Intro to TMS

Hey there,

This site will deal with chronic pain and/or other mysterious and enduring conditions, the psychology that might be behind them, emotional well-being, and peak performance.

My own chronic hand pain (diagnosed as Repetitive Stress Injury, from typing) disappeared entirely after I read N.Y.U. 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.

Two decades practicing conventional back medicine had made Sarno increasingly disheartened by the failures of physical therapy and surgery to achieve lasting cures.  In the 1970s, he began to suspect chronic pain was rooted not in the physical diagnoses he learned in medical school, but in emotions.

Sarno started to encourage open-minded patients to look at their chronic pain as rooted in their emotional life, rather than in their age, athletic habits, or the ergonomic quality of their work chairs.  Those that began to address and unlock emotional stress in their life saw themselves able to wiggle permanently free from not only their back pain, but other chronic emotional and physical conditions they were suffering from as well.

Seeing a fundamental source – emotional stress – beneath all of these conditions, Sarno labeled them under one umbrella term: “TMS,” for 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)

Since seeing my own chronic pain disappear in the Fall of 2005, I’ve spent much of my time thinking and reading about the relationship between psychology and both physical and emotional health.

This site shares these ideas, 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,