The Great Stress Deception – Faulty TMS Advice is Making us Worse

This is a follow up to my previous blog where I let my readers in on the secret that is holding them back from a more stable permanent TMS chronic pain cure. This blog focuses on why that information might be a secret in the first place and some common misconceptions that I see perpetuated daily in online TMS support circles. This faulty TMS advice is undoubtedly making us worse! Obviously, this blog title is a play on the excellent book “The Great Pain Deception – Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse” by Steve Ozanich. Check it out if you haven’t already, it is a good one and not a source of faulty advice like the kind I read every day online. If most people stuck with Sarno and Ozanich, the blogs I am now writing would probably not be required or even make sense.

After first discovering Sarno books, when I next discovered the online TMS support world, I had an immediate healing set-back from the initial “miracle” I experienced while reading. I sipped the Kool-Aid that was easy to mentally digest, and readily available in the form of online advisement from well intentioned fellow pain fighters that stress and emotional pain relief leads to TMS chronic pain relief. Luckily, I recognized that this was not working, and I quickly pivoted back to my highlighted and tattered copies of Sarno books and some mindful awareness around my symptoms. As I expected, my body responded in a much more stable way.

I don’t have to spend time thinking about what emotions are causing TMS. It took quite a bit of reading, but I already learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that every emotion I have had since the day I was born is part of the reservoir of rage, sadness, and fear, that creates the TMS chronic symptom distractions in my body. Same as everyone else. Bingo, riddle solved! This is completely normal and is part of what we call being human. There isn’t anything else to find or do. Even if I do figure out the specific emotion or stress that is causing my pain today, there will be a different one tomorrow and every day after that. That is just how life and emotions roll.

My emotions may be herniated just the same as the discs in my spine, but both are completely normal and do not require “fixing” to make TMS physical symptoms go away. Neither negative emotion or structural abnormalities can generate pain in my body unless I expect that they can and unless I do not have a thorough understanding of the nature of the symptoms and unwavering confidence in my ability to control them.

After learning about TMS, you might want to commit to a new exercise program to increase your physical fitness and prove to yourself that there is nothing wrong with you physically. That is good and exactly what cures TMS. But you do not want to start and exercise program to relieve pressure on your discs that you incorrectly believe are causing your pain. The same activity will yield a different result depending on the mindset employed.

Similarly, you may want to journal to get yourself to a higher place of self understanding about the nature of your TMS, or to relieve depression symptoms, but you do not want to journal to fix stress or find emotions as an avenue to a long term TMS chronic pain cure.

It is all about the mindset. With either physical or emotional therapies, they will work as long as you uphold your commitment to the therapy and your expected result. If that slips even a little, you are back in pain and in treatment to relieve. My cure is no different except that my expected and realized outcomes are far easier to maintain on a long term permanent basis because they don’t require me to maintain ongoing therapies. You must learn how to adopt the mindset of a person that is an expert on what they know well. I can’t say it any better than Dr. Sarno himself.

“Awareness, insight, knowledge, and information were the magic medicines that would cure this disorder – and nothing else could do it.”

Dr. John Sarno – The Mind Body Prescription

You also have to be willing to shut down the external online and internal voices of limiting belief that will make an attempt at your higher-level success. I am certain I will be defending my own personal experience by some readers that are threatened by my cure and advisement on what I personally did to get here. It is human nature and part of the problem our society has in healing. Being in perpetual pain is extremely contagious and people do not like to suffer alone. Unlike a cold, you don’t have to be in physical contact to catch TMS chronic pain. This stuff spreads freely online.

I am that person that everyone hates or is skeptical of, that was cured by reading. I was mostly cured from years of daily chronic pain in just a few months from reading Sarno books and have remained cured for a decade. Do I have relapses? Maybe only three in the last ten years that were enough to get my attention and only because I had temporarily lost connection to the mindset I describe in this blog. Definitely not the result of avoiding stress for a decade or spending hours pinpointing what emotions I am repressing.

In addition to Sarno books my learning also comes from the ongoing plethora of advice from TMS support groups over the last ten years. Unfortunately, I typically learn more from what clearly isn’t working for people than what is. A lot of the TMS advice I read is written by people that are having a limited amount of success with TMS healing. And limited success at controlling their own limiting belief in general. Many freely offer advice and strategies, but they appear to mostly be self-soothing by looking for confirmation from others that their limited results are what is possible and should be expected.

I hear all the time that you can’t heal from reading alone and that you must “do the work” to make sure you feel safe, or that there is no such thing as a complete permanent cure from TMS. This has almost become and anthem to some. Sometimes the advice is clearly, if not consciously biased by something someone is selling. But other times, these limiting beliefs made public appear to be a coping mechanism for the limited believer. Here is some advice if you are that person. Regardless of how safe you feel down in a rabbit hole, you must come out of the hole if you want to get to the next level. The level that doesn’t require you to sit in a hole to feel safe and remain not in pain.

I do almost nothing that many claim are absolute requirements for TMS healing and likewise I get results the same people claim are not possible. Not only do my results not require these ongoing therapies and remedies, but I also clearly recognize the setback they can present. I can assure you; I am under stress all the time, and I have plenty of repressed emotions both of which do occasionally require my conscious attention. TMS chronic pain management does not require my constant attention and it hasn’t for a long time. I have a clear and unwavering understanding of how the subconscious distraction was working against me in the form of TMS chronic pain. The TMS chronic pain was a subconscious distraction from the emotions not a cause of them! That firm knowledge and understanding leads to an ultra-confident unwavering mindset that is also unhindered by limiting belief. That is what keeps pain completely separated from your emotional or physical state and what allows the cure to become permanent.

The difference between me and less successful TMS warriors is that it does not cross my mind that being under stress, feeling sad, or having repressed emotion should or can cause me TMS pain any more than sleeping wrong or hearing a pop sound from my back does. If I start to go down that rabbit hole with emotions, I pull myself out ASAP because I know where the hole leads. I already visited that same dark place with the bad degenerative disc disease mindset and pain trap.

If you are chasing stress relief or trying to pinpoint the emotions that are causing your TMS chronic pain to cure the pain, you are chasing a ghost and your long-term, permanent cure will remain exactly as you expect – IMPOSSIBLE.

You can unlearn your limiting belief and your chronic pain control mindset can be stable, ultra-confident, grateful, and powerful even when your emotions are not. Easier said than done, but you must learn to disconnect the emotional stories from the TMS chronic pain just like you did when you replaced the physical abnormality story with the emotional story.

You must link a new story that replaces the story that you are a victim of your emotions. The newly linked story is that you have an innate, unwavering superpower over chronic pain symptoms. That is how you release TMS Chronic pain from your life permanently!

I am not sure where this incorrect common knowledge about stress management and TMS management originated but it is everywhere now. Sure, Sarno discovered and wrote extensively about the mind-body emotional connection to TMS chronic pain, and I am mostly a Sarno purest. But my copies are full of highlighted passages he wrote assuring me that solving my emotions, finding my emotions, changing my emotions or solving stress does not solve TMS chronic pain! He stated that around 95% of his patients only needed acceptance of and knowledge about TMS and that 5% or less require further psychotherapy. He emphasized this by prescribing lectures to his patients, not therapy. His success rate was incredible using this method. What changed between then and now? The World Wide Web is what changed between then and now.

The problem in my opinion, is that the online TMS world is overpopulated with the 5%, and they want their group to be larger so they can feel more supported and safe. The 5% methods are also unfortunately more lucrative for the practitioner and the bias, even if unconscious, is obvious. I also believe that our society, in general, is much more coddled than the population Sarno treated in his practice 50 years ago. Most of the 95% that read Sarno or were originally treated by Sarno, healed their pain very quickly through reading, lectures and psychological shifts just like I did. You never see or hear from them or their pain again. They certainly didn’t return to their job working on the docks to tell everyone they are not feeling their feelings enough.

Many people in my opinion, can become addicted to emotional therapies almost like they can physical therapies. They might become uncomfortable with being too emotionally comfortable. Having a permanent cure can be a scary proposition when you have spent months or years soothing yourself to feel better. I can almost see the faces of some of my readers turning red. Sorry, you better start working on that rage now, before your next regularly scheduled pain attack.

I am not trying to convince people not to journal about emotions or work on stress management. Same with stretching and exercising, these pursuits are healthy when done in combination with the correct mindset. I am simply trying to show you that linking these activities to TMS chronic pain healing will not result in a permanent, long-term cure and expecting that they will, might stress you out and make your pain worse over time not better.

Same as chasing physical remedies. Sarno recommended that people get moving again and to exercise for TMS, but warned against physical therapies. The reason is that the physical therapies, even if well indented, can create a psychological link to an injury or physical problem that needs to be treated. I am seeing the same thing happening with all the emotional therapies. Yes, you need to think emotionally just like you need to resume physical activity. What you desperately need to avoid is adopting a mindset that there is any sort of underlying physical or emotional abnormality that requires repair in order to alleviate the symptoms.

If you are looking for the permanent cure, stick with me.

More on this subject to come because it is huge if you want to pull yourself from the rabbit hole cycle of pain and treatment and take your TMS chronic pain healing to the next level! The last couple of blogs focused on how not to treat TMS chronic Pain. Next, I will start diving into what I do instead.