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Peg
USA
284 Posts |
 Posted - 05/13/2009 : 06:03:29
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>I actually only cracked a rib or two when I fell off the ladder,
Only a rib or two! You make it sound like nothing. I've taken care of people with broken ribs and they're pretty painful. You must have a high pain tolerance, or a great attitude.
>Besides the views of the mountains from my top windows are glorious!
Sounds nice.
>Finding it difficult to believe how pain-free I am this evening, when I really 'shouldn't' be! I'm having a very stressful time in lots of areas of my life at the moment so it's all the more remarkable and even if it doesn't last, I now know what's possible!
Believe it!!! And enjoy it. It will last even though you may have an occasional set back. In the future symptoms won't last long because now you KNOW. It's okay to still have stress, it's the way we deal with it that changes things and most importantly the knowledge you have gained. As Dr. Sarno says "Knowledge is the Penicillin for this disorder"
So happy for you. Keep at it.
Best,
Peg
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei |
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flutterby
United Kingdom
79 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2009 : 17:31:11
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I really appreciate your encouragement, Peg!
This afternoon/evening hasn't been as good as previously, though not as bad as usual on a Wednesday and it's much improved now. I expect it's partly that I haven't undone the conditioning yet but also I have some ethical 'issues' around the teaching that I haven't found a way to resolve yet, which I'm sure accounts for some of it.
As for my pain threshold - yes, I do think I have a pretty high one. I used to have all my dental work done without an injection as they made me pass out which frightened the dentist! Eventually someone discovered a different kind of injection (or were they just telling me that!) that didn't have that effect but by that time I'd developed a kind of 'switching off' from the pain method. Difficult to describe but a sort of mental standing back and saying, 'oh, isn't that interesting - that tooth is hurting like hell!'
(I also used to voluntarily run a pain management group - the relaxation, exersise, goal-setting, planning and pacing type of thing but I always believed that 'attitude' was all. It was actually a poem we were discussing that got one of the Great Moaners in our group back to work when he never thought he would!)
On the other hand, sometimes embarrassingly, I seem to have a low tear threshold and I have often found that a 'good cry' magically stops all pain instantly for a while. I'd be very interested to know whether anyone else has experienced this?
In light of the fact that tears remove stress hormones from the body, it certainly makes a case for the body-mind connection! |
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Peg
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2009 : 05:32:52
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Hi Flutterby,
>"I expect it's partly that I haven't undone the conditioning yet but also I have some ethical 'issues' around the teaching that I haven't found a way to resolve yet, which I'm sure accounts for some of it."
I think you're probably right. I've had similar experience.
That is amazing that you used your mind in such a powerful way with your dental work.
>"On the other hand, sometimes embarrassingly, I seem to have a low tear threshold and I have often found that a 'good cry' magically stops all pain instantly for a while. I'd be very interested to know whether anyone else has experienced this?"
You do have a way of wording things. A low tear threshold, I like that. I've experienced the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if the major suppressed emotion for me is sadness, rather than anger. Although I can think of things in my past that were
certainly anger generating.
Best,
Peg
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei |
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flutterby
United Kingdom
79 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2009 : 17:20:08
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Hi all - a little update
I've now had a full week of virtually no pain! Most of the time my whole back area feels relaxed in a way that I can't remember having experienced before. When I get up from a long spell of sitting I at least expect a certain 'creakiness' initially and it's quite a shock to find it's gone!
I am very grateful to Peg for drawing my attention to the 'conditioning' aspect and I can see a clear link between the little, VERY minor twinges I've had this week and the fact that they were associated with times I would expect to be in a lot of pain. And that makes it easier to deal with them quickly, talking to my brain and switching the focus and preventing the pain from building up as it normally would. It's like keeping one step ahead of it, or even half a step, anything as long as I'm in charge of the situation and not my pain!
As I wrote on another post last night, my back has been thoroughly put to the test this week!
For the past three years my family have all come to me for Christmas as I found travelling down to Kent to my daughter's just too difficult and had to spend most of Christmas 'recovering'!
So I was just a teeny-weeny bit nervous when my daugher rang me early on Thursday morning asking if it would be possible for me to come down to Tunbridge Wells asap as her husband was in hospital, having fallen on concrete whilst playing football the previous evening, hitting his head and knocking himself out and bleeding from his ear. The really worrying thing was that she'd just heard that he was going to be 'blue-lighted' up to King's College Hospital, London and she needed someone to look after her younger son (9) while she and her twelve year old went up to London. (The nine-year-old has multiple food allergies and asthma and she didn't want to leave him with anyone else).
For me this involved packing (which I always find difficult from the point of view of my back) and travelling on three trains and a taxi. I was in such a rush and had no idea how long I would need to stay that I packed far too much and ended up with a lot of luggage! As luck would have it, when I changed trains at Newport I had to cross over the bridge - lots of steps! - and the taxi driver in London didn't offer to help heave my luggage up into the cab. But I managed! Tunbridge Wells station also has a lot of steps and I have normally waited for my son-in-law to help me in the past. But I flew up them and was fine.
What I didn't expect was the change of plan which meant that the four of us all went to London again (after a quick cup of tea) and didn't get back till very late in the evening - a further two trains in each direction, though without luggage this time, but with a lot of standing around on draughty stations. I have always found train seats very bad for my back, particularly if the train is crowded (as they all were) and I can't shift my position so all in all, it was quite a challenge.
But still no pain and I wondered whether the adrenalin rush of the whole situation was something to do with it. But on Friday we eventually heard that all the scans were clear and I became the sort of 'anchor-person' for taking phonecalls and passing on messages about getting my son-in-law home. And while I waited by the phone, I purposely 'lounged' in a shockingly dreadful posture on my daughter's rather soft and slippery leather sofa - and still no pain!
The only slight 'threat', more of a tightening up really, came when we were standing in the queue at Sainsbury's in the evening, but I know what that's all about and talked myself out of it.
Three more trains and lots of hauling my luggage up and down steps yesterday and absolutely NO ILL-EFFECTS! If that's not enough to convince me that I have a perfectly strong back, nothing will be!
The old leg-pain tried to make its presence felt for a little while this morning but I put it down to a bit of pressure to 'catch up' with all the things I 'should' have been doing during the three days I was away, did some journaling - and it soon took itself off!
I'm not posting this on the Success Stories forum because it's only been one week and I won't be at all surprised if the pain hasn't completely given up yet. But the great thing, the WONDERFUL thing, is that I now feel I have the tools to deal with it if it rears its ugly head again! And, thinking of all the money I've spent in the past on every conceivable 'alternative' therapy under the sun, this hasn't cost me a penny because I've found all the information in books from the library and from this wonderful website and all the links from it.
So I would like to thank all those who have helped and encouraged me and I hope that my long post will be an encouragement to others who are just starting out on their journey of discovery that they really much more fit and healthy than they have been led to believe!
THANK YOU!
PS Another thing that has made a difference is what I read in 'The Divided Mind' about 'calendar-watching' and for that reason, I'm not sure how long it has taken me to reach this point; but for those who are new to this process, it wasn't as quick as I had inferred from the books, but it has certainly been less than a month! Not bad in comparison to the 42-year duration of my 'back problems'! |
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HilaryN
United Kingdom
879 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2009 : 07:07:03
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Wow, flutterby, that's fantastic! I think that will be a very inspiring post for others. I'm dying to add it to the list on the TMS wiki, but I'll hang on until you're ready to post your success story. Don't forget to include a link to this thread when you do.
quote:
I purposely 'lounged' in a shockingly dreadful posture on my daughter's rather soft and slippery leather sofa - and still no pain!
 Yes, I often do that - deliberately rebelling against the "bad posture will result in pain" idea and proving to myself that it has nothing to do with pain!
Hilary N |
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pandamonium
United Kingdom
202 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2009 : 07:12:30
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Well done Flutterby, that journey alone would flummox a lot of people even without back pain.
I agree with your comment about now having a "tool" for dealing with the pain, that is what I also found, and I accepted that even if that was the best it ever got, it was still a million miles better than having pain with no hope.
Panda
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A beginner's guide to psychology: If it's not your mum's fault.... it's your dad's... |
Edited by - pandamonium on 05/18/2009 13:44:03 |
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forestfortrees
393 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2009 : 09:55:34
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quote:
Originally posted by flutterby
I've now had a full week of virtually no pain!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
quote:
Originally posted by HilaryN
I'm dying to add it to the list on the TMS wiki
Yeah, I LOVE threads like this one. Roxygirl's and DanNord's come to mind--people who were really scared but who got support in a specific thread and you can watch how their fear turns to excitement and elation.
In a couple of years, we can start going through our favorite success stories and looking for early posts by their authors to see if we can find threads like that to add to the specific symptoms and diagnosis pages right after the actual success story post. To anyone who is reading this and would like to help, we would gratefully appreciate your help. You can click here to contact us or can come to the Wiki tour and we will show you how to add the suggestion yourself!
http://tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5693
I think that "before" and "after" posts like that could be incredibly helpful to people who haven't yet reached their own success story. There is something very powerful about reading the story of someone else who is just as doubtful and scared as you are and then seeing how their life was transformed.
Forest
tmswiki.org |
Edited by - forestfortrees on 05/15/2015 10:42:04 |
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Just discovered TMS - any advice?
