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wrldtrv
666 Posts |
 Posted - 10/27/2011 : 20:02:59
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| Hillbilly, Amazon shows the book you mention as being out of print. |
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Bugbear
United Kingdom
152 Posts |
Posted - 10/28/2011 : 01:05:07
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Wrldtrv, have a look at www.anxietynomore.co.uk. It appears to be the website for this author and you can order his book in various formats.
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 10/28/2011 : 10:12:19
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| Hi Hillbilly, Thanks so much for the book recommendation. It seems to be exactly what I need and I just ordered it. |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 10/28/2011 : 11:13:24
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Ace,
Good for you. Remember, though, that reading the book will be worthless without you taking action. Go for it! There's nothing to lose except your nervous symptoms.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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guej
115 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2011 : 07:27:24
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I'm a big fan of "At Last a Life". It doesn't matter if you believe this is all anxiety or not, the treatment approach is similar to Dr. Sarno's as far as breaking the conditioned bodily responses and just resuming your life. I substituted the word "pain" for "anxiety" when reading the book.
Paul David does diverge from Dr. Sarno in that David talks about digging into the roots of his anxiety with a psychologist, but still not being able to break the physical cycle. For me, it became more important to understand why I was still in pain now, and not why I had fallen into chronic pain in the first place (which is where I agree with Dr. Sarno's assessment that it happens to a certain personality type, and for our own personal reasons).
I loved the book because it is so "untechnical". It is a regular guy, talking in plain English about his day to day life. He repeats himself a lot, but I actually found that helpful in letting some very simple concepts sink in. I read the book with a highlighter because so many things he said reflected what I was experiencing. Again, different circumstances and symptoms, but the same type of thoughts (which I guess, lends credence to the anxiety debate, but pain certainly distracted me from all the unpleasant worries in my life, so I'm a hybrid "anxiety/distraction theory" believer).
The most success I had was using his approach to finally get off of painkillers. I only took a low-dose medication once or twice a day to take the edge off, but I relied on it as a crutch and was scared to death that my pain would spiral out of control again if I stopped. There is the word that sunk me the most...."scared". David talks about going towards whatever it is you are most afraid of because if you shrink from it and avoid it, you'll never get past it. I knew I had to go towards pain to overcome it (sounds crazy...). It worked. I started to just "be" with the pain without medication assistance (not overnight, but over a few months' period) vs. running away or cringing from it, and low and behold, it wasn't as bad as I thought, and without the fear, the pain cycle started to unwind.
Everyone's experience is unique, and whatever you truly believe deep down will be what's right for you. For me, it was this approach, after doing all the emotional work (which helped me understand why I am the worrier that I am and how someone like me winds up in chronic pain...). As people have repeatedly said on this board, there are different ways of looking at this. Only you know, in time, what really resonates with you.
Good luck. |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2011 : 15:33:21
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guej,
I agree that it is far, far more important to understand why you stay in pain than why you got into it in the first place. Your substitution of pain for anxiety or panic is identical to what I did. But I had both, and very bad. They were concurrent, and the one that predominated was the one I chose to fixate on the most. This is what led me to discarding the Sarno distraction theory and consequently his treatment plan because I realized that one symptom, if powerful enough, was enough to keep the mind fixed on the body, and therefore wasn't accurate in my case, and I suspect in most.
I agree that it is a personal journey, both in how the information gets distilled into a usable form and the form the action takes once it motivates a patient to attempt a given plan for recovery. As Claire Weekes said, "it doesn't matter that your mother didn't love you when you were young and that is why you are anxious. Fear is the habit now. This must be cured." Hers is a practical approach.
Yes, for some it is important to know the why of nearly everything and to validate their feelings, whatever they are. They might feel they get something out of sitting with their feelings or writing letters to their inner child or beating up their bedding. But until they conquer the fear of their symptoms, test their activity level against imagined outcomes and learn they do not come true, the suffering won't end. If you read the success stories here and elsewhere, you will find that this is the central theme: Get over your fear of life and living by living with and through your fear instead of running from it.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Edited by - Hillbilly on 10/29/2011 16:52:14 |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2011 : 23:34:10
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quote:
Originally posted by Hillbilly
...Your substitution of pain for anxiety or panic is identical to what I did. But I had both, and very bad. They were concurrent, and the one that predominated was the one I chose to fixate on the most. This is what led me to discarding the Sarno distraction theory and consequently his treatment plan because I realized that one symptom, if powerful enough, was enough to keep the mind fixed on the body, and therefore wasn't accurate in my case, and I suspect in most.
Hillbilly, Your statement confuses me. Dr. Sarno considers anxiety an affective TMS symptom such as depression versus a psychogenic symptom that exhibits itself structurally like back-pain or joint pain, etc. Affective and psychogenic pain are both distractions from facing stressful life issues which the subconscious views as more painful then the TMS symptom. I don't understand why you disagree with this or the "cure", which is simply to understand that the pain is benign, originating in the mind and not the body--and that the mind is what can reverse the process. |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2011 : 05:55:29
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Dear balto,
One more very important question to me, when you didn't allow fear for that one week, did you do this with a sense of strength or a sense of relaxation/peace or neither (meaning indifferent)? I feel sometimes relaxation is not so different from fear or backing down. The reason Baltos recovery intrigues me the most is he is someone who had the syndrome for over 10 years, tried the tms approach and failed, but then he got it and when he got it, his recovery was as quick as dr sarno mentions the majority of people in his program do. So, I am tring to figure this out. If it is a sense of strength and not worrying about the symptoms, then this cannot be "calming" the nervous system. Fred amir seems to have done this with strength. Dr sarno, says to fight tms with a feeling of disdain. And isn't strength in a way the opposite of fear? Any one is free to answer this to if they have input. Thanks again in advance for your answers. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 05:17:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Dear balto,
One more very important question to me, when you didn't allow fear for that one week, did you do this with a sense of strength or a sense of relaxation/peace or neither (meaning indifferent)? I feel sometimes relaxation is not so different from fear or backing down. The reason Baltos recovery intrigues me the most is he is someone who had the syndrome for over 10 years, tried the tms approach and failed, but then he got it and when he got it, his recovery was as quick as dr sarno mentions the majority of people in his program do. So, I am tring to figure this out. If it is a sense of strength and not worrying about the symptoms, then this cannot be "calming" the nervous system. Fred amir seems to have done this with strength. Dr sarno, says to fight tms with a feeling of disdain. And isn't strength in a way the opposite of fear? Any one is free to answer this to if they have input. Thanks again in advance for your answers.
I did it with a sense of acceptance (just like Dr. Claire Weekes taught). I don't try to ignore the pain, which I think is impossible to do, it hurts like hell, how in the world can you ignore it. To me, accepting your symptom is like thinking of your symptoms like having a pimple on your face. The pimple is there. You don't like it but you don't fear it either. It is there temporarily and it will be gone. I don't scare it will do permanent damage. I don't scare it will cause skin cancer or disfigure my face. I have better thing to do than focusing on my pimple, my symptoms.
To me, there are 3 kind of tms/anxiety symptoms. (just like Hillbilly, to me, tms and anxiety and many other mindbody syndromes are symptoms of the same illness, have the same causation, and can be rid of with the same treatment)
1 - The initial symptoms came after you had a prolong stressful and negative feeling/thoughts.
2 = The conditioning symptoms came because you body/mind wrongly accused many things in life as a threat.
3 - Last is the overly sensitive body/mind. If you look at TennisTom's signature you will see this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale . Overly sensitive to me mean for a normal person to risk having his/her first tms symptom, the stress level score is around 300. But for a long time tms/anxiety sufferer, the stress level score could be around 100 or 120 and we would get an attack. Our bodies is so sensitive. Our confidence in our bodies are so low. It doesn't take much for negative events to trigger symptoms.
To conquer the first kind of symptoms, as I said before, you have to somehow stop fearing. We don't exactly fear the pain, the symptoms. What we fear is the pain/symptoms is the signal of something worst to come. (example: palpitation signal heart attack, headache signal brain tumor, back pain signal permanent nerve damage). so somehow you have to stop fearing what the pain can do, what it mean. Don't over analyse your symptoms. Don't go searching the net for your symptoms.
When you suffering from your initial symptoms for so long you sometime have a very bad pain/anxiety attack while you're doing something and your brain will wrongly associate the something as a threat and it will create symptoms each time it see that something again. That is what I think conditioning symptoms is. Long time sufferer conditioned themselve to fear going thru tunel or over high bridge. Fear drinking or eating a particular food or drink. They find it very unpleasant when it is too hot or too cold, too bright or to dark. Crowded place freaked them out. Being alone terrified some. Leaving the house, baby's crying, sad movie, bad news in TV, Some couldn't eat too much carbohydrate or anything with gluten or fat,... I got over my conditioning doing two things. I talk and I explain to my brain, and desensitize myself. Before tms I was a heavy coffee drinker. While with tms one sip of coffee would brought on a bad anxiety attack. So after winning the tms war I sit with nice hot cup of coffee on my front porch and talked to myself for a week. First sip, it taste good. Second sip, I'm still have coffee trigger tms symptom. Third sip, my breath will be faster, my heart will beat faster..., fourth sip, But I will be fine because I know it is my coffee that trigger it... Don't fear the symptom. After one week I went back to my daily 3 cups habit with no problems.
I took a trusted friend with me for a ride thru the tunnel, where I always have an attack everytime I go thru it alone. I explained to my brain in the same way as I did with my coffee. In a short time my confidence improve, my trust in my body, my ability return. I no longer have irrational fear anymore.
I stopped the third kind, the overly sensitive kind, the same way as I did the first kind. But I know my body, my brain is more sensitive than normal so I went on a life style change mission. I change many things about my life style in order to reduce the chances that I will face stressful situations. To improve my chance of having a happy and fullfill life. We all know there are thousand of things we can do to de-stress our life and to find happiness. Here is a list of some of the things I did:
- Identified the negative people in my life and cut them out of my life or atleast minimize my time with them.
- Identified and surround myself with positive, nice and caring people. Build a big community of friends, true friends. I really believe having lot of good close friends and family is one of the best defense mechanism against tms/anxiety.
- I traveled and I volunteer whenever I can to open my mind to the world and see that I am very fortunate compare to million of people around the world.
- Other thing we all can do and we all know they are good like: exercise, meditation, get busy, stay busy, have a hobbie,...
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I just want to share with you my own experience with tms/anxiety. It is not easy to share this in a single forum post, I need to write a book to finish expressing everything I want to share.
I claim to be NO expert at all. I have no medical degree. I don't even finish four year college. Please be a skeptic at any post you read on the web, including this one.
there are many experts out there. There are many books that help you fight your tms. There are more tools, more awareness about these kind of illness than ever before. Whatever make sense to you, try it. If it don't work, try something else. Eventually, the cure will come, you will find the way. The worse you can do to yourself is not doing anything, just sit there and suffer. The second worst you can do to yourself is using the same treatment method for months or years even if it didn't help you get well or cure you. |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 07:37:13
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| Thank you Bslto, this is great!, I'll keep you updated. |
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 07:45:06
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Dear balto,
One more very important question to me, when you didn't allow fear for that one week, did you do this with a sense of strength or a sense of relaxation/peace or neither (meaning indifferent)? I feel sometimes relaxation is not so different from fear or backing down...If it is a sense of strength and not worrying about the symptoms, then this cannot be "calming" the nervous system. Fred amir seems to have done this with strength. Dr sarno, says to fight tms with a feeling of disdain. And isn't strength in a way the opposite of fear? Any one is free to answer this to if they have input. Thanks again in advance for your answers.
Balto really outlines it. Nothing I can ad but a note about my own loss of fear of the symptoms. What balto says about simple coffee drinking, causing the heart to race and fear to build, can be expanded to nearly every symptom. It's important to see, too, that while balto was drinking the feared coffee he was aware of his emotions. For a long time I thought I had beat back the fear of my symptoms, because I had re-started exercise activities. But one morning over the summer I was doing some simple outdoor chores and my movements were causing the heart to race and the panic to build. I was still afraid and still conditioned to fear movement that was doing my body no harm at all. I had to quit, come in, and pull myself back together. Now those same things I do without panic. The stiffness and the pain are still there, but lessening. All those things outlined by balto are true, especially staying busy with your real life and surrounding yourself with true friends and family support. More and more and you will find that less and less are you thinking of the physical. It becomes the "pimple" on your back or hip or foot, etc.
"Bridges Freeze Before Roads" |
Edited by - Back2-It on 10/31/2011 07:48:20 |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 07:46:44
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quote:
Affective and psychogenic pain are both distractions from facing stressful life issues which the subconscious views as more painful then the TMS symptom. I don't understand why you disagree with this or the "cure", which is simply to understand that the pain is benign, originating in the mind and not the body--and that the mind is what can reverse the process.
Tom, I disagree completely with all things distraction in Sarno's theory and have stated my reasons here many times. If any (pain, sadness, insomnia, diarrhea, heart palps, dyspepsia) were a distraction from something else, it could stand alone quite effectively. I, balto, and many others here have experienced multiple physical and mental symptoms associated with a chronically stressful time in our lives, which to us is indicative of a systemic upset in the nervous system, particularly the sympathetic branch of the ANS, that resolved once we calmed down. My symptoms did not distract me from anything. They made the things I feared before far worse and more plausible given my state of mind and body. What protection did they give me? I still had to go to work and face the prospect of embarrassment, failure, financial ruin, etc.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Edited by - Hillbilly on 10/31/2011 07:57:10 |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 08:37:32
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Thanks for the reply, I think I see the problem here, for you and a minority of others, it's NOT a distraction--but for the vast majority of the rest of humanity, it's "human nature". It serves it's purpose as a defense mechanism, and they go on their merry way from doc's waiting room, to ER to the myriad of other "complementary" treatments and quackeries from A to Z.
Dr. Sarno self-selects those who he feels will benefit from his "knowledge penicillin" and doesn't waste the time and money of those who he feels will NOT have the psychological capacity, thus enabling them to preserve the "protection" provided by their TMS symptom.
Hillbilly, give yourself a big pat on the back that you are more fully evolved. The distraction of TMS, originating in the primitive vestigial part of our brains, is being out-smarted by our reasoning brains and we are here to talk about it. There are billions of people on this planet and look at how few have found this site, and the microscopic number of docs and practitioners practicing in accordance with it. TMS'ers are an endangered species. |
Edited by - tennis tom on 10/31/2011 09:55:01 |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 11:36:50
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Dear Hillbilly,
I really enjoy your posts, you seem to be a very intelligent person. I do think however that in a way the TMS symptoms are trying to distract. In a way they are very absorbing, and they want to cripple you as so you dont do the things that scare you anymore (ie you are so disabled that you can't work anymore and that you have to put your energy into fixing the pain problem). Dr. Sarno does state that it is a maladaptive response as it only perpetuates itself. Dr Sarno says if you have more than one symptoms, your psychological situation is extreme. Its like trying to pull out all the stops. Now I'll tell you when I first started this process, I would only have pain in one 1 spot (back or neck), but never severe in both at once. I asked many drs why and no one could answer this except Dr. Sarno. I bet that at the time you had multiple symptoms, only one at any one time was very severe, never 2. You also have to take conditioning into play too, if you have pain in the neck for a distraction, but then you sit down, you might get back pain too at that time bc of conditioning, even though the orginal pain was emotional that caused the neck pain. I respect your opnion if you still disagree, but this is just my 2 cents on this subject. |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 19:05:43
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Tom,
If you mean that my stress response is not active, I assure you it is. I get the normal jolts of fear and anger when appropriate, but given time and understanding what is happening, it dissipates as it does in "normal" people. I have no idea what the rest of the comment means. You keep referring to the TMS distraction as though it is a factual being, and outside of you and Dave, no one here beats that drum very loudly. I post for those seeking advice from someone who has found the way out, and although I realize my way is not for everyone, many who follow it have.
Aces,
I do not want to discourage you from following any and all paths to recovery. If Dr. Sarno's explanation makes sense to you, then by all means follow it. I wish you the best. If in a year or so, though, if you are still struggling, give Dr. Weekes a read.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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wrldtrv
666 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 19:53:55
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"My symptoms did not distract me from anything. They made the things I feared before far worse and more plausible given my state of mind and body." (Hillbilly quote)
I generally agree with Hillbilly and Balto except for this clarification: In fairness, Sarno does not regard the symptoms as a distraction from CONSCIOUS fears, but from the UNCONSCIOUS threats (reservoir of rage or whatever else you want to call it). So the fact that your symptoms made the things you consciously feared worse, seems irrelevant to that point.
So, I might differ with Sarno in respect to distraction too, but not for that reason. I agree with your main points, Hillbilly & Balto, that fear, sensitization, and conditioning are probably the major reasons for the symptoms rather than distraction. It seems obvious that the symptoms don't (mine sure don't!) distract from anything conscious, but as Hillbilly says, makes it far worse.
I think the main problem is that Sarno's distraction view is very hypothetical; whereas, the fear-stress-sensitization view seems more commonsensical. In the end, each of us is an experiment of one. Whatever works. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 20:28:58
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Dr. Sarno has a medical degree and he has cured thousand of people so I'm in no position to criticize him. But just for me, I have followed his teaching for years, although I did get a little better, I was never able to free myself completely from the symptoms. I was only able to did that after I've read Dr. Claire Weekes.
Fighting tms/anxiety is a personal journey for us. What worked for me may not work for others. I've come here just wanting to share my own experience on what I have to do to get my life back, and hope that what I posted can be of some help to some others. This disease is horrible. Even with the right method, the right teacher, many are still not able to get well. Some got so discourage and thought this is a chronic disease and it can not be cure. I am here to say yes it can be cure. It can be defeat and you can get back your life. Invest just a couple weeks of your life and do the utmost you can to refuse to fear anything then you will be cure. You will see the light. It is lovely on the other side.
For a long time I thought peace, content, calm, relax, clear headed, happiness... is no longer possible in my life anymore. But now I am enjoying them everyday. I sometime feel more at peace now than I ever was, even compare to before I had tms/anxiety. |
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wrldtrv
666 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 21:21:58
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| I find it amazing that Claire Weekes, writing almost 45 years ago, speaks to me better than anyone else today. Her basic ideas are solid and her manner, so comforting. This, despite being unaware of so much that has been discovered about the workings of the brain since then. |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 21:35:30
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quote:
In fairness, Sarno does not regard the symptoms as a distraction from CONSCIOUS fears, but from the UNCONSCIOUS threats (reservoir of rage or whatever else you want to call it). So the fact that your symptoms made the things you consciously feared worse, seems irrelevant to that point.
That is quite accurate, wrld. What on earth does that mean in practical terms, though? You can't imagine anything worse hiding in this fictional realm. What can you do about something that you can't know, can't see, can't imagine, can't change, and don't believe exists?
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2011 : 23:11:42
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| Now I'm more confused then ever, are you guys saying Sarno is no good? Or, some Sarno is good but other parts aren't? Should I be at the Claire Weekes site? Is there a Claire Weekes site? Do you guys split your time here and at the Claire Weekes site? Why do you waste your time here if Sarno is wrong? I wouldn't. I'm confused, I'm gonna' have a beer. |
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Are You a Physio or a Psycho?
