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Originally posted by SteveO


Ozagnes,

You have it correct. It is "the coping" that demands the most energy, and therefore angers and conflicts us the most necessitating symptoms. This coping engages the freeze side of the survival response and not the fight/flight. If either fight or flight were to be utilized the trauma/or coping would be discharged from the system, and there would be less need for the unpleasant symptoms.

Try this link at UTube below, it gives the best visual explanation that I could find to help explain what is going on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u40WwqkOws

If we flee a situation (primal escape), this is an act of survival; we have escaped in our minds and that energy is disharged--no need for tms. For ex., if we are in a bad/tense relationship we can divorce from it and leave. This is escape in our minds.

OR--the other side is fight. We can can hit our spouse or argue it out until we are blue in the face. This completes the last act of survival and so the energy once again doesn't build up to dangerous levels.

However, given the personality type of the Type T, TMSer, they tend to neither argue back and release or flee to release because as Dr. Sarno insightfully observed, they are nice people, hyper responsible, non confrontational for the most part. They smile when they should get mad, they freeze instead of running, they are copers extraordinaire.

So what happens to that energy from the fight flight that was never taken? It gets locked into the body and disrupts the smooth functioning of the autonomic nervous system, more specifically the SNS. And hell begins.

You also described here what I called Phase 4 TMS, when the symptom occurs AFTER the tension is removed. This is the most common timing of manifestation. I observed that symptoms arose as needed and they fell into 4 classifications. Phase 4 was the more common and most of the tms docs agreed. I also noted that most people I knew in my life got cancer "after" the trauma events took place.

And finally, Ozagnes (I think several radio hosts called me that name since they couldn't pronounce my last name)...therapists have been telling me, regarding their clients, that my book is helping people to understand that those healing timeframes people read about in the tms books should not freak sufferers out when they don't heal exactly like that. You will heal in YOUR time, not anyone else's. Adhering to others' time frames adds stressors and slows healing. Relax and heal when you do. I've seen, several times, that quck healing is not as good as slow healing. The quick healers often see the SI upon them as the symptom shifts. The slow healers often heal deeper, which may be psychologically safer for them.

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Originally posted by tennis tom

I was reading SteveO's book today and around page sixty, he clarified something for me that I'd been wondering about for a long time. Dr. Sarno came up with his TMS theory due to his own migraines, while a young doctor. He would get the eye thing precursor of the migraine, a scotoma scintella or something like that. SteveO's book filled in the missing info of how the Good Doctor made the psychosomatic connection. He mentioned the symptom to a fellow doctor who said it was due to repressed anger--it was as simple as that. Now I wonder if that other doctor was a psychiatrist or not? SteveO does a great job of filling in the missing pieces bringing TMS theory home.

Thanks SteveO! Hope book sales are going well, when are we going to see you on Ophrah or Stossel?

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