This site originated with the idea of dealing with chronic pain and other mysterious, enduring symptoms, and delving into the emotional health issues that might be behind them.
My own chronic hand pain (diagnosed several times as Repetitive Stress Injury, from typing at the computer) disappeared entirely after I read New York University back doctor and medical school professor John Sarno’s book The Mindbody Prescription, and it unlocked a world of ideas and insights regarding emotional and physical health, which this site shares.
N.Y.U. back doctor and medical school professor John Sarno began to suspect chronic pain’s roots in emotions and stress during the 1970s, after a colleague suggested a link between repressed rage and the migraines from which he often suffered.
For Sarno, two decades practicing conventional back medicine made him increasingly disheartened by the failures of physical therapy and surgery to bring lasting cures. In the 1970s, he started to suspect chronic pain was rooted ultimately in emotional problems, rather than in the purely physical diagnoses he had learned in medical school.
Sarno started to encourage patients who seemed a bit more open-minded to look at their chronic pain in terms of their their emotional life. In his experience, the patients that then began to address and unlock emotional stresses saw themselves able to wiggle free not only from their back pain, but from other chronic emotional and physical conditions they were suffering as well.
Sarno labeled all of these emotionally-induced physical symptoms under one umbrella term: “TMS” – Tension Myositis Syndrome.
Common conditions that can be inspired by TMS include:
- Allergies
- Anxiety
- Asthma
- Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
- Bacterial imbalances in the body
- Carpel Tunnel Syndrome
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
- Chronic Muscle/Joint/Nerve Pain
- Depression
- Eating Disorders
- Eye Dryness
- Fibromyalgia
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Migraines
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Plantar Fasciitis
- Psoriasis
- Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI)
- Sexual Dysfunction (males and females)
- Taste Sensation Alteration/Disappearance
- Teeth Grinding (during sleep)
- Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD & TMJ – tightness and pain in jaw muscles)
- Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
After seeing my own chronic hand pain disappear in the Fall of 2005, I became endlessly fascinated in the relationship between emotional and physical health.
This site explores these issues, and I would love to hear your question, reactions, and related experiences, whether they go along with what I talk about, contradict it entirely, or anything in between. Email me at TMSmailTMS@gmail.com.
Thanks and best,
Good Morning,
I have a folliculitus decalvans, which is a scalp condition where, basically, it immunes system attacks the scalp, beginning at a central point and spreading outward.
I am French and I am working since 2006 in turkey. I am engineer in a company where the stress is permanent.
Soon I will have not hair if it continues.
Thanks for your advise and your help.
Ahmet Berktas
ahmet.berktas@gmail.com
00905072286170
Hey Ahmet,
I highly recommend Alice Miller’s books in addition to Sarno’s. Having resolved her own chronic health and emotional issues by unlocking pent-up emotions from childhood and then sharing her insights with patients and readers, she became a pioneer in mindbody therapy and awareness and might really help you dig into, and resolve, the baggage life has foisted on you to carry so far. Specifically I’d recommend her first book “The Drama of the Gifted Child” (not sure why this title was picked. It’s really about all children. Still, brilliant book), or “The Body Never Lies.”
Best,
TMS
Trauma Release Exercises, David Berceli. Please look it up. I’m waiting for the pamphlet with the exercises in it. You can do them at home.