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There's no one way to overcoming chronic pain or Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), each person will have their own unique journey and recovery will look different from one person to another. What I describe below are the major guidelines of the approach, however, the details of recovery are very person-specific. So, it is important to embrace your own journey, wherever you are and respect your own way of doing. I also invite you to be kind to yourself during this journey, to be as accepting and understanding as possible with yourself and to remember that you are the only one who knows what feels good to you, what is realistic and what is doable for you.

Dr Sarno discovered that when people:

It all started with Dr. John Sarno, a professor and specialist at the New York University (NYU) Physical and Rehabilitation Center, who discovered that repressed or suppressed emotions (e.g., anger, rage, fear, shame, guilt, frustration, hopelessness, helplessness) can be at the root of chronic back pain and other chronic conditions. When Dr. Sarno noticed varying recovery outcomes in his chronic back pain patients despite using similar traditional treatments, he realized there was something beyond structural issues that was causing symptoms and could influence recovery.

My story with chronic symptoms actually began much earlier than I thought it had, when I used to experience severe heartburn episodes as a child followed by daily tension headaches later in my university years - all manifestations of what Dr John Sarno calls Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) (you can read more about Dr Sarno and TMS in following Blog entries) that moved from a location to another since I was not addressing the root cause of my symptoms. But the symptoms that actually stuck, due to the high amount of fear and anger that was associated with it, and because of healthcare professionals treating everything but the cause, was in the form of myofascial pain syndrome in the jaw, facial and neck muscles. It started when I was 22 years old with a sudden ear pain, which upon investigation, I was told the source of it was my jaw and not my ear itself. This was followed by a repetitively locked jaw and sore jaw muscles, and unexplained gums and teeth pain that was dull most of the time and throbbing at other times. This daily jaw tension would not only radiate to my gums and teeth but also to my head and ears.