annoying symptoms common with anxiety. And I was a basket case when I started. My wife even wanted to hospitalize me! Reading Weekes and Low and following the treatment plan outlined by David Barlow, I got better virtually overnight. Here's why..
Regardless of how someone came to be nervous (father domineering, mother absent, frail and weak and bullied as a child) the fact remains that the person is in a condition CURRENTLY, sort of like a stuck needle on a record player thinking the same worrisome thoughts over and over and over again.. This condition was undoubtedly influenced by past experiences, but the condition must be attacked NOW, in the present by challenging one's BELIEFS about their conditioin. I thought for sure I was dying, but I didn't have one shred of evidence to support that belief other than feeling like **** all the time. One can write about and acknowledge and express their feelings about all the past hurts if one chooses, but the body doesn't slow down its over-reactions to the current situation until the THINKING changes about it, the fear subsides, and the body retains it states of homestasis, comfort and balance. That's why so many people with anxiety never get better. They hate the feelings that rise up in them so badly that they can't ever realize that they are coming in direct correlation to their THOUGHTS. So they agonize over how they feel physically, doubt their abilities to cope or participate, or accomplish much of anything. They start avoiding, and then they are in real trouble. I went through all this personally, Perhaps you have as well. This is exactly what pain does to us. Call it a distraction from unconscious rage if you want, but it is a result of continual fear of the state we are in.
Again, this simplifies the treatment program, in my view, because once the thought patterns are changed (conscious level, if you will), fear leaves. You can't make yourself fearful of something undeserving. Once it is unmasked, we cannot fear it. What you alluded to yesterday is the problem: doubt. Doubt about what it is that causes this can only be erased through experience. And that means practicing over and over and over doing things each day that you dread due to pain fear with a willful attitude to accept the pain if it is there, but not react fearfully.
I believe it was Hillbilly on the forum who noted that anxiety cure and pain cure were identical (he even quoted Claire Weekes, as I recall) in that fear of symptoms is the jailer and we imprison ourselves because we created the symtoms and the reactions ourselves. I found this thread in response to a question AnthonEE posed about the role of anxiety in TMS. The irony in this is stunning, but it's 100% true. Once we lose our fear, the symptoms go away because fear (of death, disability, financial crisis or whatever was going on in our lives at the beginning of all this) created it all in the first place. He didn't elaborate much, nor follow up, and of course Suz reacted with stop looking outside Sarno for cures type thing. She claimed 100% cure until insomnia hit her, and she reacted with fear, and then she was right back where she started, only not with back pain but something else.
I am indebted to Dr. Sarno for finally acknowledging from a medical perspective that chronic back pain was a somatization problem. That's his real achievement and gift in my view. He cared enough about hsi patients to find a way to treat them and listened to them long enough to see the patterns of stress and worry and anger in their stories until he made the connection. In the HMS world, no such will likely ever happen again.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. I hope this helps in some small way to get you to see where I am coming from and how I think.
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My comment:
It appears to me that you are conveying the message that my Sarno-istic fudamentalistic thinking is actually a manifestation of fear and doubt than one of any sincere conviction of the validity of what Dr Sarno is saying. I have to keep convincing myself with a lot of reading and a combative attitude on the TMS board in order to deal with these fears and doubts. I, in essence, am not trying to convince others, but I am trying to convince myself.
Response:
Sure, you've morphed into something you don't want to be to cover your own insecurities. You're not really a closed-minded asshole, you just play one on the forum. I understand. I think this is common, epecially among the 1,000 post club. This just means you are still in step one, becoming convinced of the fact that you have TMS. You can state with strong conviction that you have it on the forum, etch it in stone on a hillside, or whatever you like, and you will still have pain unless you are truly convinced.
Here's how you convince yourself. Do what the doctor says. Go back to living normally, engaging in everything you would if your back or butt or whatever hurts, didn't hurt.
Simpler two-step process: 1) write down all the things you would do tomorrow if you woke up without pain. 2) go do them. No excuses, no exceptions. Tough love, but I think of it more as recommitment to living and contributing to the lives of those who love and depnd on me, the whole me.
While doing them you will probably notice certain muscles tense up in different areas, and your pain will move from place to place. This is all to be expected. You must fight the urge by commanding yourself not to succumb to the urge to stretch, wiggle around, lie down, rest, slump in a couch or chair, or for God's sake, pull out HBP or other Sarno screed and start reading or visit the forum. If you like, it might do you some good to read a success story or two first thing just to get revved up.
Then do the same thing the next day and the next and the next. You will find after a couple of weeks of this that your pain is intermittent and you will have spaces of time that you won't think about it at all. You'll also likely fall mentally all the way back to the beginning, thinking about crap like posture or disc degeneration or any of the million things docs might have told you. That is normal.Don't make an issue out of it. Just stay focused on doing things, do more and more and more.
Then you will become interested in life again, resolve underlying problems by facing them courageously and not letting pain keep you shrinking away in defeat. Life is waiting, Shawn. It's your move.
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Oh yeah! One more thing: fellow "purist" Dave, your humble moderator, has reached exactly the same conclusion evidently. I printed out a few things from the forum back when I was reading with my accustomed voracity when I first found the forum. When I first read this thread, I did so because I had serious problems with Sarno's repeated asserton that we were reacting to some unknown, hidden emotion that was buried in the unconscious, out of sight. I thought then and now that this is bull****, at least in my case. I believe it may be true in people with severe personality disorders or who are completely out of touch with their feelings. That's why these stories are in the books. They are dramatic and gripping, but not indicative of most of our experience.
Here's Dave's quotation:
It's much easier to believe that Dr. Sarno is wrong than to admit that you are a failure if the treatment doesn't work.
As to the question of why some people don't get better, Dr. Sarno offers many explanations. But ultimately, the reason is highly personal, and different for everyone.
I have to agree that parts of Dr. Sarno's writings provide a way too optimistic point of view. This is understandable, since he is trying to make a convincing argument, so that the reader has a better chance of success. I have said before that I do not believe the "majority" of patients get completely better in a matter of weeks, or if it is in fact a majority, it is probably 50.0001%.
I personally believe many people have too high expectations when it comes to "curing" TMS. For me, the "cure" is that I have completely banished the fear. If I get the occasional twinge in my lower back I no longer run to the chiropractor or fear that I will have debilitating back spasms or that there is something wrong with my spine. If I experience psychogenic symptoms I treat them as a signal that I am avoiding something that is going on in my life, and I try to find the emotions that I am "pushing down" into my body. Most importantly, I just don't let the pain affect my life at all.
Am I "cured?" Not if it mean being 100% free of psychogenic symptoms. But I look at where I was before discovering Sarno, and where I am now, and see two different worlds. And I'm much better off now, but still have work to do. I expect that work to continue for the rest of my life, and that's a good thing.
Full text here, so you don't think I took it out of context: http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3777&SearchTerms=fear
One more thing as a point of clarification: I don't agree that one should expect to deal with this all one's life. This is Sarno-induced pigeon-holing, which produces thinking along these lines: "I have experienced chronic pain. I got better because of reading this doctor's explanation and treatment program. I still get pain, so I must therefore continue to implement the doctor's advice. It worked for me before, so it should continue to do so." Good, sound, logical thinking.
But here's the problem: it doesn't deal with symptoms that arise common with anxiety. If there is something new after the pain goes, fear arises and the person becomes bewildered again, trying to search out more and more unconscious repression patterns that may not prove fruitful. I have read literally dozens of stories where pain left, only to leave horrible anxiety symptoms in its wake.
Better, in my view, to learn to detach emotional reactions to spontaneous bodily sensations (which includes back pain, heart palpitations, GI upset etc.). It takes repeated practice, but is so doable, and quick. It is simple, not easy, but cognitively simple. It is much easier to say to yourself in the heat of battle, "I won't react with fear because I know I won't pass out, die, make a fool of myself or anything else," than to say " gee, there's that damn pain again, I must be angry at somebody. Let me get someplace quiet so I can think straight and try to identify this emotion that I am avoiding. I wonder what it could be." That is too much like work and can't be done in the heat of the moment.
With fear banishment, call it desensitization if you will, you carry the cure with you wherever you go. Have a good week. I will be away from the computer most of the week, as my daughter is at grandma's and I have a long honey-do list that awaits. I will accomplish it all, regardless of harmless muscle tension. Go for it!
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My comment
Thanks for your postings. I do agree with you that continually digging for repressed emotions may not be as effective as Dr. Sarno states. I have literally journaled hundreds of pages (actually close to 2000 pages) of my past stressors, traumas, disappointments etc and I feel I am very much in tune with what makes me tick. But obviously - after 3 years of digging around- it has not banished my pain. I have resumed most of my physical activity over the past couple of years but, dammit, it hurts like hell. My symptoms are quite diffuse and intense to the point it is hard to concentrate on anything else. Anyways, thanks again for your postings.
Response
Just for the record, what do you mean diffuse? Do you mean varied, like lots of different body symptoms or just pain in many different locations? And I don't care if the pain puts me in the casket. I would sooner die than live with the fear of it any more. I can't afford another day of this bull**** and won't let it keep me from doing anything. It took being fed up with myself and my fearful thoughts to the point where I thought I would explode with frustration to get me going again.
And trust me, you don't have to tell me how hard it is to concentrate when you have three knives in your neck and back. That's exactly what it feels like. I got a wave yesterday that bent me sideways when the muscle right at the base of my ribcage going down into my pelvis knotted up on me. I just kept walking for a few minutes. But I had to get back in the car and ride 45 minutes to get back to my brother's house, and I feared it. Worst of all my mom was in the car with us and wanted to just chat in her pleasant way, and all I wanted to do was tell everybody to shut up and let me wallow in misery. My wife said, "What are you going to do?" I said, let's go.
I wanted her to drive me to the freakin' ER, but I knew I'd had thousands of these episodes happen and they always calmed down if I just kept going, and sure enough it did. I started to get tremors in my hands, and I woke up out of the "pain dream." But my neck was stiffer than hell all evening. I had to drive 92 miles back home later in the evening. And yes, I was distracted, worried, and tense. Then my son wanted to ride with me, so I said OK. He is six and wants to talk about six-year-old stuff, and I recognized that it made me tense because he wanted to be in the car with me. Know why? Because I knew that having him there pre-empted me from obsessing the whole way home on how I felt.
But I refused to squirm in the car to free the tension and let it rise and fall. I was in reasonable comfort for the last 30 miles or so. It's an ongoing thing with me, the habit of tension so ingrained. But I am winning small victories every single day. I have about 2/10 pain this morning, and I've bent and twisted and lifted and carried. Still tense? You bet! Fearful? Not a chance! I'm gonna win. You are too!
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Sarno-ize it!
Read chapter 4 of Dr. Sarno's "The Divided Mind." Also chapers 3, 4 and 5 in Dr. Scott Brady's "Pain Free For Life" are very important. |
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austini
29 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2008 : 16:23:25
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What an amazing post.
Thanks for that. |
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golden_girl
United Kingdom
128 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2008 : 17:47:09
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I don't know who the member was, or if this was the point of the post, but that member is brilliant, and said brilliant things, and just, wow.
"F.E.A.R.
Forgive Everyone And Remember
For Everything A Reason"
Ian Brown |
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skizzik
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2008 : 19:25:17
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Shawn,
this is amazing. Not only have I been looking for hope, but also for someone who feels the knife in their back. thank you for posting.
everyone else: quick, print this b4 shawn deletes all his recent posts and leaves!  |
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electraglideman
USA
162 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2008 : 21:03:24
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| Great post Shawn. Thanks for sharing it. |
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skizzik
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2008 : 10:11:57
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shawn, could you tell us who the e-mail was from?
if you did'nt have an agreement w/ the person about confidentiality then I think it would be helpful to many of us. |
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sandhya
16 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 11:14:12
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HI Shawn!
YES yes YES!
Abraham Low and Claire Weekes rock!!!!
and both have helped thousands of people over many decades.
thanks for posting this!
s. |
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la_kevin
USA
351 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 12:19:54
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I first thought this was a post about why someone left the board because of a certain argument. I think this is saying something different. A lot to read, but it has a lot of good points from all people who wrote it.
One thing is for sure. I do like the fact that I can read the thoughts of other people who are "just like me"and experience this whole TMS bizarreness. SO I myself keep coming here to feel...not so alone.
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"It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment." Armchairlinguist(?) |
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skizzik
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 01/09/2008 : 19:01:49
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anyone figure out who the mystery e-mailer was any guesses? |
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Stryder
686 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 18:52:35
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Take a look at these 2 posts, the second post is from the Creator of tmshelp.com. (Even though the email shawnsmith refers to is likely not Dave nor austingary) -Stryder
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Dave
USA
1125 Posts
Posted - 07/06/2006 : 11:39:23
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Let me preface this post by saying that I realize that many people consider this to be a "support group" for TMS sufferers, and I understand and welcome this aspect of the forum. It is valuable to interact with other people who are going through or have been through the same thing, and can certainly help in recovery.
However, we should not lose sight of the fact that TMS is a psychogenic condition from which full recovery is possible. When used solely as a support group this forum can actually stunt recovery. Some people who suffer from TMS unconsciously need to perpetuate the symptoms. The distraction is essential. The pain has become a part of their personality, an inescapable aspect of their everyday life. For some people, life without the pain is unimaginable. What would they do with all that free time now spent focusing on the pain? What would they do if they were no longer part of that close knit community of fellow sufferers? What horrors would they be forced to face if they suddenly did not have the pain to distract them?
More... http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2300&SearchTerms=austin
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austingary
USA
95 Posts
Posted - 06/29/2004 : 14:51:50
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One other thing. This board is Dave's baby now; you would have to ask him what he thinks it is and where he thinks it is going. But when it was my board, I never, ever thought of it as being a "support" group where people get together to trade positive affirmations. It was always a place for discussion and, yes, argument on topics related to TMS. That also involved people helping people, which was good, but that was not all the board was about.
We have had chiropractors, medical doctors and other medical and quasi-medical practitioners post here, people who were 100% opposed to everything Dr. Sarno stands for. They were not thrown off the board because they were not "positive" enough or didn't believe correctly enough; they were answered, questioned, contradicted -- which they were not used to, and they went away.
I fear for this country, one reason being that the schools no longer teach anyone how to think; they are only interested in teaching them what to think, i.e., political progaganda. In fact, any student who knows how to think and practices it -- meaning putting ideas, logically, to the test -- does not usually get along very well with the teachers and administrators.
Some of the people who post here are prime examples of those who simply have no clue about or any interest in thinking rationally. They are quite happy to simply choose what to believe and then never take in anything that doesn't support those beliefs.
This is a formula for totalitarianism. Let the sheep now all go, "Baaaaaaaaaa"!
More... http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=80&SearchTerms=never,ever |
Edited by - Stryder on 01/11/2008 10:12:11 |
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la_kevin
USA
351 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 23:08:23
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I'm really lost right now on the motive for this thread. What it is supposed to show and such. I like the discussion, but is there a reason?
I too have said in the past that I believe some people need this board to act as just another distraction from their symptoms, and I still think so. That may even include myself on some small scale.
SO is that what this thread is about?
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"It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment." Armchairlinguist(?) |
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JohnD
USA
371 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 16:55:26
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| Well said AustinGary! |
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Topic |
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Why One Person Left The TMS Board
