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guej
115 Posts |
 Posted - 01/30/2010 : 10:08:54
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It's Saturday, so I have a little time to peruse this board, and boy, did I find a few gems today! Hillbilly, Dave and Winnieboo, your posts on this thread are spot on. I'm in month 7 of my journey through the "Sarno" world and still struggling, although I definitely got a lot better, and then slipped into my old habits, and went backwards again. However...I know the road to recovery. I"m just struggling in implementing it.
Like most people on these boards, I overanalyzed everything. I overthought the Sarno logic. It didn't always make sense to me, so I dug into more books, re-read his books a ton of times, re-read all the posts on this forum, etc. Didn't do me any good! I've finally come to the realization that there are 2 things going on working together to keep me in pain. First, my well-established pattern of tensing my muscles and "stewing" over things or explaining them away in my head, instead of living more in my body and just feeling and observing emotions and passing through them. This got me into pain, and this keeps me in pain because I'm still doing it. Second, is just the chronic pain cycle itself. Pain...worry/fear...more tension...more pain...more worry/fear...more tension....
It is hard to think rationally when you are in pain, and I am definitely struggling with the approach of not giving the pain any significance, emotionally or otherwise. I know that retraining my body's response to stress and learning to not interpret the pain as threatening, are my way out of this. It is taking time, but I know in my heart, that's what's going on.
I also recommend Claire Weeke's book "Healing your Nerves" (I think that's the title). It is very much along the same thought process if you substitute physical pain for anxiety symptoms. It's not the "first" pain that gets us into trouble. Think about it. When we bang an elbow or some other short term painful sensation, we don't give it a second thought. We assume it will be fine, our mind shifts back to other things, and the pain goes away. When you have significant, longer term pain, you feel the initial pain sensation, and then fear and anxiety flood the system, and "second" pain comes, which is basically the escalated pain sensation in the brain caused by the reaction to the first pain. That particular chapter I read over and over again because it was the most applicable to TMS.
I've also recommended in other posts Ron Siegel's book "Back Sense". He is a former patient of Dr. Sarno's. I really liked the book because it focuses on muscle tension as the cause of pain, and gives a very understandable explanation and chart of how tension causes pain, which causes fear, which causes more tension, and thus more pain, and the vicious cycle ensues. It touches on why some of us have that initial tension response, and how our personalities lend themselves to this type of response, but it doesn't go into the long explanation about distraction or unconscious emotions that Sarno does. I think it's a nice complement to Sarno's books, and a good read for a simple explanation and program to breaking the cycle. Siegel's view is stop trying to control the pain. Think of it like the weather. You have no control over that. Concentrate instead on getting your life back (which is something you can control), and the pain will fade on its own in time. Stop overanalyzing or trying to figure out why you're in more pain today than yesterday, etc. Very much in line with HellNY's approach and others on this forum. It's the focus on trying to control the pain that has a lot of us trying too hard and overanalyzing, and not moving beyond this. If I'm perfectly honest with myself, I know I've been practicing the TMS-type approach for 7 months, but at the same time, I'm still executing on a daily basis my old habits of overworrying and panicking every time I have pain. They are cancelling each other out.
Sorry for the long rambling post, but it's suddenly become very clear to me through Siegel's book and various emails/posts from members of this forum of why I'm stuck. Writing it out here in my own words re-inforces my understanding of this process even more. |
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catspine
USA
239 Posts |
Posted - 01/30/2010 : 18:44:01
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Hi Winnieboo
Once again I enjoyed reading your post.
Yes. The mind delights in challenges!
Independently from trying to find some relief this is why we want to find out how things work e.g. explain the pain or the reason for it etc. Secondarily it provides an illusion of control in a universe always slipping out of it . It's a great pleasure we just can't help it!
Unfortunately when the pain gets through it's another story.
When I get caught in this motion I'm well aware of what's going on and one way I deal with it is give the mind a new challenge it can not refuse selectively. It works well because we can not think of two different things simultaneously : the mind has to chose one or the other.
The pain is like an alarm signal telling us something requires our immediate attention. Imagine what would happen if we didn't have it!
That's why we devote so much to it.
In a different way this may have led Dr'Sarno to the distraction theory. For one thing it works for many people and that's good enough for the category in which they fit. Other theories exist but this was not a battle about "which church is best" there it was about proving the pain is psychosomatic and he succeeded at doing that. We can all be grateful to him for sharing.
There is a time for everything and I agree with what you say about laughing . Also I think that laughing is important in the process and if it can't take place while the pains is blasting then later like as soon as it is felt going away as a way to celebrate quickly while we can.
It feels so good to come out of a damn migraine: we are up and running again and we can resume activity just as if nothing happened until the next time, that's worth laughing about . After all maybe that is what's so extraordinary: all this pain and all is well again...
On the other hand we take all this abilities like intelligence and all for granted but what if it is a gift that's to be enjoyed and used sparingly? for as far as I can tell abusing of it like anything else is thrilling but may have some unwanted consequences. I'm saying this but I find myself doing it even with the sword right above my head... amazingly this is also how I manage to find more ways to get away with it when it looks like there is none. There really is a conflict in between the minds it seems.
Sometimes I think it is our deep craving for comfort (mental or physical) or for excitement that makes us unable to slow down and have a tms free life as if in reality we were always living "above our income". Impossibilities are a big trigger.
Here is another challenge for our minds.
It may sound far fetched but what if there is an unconscious need for TMS? Like an addiction of some sort or a neurosis, after all the pain is not the only aspect of it!
I would not be surprised to hear a psychiatrist say that tms is a neurosis as bad habits always come with a reward: unfortunately it's only the best of the worst.
So what it comes down to is a never ending dilemma having to choose between what we want and what should be done with occasionally a reminder that we should be having fun instead...
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Please help me understand how this works
