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lynnl
USA
109 Posts |
 Posted - 03/10/2012 : 16:39:45
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I guess I didn't make myself quite clear enough. Yes, at the very outset I did latch on to the childhood experiences, trying to find some real traumatic issue(s) which I was unconsciously trying to keep repressed. That was what I assumed was needed. But after a couple of weeks I found that tender, kind, gentle, loving, etc. type thoughts worked much better for me.
In fact, I've come to believe that, while thinking anger/rage type thoughts or recollecting such situations as that, can, as one of you suggested, distract me from pain briefly, that doesn't seem to be of any lasting value. I suspect, for some individuals who are repressing some extremely painful experiences, e.g. Dr Sarno's story of Helen (incest victim), uncovering those emotions would be therapeutic. But for the run of the mill, or most of us, it's more a matter of the accumulation of buried issues that is the main problem.
In my own case, I know that I've always repressed/suppressed "I love you's" that deep down I felt and really wanted to convey to other people who were dear to me. ...a matter of going out of my way to maintain the he-man, macho personna.
The truth is, I DON'T KNOW just what buried demons or emotions my mind is determined to keep hidden. But as my experiences can attest, that doesn't matter.
There's a current TV commercial, advertising "Ancestry.com." It encourages the viewer to start searching their ancestry, with the line "You don't have to know what you're looking for, you just have to start looking!" I think that's very appropos here. That advice is tailor made for TMS solution seekers.
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Ace1, your question regarding whether I have residual pain, requires a rather complex answer. Within a matter of weeks, or maybe it was a few months, I was absolutely on cloud nine! Elated! Euphoric! and all the other words like that would apply. It's been a long time, so I'm sure some of the exact details have slipped my mind. But as I remember it, the sciatica, which was my main pain (butt and legs) abated down to the trivial or noise level. Mostly not even noticeable for months at a time, tho occasionally flaring back up to a 2 or 3 level for maybe a couple of days, by which time I'd get it back under control with the same emotional type focus.
I had several other issues, which were minor in comparison to the sciatica: Carpal Tunnel, swallowing difficulties at times, probably IBS symptoms (I say probably, because that term IBS has always been vague to me), Sleep Apnea, elbow tendinitis, sporadic painful eye dryness, and several others, which I can't recall at the moment, that would come and go. All cleared up coincident with the resolution of the sciatica. What was most pronounced was my sleep. I would now wake each morning as refreshed as back when I was a child or teenager. (I was in my mid-late fifties at the time.)
Life was truly great! It continued this way for 7 or 8 years, during which I was fully conscious of the control process I mentioned in the prior post. But during that time, any flareups or problems were so infrequent and minor that I seldom had to do anything or concern myself with emotional thoughts. Over time, after those 7 or 8 years, I gradually started losing my awareness of the control process. Any flareups or pains would still respond to the emotional thinking, but the process was becoming "invisible" to me. It was like my mind was getting lazy in regard to TMS.
Then about 3 years ago, I started having a knee problem playing tennis. I attributed it to TMS initially, but then considerable swelling developed which gave rise to doubts. Long story short, after a few months I gave in and went to a Dr and ended up having arthroscopic surgery to repair a tear in the medial meniscus.
BIG MISTAKE!! Before the surgery the knee pain was only slightly more than trivial. Afterward it was MUCH worse, and swelling was worse. I can control or blank out the pain with those emotional practices on a temporary or "on-demand" basis, but so far have been unable to banish it completely and permanently. But, while I won't go into the details, there are other personal factors that I think are standing in the way of a complete, permanent resolution now.
Also, this knee pain is not even close to being as debilitating as the original sciatica was. So I'm just not as highly motivated and persistent in my approach as was the case years ago. Which brings up another point I'd like to make.
Pain is pain, and of course it hurts, and we'd like to be rid of it. But I reached the point, after I got control of the pain years ago, where I realized that once you've eliminated the fear and dread factors, the pain per se, is not nearly as bad. It becomes something you can live with.
Think about it a moment. Imagine, given whatever pain level you're experiencing right at this moment, that somehow you were given the absolute assurance that, while your pain is going to continue unabated for the next 10 and 1/2 hours, at which time it will cease entirely. I daresay that you would immediately perceive that pain in a totally different and less intimidating, fearful light.
So that's kinda where I am now.
Lynn |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2012 : 16:57:57
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quote:
Originally posted by Aussie
... I just want to get back to doing the sports i love and get back to a normal life. If someone who reads this can offer anything for me at my current "stuck" stage i would be very grateful.
Thanks for reading.
Aussie,
You don't have to self-analyze yourself. You are stuck in a state of paralysis by analysis. Quit digging into your emotional past. Your subconscious only needs to absorb your new TMS belief that the pain is real but benign, harmless and will eventually dissolve away.
Read this excerpted from the article cited below:
"Manage your pain with "distraction"
...“one of the best ways to tap into the system is through distraction. Many people suffering from chronic pain have an impulse to withdraw from day-to-day life, Thernstrom says, but withdrawing often makes the pain worse.
"Trying to focus on other things and trying to go about your life — even when you feel like you're pretending — really is the best pain treatment," she says. Distracting the mind "literally keeps your brain from generating pain."
..."When pain is the first or second thing in your mind, life just isn't worth living," she says. "When pain is the fifth or sixth thing in your consciousness. It's in the background of your thoughts and no longer drives you crazy."
The full article is here:
http://www.huliq.com/10282/holiday-body-pain-linked-christmas-stress-causing-tension-myositis-syndrome
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Wodg
Australia
89 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2012 : 17:04:57
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quote:
Originally posted by balto
quote:
Originally posted by lynnl
I welcome comments and questions, and especially would like to know how my experiences compare with others who successfully won their TMS battle.
Lynn
Just want to share my experience conquering my pain.
In my experience, working with childhood memories doesn't help me at all. Reliving those childhood memories only brought back sadness, anger, and more pain. I think maybe it worked for you is because you totally shifted your mind's focus onto something else instead of your pain symptoms. Your thought is on something happen in the past, not on what is bothering you at the moment, and once the focus is not on your pain, the fuel for the pain ran out and the fire burn itself out. If you're fan of the "distraction" theory then because your focus is no longer on the pain, the distraction lost your attention, it is no longer doing it's job so it leave you.
One of my observation also made me doubt that my childhood have anything to do with my symptoms. I saw that my dad and many of his friends never have tms/anxiety. They've been through hell. They lost many of their family members, the survived countless hardship and wars. They were practically slaves under the Japanese and the French. They were torture physically and mentally, they were always hungry.... long story short, their life is the kind of life you pray you never have. And yet, they never have back pain, sciatica, tinnitus,... That made me thought, if Freud was right then they would all be paralyzed with pain and anxiety forever. Their life is doom. The same would be for millions of those people all over the world in Somalia, India, Cambodia, North Korea... It doesn't make sense isn't it? tms rarely happen to them. Then why we blamed it on our childhood?
I know some people suffered from tms for 10, 20, even 30 or more years. If our mind is smart enough to create these pain symptoms to distract us from some painful thought in our unconscious mind about something happened long ago when we were 6 years old, why it is not smart enough to stop the pain like, say after 5 or 10 days? What keep this distraction in place for 20 years? Why can our unconscious mind switch from that painful thought to some other more pleasant thought? Why did it has to get stuck on that one stupid painful thought? This doesn't make sense to me.
Another observation, if you think about it, all those "programs" that dealt with mindbody health out there have one thing in common when we use them to treat our tms/anxiety, they all have one goal: which is try to help us shift our focus away from our pain, our symptoms, onto something else. Programs from Dr Sarno or Dr Claire Weeke. Programs like yoga, meditation, positive selftalk,... They all do that, help us not focusing on our pain/anxiety. Help us not fear it. Help us not allow the symptoms over taken our mind, our thoughts.
When your symptoms became insignificant, when it no longer the center of your thought, it just died out. For the pain symptoms to last months and years, we have to get stuck in a pain <-> fear loop. What better at holding our attention, our focus than fear? Pain created fear. Fear made all these changes to our body's chemistry which produced more pain, more fear, more pain, more fear, more.... you get the picture. Now if we can just remove one of those 2 components, our problem will be solve. Remove the pain there will be no more fear. Remove the fear, no more pain. If there is a drug that would completely remove all pain from our neck, our back, our legs... would we still be here discussing about tms? Well, we don't have that drug yet so the only thing we can do now is to remove component: Fear. We have to think of the pain/anxiety like a rubber snake. It look scary until you realize it is not real. If we can accept that the pain/anxiety is not real, it is not harmless or permanent, we're on way to a pain free life.
So my formula to conquer my pain/anxiety is:
- Remove my fear of my symptoms.
- Work on de-conditioning my body to rid myself of that left over 10% pain.
- Remove as much stress and negative thoughts from everyday living as possible to prevent tms/anxiety from coming back.
Maybe you need that 10% pain. If you were 100% free what would life be like? |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2012 : 17:32:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Wodg
Maybe you need that 10% pain. If you were 100% free what would life be like?
Like the Buddha! :) That big fat happy Buddha you see in front of many asian restaurants.
The true is: life is suffering. The more we want the more we suffer. If we can learn to let go, learn to live with less, learn to forgive, learn to be content with what we have, we will have less pain, less suffering.
The happiest people I've met in all my years of travel, the most contented people are usually the people with the least. They have so little and yet they have so much, they have much more than we all do, they have each others and their beliefs. As long as they have each others that's all that matter. |
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Wodg
Australia
89 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2012 : 21:31:45
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quote:
Originally posted by balto
quote:
Originally posted by Wodg
Maybe you need that 10% pain. If you were 100% free what would life be like?
Like the Buddha! :) That big fat happy Buddha you see in front of many asian restaurants.
The true is: life is suffering. The more we want the more we suffer. If we can learn to let go, learn to live with less, learn to forgive, learn to be content with what we have, we will have less pain, less suffering.
The happiest people I've met in all my years of travel, the most contented people are usually the people with the least. They have so little and yet they have so much, they have much more than we all do, they have each others and their beliefs. As long as they have each others that's all that matter.
;)
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Aussie
Australia
87 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 00:30:33
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quote:
Originally posted by tennis tom
quote:
Originally posted by Aussie
... I just want to get back to doing the sports i love and get back to a normal life. If someone who reads this can offer anything for me at my current "stuck" stage i would be very grateful.
Thanks for reading.
Aussie,
You don't have to self-analyze yourself. You are stuck in a state of paralysis by analysis. Quit digging into your emotional past. Your subconscious only needs to absorb your new TMS belief that the pain is real but benign, harmless and will eventually dissolve away.
Read this excerpted from the article cited below:
"Manage your pain with "distraction"
...“one of the best ways to tap into the system is through distraction. Many people suffering from chronic pain have an impulse to withdraw from day-to-day life, Thernstrom says, but withdrawing often makes the pain worse.
"Trying to focus on other things and trying to go about your life — even when you feel like you're pretending — really is the best pain treatment," she says. Distracting the mind "literally keeps your brain from generating pain."
..."When pain is the first or second thing in your mind, life just isn't worth living," she says. "When pain is the fifth or sixth thing in your consciousness. It's in the background of your thoughts and no longer drives you crazy."
The full article is here:
http://www.huliq.com/10282/holiday-body-pain-linked-christmas-stress-causing-tension-myositis-syndrome
Thanks Tom that makes sense to me. I went surfing twice today and didnt really notice pain at all until i got back home and it intensified. It has always baffled me that along as i wasn't focused on my pain it would be less intense. I have to work on trying to get to that state permanently now and i'll be happy. |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 05:13:09
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Thanks Lynn.
I would also like to ask Hillbilly and Balto if they have any medical conditions now. I mean anything that you may take pills for or any symptoms. Now of course I'm not talking about occasional minor things like we got when we were teenagers. Once again thanks in advance, it would help my understanding. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 06:58:07
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Thanks Lynn.
I would also like to ask Hillbilly and Balto if they have any medical conditions now. I mean anything that you may take pills for or any symptoms. Now of course I'm not talking about occasional minor things like we got when we were teenagers. Once again thanks in advance, it would help my understanding.
The only condition I have now is hair loss. I've been loosing my hair for years. I used to think it is tms/anxiety related but now after seeing that my dad and all my brothers also loose their hair, I came to conclude that it is genetic and blamed my dad for it.
I only take some fish oil pill and vitamin D3 every day.
Ace1, what condition are you having now? or you're just doing research on tms? |
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Hillbilly
USA
385 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 08:25:05
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Ace,
I don't have any medical conditions now. I have no pain at all, and I haven't for years. I don't have trouble sleeping. I don't have a gurgling bowel. I don't shake when I try to write or talk in front of others.
After going through this hell, I was filled with a sense of doom that it would come back. So I set out to keep going, to stretch myself a bit to keep challenging my nervous system to build resistance. I believe I and most of you were born with little resistance in the nervous system, genetically. This can be built up gradually.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 08:39:37
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| Balto I'm kind of doing research to see what happens when someone is fully cured of tms. I work with cancer and almost everyone I have seen has tms prior to their diagnosis. I also believe their disease takes off once they know they have cancer. I do think hair loss is also related and I think it kind of is like when we see other family members with something we tend to get it bc we believe we will! I do agree with all your posts on being at peace which I believe is the ultimate cure. However how to achieve that is the question especially if your working a usually high tension job and have multiple small kids and if you have been so used to reacting out of peace in your normal day. I still have some mild tms symptoms occasionally but it keeps getting better and better. it shifts from back to gi and sometimes neck and headache. I found that deconditioning each specific situation by affirmations have been extremely effective. I remember you mentioning that before and that was helpful, thanks. Challenging, even though you may not be afraid of what the symptoms can do puts you somewhat out of peace, which is in a way why i wasnt sure if challenging was the right thing or if going into peace first, then doing whatever activity was more right maybe you can clarify that. What I have concluded is that you have to try to do whatever it is that might hurt and decondition yourself by speaking affirmations and calming yourself down while doing it. Thanks for all your input |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 08:43:41
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| Thanks hillbilly this is the kind of thing I was trying to understand. The fully cured person seems to have no medical conditions. They are just back to the way they were when they were kids |
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Wodg
Australia
89 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 08:49:06
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quote:
Originally posted by balto
quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Thanks Lynn.
I would also like to ask Hillbilly and Balto if they have any medical conditions now. I mean anything that you may take pills for or any symptoms. Now of course I'm not talking about occasional minor things like we got when we were teenagers. Once again thanks in advance, it would help my understanding.
The only condition I have now is hair loss. I've been loosing my hair for years. I used to think it is tms/anxiety related but now after seeing that my dad and all my brothers also loose their hair, I came to conclude that it is genetic and blamed my dad for it.
I only take some fish oil pill and vitamin D3 every day.
Ace1, what condition are you having now? or you're just doing research on tms?
I'm pretty much TMS stressed 24/7 for the last 20 years but have a thick head of hair (prematurely grey) although my younger brother is seriously gone for the baldness. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 09:00:52
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I truly think Fear is the biggest source of fuel for our tms fire. If we can elliminate fear from our thoughts, our mind, we will cure ourself of many disease. I know many people believe in what I said, but their problem is they don't know how to remove fear from their mind. For me, I just made up my mind and refuse to fear. I refuse to let fear run my life no matter what happen. Here is the 10 great willpower quotes and one of them may set free the motivation you need to reach your own seemingly impossible aim: removing fear from your mind.
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“To assert your willpower is simply to make up your mind that you want something, and then refuse to be put off. In short, think about what you want and hold to that thought. Believe in it as a reality, regardless of what may appear to be true. This is willpower in action, and anyone can do it.” – Phillip Cooper
“The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.” – Bobby Knight
“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.” – James Gordon
“The will is the keystone in the arch of human achievement. It is the culmination of our complex mental faculties. It is the power that rules minds, men and nations.” – Thomas Parker Boyd
“If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower.” – Adolf Hitler
“Willpower is essential to the accomplishment of anything worthwhile.” – Brian Tracey
“Great souls have wills…..feeble ones have only wishes.” – Chinese Proverb
“Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.” – Dan Millman
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” – Pearl S. Buck
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 09:43:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Balto I'm kind of doing research to see what happens when someone is fully cured of tms.
Ace1, I assume you're familiar with the works of Dr. Bernie Siegel with cancer, if not he's very complementary to TMS thinking.
Here's a link to him:
http://berniesiegelmd.com/
Regarding being "fully cured of TMS", I don't think this is possible since it's part of the human condition. We may understand TMS knowledge and use it to overcome symptoms as they arise but as long as we are on the planet and interact with it and others, it will pop-up from time to time disguised in various unpredictable forms. We can learn to minimize TMS stress by learning to deal with it or retreating to environments that are less stressful like a monestary, an ashram or solitude in the wilderness, but TMS creating situations will likely present themselves and what we can do is learn to recognize them as such and roll with the punches. |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 10:18:15
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| Hi in regards to the hair loss I think stress can affect different people in different ways like one person who wears glasses the other has back pain etc. it may be that the stress energy needs to discharge in one way or another depending on what you think about the most |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2012 : 19:38:49
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Balto I'm kind of doing research to see what happens when someone is fully cured of tms. I work with cancer and almost everyone I have seen has tms prior to their diagnosis. I also believe their disease takes off once they know they have cancer. I do think hair loss is also related and I think it kind of is like when we see other family members with something we tend to get it bc we believe we will! I do agree with all your posts on being at peace which I believe is the ultimate cure. However how to achieve that is the question especially if your working a usually high tension job and have multiple small kids and if you have been so used to reacting out of peace in your normal day. I still have some mild tms symptoms occasionally but it keeps getting better and better. it shifts from back to gi and sometimes neck and headache. I found that deconditioning each specific situation by affirmations have been extremely effective. I remember you mentioning that before and that was helpful, thanks. Challenging, even though you may not be afraid of what the symptoms can do puts you somewhat out of peace, which is in a way why i wasnt sure if challenging was the right thing or if going into peace first, then doing whatever activity was more right maybe you can clarify that. What I have concluded is that you have to try to do whatever it is that might hurt and decondition yourself by speaking affirmations and calming yourself down while doing it. Thanks for all your input
You said: "Working in a high tension job" reminded me of Mother Teresa. I don't know of anyone who's job is more tensed than her job. She worked her whole life with the poorest of the poor. The sickest of the sick. And often with very little financial, emotional, and physical support. She gave homes for the dying, refuges for the care and teaching of orphans and abandoned children, treatment centers and hospitals for those suffering from leprosy, centers and refuges for alcoholics, the aged and street people—the list is endless.
She worked in a very demanding job, physically and mentally. Worked in a very depressing environment and yet she never have tms/anxiety.
I always wonder what protected people like her from getting all these tms/anxiety diseases? Is it her devotion to her God? Is it because she enjoyed what she did, a higher purpose?
What can we learn from her? from people like her? I'm sure her unconscious mind work the same like ours. Then what keep it from triggering all these pain symptoms from her and not us?
All I can think of is: she forgot herself. She live for others. |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2012 : 07:01:21
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| Dear Balto. Mother Teresa did have ailments- heart disease and anxiety with bad dreams. Look up her medical conditions on wikipedia. She was very old when she died and we know we cant prevent death, and everyone will die of something, so its hard to know what to make of it. Just something for us to ponder in the grand tms scheme. |
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lynnl
USA
109 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2012 : 13:22:50
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Mother Teresa was probably facing and dealing with all of the trials and tribulations encountered in her daily life.
It isn't the known and open issues in life that gnaw on you. inside. It's those that are hidden or buried deep inside.
Lynn |
Edited by - lynnl on 03/13/2012 00:10:57 |
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catmac
United Kingdom
57 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2012 : 14:26:15
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I went surfing twice today and didnt really notice pain at all until i got back home and it intensified. It has always baffled me that along as i wasn't focused on my pain it would be less intense. I have to work on trying to get to that state permanently now and i'll be happy.
[/quote]
Hi Aussie, weird you should say the above. I'm now on my third week of the programme and have noticed I can now get through work with the minimal of pain (and sometimes i dont notice it at all) but the minute I get home the pain kicks in big time. Does anyone else know if this is just part of the process to recovery? Does it mean we are heading in the right direction? |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2012 : 19:49:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Ace1
Dear Balto. Mother Teresa did have ailments- heart disease and anxiety with bad dreams. Look up her medical conditions on wikipedia. She was very old when she died and we know we cant prevent death, and everyone will die of something, so its hard to know what to make of it. Just something for us to ponder in the grand tms scheme.
Too bad. She deserved to have great health. She is one of my most respected person of all time. She is a Buddha, a saint. |
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What does "think psychological" mean?
