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Jeremy
USA
27 Posts |
 Posted - 01/28/2008 : 21:45:25
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I'm back with another new-to-TMS sort of question, which may well have been answered in other places at other times, so feel free to point me to past threads.
I've now read Healing Back Pain and The Divided Mind and one aspect of Dr. Sarno's explanation of TMS keeps feeling incomplete to me. If I'm understanding him properly, he is telling us that the emotional pain that is at the root of your physical pain is deeply buried in the unconscious. The primary theory being, as you all know, that the physical pain is designed as a distraction so that the unconscious emotional pain never "breaks through" at all-- that it stays deep down inside, out of conscious awareness.
But what about someone (such as me) who has already, long before I manifested TMS, has been in therapy and has pretty deeply explored a lot of my emotional pain from childhood, and how (why do we do this???) I had managed to re-create, as an adult, unconsciously, in my marriage, the very childhood environment that had been emotionally scarring for me.
The point being, while of course there are areas that remain out of my awareness, I've done a lot of digging. My problem is I have been kind of frozen in my life. I've become very aware of what my issues are but have been feeling very very stuck, for the better part of 10 years, regarding what to do to improve my situation. I basically have felt that I can't do anything. And this-- I feel pretty sure-- is at the root of my TMS. In the Divided Mind, the section written by Dr. Leonard-Segal addresses some of this. But I'm not getting much (in what I've read) out of Dr. Sarno that would relate deep-seated emotional pain that one is nevertheless *aware* of to one's TMS.
Once again, any insight or experience anyone has to help illuminate this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Jeremy |
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qso
USA
52 Posts |
Posted - 01/28/2008 : 23:37:59
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There are two points:
1. The concept of the 'emotional tank'. We all know someone who has way more conscious stress in their lives than us and they should have got TMS by now but they don't. The emotional tank is filled up from birth and the conscious stress can make it overflow and and cause TMS. Some people have a tank that's already nearly overflowing when they exit childhood. We may never find out everything that is in the tank and may never find out the biggest driver of the TMS. But you can siphon off the top of the tank so it is not overflowing or you can make the tank larger (by e.g. meditation).
2. Actually I don't think it is necessary to find out exactly what the emotional drivers are or even resolve anything that you do find. I recovered completely from my TMS without knowing exactly what the key drivers were and I did not resolve any of the "issues" that I did find. You can outsmart the TMS by creating a kind of informational paradox in your brain by rejecting (*completely*) all physical origins of your symptoms -your subconcsious wants you to be in no doubt that it is entirely responsible for your symptoms, it doesn't necessarily want you to resolve anything, because with the acknowledgement, the brain has achieved its goal of getting your attention and then you know that the thoughts that come into your head are not just random thoughts but deliberately being put there for processing (not dwelling on too much though).
See Scot Murray's thread on 'The biggest mistakes people make..' which explains the process in more detail.
The point is that stress is normal. The only people that don't have stress are dead people. My sources of stress are exactly the same as they were before I recovered from TMS. BUT my attitude to it is different. Acknowledge it, process it, let it pass. Do it again and again whenever necessary but don't dwell on it each time. This doesn't mean 'take it out on something' -apparently that doesn't help. Don't deny it or repress it otherwise you'll end up at square one. Try some meditation techniques.
As much as I think that Dr. Sarno is a pioneer decades ahead of his time, the distraction idea is really still a hypothesis but it is not a unique interpretation of the data. In fact I personally think it is problematic - there are many people who try for months to years to be *undistracted* by digging up the emotional pain and experiencing it, bringing it to consciousness, yet the TMS still doesn't go away. I think, what I call the 'software gone wrong' is the bigger factor and getting rid of the TMS is more like rebooting a computer (again see Scott's article on how this works). This also makes sense from a physiological point of view - have a read of Candace Pert's 'Molecules of Emotion'. She was the first person to discover the long sought for Opiate receptors in the brain and has since been doing some ground-breaking research on how peptides form an information network over the entire brain and body, but this network can sometimes get 'stuck' in a mode that causes disease and pain but can be reset by various methods (including Sarno's - he mentions her book in the Divided Mind). The interesting thing of course is that this information network - which cannot be measured or imaged - is in fact the very thing that many cultures have discovered over and over again in different guises..but obviously not from a scientific point of view (e.g. 'the life force', the chinese 'Qi' etc. etc.).
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qso
USA
52 Posts |
Posted - 01/28/2008 : 23:55:24
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| Sorry -I meant the thread 'TMS support strucures and Elimination' by Scott on page 4. By the way I have found Scott's model a very good way of explaining TMS to people who have never heard of it. So the answer to your question in the title is that the emotional issues themselves whether subconscious or not are secondary to recovery so it makes no difference in your case, it just means you have a head start. I found that after exhausting all the issues, the TMS still did not go away. But it did when I truly rejected all other possibilities for the symptoms (which must include *not* believing that your muscles have become intrinsically weak). |
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Wavy Soul
USA
779 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 00:52:30
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Yes, I agree with the above responses, Jeremy.
And I would add, from my own experience:
I had also done almost endless "digging," yet still been sick for decades. In fact, so many people had unhelpfully suggested that I was "creating" my illness that I had become very resistant to it, since I hadn't been resisting my very painful issues, that like yours, Jeremy, had reiterated almost exactly in current situations, especially relationships.
I also knew that there was something very fishy about most of my symptoms, and would talk about this openly - for example, why did they seem to move around my body, and fixing one would bring on the next? I was into saying that I hadn't succeeded in getting miraculous healings, but I did seem to have a miraculous illness - which was my way of saying I knew it wasn't really "real," but I was still suffering and didn't know how to stop.
So what made the difference?
PUTTING THESE TWO POINTS TOGETHER! In my case, and with others I have seen, one without the other is like a horse without a carriage, or vice versa. But when you can say, okay, THIS IS NOT REAL ILLNESS...
AND AND AND
I know it is trying to distract me from feeling XYZ
AND
I'm willing to breathe into that feeling directly right now
AND
Body, you can stop that nonsense right now, whether it's a communication of or a distraction from my deep feelings.
Boy, did this work well! Dramatic.
I should add that it's not yet perfect for me. My symptoms have morphed and shown up as things that are more officially "dangerous," though minor, as though to prove they are not TMS. Personally, I believe that pretty much any illness I get at this point has powerful psychosomatic underpinnings. But they don't all necessarily conform to the "this is TMS" official list.
And it's still important for me to recognize that these old emotional stresses may still be there. It's been a mistake, for me, to think that I don't have to put attention on the pain that is causing the pain. It has been tempting, and has seemed to work for a while, but then I've watched it get (or distract) my attention in other ways. But of course, the idea isn't to make a lifestyle out of processing and telling stories, either. I am talking about the direct process of going into the feelings with breath and being in them until they transmute, which they do.
And then, of course, get on with your life. Today I went to the gym and worked out with my trainer all bundled up and looking like a cage fighter getting ready for a cage bout.
Bring it on!
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 08:58:47
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Feeling 'stuck' sounds like a conscious outgrowth of feelings you may not have thoroughly explored yet -- probably a great deal of rage. For ten years you've known what's causing you emotional pain, yet you don't know what to do to change your situation? Sounds rage-producing to me.
Or it may be that what you mainly need to do is connect your pain to your emotions, i.e., the knowledge cure which is the main first step in Sarno. Digging through emotions isn't enough to eliminate TMS if you don't know that the pain is connected, because the pain kind of takes a life of its own through conditioning. Deconditioning might be important.
Or both.
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It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment. |
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Jeremy
USA
27 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 11:33:24
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Thanks for everyone's input, which is greatly appreciated. A particular response to armchairlinguist ~
quote:
Originally posted by armchairlinguist
Feeling 'stuck' sounds like a conscious outgrowth of feelings you may not have thoroughly explored yet -- probably a great deal of rage. For ten years you've known what's causing you emotional pain, yet you don't know what to do to change your situation? Sounds rage-producing to me.
Or it may be that what you mainly need to do is connect your pain to your emotions, i.e., the knowledge cure which is the main first step in Sarno. Digging through emotions isn't enough to eliminate TMS if you don't know that the pain is connected, because the pain kind of takes a life of its own through conditioning. Deconditioning might be important.
Or both.
It has occurred to me, for good reason, that yes, even with all the digging around I've done, there may well be feelings I haven't thoroughly explored yet. And I must fight my initial (conscious) response to that idea, which would involve a mix of exasperation ("so even after all this inner work, I *still* have years of digging to do?") and self-blame ("I've been wasting my time all these years, not actually getting at the right thing!").
Rage is a pretty new concept for me. I know I have issues with anger-- I rarely experience anger because I rarely "allow myself" to get angry. One thing I've learned via therapy is that as a child I figured out how to convert anger to sadness. And I have continued to do that all these years. In recent years, I've been much more aware of it. But I've still done it.
So the idea of rage is, well... wow. Over the top sounding to me, who can't even cope with plain old anger.
And yet your comments ring true to me. And whatever rage I've been generating inside by this protracted period of stuckness could well be an echo of the deeper unexpressed rage inside, from my childhood situation, which, as noted in my first note, I've re-created for myself in adulthood. And have remained stuck in.
Yikes, it strikes me as a sort of emotional mobius strip: the stuckness generating an unacknowledged rage that itself serves as an echo or shadow of the buried rage that was never acknowledged from childhood which itself generated a life direction as an adult that pushed me into this stuck place, generating unacknowledged rage, etc....
Your point about the pain taking on a life of its own via conditioning is a very useful insight for me. Because I keep feeling that the twinges and minor flare-ups I can experience in very specific circumstances day to day-- getting into the car, say, or tying my shoe-- can't necessarily all be because of a thought I'd been having at that exact same moment.
It makes sense, however, in a conditioning framework. Those are moments when I've conditioned myself to expect pain, and it becomes hardest, I think, *at* those moments to remember that it's TMS. Because at one level it seems "logical" enough that, say, getting into the car maybe the "wrong" way would send a jolt into that area of my body.
Again, thanks to all for the input and observations.
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painintheneck
USA
124 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 12:14:22
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The feeling of being "stuck" is enough to produce rage IMO. I know the feeling well and it infuriates me at a conscious level and I feel helpless to escape it so who knows what it does that I am unaware. It is akin to being a child and under the direction of others with no control of your own decisions. I have felt lack of control during most of my life and when I thought I had control a huge event or circumstance would show me I was mistaken. This is actually a huge issue to me and it produces fear and anxiety.
I realize rage and stress are producing the pain and anxiety symptoms but it hasn't stopped either from occuring. As a matter of fact the more I try to get back to "normal" the more symptoms are appearing. I don't know what more to do. |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 14:23:52
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painintheneck -- I don't know if you saw my response to la_kevin on his recent thread, but what is it you do when you get the anxiety? Have you tried going under it to emotions that's it's masking and just being with them? (Rage and fear have been the most common for me.) This is sort of the equivalent of thinking psychological, but it isn't exactly thinking, more feeling.
Jeremy -- exactly. The connection between emotion and pain isn't always immediate and direct, but often delayed and general, and affected by conditioned patterns.
From your description it sounds like my thoughts about rage might be right on. This is an important part of Sarno to understand. We may not like the rage and we may decide not to vent it outwardly, but it is there. And it's normal. It's the power of this rage that necessitates the pain. It's so strong that we need a powerful distraction from it.
Showing sadness instead of anger is very common, but the anger doesn't actually turn into sadness. The sadness is what you feel consciously, because you've excluded the possibility of consciously feeling anger. (Alice Miller describes this well. A child hides anger so thoroughly that even he can't find it, because if he could, so could the parents. It's like living in a glass house.) But the anger is there, in the unconscious.
You may not really need to do any more 'years of digging'. At this point, it may be making the TMS connections, and perhaps, I suspect, making a change. Making a change in circumstances isn't always necessary, but the way you describe...it's heartwrenching really, to hear you talk about being stuck for ten years even after therapy. That's so long! You need space and freedom, a chance to grow and be yourself. You need that. We all do. And you deserve it. You deserve to have a chance to create a situation not made in the image of your childhood, a situation where your true self can come out and live.
Sometimes knowing is enough, and sometimes, it isn't.
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It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment. |
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Jeremy
USA
27 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 20:42:35
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quote:
originally posted by armchairlinguist
Showing sadness instead of anger is very common, but the anger doesn't actually turn into sadness. The sadness is what you feel consciously, because you've excluded the possibility of consciously feeling anger. (Alice Miller describes this well. A child hides anger so thoroughly that even he can't find it, because if he could, so could the parents. It's like living in a glass house.) But the anger is there, in the unconscious.
That's a wise and excellent point. Interesting that I have always inside thought of it as "converting" sadness to anger-- which shows you exactly how buried I "wanted" it to be inside. That Alice Miller observation is brilliant. And the behavior continues even as an adult: note how I convinced myself the anger was gone even by this supposedly psychologically astute observation that I convert it to sadness.
quote:
also originally posted by armchairlinguist
You may not really need to do any more 'years of digging'. At this point, it may be making the TMS connections, and perhaps, I suspect, making a change. Making a change in circumstances isn't always necessary, but the way you describe...it's heartwrenching really, to hear you talk about being stuck for ten years even after therapy. That's so long! You need space and freedom, a chance to grow and be yourself. You need that. We all do. And you deserve it. You deserve to have a chance to create a situation not made in the image of your childhood, a situation where your true self can come out and live.
Wow, armchairlinguist. This kind of brings tears to my eyes. Words from a stranger that strike to the core. A situation where my true self can come out and live. How did you know? And yeah ten years *is* a long time. Of course there have been all sorts of extenuating circumstances. But perhaps the time is arriving. I have literally felt incapable of making a change for these many years. Lots of extenuating circumstances, etc etc.
TMS may be its own kind of gift, huh? I imagine other people have discovered this.
Thanks again, most deeply.
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Big Rob
32 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2008 : 21:16:45
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From what I have experienced, emotional pain can be conscious.
There is currently a battle going on between traditional psychotherapy (emotional problems are caused by repressed emotions) and cognitive behavioural therapy (emotional problems are caused by unhelpful beliefs about the self, others and the world that are carried around day to day).
From my experience the latter is more true, even with respect to TMS. |
Edited by - Big Rob on 01/29/2008 21:20:27 |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 01/30/2008 : 13:09:12
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Jeremy, you're most welcome. I agree that TMS can be a kind of gift, in its own perverse way. I wish you the best. I am working on creating a healthy situation for myself right now, as well. It is not easy but every tiny step is worth it.
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It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment. |
Edited by - armchairlinguist on 01/30/2008 13:09:32 |
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emotional pain isn't always unconscious-- is it?
