| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
delightenment
USA
7 Posts |
 Posted - 07/28/2009 : 15:02:06
|
Hi all,
I posted my success story here last summer - http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4787 - and 18 months after the events I describe, have not had a lick of RSI pain. I was lucky enough to find a practitioner of a new therapy--a somatic approach to trauma healing--whose work was relevantly like Sarno's. In the last year I have learned more about her method, and read a lot about other approaches to healing, and I can now say with conviction that there are several approaches out there that can complement and expand on Sarno's insights. I'm writing to share what I've learned with anyone who could use new avenues to explore--if you know that Sarno is on the right terrain, but your reading of his books hasn't completely processed your pain. Hope this may be helpful to other searchers.
1. Somatic approaches to trauma
Several therapists have developed methods for working with trauma that make use of the same mind/body connection that Sarno is discussing--rage and other emotions that get stored in our body and cause physical symptoms. Peter Levine is the best known, with books Waking the Tiger and a new one called Healing Trauma. Two others that are ok are Rothschild, The Body Remembers, and Scaer, The Body Bears the Burden. For various reasons, all these books are primarily explicitly devoted to working with clients who have "shock trauma" related to incidents of car crashes, etc-- but it is clear to me that so-called "cumulative stress trauma" can have the same effects, and be healed in similar ways, as the forms of trauma they discuss. Peter Levine does work called Somatic Experiencing, and the therapist I worked with was trained in an off-shoot of his work called Self-Regulation Therapy. Practitioners of either one might be interesting to this community.
2. Schema Therapy
If you believe that early childhood experiences have primed us to store emotions in our body, and are looking for ways of accessing the different emotional themes that may affect you, you might explore this therapy, which is a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychodynamic work. They have come up with what they say is a verifiable list of 18 "schemas", or relationship patterns, that may have formed early in us. For example, I personally relate to what they call the "autonomy" schema, where my feeling that my autonomy is threatened brings up a huge amount of emotion in me. I have the sense that this work could be used as a spur to Sarno-style journaling-- little triggers for emotional patterns that we may not even have been aware resonate with us. I first read about this work in Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy (she is a therapist, mindfulness meditation practitioner, and the wife of Daniel Goleman); the very helpful textbook about the method is Young et al, Schema Therapy (it's on google books).
3. Reichian/Bioenergetics
Wilhelm Reich was a psychoanalyst who developed some really, really out there ideas about sexuality and biology. But before he went there, he wrote a single book about "character" that develops some really interesting, relevant themes. He talks about one's "armor", the way that stress and emotions lock our bodies into particular configurations, in a way that sounds to me like TMS. That book is called Character Analysis. The clearest explanation of it is in a book called Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy by Raknes, pp 20-22, which is on google books. Reich had a student named Alexander Lowen, who wrote a bunch of books on "bioenergetics" that resonate with Reich's insight. Poke around in Lowen's work, or even look for a Bioenergetics practitioner (they are a dwindling bunch I think).
Like I said, I hope this is helpful--I know that all of it has been great for me on my journey, and I think there is so much overlap with Sarno's work that these approaches have a lot of potential for the TMS community. All my best wishes as you continue along your quest! |
|
|
sarita
130 Posts |
Posted - 07/28/2009 : 15:49:27
|
| i did the somatic experiencing therapy 6 years ago and it WORKED; got me out of my bike accident trauma after a few sessions! 3 years later i tried it again for anxiety etc...and it didnt work. it depends on each individual case/stage etc. it is more than worth a try and i think, not too hard to find someone who trained with levine. i think basically it is about regulating your autonomic nervous system. same root of the problem. |
 |
|
|
fibri
Belgium
56 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2009 : 10:28:08
|
I've just been reading Young's Schema Therapy in google books and it has just blown me away. I haven't recognised myself so much in a book since I started reading Sarno :-)
Thanks so much for providing these tips for further reading. This helps me enormously. It also helps me understand why I have found it so hard to "do the work" recommended by Sarno et al. I see that I am an avoider, so it suddenly makes sense why I have been unable to do much journaling, and why thinking about my childhood triggers one new symptom after another.
I have taken copious notes from the book which I know can help me hugely. That's if I can face going back and reading them again :-) Oh well, at least now I KNOW I'm avoiding, and why, so I may get better at not doing it. |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
more resources related to TMS approach
