What is TMS?
Tension Myoneural Syndrome
To help you understand some of the content on this page, you will need to understand what I mean when I say TMS. Tension Myoneural Syndrome was first coined by Dr. John Sarno. Dr. Sarno worked at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation in New York. Early in his career he started to see patients with chronic pain. He saw many patients with back pain, leg pain, joint pain, carpel tunnel and more. At first he followed the regular procedures that most doctors did, and that were standard for patients with these types of complaints. After some years however, Sarno became frustrated with the lack of results and inconsistencies in treating people with pain. He began to search for something else that could explain what was happening. He became suspicious that perhaps these patients had been given the wrong diagnosis and thus were not being treated in the most effective manner. Sarno began to suspect that there was more going on here than appeared at first glance. He had a feeling that the mind was involved and began to implement practices to explore his hunch.
Dr. John Sarno
Sigmund Freud
The people he was seeing had plenty of physical abnormalities on x rays and MRI’s that could potentially explain the experience of pain they were having, and yet some patients had none of these abnormalities. In fact, he found out that many patients had physical abnormalities such as herniated discs, bulges, and nerve compression, but no pain. This led to him to inquire about what other factors could be contributing to his patients suffering. What he found was that unconscious emotions were playing a big role.
Sarno began to study how chronic pain, hysteria and other psychosomatic problems were treated in the past. He explored the work of Frued, Franz Alexander, Jung and other pioneers of psychology to create a modern bridge between mind and body. He saw that many of these physical problems his clients were seeing had the same illusory qualities that, in the past, were known to be psychosomatic and generated in the deepest regions of the brain. As Sarnos discoveries continued, he started to treat his patients with back pain in a different way. Instead of prescribing the usual physiotherapy, pain pills and bed rest, he began to encourage clients to journal about what was happening in their lives, particularly any intense feelings that could be contributing to their conditions. He began to relate to his patients that they had to start to trust their body again, and not fear the pain. The results were encouraging. Patients who had experienced pain of all kinds for years had their pain simply disappear after acknowledging and expressing painful and powerful emotions like rage. People who were afraid to move in case they were to damage their body further began to have the confidence to return again to the activities they loved.
Even patients who showed herniated discs, bulges, protrusions and pinched nerves on imaging scans had their pain dissolve and the most fascination part was sometimes the symptom(s) vanished right before their eyes. This reinforced the idea even more that these common pain maladies had much in common with the psychosomatic ailments that were very common in the recent past. The thing is, for those maladies of the past, it was not so much a medical doctor you went to see, but a shrink or someone like Jung or Freud. Sometimes even after just one visit with Sarno reassuring his patients that there was nothing wrong with their spine or body, that they were generally healthy, and that what was going on was a simple trick of the mind, was enough to dramatically reduce or get rid of the symptoms. As his work and results evolved he grew more confident than ever that our modern western medical system had some serious holes in its practices. His patients were healing long term. Meanwhile patients treated with conventional practices had much usually short term results and often showed a reliance on continued physical therapies and less freedom to enjoy an active life.
Although his findings were inspiring his patients and himself, Sarno’s peers in the medical field often accused him of quackery. Unfortunately he and his practice were kept in the basement….literally, his office was in the basement of the institute. Over the course of his career Sarno wrote numerous books detailing his treatments and views of mind- body medicine. His hunch, he was seeing, was bang on. His patients came to him with diagnosis’ like ‘herniated disc, sciatica, repetitive stress injury, frozen shoulder’ ect, and he began to see that most of these problems were very similar. The diagnosis his patients had been given was only addressing the physical side of their experience and ignoring the strong emotions that were underneath and at the heart of these conditions. Enter TMS. TMS was the diagnosis Sarno gave most of his patients. The name basically refers to unconscious tension in the body, caused by repressed emotions generating physical symptoms. Ever notice how when you get angry your head may pound? Or when a car screeches behind you your heart starts to beat to another level of intensity? TMS is similar. Sarno discovered repressed rage, and the toll that process takes on the body, was the silent cause of so many pain syndromes he was seeing. The uncovering, acknowledging and expressing of these emotions was the ‘cure.’
The physiologic process that could describe what was happening with people experiencing TMS came later. Dr. Candice Pert uncovered receptors all throughout the body that basically processed what she called ‘molecules of emotions.’ Her findings indicated that emotions were not just in the brain, they were in the body as well. She concluded her findings stating that, “In the beginning of my work, I matter of factly presumed that the emotions were in the head or the brain. Now I would say they are really in the body as well. They are expressed in the body and are part of the body. I can no longer make a strong distinction between brain and body.” Candice Pert was able to show scientifically that emotions effect more than just our mood but play a vital role in our health or a dis-eased state. Sarno also theorized that that mild oxygen deprivation in nerve, muscle, and connective tissue, modulated by the brain, could bring on the sensation of pain in his patients. Later it was found that people with Fibromyalgia, another form of chronic pain, were shown to have oxygen deprivation in those tissues.
The autonomic nervous system (usually outside of conscious control except for monks and yogis and some normys) can quickly change the flow of blood and oxygen to most parts of the body. (Think of when you get a back spasm) something similar is happening here.
Or when your cheeks go red after an embarrassing incident. Sarno found that people had a tendency to disconnect and repress the intense feeling of rage and that the mind was helping them do this by creating a distraction in the form of pain.
Sounds crazy right? I thought so too. But I ended up using these findings to heal intense chronic pain which I had for almost two years. Thousands of other people have done the same with everything from fibromyalgia to autoimmune conditions (including my brother.)
If we take a look at TMS from a pulled back view we find that many other cultures and people through out history have understood to connection between mind, body, health and dis-ease. We find that there hasn’t always been such a reliance on surgeries and pharmaceuticals. TMS, as I see it, is part of a bold rediscovery by a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to tell it like he saw it and was not happy going with the status quo and consequential lack of results for his clients. Sarnos’ TMS, helped make the bridge between medical science and a more holistic form of medicine.
So the question you have to ask yourself is? Are you experiencing TMS or another diagnosis? Would you accept the idea that your mind is powerful enough to protect you from feeling rage? Powerful enough to create physical pain and symptoms? One diagnosis has a journey. One of self discovery, self inquiry and healing from the inside out. The other could be surgery, pills, a less active life and ongoing physical therapy. There is no right or wrong here. Whatever works for you is the best option. For me I wasn’t content with being in pain all the time. I wanted to get back to the sports and lifestyle I loved. I committed to the TMS diagnosis because I didn’t have much to lose. I thought hell with it, I’d rather give it a shot then be be a prisoner to chronic pain the rest of my life. I saw that even with conventional treatments I would have to rely on so much just to keep the pain away. I also started to see so many inconsistencies with what I was being told was going on in my body.
Ask yourself which name you are giving to your experience, and if you like the agreements that that name carries.
One trusts the body to heal and be in harmony but may require some honest self inquiry and a change in lifestyle. Not so much with diet and restrictions, but with the honesty about how you really feel. This can be tough. The other carries a profound mistrust in the intelligence of the body, and you may have that mistrust and fear for a long time, if not till you kick the bucket. One may tie you to a lifestyle you might not prefer.
Which diagnosis would you choose..?
So in in this work, TMS and chronic pain are synonymous. They describe painful chronic symptoms of many kinds, that have a physical aspect and experience, but ultimately are originated and/or prolonged by the mind to usually serve a purpose for the one experiencing them.
Check out http://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/ for some inspiration!