Rita’s Blog

“Scientia potentia est”, the Latin aphorism meaning “knowledge is power” is the basis for transformation and freedom from suﬀering. In order to learn the “how” of eliminating the horrid symptoms of CRPS, one must ﬁrst learn the “why”. In order to understand the root cause of this “condition”, it’s essential to understand the operative system…in other words…how the mind and body interact. Although the ﬁeld of neuroscience has made tremendous strides in the past 20 years, these amazing ﬁndings have not yet ﬁltered down to the ﬁeld of medicine.

After my own odyssey in the medical mill, desperately searching for answers, I often wondered why this knowledge is not more mainstream. How much suﬀering could be alleviated if it was? After ping ponging helplessly to numerous specialists for 6 months, I was ﬁnally given the diagnosis of CRPS. The irony is that the diagnosis did not serve me one whit. If anything it conﬁrmed my worst fears…that I was damaged and “broken” beyond repair, doomed to a life of existing in pain and debilitation. At the time, I was terriﬁed and really believed my life was over. Fortunately however, I had information on the brain and chronic pain. I endeavored to delve deeper and ﬁnd out if it applied to CRPS as well. !With the knowledge I gleaned from books such as “The Mind Body Prescription” and “Unlearn Your Pain”, I decided I could apply it to CRPS. This was conﬁrmed to me by Dr. Schubiner, who reassured me that CRPS was still brain induced pain …that is faulty signals stemming from the brain and altering my physiology.

At that point I knew it was a reversible situation and I was not going to allow a label or the medical industry to discourage me. After all, I knew too much! !The emerging ﬁeld of PsychoPhysiologic disorders (which includes an array of labels (such as: CRPS, Fibromyalgia , Interstitial Cystitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, RSI , Trigeminal Neuralgia, Tension Headaches, back pain, neck pain and foot pain) is producing study after study demonstrating the role of the brain and neural circuits.

90% of chronic pain is NOT caused by structural issues (infections, tumors etc.) but by neuro pathways in the brain that send pain signals and maintain the fear-pain-fear loop in the brain and body in a state of chronicity. Let’s start with understanding the nature of pain: All pain is real and it’s a subjective experience. The brain is what creates all sensations. All experiences are derived from learned circuits (vision, hearing, taste, how we talk, walk, ride a bike, respond to diﬀerent people or activities like snakes or heights etc.). Basically, we feel what we EXPECT and the term for this is “Predictive Coding”. Pain is a decision made by the brain to protect us from danger (whether it’s real or imagined). Depending on the situation, our brain will decide if it should alert us. When our fearful thoughts about symptoms become ingrained and habitual, the danger/alarm mechanism becomes sensitized over time. I realized that the CRPS label simply meant that my brain had become extremely opinionated!!

One of the huge deﬁcits in medicine, is the lack of knowledge between “Dynamic Pain” vs. “Static Pain”. Physicians and the costly world of alternative practitioners are trained in static pain and that is why treatments fail the patient. CRPS is a great and dramatic example of dynamic pain (or neural circuit pain) that can be turned on or oﬀ, that waxes and wanes, shifts locations, changes in intensity, morphing symptoms, and it often “spreads”. It is not the same thing as static pain like a broken leg or metastatic cancer. This is actually great news! Dynamic pain is common and reversible. We can retrain our brain out of these learned pathways and habits, by using our conscious mind.

When you have an accurate diagnosis, you employ an accurate treatment. Rather than having to “cope”, the mind body approach “cures”. !This leads me to the diﬀerence between acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is mediated by an entirely diﬀerent area of the brain than chronic pain. Chronic pain is actually driven by the area involved with emotions and memory. When we treat pain as a symptom of somatized anxiety, we can then place it in the construct of thought. Stay with me here!! When we are embarrassed, we blush. When we are frightened our heart races and our pulse quickens. When we are aroused, sexual organs react. When we are sad, we shed tears from the eyeballs.

CRPS is no diﬀerent it’s just on steroids so to speak. When we look at cases of “phantom limb syndrome”, we see how dramatically the brain creates sensations. People have reported feeling their watch on an amputated arm. Why? Because that is what their brain was used to and now EXPECTS!

When we can understand how the brain operates, we understand the cause. When we know the cause, we can implement change. Stay tuned…more blogs to come! In the meantime start reading those books and getting empowered!

“Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!!”

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This quote by Viktor Frankl is one of my favorites and describes the journey you have chosen to embark on. In order to do the necessary work in your road to recovery, it’s essential to understand the “operating system” of the brain and body.

The character of “The Robot” in the 1960’s tv series “Lost in Space” illustrates the alarm function in our brain that alerts us to danger. On the tv show, a family find themselves struggling to survive in outer space after their space ship gets sabotaged and highjacked by the evil agent Mr. Smith. The Robot is ever aware of threat to the Robinson family and frequently exclaims “danger, danger!” to Will.

Having CRPS is exactly like having the robot as your brain’s default setting. We all have an alarm function that is activated when the brain senses danger. It’s the evolutionary survival mechanism meant to keep us alive. When the alarm center is triggered, the brain goes into fight or flight within milliseconds, sending signals throughout the body (heart rate, breathing, adrenaline, muscle tension, vision etc.). In the case of chronic pain syndromes, and most dramatically in the case of CRPS, the alarm function and danger signal becomes sensitized and reinforced over time.

Often this leads to the freeze response and a feeling of helplessness that also becomes chronic. When signals are continuously transmitted from the brain to the body, symptoms ensue. So how do we turn this spaceship around? The first step will require a suspension of belief on your part. This is critical because once you accept the diagnosis that CRPS is simply mind body pain (learned pain), you believe that it’s reversible. In order to be successful in reversing the brain’s strategy, the reduction of fear is critical. Without belief in the diagnosis, it is impossible to reduce fear. So are you ready? Read on in the next blog! Stay tuned….

Your Brain is a Smoke Detector

If my smoke detector could differentiate between fire, carbon monoxide and burnt toast, I would never have to worry! Unfortunately I seem to have a talent for burning things in the kitchen! Our brains are no different. The brain cannot discern what is a real threat or danger, from a perceived one. When we experience pain sensations and altered physiology (swelling, redness, temperature changes etc.), they are actually the burnt toast in the story of how our brain responds to messages of danger. What is the messaging you are giving to your brain on a daily basis? On a minute to minute basis? What messages have you received from the medical or alternative industries? If you have the label of CRPS, then it’s guaranteed they were all communicating danger, doubt, fear, and hopelessness.

Ask yourself if you have engaged in these thought habits or behaviors:

1.) Panicking when symptoms arise or worsen.

2.) Researching online about it’s “incurability”.

3.) Reading in toxic “support group” forums filled with horror stories and doom and gloom.

4.) Believing the dire prognosis given to you by medical “experts”.

5.) Chasing “treatments” or “therapies”.

6.) Generating chronic, ruminating thoughts about how your body is “broken”, “flawed”, or “weak” in some way.

7.) Avoiding so called “triggers”….activities or movements or other innocuous stimuli that your brain has deemed dangerous and linked to your symptoms.

8.) “Guarding” areas of the body that are affected for fear that you will hurt yourself.

Do any of these ring a bell? If so, what is the antidote? We combat the messages of danger, by replacing them with messages of safety. Our job is to teach the primitive part of the brain (‘our stupid friend”) that is bombarding us with false alarms, that we are totally ok and safe in the present moment. Some ways of cultivating safety are:

1.) Using knowledge and logic to shine a light on this label. It makes no sense from any medical or scientific standpoint that the body would renew a subscription to acute pain on a moment to moment basis, in the absence of any pathology or structural damage. For evidence, refer to the PPDA association’s list of peer reviewed research studies on chronic pain. The science and truth are indisputable!!

2.) Do an assessment of your symptoms. Review if they fit the criteria for mind body syndrome (for ex.: symptoms change location, mirror image, pain and symptoms “spread”, symptoms are triggered by harmless stimuli, pain varies, your personality profile, and any history of trauma.) Even if you have one of these that fits the criteria, that is enough to prove it’s TMS!

3.) Feel your emotions rather than resisting them. Teach your brain that emotions are safe and normal.

4.) Calm your thinking down by catching yourself when you are catastrophizing or pessimistic. Become aware of those thoughts and nip them in the bud. Just because you think something does not make it true!!

5.) Respond to symptoms with curiosity and detachment, rather than terror or frustration. They may “hurt”, but they cannot “harm”…they are as harmless as burnt toast.

6.) Practice gratitude (even if it’s just for finding this site and knowing you will get better!)

7.) Focus on your life as much as you are able to. Even if you are totally debilitated right now, see if you can find enjoyable and relaxing things to do….even if they are small, things like organizing your sock drawer or watching stupid cat videos on YT. This will train your brain out of danger mode.

8.) Believe that you can get better and reclaim your life. Choose to believe you can, and you deserve it as well!

So, rather than smashing your smoke detector with a hammer after burning some toast , simply take the batteries out!!

What Dorothy Learned the Hard Way, So You Don’t Have To

If anyone had asked me how I perceived the road ahead of me when I was bedridden with CRPS, I would not have envisioned it as a yellow, brick one….Dante’s journey through the 9 circles of Hell may have been a more plausible description at the time. While I can relate to the guide Virgil, now that I work as a coach, the story of “The Wizard of Oz” could easily serve as a TMS allegory for anyone embarking on the yellow brick road, out of chronic pain and back to “Kansas” ( aka your life).

“Was I scared? You’re talking to a man who laughed at death, sneered at danger, and chuckled at catastrophe. I was terrified!” The Wizard.

After contending with lions, tigers, and bears (“Oh my!), nodding off in a poppy field, being locked in a witch’s castle and chased by winged monkeys, Dorothy and the gang are confronted with the bombastic floating head of “The Almighty and Powerful Oz” on a screen. Terrified but exasperated, Dorothy calls him out for being nothing more than a bully. It is in that moment that Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal a diminutive man behind a microphone. Upon seeing “Oz” for who he really is…. just a nervous little fellow, he lost his power over them. Pull the curtain back and see what your brain is doing. What is behind the curtain? Real danger or just you….scared? See what your brain is up to and how persistent and desperate it is in wanting you to focus on this thought, or that fear. Know that it’s goal is to alert you or preoccupy you in some way. Make the conscious choice to not buy into these thoughts. Take their power away. Disable the TMS strategy.

While we are on the subject of lessons from “The Wizard of Oz”, start allowing yourself to dream. Before taking action steps, we have to imagine them first. Dorothy didn’t sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow…skies are blue” solely to showcase Judy Garland’s voice. The song had meaning and it’s up to you to “dare to dream” and make them come true!

Don’t Let The Grinch Steal Your Recovery!

When Dr. Sarno flipped the medical paradigm on its head, with his observations and debunking of myths in the medical industry, he was met with tremendous backlash. He bore the slings and arrows of disdain, criticism, and ridicule, with courage and aplomb. What made Dr. Sarno such a great doctor and human being, was his willingness to accept the label of heretic, by his own colleagues, in the interest of advancing truth and helping people to heal. In your TMS journey, you will encounter various Grinches in the form of doubt and naysayers. It is only when you strip the “tag” of “crps” away, and stop “doctor shopping” for answers outside of yourself that you will prevail over the “Grinch”.

“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!”

“It came without packages, boxes, or bags!”

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!“ Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store!”

As hard as Grinch tried to steal Christmas, he could not take the inner joy that the Whos of Whoville held in their heart. The opposite of fear is joy, and in order to reach joy, we must move through our doubts and fears. Perhaps you are struggling because your fear is too high and it’s keeping your brain in the fight or flight response. Fear is the fuel for TMS and fear usually stems from our own false beliefs and doubts. So where do these come from? When we know from whence they came, we can employ logic and dismantle each doubt off of our list. Think of it as a reverse Christmas list! With each doubt we eradicate, we build more confidence in the “diagnosis” of TMS and ourselves. Here are some examples of doubts that feed the underlying fear of “what if I can’t get better?” :

1.) Medicalization: “Tagged” by physicians with a label that implies a neurological “disease” or “pathology”. This includes nocebos: suggestions by doctors that you have something incurable, that at best you can “manage” or hope for “remission”. These types of experiences in the medical industry lead to PTSD in a patient …trauma from misdiagnosis, abandonment, and useless drugs or procedures)

2.) The “Inner Bully”: that negative voice and narrative in your head that tells you, you are “broken”, “not good enough”, “different”.

3.) False beliefs stemming from childhood messages you may have internalized (having to “hustle for your worth” or believing that negative events in the past predict more of the same in the future).

4.) Doubts arising from negative thought patterns: Just because you think something, doesn’t make it true! Become aware of your thoughts and ask yourself if they are accurate or based on faulty information or distortion. Nip those chronic negative thoughts in the bud, and reach for more accurate, better feeling, neutral ones that are rooted in reality.

5.) Doubts about your symptoms being “different” or somehow too “far gone”: TMS can take on any pathway under the sun, in any location(s) and any form (sensations and symptoms can take on a plethora of flavors). Bottom line: We all have 1 brain. Your brain is not designed differently than anyone else in the human species.

These are just some examples but examine the ways in which the Grinch appears in your life as doubt. Is it pervasive? Recognize it, call it out, and pulverize it. Just as the Grinch could never win the battle against Christmas, don’t allow doubt to interfere with your healing, peace and happiness. Find joy when and where you can, like the Whos of Whoville. No one can ever take that away from you because after all, it’s an inside job!

“The Enlightened Groundhog”

The film “Groundhog Day” has always been one of my favorites and the fact that one of the main characters is named Rita doesn’t hurt! When Bill Murray’s character Phil the newscaster, gets stuck in the dull town of Punxsutawney, waiting for the groundhog to make his appearance, it’s a metaphor for all of us. Have you ever noticed yourself living in autopilot? Recreating the same patterns day after day? Trapped in your own groundhog day? Every single day is the same in the film. The events and people never change one iota, but the lesson that Phil has to learn the hard way, is that every single day we have the choice to take responsibility for our lives. In the beginning of the movie, Phil tries to “fix” the problem, then he decides to indulge in it, then he tries to escape it by committing suicide in various ways. He would literally rather die, than change! None of it works though until he fully commits to the present moment. His misery was not from the day in which he found himself (over and over and over), but his desperate and futile attempts to escape the present. Once he shifts perspective, his whole life changes and he even gets liberated form the prison of “groundhog day”.

Our time is literally our life so use it wisely. Just as Phil learns over the course of the film that he gets to create his reality (with plenty of practice), we get to reverse the TMS strategy through our own choices. We are not doomed to suffer in a chronic pain loop. We can choose our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. We can choose to live in the past, or appreciate the right now. We can choose to remain stuck and wait for someone or something to “fix” us, or we can realize that we are not broken. The choice is yours!

Waiting on a Miracle

When reading the “Success Stories” of former Tms’ers, have you ever found yourself comparing your story, your symptoms, and your timeline to theirs? Don’t do it! It’s a trap! In fact, the faster you want to be free of your symptoms, the longer this process will take! Focus on the “how”, rather than the “how long”, or the nature of their symptoms. Our recovery will be as individual as our lives and individual minds. Your journey is unique to you, so when you read of people who had the “book cure” and were back in the game within a couple of weeks, don’t think of it as a “miracle” in the dramatic Hollywood sense of the word. Miracles are actually commonplace and SUPPOSED to happen. A miracle is simply a shift in perspective, so keep that in mind next time you read about a “book cure” or a success story.

When we begin to choose new thoughts, our new reality will not immediately follow. There will always be a time lag during which you will be cultivating new thoughts, but your body will still be living in your old reality. This “waiting for it to happen” period is where the rubber meets the road. How you react to stressors and how you respond to symptoms during this waiting period, will either speed up or hinder the new reality you’re endeavoring to create. It is during this critical period that your brain will test you, subvert you, and continue to send those false alarm signals. Do not be fooled! This is just your brain on tms so recognize it, expect it. it and heed not these symptoms. Remember, every choice you make, is an investment in your future. The cash register is ringing and ringing until the drawer opens, or in the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.”

Patience and persistence are required during the wait, but also make sure you have clarity about the miracle you want. If you are focused on what you don’t want (symptoms) then you are actually moving farther away from the miracle because your desire is based in fear. If you focus on what you DO want and what is aligned with your true self and purpose, then your energy is based in joy, and this will draw the miracles towards you. So the question is: are you willing to take full responsibility, do whatever it takes, and however long it takes, to create your own miracle?

Setbacks Towards a Comeback

Like the colorfully paved board game, Chutes and Ladders, the TMS journey is one filled with corrective experiences and necessary setbacks. While Candy Land, Clue, and Life, satisfy my inner 70’s child more, Chutes and Ladders has more practical application in the pain reprocessing domain of the mind body framework. The phrase “back to square one” actually hails from this classic game whose roots are in ancient India. Originally called Snakes and Ladders, the game is a metaphor for the duality of life. For every dangerous snake lurking around the corner, there is a ladder to bail us out and advance our progress.

The cycle of fear and symptoms that ensue in “chronic” conditions (tms), results in yet another cycle of fear – response – avoidance. These avoidant behavior patterns become habits of the brain and body, which lead to symptoms that are remembered and learned. The more one avoids and restricts activities or other “triggers”, the more anxious family members and doctors of the sufferer’s orbit grow, and the smaller their world becomes. In order to break this vicious cycle, we need to stop avoiding the “game”. If we wish to play and reach the finish line, we need to accept the chutes (the setbacks), not allow them to spoil our fun, continue to spin the wheel, and expect plenty of ladders along the way! While setbacks can be incredibly demoralizing and frustrating, do not begrudge them, for they are actually our friend! They bring us experience,

knowledge, and the opportunity to practice. If you are willing to practice, you WILL recover! This is the work! Another way to view them is captured in this quote: “Giving up your goal because of one setback, is like slashing three tires, because you got a flat.” So remember, confidence can only arise from experience. What better way to cultivate that, than by accepting the setbacks as speed bumps on the road? You can’t have a comeback without the setbacks, so trust the process and enjoy the ride, even when you hit those potholes!

You Are Not a Campbell Soup Can!

A recent experience at the ophthalmologist spurred me to examine the idea of the label and our society’s seeming obsession with labels. Since the time I was little, nothing makes me more squeamish than eyeballs. Every trip to the eye dr. would begin with my nervous laughter and ensuing vasovagal reaction, instructions to put my head between my legs, and the phrase “don’t faint”. The mere recollection of these routine office visits inspires nausea as I type. My latest incident involved an enraged, flaming red eyeball. Although unsightly, I was cheerfully informed that it was “nothing”…just a subconjunctival hemorrhage (if you decide to google this, don’t say you haven’t been warned!). In layman’s terms, a bruise. Before I could enjoy a sigh of relief, however, the dr. was compelled to mention my “drusen”. “Umm, what’s that?”, as visions of gnomes and druids danced in my head. “Oh it’s just a sign of macular degeneration and cataracts!” As she unveiled a high tech image of what appeared to be the topography of the moon, she indicated “See…that’s the surface of your eye and those spots are drusen !” “So what should I do then?” I asked feebly, my voice several octaves higher, as waves of nausea mounted. “Oh nothing…” she trailed off. I wondered then, why had she told me? Did I really need to know that other than to feel worse as I stumbled out of her office (into the blinding sunlight with dilated pupils), than when I had entered?

How do these labels and terminology help, and why do we worship our own inventions?….Images and scans that rarely
correlate to our symptoms? If the medical system were a church or religion, its sacred cows would be diagnostic labels, imaging scans, surgery, injections, and pills. This begs the question: Why do we have a devotional trust in a system that has never demonstrated recovery from “crps” or even defined health in the same was as we would? In other words…coping vs. curing, not dying vs. vitality and well being. These labels for seemingly chronic scenarios that are actually mind body experiences, only serve to instill the nocebo effect in the patient. They may be useful for the purpose of billing insurance companies, but they are nominations that have nothing to do with who you are, your “prognosis”, or your life. They are as useful as a brand label on a soup can, like the pop art created by Andy Warhol, to denote the surface and the banal. While some interpreted his static images as subversive art, his message was intended to reflect an emotional and social void….a commentary on modern civilization that could just as easily be applied to our healthcare system.
Nothingness under the guise of art …a mind body experience under the guise of a medical diagnostic label. A system in which human beings have been reduced to one dimensional constellations of symptoms…disconnected from the psychosocial-environmental factors of the human condition. My parting advice would be to knock that meaningless label off the table! No matter the label bestowed upon you by a practitioner, the methodology to reverse mindbody symptoms is exactly the same. Reclaim your power from the tyranny of the label, or as Dr. Seuss put it best, “Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you.”

Rage Reconsidered

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I always loved this line in the poem by Dylan Thomas…a battle cry of defiance and the refusal to settle. The truth was, that if it were not for my own odyssey into chronic pain, I may never have plucked up the courage to act on that inner rebellion.

The emotion of anger gets a bad rap. Its connotations can range from unpleasant, to anti social, to violent, but what are the implications of its disavowal? As humans, we are meant to experience the entire range of emotions and when we disallow them we pay a heavy price. Emotions such as rage, resentment, guilt, sadness, shame, fear, and even love, get relegated to the bowels of our unconscious where they are left to fester. Dr. Sarno recognized the role of chronic pain as a distraction mechanism and a defense against what he termed the “reservoir of rage”, threatening to erupt to the surface at any time. I was confronted with my own cauldron of suppressed rage in therapy, when I finally verbalized the intolerably ugly feelings and impulses I had towards my young son with autism. By granting myself permission to own the rage, while having compassion for the rage, I freed myself from the shackles of guilt and self judgment. They didn’t define me as some kind of monster or degenerate mother, and I certainly would never act out those horrifying stories or impulses my brain seemed to conjure. They were just emotions, and as such, normal and safe!

I came to realize that the anger was not the problem, it was my lack of tolerance to it (as well as to other emotions I had deemed “unacceptable”). If it didn’t fit with the idealized image of myself, I concealed them from myself. The unintended consequence of hiding myself from myself, was living half a life in a self created prison. By acknowledging and even embracing the kaleidoscope of emotions, I could finally feel the feelings, rather than freeze or suppress. I learned that I could even use anger to create safety, through asserting myself or setting boundaries. Although our culture tends to view anger as a negative emotion, recent neuroscience has turned that view on its head. The evolutionary purpose of anger was survival, and thus “positive”. If the anger can be separated out from harmful or destructive actions, it can be channeled in a multitude of positive motivational directions. Depending on the situation, anger can be healthy or toxic. While unbridled fury is unproductive, anger can be a catalyst to stand up for yourself….to be be fiercely in your own corner. Anger can also act as a counterpoint to fear, spurring a person on to become more creative, ambitious, more of a leader, and more of a risk taker.

As someone who wishes to spread the message of the mind body approach, I have often been the recipient of aggression and hostility ….in online groups, private emails, and most recently a bruising experience at a live Q & A with one CRPS group of sufferers. I reason that if Dr. Sarno was willing to be viewed as a heretic, for the sake of disseminating the truth to the world, than I’m willing to go to the mat with an occasional naysayer to further his mission. In that sense, I am channeling my own anger for good. I no longer need to avoid “controversy” or the displeasure of others, or harm myself with “goodism”, when I know that I’m speaking my truth. As Mohammed Ali quipped, “It’s not bragging, if you have something to back it up.” I no longer fear my anger, as I know it won’t lead to hate, but hopefully a better understanding of myself and others. Zsa Zsa Gabor said it best darrrlinkk !, “I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.”

The Disease to Please

Do you avoid conflict at all costs? Conform to the expectations of others? Worry about the needs and preferences of others above your own? Are you over accommodating or adaptive for fear of ruffling feathers? Have trouble asserting yourself or setting boundaries? Do you have difficulty saying “No” or disagreeing with others? Do you chastise yourself or worry that others may judge you negatively, or worse yet…uncover your fraudulence? Are you constantly “should-ing” on yourself or wondering if you are a bad person? Do you feel guilty for advocating for yourself or “gasp!”, doing something nice for yourself? Do you even know who you would be or what you would be doing without these self imposed conditions?? If the answer is yes, to any of the above, you may be suffering from one or all of the anxiety trifecta of people pleasing, perfectionism, and “goodism” ( the moral version of perfectionism coined by Sarno). Dr. Sarno recognized certain personality behaviors and chronic thought patterns in his patients, which he later termed the “Type T” (TMS) personality profile. He found that people possessing these traits were at a far higher risk of developing somatic pain disorders, due to the fact that they have the tendency to generate tremendous inner stress, pressure, and tension on a daily basis. As a recovering worrier in all three traits (amongst others…Rome wasn’t built in a day after all!), I could often relate to the characters like Elaine (and her cringeworthy dancing) on the show “Seinfeld”, but in one episode, I remember empathizing with George. “The Masseuse” featured a storyline in which Jerry is dating a massage therapist whose dislike of George is palpable. This creates so much anxiety for George that he becomes obsessed and complains to his own girlfriend Karen “I wanna know what I did to this woman.” Karen is baffled and responds, “What difference does it make? Who cares if she doesn’t like you. Does everyone have to like you?” George answers, “Yes! Yes! Everybody has to like me! I MUST be liked!”. For the rest of the episode, George is driven to extremes to seek approval from an acquaintance, rather than accepting, being at peace with himself, and focusing on connecting in his real relationships.

We don’t need to change our entire personalities or uproot our lives to reverse the pain strategy, but we do need to become aware of our traits, our habitual thought patterns that these traits engender, and how they interact with our life situations. Once we are aware, we can catch ourselves and switch out of these traits or make different choices. The false core belief that so many of harbor, is that we are not good enough, and therefore we must meet certain standards of acceptability, in order to stave off judgment. This façade we present to the world gives us the illusion of safety. It makes us feel bullet proof or beyond reproach, but unfortunately, what seems like a protective mechanism becomes our prison….an exhausting, unsustainable way of life that breeds resentment and self betrayal. What starts out as an attempt to change ourselves in order to be loved, ironically prevents us from genuine relationships. It becomes a tightrope walk of constant fear of our true self slipping out and subsequent rejection. The symptoms in your body are the messenger. They are indicators of how you are being on a moment to moment basis…”a cry from the soul”. The question is, will you receive the communication and free yourself from the tyranny of the “should” ? Will you decide that dropping the mask to be authentic is worth it in the long run? Can you be honest with yourself and start living in accordance with your true values and desires? Can you talk back to that inner critic and tell it to “shut the hell up!” once and for all? Can you treat yourself with the same compassion you would give to a dear friend? Can you use the word “no” as a full sentence? These choices may feel risky at first, but they are risks well worth taking, because the alternative is far more painful. Besides, what is a little discomfort compared to what you have already endured? Nothing! When we heal the relationship with ourselves, cessation of symptoms is the happy by product. Sammy Davis Jr., crooned it best, “I can’t be right for somebody else, If I’m not right for me….I gotta be free, I just gotta be free….Daring to try, to do it or die…I gotta be me.”

Recovery is Real

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” Anthony de Mello

So often I am taken aback by the question, “Are you fully recovered?” from TMS sufferers, and even my own coaching clients ,who are already well themselves but don’t yet realize that fact. We live in a culture that fosters illness and fear, where the voices of recovery are drowned out by the din of chaos and messages of danger. We need to remind ourselves of the power of choice. The possibility of recovery, which was once a question mark in my mind… a “maybe’, a “wish”, a “dream”, a “remission” a “partial”, a “management”, an “alleviation”, is now a conviction of truth. Recovery is not a word or an abstraction,… it’s an action. A choice that any one of us has the capacity to make. As William James wrote, “Believe, and your belief will become fact.” As long as 1 person has recovered from your symptoms or label, you can be number 2, and if no one else has (that you know of!) then you can be number 1! If I had to distill the “how” of my recovery into one word it would be “belief”. You may be reading this and thinking, “Could you break that down into something a bit less ineffable?” Absolutely! I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to hit rock bottom to figure this out. My experience can serve as a way of skipping over the hell scape of the mind.

The two main sources of reference we have are science and religion, and one could argue that they share more in common than not. Both instruct us to believe, and our beliefs are based on an evaluation of something. When we re-evaluate, our beliefs can change. My process was twofold: 1.) Examine my falsely held and limiting beliefs that had created my self constructed cage, reject them and walk out, and 2.) Make the choice to have hope and a willingness to cultivate faith. I started re evaluating who I really was, and let go of the persona/facade I thought I “should” be. This meant healing all aspects of myself. There were things I needed to accept and of which to let go. With the strength I had used against myself to cultivate fear and obsession, I began to nurture hope and take back my courage. Safety no longer signified staying in my nightmare, it meant letting go of my vice grip on the bars and opening the door. The loss of hope has been described as a “soul sickness”, but the mere fact you are reading this blog is proof that hope is alive and well. No matter how cluttered our minds may be, hope waits patiently to be watered. From the hope we carry with us as we navigate the bumpy path, we move forward to faith….faith that the fear will lessen and faith that we are far, far stronger than we realize, and brave enough to keep going.

When we leave the familiar prison that may have been hell, but it was “our” hell, the one we knew, what we get in return is freedom . We get to have our lives because we say so…it’s not the property of our past traumas or illnesses, it’s ours….Recovery is there for the taking. The blessing of TMS is we get to receive the communication from our body (the “cry from the soul”)… that we have a right to take part in the living world, experience joy through relationships and use our gifts to make an impact. I know recovery to be a fact because I have seen it over and over and over. With equal certainty, I can say I am fully “recoverED”. I am not “broken”, never was “broken”, and neither are you!! Ultimately belief stems from willingness…If you are willing to take a leap of faith, to make the effort, you will begin to accumulate concrete results, and you will have the proof to bolster more belief. While I can’t claim that my “recovered” life is always sunshine and tulips, I can gratefully say I am no longer stuck in survival mode. I can imagine greater possibilities for my life and loved ones, and most of all, I have unshakeable faith in YOU!

Nostalgia and Neuroscience Part 1

“Nostalgia… it’s delicate but potent.” Don Draper, “Mad Men”

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” which I’m currently revisiting, is a semi autobiographical novel, in which essentially nothing happens, but author Betty Smith’s vivid, bittersweet, recollections of life in the the 1910’s tenements, transports us back to a specific time…the same milieu of my grandmother who would share with me her photo albums of her large Italian immigrant family. How I loved poring over the pictures of a bygone era as she recounted stories of her 11 siblings, the way all the sisters would make the beds, “keeping company” with my grandfather in Coney Island…him looking sheepish and skinny as my grandmother squeezed him with glee. Nowhere is the concept of nostalgia, capitalized on more, than in advertising and marketing. In the tv series “Mad Men”, set in the advertising world of the 1960’s, Don Draper masterfully pitches to Kodak execs, the latest in technology… a slide projector, “not a space ship, but a time machine. A device you can use to travel backwards and forwards. It takes us to a place where we long to go again. It’s not a wheel…it’s called the carousel.”

Nostalgia holds fascinating aspects, some of which I will attempt to explore here, through the lenses of art and science, the personal and the collective, time and space, memory and imagination, the unconscious and self identity. Can a blog encapsulate such scope and breadth? Probably not, but one can die trying! Traditionally we think of nostalgia as a desire to return home (nostos, Greek for “nest”) and the pain (algos) of being unable to do so, but we can also feel nostalgia for eras in which we never lived, such as the 80’s Facebook group to which I belong, filled with millennials! Nostalgia can also arise for those times we actually begrudgingly endured. I have experienced this first hand, from recurrent dreams of longing to go back to college…a time of my life in which I was fairly miserable. The campuses and dorms vary wildly in my dreams, but the intense emotion of longing is consistent. According to Freud, these repetitive remembrances are a way to assert control over our past. In this case, nostalgia as a mind state serves to re imagine our troublesome past in an attempt to better our future.

In 1688, the Swiss physician Dr. Johannes Hofer, coined the term “nostalgia” as a medical diagnosis for which the symptomatology included: rumination, melancholia, insomnia, anxiety, and loss of appetite. It was originally thought to primarily affect soldiers and sailors, but the label made an indelible mark in society. Even author Emily Bronte, while away at boarding school, became afflicted with nostalgia,…its subsequent treatment a speedy dispatch home. By the early 20th century, nostalgia was considered a debilitating psychiatric, rather than neurological, illness. The object of the nostalgic state as “homeland” or a place, was expanded to include the non spatial : loved ones, carefree times, holidays, and even societal norms. Marcel Proust described these sudden, nurturant memories so well in his magnum opus “Remembrance Of Things Past” (the longest novel ever written, clocking in at over a million words!), that the term “Proustian moment” was coined. In one of the early scenes of the novel, the voice of the depressed narrator describes an encounter with a little madeleine pastry cake and a cup of herbal tea, that can only be described as transcendental. The flavor and fragrance, unexpectedly evokes a flood of childhood memories in the French countryside, imbuing him with a renewed sense of grace….a sense of peace, safety and gratitude …the belief that no matter how hard life gets, and no matter the tragedies that befall us, there is beauty in the world and these fragmented recollections are “like souls….in the immense edifice of memory.”

In the mind body landscape, a plethora of tools are at our disposal.…whether of a scientific or spiritual bent, but I would venture to say that art is underrated! One could even argue that all of psychoanalysis can be found in art and literature. As Tolstoy lamented “Art is long, life is short”, but what triumphs over the destructive power of time better than art? Years ago I stumbled upon the film “Nostalgia” by the director Andrey Tarkovsky, and it was unlike any other prior film experience. The film was meandering, long, and seemingly plotless, but I found myself transfixed to this painterly, dreamscape of a visual fugue. Tarkovsky, an artist obsessed with the concept of time, was not concerned with entertainment, but of contemplation, and his films demand of the viewer to be part of the experience. He maintained the belief that cinema was the only way to record the moral qualities inherent in time itself. Asserting that time and memory were two sides of the same coin and that without time, memory could not exist, and without memory a human is bereft of self identity and connection to others. As a film geek, I concur that movies are the closest thing we have to a memory bank in visual form. In the case of “Nostalgia” (and Tarkovsky’s entire oeuvre), it is the journey into a person’s inner world…their psychology… a film that imitates life, and would lead to life imitating art. You may be thinking,”What does any of this have to do with my life or the present? I thought we were supposed to stay in the present moment?” Stay with me! By shattering plot driven narratives, cinema can illustrate non linear states of the mind in which past, present, and future are fused into the inner self. In order to understand ourselves better, we need to step out of the temporal plane, and art can serve as a tool. As Tarkovsky notes in his work “Sculpting in Time”, “Given that art expresses the ideal and man’s inspirations towards the infinite, it cannot be harnessed to consumerist aims without being violated in its very nature.”

Returning to the film, which recounts the story of a Russian poet, Gorchakov, who journeys to Italy to research the life of a Ukrainian serf who became a renowned composer in Bologna, Italy in the 18th century, only to become stricken with nostalgia and return home to poverty and suicide. Tarkovsky himself left the Soviet Union, became exiled, separated from his wife, his son, his farm house, and subsumed with what he described as “the stifling sense of longing that filled the screen, which was to become …the painful malady within myself…my lot for the rest of my life.” One of the locations in the film includes the thermal baths of healing waters, made famous by St. Catherine of Siena, in which for centuries travelers would wade, for ailments of the liver, spleen, stomach and skin. The water was believed to be particularly effective for expelling “melancholy”. Entranced by the pool, Tarkovsky employed it as the locus of the movie. Gorchakov, who has a heart condition and is accompanied by an Italian translator named Eugenia who bears an uncanny resemblance to a Botticelli painting. Eugenia pines for everything she can’t have including the love of Gorchakov, while he yearns for his homeland. I remember viewing “Nostalgia’s” long meditative sequences, and feeling an array of emotions, but it was the six minute long, uninterrupted, unedited take of Gorchakov crossing the drained pool with a candle, despite the wind threatening to extinguish it, that had me on the edge of my seat. A single task being carried out and completed in real time. One forgets why they even started it, much like writing this blog, it becomes about the act itself… you’re in a constant present. When he finally succeeds, his heart promptly gives out…The final shot represents one man’s inner division being made whole at last… the hypnotic image of a gothic cathedral on a Tuscan hill and a Russian dacha merging into one, indissolubly. As Tarkovsky expressed, “It is a way of preserving time which in theory gives us the possibility of moving backwards, freely, eternally.” More on the power of memory and nostalgia as a motivating force in Parts 2 and 3 !

Nostalgia Part 2: Storytelling

“You are not what happened to you, you are what you choose to become.” Carl Jung

If only cultivating and integrating our memory was as easy as eating a madeleine cake like Proust! According to Carl Jung, one way to access repressed personal memories, is through the collective consciousness found in works of art. Since film can represent the non linear terrain of the psyche, there are two films that stand out in my mind in terms of illustrating the negative emotional valence of nostalgia. The ways in which the “bitter” of the “bitter sweet” manifest in repressed memories, longing for something that could have been (but never was), the loss of families and cultures in collective memory, and how we can apply these concepts to our own “stories”. Relating to the fictional characters’ emotional struggles, traumas, and restoration, we can better understand aspects of ourselves. By recounting our own story, we can embrace our past and become the author of the next chapter. As Brené Brown notes, “Storytelling is an act of courage”, which leads to healing.

“The Garden of the Finzi-Continis”, the film adaptation of Giorgio Bassani’s elegiac novel, drenches the screen in nostalgia. This is thanks in part to director Vittorio DeSica, who quipped, “The pictures I direct are nearly always melancholy. This comes from the contrast between my love and my disillusion.” Bassani, like Proust, was an author of memory….his semi autobiographical narrator is reflecting 14 years after the historical horrors of 1943. In all of his novels, the main character is the city of Ferrara…this “lieu de mémoire” where time and space intersect into memory, is ironically where he never felt he belonged. In the tradition of many authors (Adler with Prague, Joyce with Dublin, Faulkner with Mississippi, Ferrante with Naples ), Bassani’s novels revisit memories in an effort to retrieve that visceral experience of childhood and one’s formative years. The novel’s epigraph is a quote by author Manzoni, “Certainly the heart has always something to tell about the future to those who listen to it. But what does the heart know? Only a little of what has already happened.” Of the 183 Jewish citizens of Ferrara, only one survived and that was Bassani himself, who happened to have been imprisoned for his anti fascism when the deportation round up occurred ( which included his father). Through the point of view of the narrator Giorgio, the author transmutes the memories of this vanished world into a monument of words .

In a series of flashbacks, DeSica’s film captures the desire of the characters to freeze time. Rather than orienting the viewer visually, the scenes within rooms of the aristocratic villa behind the high walls of an edenic garden, mimic the sense of claustrophobia and an enclosed state of mind. The clinging to the way of life they know (strolling and bicycling through manicured gardens, chatting with friends at the private tennis courts), the false sense of security, the genteel seclusion, the light hearted ways of defending from reality, and finally the fatalistic acceptance of their doomed fate, creates an anticipatory nostalgia. It’s the nostalgia for time itself when you can sense it slipping away and you’re already missing what you haven’t yet lost. The narrator who has been drawn to the mysterious, aristocratic family of the Finzi-Contini since childhood, has always felt like an outsider…a middle class kid, suddenly subjected to the Racial Laws in 1938. As exclusion from the library, the public tennis courts and other restrictions and indignities pile on, he is also falling in love with the dazzling but aloof Micòl. Her character is one who embodies nostalgia, preferring the “dear, the sweet, the sacred past” to the present moment. He makes several clumsy and desperate romantic overtures but is rebuffed each time. She explains that they were childhood friends and she refuses to sully the perfect shared memories of innocence, “You and I are not normal people. For the two of us, what counts more than the possession of things, is the remembrance of things, the memory of things.”

For Micòl, the past is far more precious than the present, and she adamantly resists change. Her refusal to confront reality, and a creeping sense of death is exemplified by her protest against her family’s desire to refurbish the estate, rather than letting relics “decay with elegance”. Her emotional defenses against the darkening political tides, take on the form of denial, while her brother Alberto’s is one of willing withdrawal from the outside world. He remarks that he has no need to leave the walls of his enclave since everything he could possibly need is there. It’s as if he chooses to fade away, dying of a terminal illness before the war breaks out. Alberto will be the only one in the family buried in the family tomb, whose shadow looms over the golden days of youth..tennis, flirting, bicycling, listening to music, and dreaming of university. Giorgio’s intense pain from unrequited love and expulsion from the illusory garden, turns to self exile and resistance to larger forces bearing down on the country. Whereas Micòl serves as an example of the harmful effects of nostalgia …a waste of the present and even a danger, Giorgio’s hindsight of a lost paradise is a different kind of nostalgia and arguably more useful. Historical events overshadow the magnitude of personal heartbreaks and traumas, but the novel and film serve as “containers” of memory and they remind us our shared humanity.

In order to integrate our own pasts so that we can move forward in the mindbody journey, we need to apply this kind of mourning and bearing witness for ourselves and our own lives. Following Jung’s lead, a powerful way of doing this, is writing our own story in a way that captures who we are with self empathy and new self talk that will propel us into a brighter, more peaceful future. If you balk at the prospect of writing, fear not! The 3 paragraph core narrative devised by Dr. Dan Ratner has proven to be an effective tool with many coaching clients. Before I outline the core narrative, I’d like to examine some features of memory and the unconscious illustrated in another film, “Wings of Desire” directed by Wim Wenders. Heavily influenced by Freud and Jung, Wenders tackles the topic of the unprocessed past, (referred to in German as “Vergangenheitsbewaltigung’’), and the importance of not allowing our memories or emotional repression to block our present. Since our narrators in this case are angels, the film offers a way to perceive the world through an atemporal, spiritual lens.

Once again memory and history, the individual and the collective, intersect , this time in the city of Berlin in 1987. The wall which entombs East Berlin and the remaining ruins, is a persistent reminder of WWII. It is a city trapped in the past. The angels who long to become humans, travel through space but not in time. The original title of the film was “The Sky Over Berlin” which foretold the unification despite its history and the bad memories symbolized by the wall. Two years after the film release, the wall was torn down and along with it, its shameful memory. The angels intently listen in on the thoughts of individuals. To the angels, the historical point of view is trivial, while the thoughts of ordinary people warrant attending and remembering. Every person and every thought is of equal importance to them. Wenders fills the screen with mystical skies and seemingly empty spaces. As we “stroll” down memory lane with the angels, similar to the strolling through the gardens of the Finzi-Continis , Wenders uses desolate areas and “no man’s lands” as sites where the angels gather. They know that these sites hold meaning. The angels fill these spaces and act as keepers of the repressed memories. As Freud would say, it is these blind spots of the mind, these gaps in memory that result from repression. Just as the angels listen to the fragments of memory within individual minds, we must contemplate our own fragments of memories. If we want to connect with our identity and build up a new one, we have to remember, but also to forget. In other words, we look at the past, we take it into account of who we are now, and then abandon it.

One of the characters in “Wings of Desire” is Marion, a trapeze artist who finds herself alone, displaced, and in search of a new identity. The angel is able to communicate with her directly and he helps her through the process of re evaluating her past memories, not in a linear sequence, but in fragments. He helps her see that her past is not her identity, but certain memories can be used to fit them into a new narrative and an evolving identity. As philosopher Henri Bergson wrote, “The brain’s function is to choose from the past, to diminish it, to simplify it, but not to preserve it.” Part 1 of our own stories, we had no control of. As Micòl in “The Garden of The Finzi-Continis” says to Giorgio, “Children are always prisoners of grownups.” Childhood is a hostage situation but we get to take ownership of Part 2 and author the second chapter.

Our memories are connected to our humanity and identity. We are not only what has happened to us, but also the way we interpret those experiences, as well as what we dream of for our future. Jung understood how important it was for each one of us to tell our own story. We can do this is a variety of ways…in therapy, confiding to a friend, recording it verbally, or writing it down. By doing so, the subconscious is brought to the surface. This leads to integration and what Jung called “individuation”…in other words understanding ourselves. Writing it down helps us shape our mythology where we are in control. Dr. Dan Ratner has designed a simple but brilliant way to do this by writing a 3 paragraph “core narrative”, an emotional mantra of sorts that encapsulates our core suffering self . The first paragraph is for the purpose of embracing the fullness of our trauma. Write down the emotional themes that capture your childhood and the false beliefs that stemmed from the early part of your life. Paragraph 2 should describe how that impacted you as you matured and how it carried over into your adulthood. Paragraph 3 is what you can do to change the narrative and find your path to power. By recording our self story, we can reach a state of wholeness in which our potential is brought to consciousness. By creating a new narrative, we ultimately reach self understanding and self awareness. Most of all, we can attain self appreciation. As Jung put it so poetically, “We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.”

Nostalgia Part 3: Positive Memories and Imagination

“All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” Federico Fellini

In the last blog, you were introduced to the tool of rescripting your life in the form of a 3 paragraph core narrative for the purpose of understanding yourself. This creative act, in and of itself, allows you to see yourself through a clear, undistorted lens, and the ways in which your life experiences and traumas impacted you; to respect and honor your core self suffering self, to attain self empathy, and to determine how you will handle things going forward. It is the written crystallization of your own power. In this blog, we will examine the ways in which nostalgia and recalling happier times can buttress against the inevitable stressors of day to day life. In a nutshell, nostalgia can be used as a motivational force and a source of imagination. Furthermore, recent developments in the science of memory and imagination have revealed the powerful health benefits of “reference memories”, i.e., positive and supportive moments in our lives that we can draw upon to create even more affirmative and constructive moments in our future. So, when the going gets tough, the tough get nostalgic!

“I walk on, once again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this structure of another century, this enormous, luxurious, lugubrious hotel, where corridors succeed endless corridors, silent deserted corridors overloaded with a dim, cold ornamentation of woodwork, stucco, moldings, marble, black mirrors, dark paintings, columns, heavy hangings, sculptured frames, series of doorways, galleries, transverse corridors that open in turn on empty salons, rooms overloaded with an ornamentation from another century….”

This is some of the narration from the film “Last Year at Marienbad’. Much like director Tarkovsky, Alain Resnais’ film was an attempt to construct the unconscious mind on film. It’s a non linear, meditation on memory, dream vs. reality, past and present, and personal identity. The characters seem mired in a timeless universe of infinite regress. The film evokes the trapped feeling I had myself when in the throes of my own TMS experience and the ominous label of “crps”. Much like the doomed characters in “Marienbad” I felt as if was living in a nightmare from which I could not wake up. But was I? Were things really as they seemed? Was I in a dream within a dream? The film reflects the dualistic theories of 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes and illustrates the interior monologue of an individual. Descartes bears inspection here, because one could argue that it opened the door for Western medicine’s appalling backslide into duality. One of the reasons that Descartes separated the mind and body into 2 powerful entities was due to influence of the Church,, but more importantly his theories were widely accepted because psychological defenses were not yet understood. In Descarte’s famous “Dream Argument” he asserts that waking up from a dream can itself be a part of a dream. We are left to conclude that there is no escape from getting outside of our own minds to determine objective truth. The anxiety of the character in “Marienbad” is one of the Cartesian individual, desperately trying to egress the labyrinthine hotel of the mind. Every exit of the labyrinth reveals yet another part of the labyrinth! If you have ever wandered into to a hotel/casino on the Vegas strip you know the feeling! While the characters in the film never do find a way out ( it is a French film after all! ), there is most certainly a way out of the mental prison in which you may find yourself now! The truth is Descartes was wrong and we can free ourselves from these defenses. The mind and body are one and we have only to realize that our symptoms stem from our own anxiety and misperceptions of reality.

“Everything you can imagine is real.” Pablo Picasso

Now that we are liberated from the shackles of our own false beliefs, we can mine our own pasts for joyful moments. Neuroscience tells us that drawing from a specific happy memory (even seemingly small or brief ones) can produce psychophysiological changes. One fascinating Harvard University “time travel” study conducted by social worker Ellen Langer, in 1980, demonstrated the powerful effects of memory and belief, in which a group of men in their 70s and 80s were placed in a full immersion 1959 retreat. During that time they reminisced and lived in conditions set up to simulate the period (music, food, fashion, decor etc.). A series of cognitive and physical tests were performed, and results showed dramatic improvement in strength, gait, flexibility, hearing, vision, and IQ, after just one week! Those who impersonated their younger selves, seemed to have younger bodies! Nostalgia in this case, was used as imagination, and when we imagine, we redeploy much of the same mechanisms that we would have employed when we actually engaged in the action. Although time is irreversible in the sense that we can’t actually “bring it back”, as the men in this study proved, it’s not what has passed, but what we “embody”… our past is a spiritual and subjective category! As Tarkovsky wrote in one of my favorite quotes, “In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips away like sand between the fingers, acquiring weight only in its recollection.” Whether it’s through recollection or imagination, the ersatz experience creates the desired outcome, and even paves the road for a brighter future.

“Everything has been thought of before. The problem is to think of it again.” Goethe

We all have access to both positive and negative memories that shape our self image, so it’s incumbent on us to activate the positive mental pathways and let the negative ones grow weaker through attrition. Ones involving social interactions are the most healing because they reshape how we see ourselves….memories such as baking cookies with your grandma, receiving applause for a speech, falling in love, enjoying a vacation with loved ones etc. Keep a mental file cabinet of memory folders that you can call up in any needed moment…memories under headings such as “romance”, “safety”, “tranquility” “victory”, “tenderness”, “strength”, “resilience”, “connection” etc. This naturally kindles feelings of gratitude and motivation. It has also been shown to increase productivity and decrease your experience of loneliness and disconnection. This is especially true when we are distracted by symptoms in the body. We need to remember who we really are and that these physical sensations are just a transient experience, and not our identity. Redirecting our thoughts to better past moments that are part of the fabric of our soul, not only serve as a buttress against anxiety and depression, but they point us towards a brighter future. So remember the good, remember that YOU are good, and start imagining! As Albert Einstein wrote, “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Crossing the River of Doubt

“Doubt is a good servant but a bad master.”

Adventurous would not be an adjective to describe me. My scaredy cat nature was on full display as a child one Halloween, when I had to hide my Witchy Poo costume from myself, the mask only making an appearance on top of my head for trick or treating purposes. That doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through others though! One such person would be Theodore Roosevelt, who was nothing if not the very definition of intrepidness. The kind of man who went cougar hunting for fun and finished a 90 minute speech after taking a bullet to the chest. I recently watched, riveted, a documentary on Roosevelt’s harrowing scientific expedition through the “River of Doubt”, an uncharted, ink black, crocodile infested, tributary, winding a thousand miles down the Amazon in the depths of the Brazilian rain forest during the height of the rainy season. Roosevelt, who had already experienced tremendous sorrow and hardship in his life, including the death of his wife and mother on the very same day, threw himself full force against the cruelest trial to be found in nature. The two month trek he and his small party of men endured, renders “Naked and Afraid” a glamping getaway. Facing lethal rapids, hostile natives, starvation, injuries, infections, tarantulas, relentless insect bites, venomous snakes, and even 3 deaths, Roosevelt remained undaunted. Most impressive of all was Roosevelt’s unyielding will and determination as a response to every one of the seemingly unending obstacles. It is exactly this mindset that is required when facing the greatest roadblock of all in tms recovery….the one of doubt. While my journey with tms was not one I would have chosen, as was Roosevelt’s escapade, it often felt like the river he traversed, one that defied direction… that twisted and turned, and doubled back and forth. This may strain credulity, but I’m grateful for the imposition of tms, for without it, I would still be living in my old life.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over, if you just sit there.” Will Rogers

Just as Roosevelt and his men were confronted with fallen trees blocking their path, so will you in the form of doubts, and the fear that arises from doubt. It would be unfair and overly simplistic to say that mind body symptoms are self inflicted…after all no one decides to suffer physically on purpose!, but I do believe that some of our blocks and barriers on the path of reversing the tms habit, can be self created. Perhaps the most common, and by far the most destructive and insidious, is the role of doubt. It’s normal to have doubt about the tms diagnosis and doubt is endemic to the human condition, since it serves as a protective mechanism. Some measure of skepticism is useful, but when taken to the extreme it can be an impediment to our growth and expansion. The symptoms of the body tell the tale of the psyche. Occurring initially as a distraction strategy from the cauldron of unconscious emotions threatening to bubble over, they quickly become a habit, entrenched by our recurring thoughts. If doubts cause you to believe in faulty arguments, the symptoms will persist for as long as your thinking remains unchanged. As Migel de Unamino noted, “To fall into a habit is to cease to be”, and it is precisely within this state of mind, that the regressive pull of doubt has you in its clutches. In “Think Away Your Pain”, Dr. Schechter describes this state as “chronification”… “where doubt has crept in.. and becomes chronic it’s a different animal.” Indeed it is the animal of our intellect and one that buries our emotions. As Dr. Dan Ratner points out, “Doubt can be seen as a malfunction of the distraction mechanism in a sense.”

The first step in tackling doubt is to accept it and let it in, in all its varied guises. One mask it wears is the one of truth. Humans have a tendency to assume their thoughts are the truth, so we must hold our thoughts up to scrutiny. Physical symptoms can be placed in the same construct of doubt thoughts. Our only job is to not take them seriously. Think of doubt as a bad poker player or a compulsive liar, and your only job is to not be bluffed by its twisted logic. Doubts efforts may be relentless, but its arguments become flimsier and more laughable as each one is disputed and dismantled. Ask yourself if certain thoughts are logical, and from where did they originate? Do you doubt that you are in the same Amazonian canoe as other mind body sufferers? Do you think that your symptoms somehow preclude you from getting better? Do you doubt your own capacities and capabilities? Endeavor to list of all your doubts and counter them with logic and evidence. Take notice of new ones that attempt to infiltrate, and make the determination to squash each one like the pests and bugs that they are. The only thing you will need to conquer doubt, is proof from science and the information you have acquired along the winding trail. Stay vigilant! Doubt depends on you to forget what you already know, so don your doubt armor and consistently remind yourself that you have access to information that the vast majority do not. Wherever you are in your trip on your own “river of doubt”, remember that victory is inevitable. Doubt is no match for you and it will scamper away like the cowardly “girly man” it is. So start collecting proof, the way Roosevelt and his men collected specimens of the jungle, and that will strengthen belief. As Roosevelt declared, “Believe and you are half way there!”

Cultural Contagion

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” Alduous Huxley

Since the dawn of time and across all cultures, the established social agreement and common knowledge was that the mind profoundly impacts the body. The interplay between society and individuals, however, adds another layer to the picture. The way we perceive our illnesses and the way physicians diagnose them is directly influenced by the surrounding culture, wherein templates of symptoms are deemed legitimate or illegitimate. The “legitimate” ones are ascribed to underlying pathologies for which a patient can’t be blamed, whereas “illegitimate” ones are viewed as malingering, simulation, and secondary gain,… all of which carry a negative stigma. As a result, when it comes to stress conversion/somatization of inner pain, there is a cultural pressure on the unconscious mind to produce sensations from the available schema termed the “symptom pool”. It’s not that society invents symptoms, it simply retrieves them from the prevailing pool.

We pass on dis-ease, disorders, and symptoms to one another in a collective unconscious game of telephone tag. The socially acceptable symptom pool in any given timeline, becomes “de rigeur”. We can “catch illnesses” from a mere suggestion, an anecdote, or observation. Yawning is a common example. Our minds are the most powerful force on earth, but when the medical model or the media, sanctions and broadcasts various symptoms from the pool, they morphe into a chronic (and often ever worsening) form of tms, in which the sufferer falls and risks drowning. What begins as a safe haven from emotions and a way to “belong to the tribe”, becomes a prison of our own making, and is compounded by the marketing barrage of popularized diagnoses and treatments. Chronic pain and other unexplained chronic symptoms, therefore carry an enormous social weight, as compared to structural injuries or disease pathologies. The more we conform to the medical paradigm which seeks to scientifically engineer the body from the outside, the more we play into the diversionary tactic of tms. The pain is a coping mechanism, and until we ask ourselves why we need this defense and address the deeper emotional pain, on the hamster wheel, we shall remain.

Culture, family, and society, don’t change anatomy. What changes is our belief systems. When it comes to human anatomy, Italians are particularly fixated on it, which has made them prone to a wide range of maladies, such as “meteorological” ones and the dreaded “colpo d’aria”. As a hearty American, this hit of air poses no threat to me, but it can be dangerous to Italians. Having enjoyed a trip to Italy this September, in which we were blessed with warm temperatures, I found myself perspiring in sleeveless summer dresses, while its countrymen were clad in winter puffer jackets. Flashbacks from my time of college study abroad, observing babies and tots bundled like mini Michelin men, lest they receive a “hit of air”, and venturing out with wet hair to the horror of bystanders, came flooding back. This hit of air could land anywhere…the eye, the nose, the stomach…the slightest seasonal change is considered a health hazard, signaling the need for scarves, without which could lead to the “cervicale”…the pain in the neck resulting from an impromptu gust of wind. My Italian husband described this scenario upon returning from a sweaty jog in the summer heat. Pausing for shade under a tree, He glumly recounted the moment in which he paused under a tree for shade and was assailed by a “colpo da’aria”. With a fatalistic sigh, he proceeded to change into more suitably absorbent attire. Fortunately his condition was not contagious since I’m an American. Whew!

So striking is the enculturation of mindbody disorders that we can learn much from the past about our own seemingly idiosyncratic symptoms. Wherever and whenever there are symptoms, there are sure to be marketed diagnoses and cures of varying efficacy and quackery. Even since medieval times, the much maligned uterus had been widely implicated as the seat of all problems, including insanity. During the Victorian era, bizarre treatments ensued, including ovary compression belts and the surgical removal of ovaries called oopherectamies….Oof indeed! Gender politics in medicine raged on, spanning the witch trials, when women experienced “anesthesias” (the term for skin sensory deficits), up until the age of hysteria, heralded by Parisian neurologist Charcot in 1879. Initially his theory rested on heredity, but ultimately he concluded that it was an organic nervous disease. This “Napoleon of the nervous system”, as he fancied himself, enthralled high society and sparked a belle époque of suggestibility, and an “age of nerves”. Social mores and behaviors rose to match the medical doctrines with “fainting rooms” and clubs for trendsetting ladies who referred to themselves as “les hysteriques”. There was even competition and jealousy between cliques of the hysterics and epileptics, the former differentiating themselves with red and blue hair ribbons and delirious hallucinations, and the latter with flowers in the hair, wandering barefoot in the rain and collapsing into convulsive fits.

The swift rise and fall of Charcot’s hysteria was discarded, when other physicians turned away from his theories and shifted to the diagnosis of “neurasthenia” or tired nerves. Hysteria was out, and the concept of nervous disease and weakness was in. By placing symptoms squarely in the nervous system paradigm, it reassured patients that their ailments were not “all in their head”. The idea captivated the public so much so, that even heroines in novels like the 1883 “A Fashionable Sufferer” exhibited neurasthenia. The core symptomology of this label has been precisely replicated in our modern iteration of “chronic fatigue syndrome”.

After WWI, the psychological paradigm and insights on psychogenesis began to take shape. Charcot’s notions of hysteria were transformed into a disease of the “imagination”. In yet another historical twist, the unfortunately titled, “On the Physiological Weak Mindedness of Women”, posited that hysteria belonged to the category of “psychosis”. This new psychological paradigm, heralded by the wave of psychoanalysts in Europe, supplanted the Victorian views of nervous system dysfunction. It was violently rejected by patients however, who took umbrage to the imputation of mental illness. One physician in 1908, wrote, “I have had patients rebelliously declare that they were not going to leave my office until they got a prescription for some medicine.” The sense of triumph that the fields of psychology and psychiatry enjoyed in the discovery of the role of the unconscious mind in pain and symptoms, was thus a fleeting one. An informal consensus emerged in medicine, that somatizing patients should be offered some king of treatment, even if they knew it was a placebo. The inverse of neuroplasticity is “pathoplasticity”, the tendency of illness attribution and presentation to change with the fashion of the day. When patients were bestowed an in vogue label like appendicitis, but balked at the prospect of appendectomies, doctors had to invent new labels like “colitis” to meet the general demand. As medical historian Edward Shorter notes, “It was a neat complaint, safe from the surgeon’s knife, suitable to everyones taste.” Nobody knew when it came, nobody knew when it went away. Pathoplasticity raged on …from the ulcers in the 1970’s, to chronic back pain and chronic Epstein Barr (yuppie flu) in the 80’s, to fibromyalgia in the 90’s, to chronic lyme, to chronic fatigue, to crps, to mast cell activation syndrome, to mold illness, sibo, long haul covid, and stiff man syndrome…”On it on it goes, where it ends nobody knows…” Through the lens of history we can appreciate how fragile and unscientific our current labels are. It will be up to each of us to decide for ourselves, and to replace the social contagion of fear, with one of hope and truth!

Solitude to Certitude

Figure in the fog.

Darkness and shadows surround.

Thoughts of solitude.

I wrote this haiku at the age of 12, during my crucible of the atavistically brutal hellscape, most commonly known as middle school. In 1980, bullying as a term, was not in the societal parlance, nor did it occur to me to seek help from a teacher or any other adult, but it was my daily experience for two grades in a row, and for better or worse, it would shape me as a person. After innocently disclosing to classmates that the large bandage on my right cheek was due to a herpes simplex 1 virus, I found myself the recipient of intense, humiliating, and ongoing taunts from a group of boys. At the time, oral medication to halt the spread was not yet available, and my parents feared that the blistering would affect my eye. It was painful, miserable, and left scars that took years to fade. The cruelty of bullying was it’s own source of suffering, and those emotional wounds proved to run far deeper than my epidermis. Although content with the few friends I had, and not yet interested in boys, the relentless ridicule led me to find solace in the safety of solitude. Books were more accepting than peers, and more reliable than adults. The hidden benefit of social ostracism, was the cultivation of intimacy with myself. What began as an imposition of isolation, transformed itself into a happy hermitism of my own choosing. Solitude proved to be a sanctuary, and therein, I found tranquility. Although the school environment may have been more “Lord of The Flies” than Walden Pond, there were bright spots as well, one of which was the time our class was treated to a one woman production featuring Emily Dickinson. It’s hard to say who captivated me more, the actress playing her, or the iconic figure of the “lady in white”, reclusive, poetess. Little did I know at the time, that this burgeoning isolophilia would come in handy throughout my life, and would later re emerge as a boon, during my mindbody journey out of chronic pain.

“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “Its’ a little lonely in the desert…” “ It is lonely when you’re among people too”, said the snake. (The Little Prince)

As excruciating as the symptoms and sensations of the CRPS label were, they paled in comparison to the suffering engendered by my sense of loneliness, separation, and feelings of entrapment. This state of disconnect from the rest of humanity, fuels the brain’s perception of danger and perpetuates the chronicity of neuroplastic pain. Greater than the fear of symptoms, was my terror of losing self sufficiency, agency, and independence. According to Dr. Sarno it’s not the physical sensations, so much as the threat of limitations, that breeds fear and rends the sufferer’s soul. This begs the question: how can we reclaim our experience from a labeled victim to total recovery of the self? By transforming the emptiness of solitariness into the fullness of solitude, we can actually harness the wisdom of the ages and the power of our own beliefs. If that sounds preposterously lofty, let me assure you, it is indeed doable!

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Aristotle

Just as the philosophies of the taoists, the stoics, the eremitic desert monks, the 17th and 18th century British and American Romantics, and the modern Western ethos of the individual, espoused, Aristotle recognized the power of aloneness. When I was in the throes of symptoms, I felt acutely “apart” from others, but what I quickly learned, was that this was an illusion created by my own mind. Not only are we never truly alone, due to our shared humanity, but those tough moments provided me with an opportunity to forge a deeper connection with myself, and they granted me the space to introspect. As Aristotle noted, ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” My symptoms proved to be a siren call to confront my fears and doubts so that I could finally pave my own path and pursue what I wanted in life. In our hyper connected, hyper social, linked in, networked, spread thin, modern lives, the idea of solitude can seem like an anathema. Rather than viewing the isolation of symptom recovery as a burden, we can use it as a golden opportunity to cultivate our sense of agency, and to find the courage to trust our own judgment. We can finally step outside of the constraints of distressing societal expectations and damaging influences. We can stage an inner rebellion against the incessant din and cacophony of the masses and the social media that seek to overpower our inner voice. One of my favorite literary heroines Jane Eyre said it best, “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” As I shed the voices of my past bullies and unshackled myself from the need for validation and approval, I also stopped engaging in harsh self judgment as well as the judgment of others. My newfound independence proved to be the antidote to shame. It was my way of teaching my brain that I truly could trust myself, as well as telling my symptoms “I’ve got this”. My journey from solitude to certitude was hard won, but what I can promise is, “you’ve got this!”

The Trying Trap

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

The daily fashion conundrum I faced as a high schooler, was that of desperately trying to look as if I wasn’t trying. This was especially tricky to achieve in an era defined by the ethos of “more is better.” As the 80’s receded into history, along with the big hair and shoulder pads, the “less is more” approach prevailed. This mindset could not withstand the desperation I felt however, years later, in the face of my son’s autism diagnosis. The shock and grief was only compounded by the weight of urgency to pursue every known intervention, before the “recovery window” closed. Little did I know at the time that this ominously narrow window, would rear it’s head again years later, accompanying my CRPS diagnosis. Our frantic quest to “fix” Andrew with endless therapies and biomedical treatments served only to hamper our judgment, waste our resources, and worst of all, traumatize him in the process. This was a clear case of diminishing returns. The greater the urgency and effort, the more he decompensated, and our family relationships suffered. It wasn’t until Andrew regressed and lost all his words that I was forced to accept what was. So began the road to acceptance and the conscious decision to no longer view my child as a science project, but instead as my Andrew.

My experience with diminishing returns proved to be a valuable lesson, and ironically an advantage, during my TMS recovery process. In stark contrast to starting off my days at metaphorical gunpoint, subtracting self imposed pressures, became my super power. So relieved was I to know that the CRPS label would not seal my fate and that this mythical window was an erroneous construct, that I genuinely didn’t care if the process took 2 months or 2 years. After all, tms meant there was nothing medically wrong with me to begin with!

After discarding the tensive thought habits and permitting myself to feel those long repressed emotions, I began to sense a subtle inner shift …a burden lightening, the space around me expanding. The inability to accept Andrew’s autism had caused me untold suffering, and that same resistant energy was now generating physical symptoms in my body. In order to reverse the tms strategy, it became clear that I would need to surrender

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Carl Jung

Before we can embody this state of surrender, we must assess if any of our thoughts or behaviors are keeping us ensnared in the “trying to heal” trap, or in other words, TMSing about TMS! Some counter productive examples of efforting are: applying various and sundry tools (journaling, meditation, breath work, tapping, somatic exercises etc) in a performative way, for the purpose of “fixing” (rather than from a place of genuine interest or desire), comparing yourself to others in groups or to success stories, incessantly scanning your body to check if symptoms are still there and if so, what they are doing, asking yourself questions like “When will this go away?”, “Am I better yet?” “Am I doing something wrong?”, overanalyzing, seeking results in the moment, tumbling down rabbit holes of alternative pseudoscience protocols (detoxing, restrictive diets, fasting, cold water plunges) or spiritual/psychic/wellness gurus and other cults of personality, revolving your day around “healing”, loitering in tms fb groups and message boards, listening to tms podcasts and scouring success stories for the sole purpose of finding someone else with identical symptoms, program hopping (so called brain retraining, nervous system regulating, vagal nerve toning and the like), bouncing from coach to coach, attending retreats or clinics in the hopes of of leaving “cured”, and pondering or attempting healing modalities like PT, chiropractic, cranial sacral therapy, energy healing, acupuncture, gut healing regimens, vitamin infusions, etc. etc… All of the aforementioned examples are not healing “cures”. They are forms of engineering and micro managing the body, masquerading as science, wellness, and even spirituality. The paradox is that one finds themselves right back “on the hustle”. Ego driven, intellectualized, biohacked, and externalized modes of being that yet again, morphe into other forms of avoidance… our emotions, our inner conflicts, existential angst, and ourselves. The question is not “how to get rid of symptoms”, but WHY the need for them in the first place.

“To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened.” Buddha

The oft repeated paradox of “you’ve got to lose yourself to find yourself”, begs the question, “Have you ever tried to lose yourself?” The harder one tries, the worse it gets. We are never as self absorbed and self focused as when we are in pain or depressed. When I have a headache, I feel like a walking throbbing, disembodied head, but when I don’t, I would forget my head completely if it were not attached to my neck! It’s when we are happy that we are liberated from the self and no longer fantasize about shuffling off this mortal coil. When I was in the throes of symptoms, I can recall observing other people as zoo animals… marveling at the fact that they could effortlessly walk around pain free and unshackled, blissfully ignorant of my intense suffering. “How dare they?!”, inwardly, self pityingly, I railed. Since no one was coming to save me, I turned my awareness inward to my patterns of thinking that were generating a cauldron of inner tension. This chronic tensive thinking, combined with emotional repression on a daily basis, formed a state of resistance,.. communicating pressure and frustration (i.e. danger) to my brain. If I ever hoped to return to my factory settings, I intuited that I would need to change my very way of “being”, from one of trying and resistance, to one of allowing and letting go. An image that came to mind of this embodied allowing, was that of “Joe Cool”, one of Snoopy’s alter egos. Although Snoopy played a part in nearly every scene of the comic book and tv series, he never got sucked into the antics and drama of the other Peanuts. Despite his dog-hood, Snoopy was largely considered to be another “kid” by the rest of the gang. He served as a detached observer, responding to events with a certain nonchalance, and saving the day with aplomb, when needed. Snoopy maintained neutrality and thus, his equilibrium. Taking my cues from Joe Cool, I adopted a more powerful and flexible persona than the habitually reactive, rigid, fretting, people pleasing, brittle facade. Allowing, as a concept, can be mistaken for resignation, weakness, or passivity. To the contrary, allowing, surrender, and acceptance, are productive states of being and potent skills to possess. It is only from this place that we finally stop interfering with Mother Nature and the innate drive for homeostasis.Rather than forcing our bodies to heal, or wanting to control what is happening in our world, we can step aside and let the pain leave our bodies and life unfurl as intended.

Rita LaBarbera

I’m a 52 yr. old, happily married, mom of 2 teenage sons, living in NJ. After overcoming the diagnosis of CRPS and its debilitating symptoms, I endeavored to help others and now offer short term, solution focused coaching sessions as a Mind Body Coach.

My mission and commitment to others is not to “cope” with pain, but to eliminate chronic pain entirely…to help people take their power back and reclaim their lives.

My background education is a Masters Degree from NYU in Counseling Psychology and a certificate of completion of Dr. Schubiner’s “Freedom From Chronic Pain” Practitioner Training course. Most significantly, my work is informed by my first hand experience of conquering CRPS through knowledge and implementing the core concepts of the maverick Dr. John Sarno.

My coaching sessions expand on Dr. Sarno’s framework to provide you with a laser focused roadmap to recovery, and a life of freedom!

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Go back

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome : Your Path To Healing

FULL RECOVERY FROM CRPS

Rita’s Blog

“The More You Know”!

“Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!!”

Your Brain is a Smoke Detector

What Dorothy Learned the Hard Way, So You Don’t Have To

Don’t Let The Grinch Steal Your Recovery!

“The Enlightened Groundhog”

Waiting on a Miracle

Setbacks Towards a Comeback

You Are Not a Campbell Soup Can!

Rage Reconsidered

The Disease to Please

Recovery is Real

Nostalgia and Neuroscience Part 1

Nostalgia Part 2: Storytelling

Nostalgia Part 3: Positive Memories and Imagination

Crossing the River of Doubt

Cultural Contagion

Solitude to Certitude

The Trying Trap

Contact Rita

Your message has been sent

“The More You Know”!

“Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!!”

Your Brain is a Smoke Detector

What Dorothy Learned the Hard Way, So You Don’t Have To

Don’t Let The Grinch Steal Your Recovery!

“The Enlightened Groundhog”

Waiting on a Miracle

Setbacks Towards a Comeback

You Are Not a Campbell Soup Can!

Rage Reconsidered

The Disease to Please

Recovery is Real

Nostalgia and Neuroscience Part 1

Nostalgia Part 2: Storytelling

Nostalgia Part 3: Positive Memories and Imagination

Crossing the River of Doubt

Cultural Contagion

Solitude to Certitude

The Trying Trap

Contact Rita

Your message has been sent

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