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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
 Posted - 02/12/2013 : 07:00:46
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How MBS/TMS develops
http://www.unlearnyourpain.com/moodle/mod/page/view.php?id=10
Everyone that I’ve ever met has MBS/TMS to some degree or another at some time in their lives. When we get embarrassed, our face will turn red. This is a sign of an emotion causing a physical reaction. When we are asked to speak in front of 1,000 people, our stomach will tighten up. This is also a sign of a physical reaction to an emotion. When we have a stressful day, we may get a headache.
TMS occurs when the stresses of life trigger emotions that cause our bodies to react by producing physical symptoms. The symptoms, such as pain, are real. They are very real. They are not imagined or “in your head.”
The most important things for you to realize is you’re your pain (and any other Mind Body Syndrome symptoms) is real; that emotions are very powerful forces that can cause physical symptoms; and finally, that if you have a form of the Mind Body Syndrome, you are not crazy. I know this because I’m not crazy and I have MBS/TMS. I repeat: almost everyone I have ever met has some physical symptoms due to stress and their reactions to it.
One of the doctors at our hospital told me that he had applied for a prestigious fellowship program and was waiting to learn if he had been accepted. During those weeks, he didn’t feel that he was anxious or particularly stressed. However, every morning he woke up with pain in his jaw and his wife reported that he was grinding his teeth at night. He considered seeing a dentist or an ENT doctor but put it off and his pain worsened. A few weeks later, he found out that he was accepted into the fellowship program and his teeth grinding and pain quickly disappeared. Had he been rejected from that program, he may have developed a TMJ (temporal-mandibular joint) syndrome and sought medical care. He would not have connected the mental stress and emotions to the disorder had he not known me and my interest in Mind Body Syndromes. The fascinating thing about his story is that he was unaware that he was feeling stressed about the situation. In fact, he told me he thought he was handling the whole process rather well. What was causing him to develop physical pain? Why did he grind his teeth while he was sleeping?
The answers lie in the mind. The mind is very complicated and everyone reacts differently to different stresses. However, we all share some things in common. We all need to be loved, nurtured and protected. We all need to grow and develop and become independent. We all have thoughts and emotions and memories. When stressful events occur in our lives, we react to these events. How we react can vary dramatically. I saw a 37-year-old woman who sought my help for migraine headaches that developed when she was a child. She had seen dozens of doctors and been placed on countless medications for these headaches. I asked if she could remember the first headache she ever had. She quickly replied, “Of course, I got my first headache the day after my father was murdered.” As a child she was not offered counseling for her grief.
In some people, symptoms will be delayed. I saw a 45-year-old woman who had had abdominal pain for 13 years. She had never felt particularly cared for and nurtured as a child. (Whether she had been nurtured is not relevant, what is important is her perception of her childhood.) She married and divorced at an early age and had two children. Her second husband was very caring and loving. Unfortunately, he had been born with a congenital heart condition and became terminal a few years after they married. He did not want to be placed on life support when that time came and she honored his wishes. However, he wasn’t sure if this act conflicted with her religious beliefs. After he died, she didn’t grieve fully and upon the advice of her mother, married again rather quickly. Her new husband was kind, but worked as a high school teacher and band director and therefore was more available in the summer than in the fall and winter. Two years after her second husband passed away, she developed stomach pains. These stomach pains worsened each fall and eventually began to hurt her throughout the year. Later, she developed anxiety attacks in the afternoons, around 3:30 or 4 pm. She consulted four different gastroenterology specialists and had her gall bladder removed, but the pains continued. After many years of this and worsening pain and anxiety, she couldn’t work or continue her usual activities. She saw me for an office visit and we talked about her life and the possible relationship between the stresses in her life and her reactions to them and her abdominal pains and anxiety attacks. After taking my program, she began to see how her need for caring which was unmet as a child had transferred to her husbands. She saw how her conflict over the end of life issues and her guilt about her role caused her continuing anguish in her unconscious mind. She realized that her husband had died in the fall, and that her new husband was less available to her in the fall and she understood why her pain always intensified in the fall of the year. Finally, she reviewed her second husband’s death certificate and noted that he has passed away at about 4 pm. She diligently completed the exercises I recommended to her (which can be found on this web site). Her anxiety attacks and abdominal pain disappeared within a couple of weeks.
Our emotional memories are imprinted in our minds and are stored there. In fact, while regular memories are stored in the hippocampus, emotional memories are stored in the amygdala, in a deep section of the brain closely connected to the hypothalamus, the center of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls our breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and most of the normal functions of the body, including temperature control, motility of the bowels, and hundreds of other functions. The autonomic system is what gets activated during times of stress and produces the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, which turn on the fight or flight reaction.
When we get embarrassed, our faces turn red. That is a physical reaction to an emotion which is triggered by the autonomic nervous system. Everyone accepts this as a “normal” and expected reaction. This occurs because the blood vessels in the face become dilated and more blood is distributed to the cheeks. When we are stressed, blood flow is shifted to the big muscles of the arms and legs (by a process called vaso-dilation) and away from the gut, the hands and the feet (by vaso-constriction). Therefore, this system can control blood flow to every small area of the body. In the Mind Body Syndrome, stress and our emotional reaction to stress (even if our reactions are unconscious, i.e. we are not aware of these emotions or reactions to emotions) causes blood flow to be shunted away from certain muscles, tendons, and nerves by vaso-constriction. Therefore, these tissues receive less oxygen and develop spasm and pain. It is important to emphasize that this pain is real!! The tissues are being affected and produce pain in the pain fibers that travel up to the brain, where of course we are able to feel the pain. This cascade of events is what causes pain and is responsible for the much of the neck aches, back aches, muscles pains and fibromyalgia-type pains that are so common in our society. Tension or stress headaches are also the result of this alteration in blood flow to the muscles around the head, neck and scalp. Migraine headaches are due to a process triggered by the brain that first produces vaso-dilation and then vaso-constriction to the head and scalp.
Another action of the autonomic nervous system is to cause spasm and relaxation of the muscles that line the walls of our foodpipe (esophagus), stomachs, intestines and our urinary bladder. These organs must have a very finely coordinated pattern of spasm and relaxation to swallow food, move it through the intestines, and start and stop urination and defecation. Therefore, when we have stress and emotional reactions to stress, it is quite easy to develop physical symptoms that occur in these areas. Almost all of the adult patients that I see for the Mind Body Syndrome have had some episodes of heartburn or abdominal pains in their lives. Gastric-esophageal reflux disorder (or GERD) is extremely common these days. Irritable bowel syndrome is also a very common syndrome that consists of diarrhea, constipation and abdominal pains. Both of these disorders can be cured most of the time by using the approach outlined in this book. A patient of mine developed stomach pains upon taking his first dose of a blood pressure medicine. The pains worsened over several days and the medication had to be stopped, but still the pain persisted throughout the day despite the addition of strong acid blocking medications. Finally, he saw a specialist who looked into his esophagus and stomach via an endoscope and he found that there was nothing seriously wrong. The pains immediately went away and he started back on the same blood pressure medication without any problems. What was going on? A review of his family story revealed that he currently was the same age that his father was when he died of cancer of stomach. Even though he was unaware of any emotional reactions at the time, taking a blood pressure pill triggered thoughts and fears in his unconscious mind of death and reminded him of his father’s death. His mind produced activation of the autonomic nervous system which produced abdominal pain or esophageal reflux due to alteration in blood flow and/or alterations in spasm and relaxation of the esophagus and stomach.
The most recent addition to the Mind Body Syndrome list is a disorder called interstitial cystitis; a disorder of bladder pain, urgency, and frequency of urination. I have seen several patients with this “new” disorder who have been helped by the recognition that they in fact were not suffering from an incurable disorder, but one that was caused by reactions to life events that were highly stressful.
Finally, psychological reactions can also occur due to powerful underlying emotions. I have a patient who developed severe sadness when his wife worked on Sunday afternoons, although he never had any symptoms when she worked on any other day of the week. He had no idea why this happened, but his therapist helped him look at his past and they uncovered the cause. It turned out that as a child he lived with an aunt and uncle during the week and returned to his mother on the weekends. Tragically, his uncle abused him physically and it was Sunday afternoons when he left the comfort and love of his mother to return to the “evil” uncle. When his wife left him on Sunday afternoons, it would trigger the long buried emotional responses and this lead to depression on those occasions. It could just as easily have led to back pain or headaches. That is how the body works. The fact that we get physical and emotional symptoms due to stress and our emotional reaction to stress (even if we’re not aware that we are having an emotional reaction) is basically normal. Everyone has physical and psychological symptoms in reaction to stress. It confirms the fact that we are human because that is how the human brain works.
Dr. John Sarno has written several excellent books on the subject, including Mind over Back Pain, The Mindbody Prescription, and The Divided Mind. I have seen many people who have been able to cure themselves of their symptoms by simply reading one of Dr. Sarno’s books and applying the principles to their mind and body. In fact, one man who had suffered from fibromyalgia for over 15 years found that all of his pain disappeared after reading only 20 pages of The Mind Body Prescription! I told him that was a record and congratulated him on this insight and his cure. I figured that he wouldn’t really need to use my program. However, a couple of weeks later he called to tell me that his symptoms came back immediately when his son (who has caused him much grief) returned home for a visit and then disappeared again after the visit. He needed this program in order to learn how to prevent the re-emergence of pain. I have found that many people need more than just the education about the Mind Body Syndrome in order to get better. Many need to undergo psychotherapy to help them understand and cope with the emotional issues in their life. However, a great number of people have been able to help themselves by using an educational program, such as the one on this web site. This program includes an understanding of the Mind Body Syndrome but adds a detailed and systematic method for understanding and coping with physical and psychological symptoms. In addition, the exercises and meditations will help you to understand yourself much better and develop the attitudes and skills to prevent the MBS/TMS in the future. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 07:16:42
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It is interesting that Dr Schubiner also writes about the following example. Perhaps some of what he says resonates with your case:
A patient had a very difficult childhood
because his father was abusive to him and never spent time with him or cared for him.
After his parents divorced when he was 11 years old, he went to live with his father and when his father remarried, he was sent to live in a home for orphans and disturbed youth for 6 years until he turned 18. He had a tremendous amount of underlying anger and
resentment towards his father (and towards his mother who allowed this to happen).
However, he grew up without the development of any MBS type illnesses. When he was
35 years old, now employed and married with small children, he thought he was “over”
his traumatic youth. One day, his father was visiting the area, and he asked his dad to
stop by and see the grandchildren for the first time. His father came, was drunk at the
time, and left after 15 minutes. Within days, this patient developed severe abdominal
pain, back pain, and fatigue. For the ensuing five years, he couldn’t figure out or resolve
these symptoms despite seeing many doctors. When I saw him, I explained to him that
his father had poured the gasoline in the unconscious mind for his whole youth, and it
only took a small event (his father treating his children the same way that he treated the
patient) to light the match and trigger a massive outpouring of unconscious emotions
which caused severe MBS. |
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How MBS/TMS develops -- Howard Schubiner, MD
