The story continues...part 2

The condition that my body/mind was experiencing is known as TMS, or Tension Myositis Syndrome. This term was coined in the mid 80”s when a doctor began healing people of chronic pain using a different approach. He knew that pain was caused by the brain, as a danger signal, and all that the patients had to do was convince the brain that it was safe.

TMS happens when the flight or fight response (or freeze or fawn) gets switched on too often or gets switched on and doesn’t turn off. In my case, it got switched on and wouldn’t turn off, which is why i experienced so much shakiness. The brain perceives danger, and it slightly decreases the blood flow to different places in the body, which causes the muscles to contract with pain. My leg and foot actually turned purple, and my leg shortened by a couple inches.

There can be many different types of symptoms with TMS. The most common are skeletal musculature, digestive (IBS), migraines, and dizziness. But there are many, many others. None of them have anything to do with the body- it’s all a brain response. It’s all the brain perceiving danger.

I began reading all the science I could (I’m kind of a science nerd), and I found it fascinating. I then listened to many stories of people that were now symptom-free- using a mindbody approach to convince their brain that they were safe. I heard lots of different stories with lots of different symptoms, and lots of different modalities were used to get better. One of the most common traits of people with TMS is that they/we all share a personality trait. We are perfectionists (to ourselves), we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, and we really want people to like us. Every single TMS person I have ever met share the same qualities, and they were all very kind and sensitive people. It’s kind of funny that these are the kinds of qualities that are society likes most, when it is actually the most energy-draining one.

After I studied all that I could, I decided to get some personal help. I found a mindbody coach and joined his online coaching calls. In this group of people, with my coach’s guidance, I learned a ton about people, and what helps people get better, and what doesn’t. I also slowly began to decipher what my brain was perceiving as dangerous. Now, this is the interesting part, because there are many ways for the brain to perceive danger. It can see it in the environment (people, jobs, etc), it can see it in time (past, future), it can see it in the thoughts, and also in emotions. It can see it in the Unknown. And then, when you add on difficult symptoms- it sees it in the pain. The brain is highly irrational in its perception of danger, because it’s the subconscious part of the brain that is operating from old programs. So, you can be perfectly fine, but the brain does not believe so. This is the challenging part of recovery- getting the brain to believe that it is safe. Because if the brain has been on high-alert most of it’s life, those programs are hard-wired. I was able to recognize these tendencies/symptoms going all the way back to my childhood. I believe that I inherited them in utero from my mother who was a single 16 year old, and was probably terrified. Who knows what we inherited from our parents, but with chronic pain, we have great incentive to change all that.

I ended up working with my coach for about 5 months. It took about 4 months to get the shakiness to subside. But the pain symptoms were still fairly strong, and I still couldn’t walk without a limp and a cane. I also still had a few other symptoms. The body does keep score, and I began to be much more tuned to it as an instrument of consciousness. I was still in the early stages of learning so much more about the subconscious programs of my past.