Often, people are asking an important question: cognitive-behavioral therapy is often used for pain management and seem to produce some results, why TMS therapy is better?
The answer to this question is very simple. CBT is a supportive therapy, it was designed that way and is being used that way. It is meant to help people cope with pain – that’s it. At least some clinical studies do not find a significant positive impact of CBT on pain levels
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5999451/.
TMS therapy, on the other hand, is a very different animal. All various types of TMS therapies are based on doctor Sarno’s theory of chronic pain. All of them have a goal to eliminate chronic pain and associated with it other symptoms. The first clinical study conducted on one of the TMS therapies, Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), showed significant improvements not only in the level of pain, but also in the mental health of the patients. Those improvements largely remained at a 1 year follow-up.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694
As someone who tried both, CBT and TMS therapies, I can tell that the difference is significant from day one. Without going into many technical details, I will focus on one. When you enter CBT, you are told that CBT will help you better handle the pain, so you still believe that your disease is with you forever. Just knowing that you are doing all the work to finally be pain-free sets the patient on a very optimistic course. The best component of TMS therapies is hope for the better future!
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