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andy64tms
USA
589 Posts |
 Posted - 09/05/2012 : 09:38:38
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I have been Windsurfing and away from the forum since May, and thought this a perfect opportunity to read Healing Back Pain once again. I had not read it since my very simple back recovery in 2000. While in the fresh air away from people, I was able to really read every detail and message, I did not rush and absorbed many new ideas.
At the end of Dr Sarno’s book I had more questions than answers. So I ordered SteveO’s “The Great Pain Deception”. In one of his postings he mentioned a champion golf player who sabotaged her game for fear of making a victory speech. I was somehow attracted to this story and was very keen to read more of his personal experiences.
When the book came I approached it with some trepidation and nervousness, and just looked at it for several weeks. I’m not kidding! I’d seen the way SteveO writes with candid honesty, what did this book contain? All I could do was to read the reviews, acknowledgements and forward.
One day I picked a quiet time and with determination started to read Steve’s prologue. I immediately related to his back pains and story, and felt very comfortable reading. Then I got to the paragraph about tension and perfectionism. I turned over the page and read the next sentence. “Perfectionists are also constantly angry, but they cannot sense it.”
As these words sunk in I shivered, and tears welled up in my eyes. In denial I tried to blink them away, but too late - splat, a tear dropped onto page one. I had not read a single page yet and Steve’s book already had me in tears.
I thought to myself: “Pay attention, your body is trying to tell you something.” Remember what happened when you ignored your appendix pains, and that time you walked on your broken foot for two weeks?” Did I have hidden rage due to my perfectionism? Had I hidden resentment for being the way I am, how could this be? My emotional tears told me I truly had, and I did not know this might have added to my hidden rage pool, I simply hadn’t thought about it.
I reflected that I am a confirmed perfectionist. I have worn this badge proudly for 60 years or so. My career as a mechanical designer and the thousand of drawings I’d done, no mistakes allowed! I thought about my home construction projects, hobbies and auto repairs that have been tackled with the utmost attention and detail, my standards maintained that everything had to be done properly, no shoddy workmanship allowed!
All of a sudden the word perfectionist had a new meaning with negative connotations. It’s described as a “disorder”, even though it has positive and negative attributes. I took an on line test of ten questions. Yes I am a perfectionist, and yes, it’s bad for me, I have been as Dr. Sarno stated in HBP “very hard on myself”. I will start journaling about this new topic and will try and make it amusing, for up to now my perfectionism has been a joke on me. Now it’s my turn to laugh!
Thank you SteveO for that one sentence, it was my light bulb moment.
Foot note: After drying my tears I continued reading, what wonderful Insights into the complexities of TMS.
Andy
Past TMS Experience in 2000, with success.
Taking a break from Wiki Edu. due to windsurfing priorities
Charlie horse on neck for 20 years. (to be evicted soon.)
Books:
Healing Back Pain
Unlearn your Pain
The Great Pain Deception |
Edited by - andy64tms on 09/05/2012 09:40:39 |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2012 : 17:54:20
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Andy thanks for the nice email it reminded me that I hadn't been here.
I'm glad something connected with you. I had many of those moments of clarity. I remember my first one. I had just read HBP and I didn't believe a word of it, other than Dr. Sarno had ratted out my private personality to the public. But not long after that I was at the gas station filling my tank and a gust of bitter cold wind cut right through me; for a moment I had no pain. That was the first time I thought that my pain could indeed be a distraction, a focused-based obsession, and could be defeated.
I had many other moments, most are in the book, where time stood still, in what seemed to be an eternity. Even today they are fresh in my mind's eye.
Days later after reading HBP I was going to try to stand up in severe pain. As I stood up I forced all of my energy into thinking, "the pain's not there, the pain's not there...the pain's not there..." As I stood up the pain was not there, for about 5 seconds. Another moment frozen in time, another piece of the healing puzzle in place.
A year and a half later my pain was gone after 30 years. Each moment added synergistically to the previous until the process was complete.
Those moments like you just had are a "uniting of consciousness" as what is known and what is unknown suddenly come together.
I was especially interested to read you say, "One day I picked a quiet time and with determination started to read Steve’s prologue." As you know after reading the book, I used the example from the Tao Te Ching, "muddied waters let stand will clear and the mud will go the bottom, and we can live in a clear ambient." Adding to Houston Smith, "but we are so harassed by the avalanche of distraction and demands and duties, many of which we impose on ourselves, that there's no time to know thyself... and what one ultimately lets go of is ego, this clamorous ego with its demands."
That is key to moments of clarity, the widening of the proxemic space; no one around to necessitate ego as the unconscious waters calm and the negative chatter dies. Every great prophet went into the desert or the caves, or a mountaintop in seclusion. They did not head into the city to see clearer.
Thanks for contacting me.
Happiness first...
Steve |
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drh7900
USA
194 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2012 : 09:26:40
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Thanks for sharing that, Andy.
You know, before reading HBP and "The Great Pain Deception", I don't think I would have ever considered myself a perfectionist. What I have realized is that I am very much a perfectionist with possibly more subtle "symptoms". I'd be interested to take that online quiz you took...do you have a link?
I can't remember which book it was in...perhaps HBP or MBP, but there was something that made me stop and think and realize that I had perfectionist qualities. The mention that procrastination is a perfectionist trait...I am a chronic procrastinator. Sometimes I think about putting something off, and then I decide to wait. I thought that my birth month, September, would be a good "National Procrastination Month" but decided that we should wait until October to recognize it. Point and case...I procrastinate. When I realized that one of the reasons we procrastinate is due to the fear of not being able to do something perfectly...what a revelation that was! I started noticing perfectionist traits in myself left and right after that...eesh!
And then there's the internal turmoil of trying to be perfect by not being a perfectionist...
"...and the yin chases the yang...as this becomes that..." - TGPD by SteveO
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Dustin |
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glowgirl
USA
42 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2012 : 11:13:33
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I too was very motivated to take the next step in my TMS healing via SteveO's book. He helped makes sense of everything i read on this forum, and Dr. Sarno and others, with his story and in depth analyses.
As a writer myself i know how much reviews mean to an author. for me a way to thank SteveO was to write a review on Amazon.com.
but i'll also thank SteveO again here too. I can only imagine how much time it takes to answer so many so thoughtfully and i do feel his commitment to spread the word. I think of him often.
For me TMS is not a "got it!! in one second" kind of AHA! it is sinking in little by little, my mind has to come around, there are so many concepts. My mind has a lot to digest, refute, let in: "Pain isn't really there... perfectionism... (me?!).... repressed memories... healing is possible... (other people, sure, but me?!)... go have fun... look at MY LIFE.... deal with it... who cares if I have a real excuse for why i feel the way i do..." and so on.
I have needed all the help i can get, i want the story sold and told in as many ways as possible. I am so grateful to MANY on this board, MANY!!! and SteveO is one whose message really reached out to me and helped me further my journey, which I am still on... glad to hear about others. |
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andy64tms
USA
589 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2012 : 12:38:48
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Dustin- Here is one of the perfectionist tests that I took on line.
http://www.quizmoz.com/quizzes/Personality-Tests/a/Are-you-a-Perfectionist.asp
I did two of them for a second opinion. I would print out the results unless you want to log on. I was shocked at one of them when the result told me that I had a score of 80 compared to the average of 50.You will also do better to use the word “quiz” in your search.
I agree with you over your procrastination remark. Yesterday I put a windsurfing sail away covered with mud for the first time. My attitude was that I did not care about it being dirty. Not so, when I arrived home in the dark I was compelled to hose it off. I’d fallen into the trap of classic procrastination. I would have been better off leaving it dirty! Perfectionism can be quite an amusing trait, but can drive you to serious consequences.
Shall we start spelling perfectionist backward to prove we are not? I think it more important to become more aware of what it does to our internal turmoil and laugh at it. Laughter = not taking seriously.
Glowgirl- I’m nearly at the end of SteveO’s book, I will put a review on Amazon as you suggest when I’m finished. I’m envious of your writing skills; I’ve been drawing all my life.
Andy
Past TMS Experience in 2000, with success.
Taking a break from Wiki Edu. due to windsurfing priorities
Charlie horse on neck for 20 years. (to be evicted soon.)
Books:
Healing Back Pain
Unlearn your Pain
The Great Pain Deception |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2012 : 23:25:36
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Glowgirl I was happy to read your post here. I'll jog over to Amazon to see what you have written, but people often use different names in the real world so I probably won't know who you are. But thank you.
I knew while writing that it would connect with somebody who wanted to heal. The thousands of hours of work are worth every second when one person heals. I wrote that book for people like you, and so I wrote it for you. People can heal if they look deep into what I wrote, and what I meant by each chapter, why the chapter is in the book, what it has to do with TMS. There's a reason the topics are in there. For ex., I put the YouTube double slit experiment in there by Dr. Quantum for a reason, to make a point about slow healing.
The proof that it works is in the people who are emailing me, telling me it worked. If someone does not heal, there is strong unconscious resistance, and deeper awareness must be obtained through a deeper willingness to look even deeper within. All the answers to healing are within the self, the true self, not the constructed one.
I've been having people email me to say they are afraid to open my book. They're afraid it just might heal them, that they will have to face punishing emotions that threaten to uncover something too painful. But it doesn't have to be that way. When I read Andy's post in this thread it reminded me of those emails. He shed a single tear on page one, as if what was about to be uncovered was a deeply buried truth, as light re-enters the body. To proselytize for CS Lewis, I believe in Truth as I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see it, but because of its existence I can see everything else.
The TMS story does need told in every corner of the planet, in many different ways. I try to stop here when I can to see what the word on the TMS-street is.
Everyone can heal. And when they aren't healing they need to understand why they are resisting. It takes a concentrated look at the self, beginning with the loss of fear through understanding.
Steve
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How SteveO made me cry.
