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.
The correlation between certain personality traits (e.g., perfectionism, people-pleasing, ambitious, overthinking, do-gooder, harsh self-criticism, catastrophizing), past traumatic events, major life events, learned conditioning, and typical reactions to symptoms became apparent, all linked to repressed emotions and the role of the brain in the chronic pain cycle. Dr. Sarno began healing his patients solely by educating them on the subject through lectures and discussions (related links can be found on the "Resources" page).
He referred to the condition as Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), an umbrella term for all psychosomatic conditions, including fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, insomnia, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, GERD, IBS, allergies, tinnitus, back pain, shoulder pain, sciatica, and many other stress-related conditions. Since the root cause is one and the same and is psychological, not structural, the symptoms tend to move around and co-exist. This phenomenon occurs because symptoms are created as a distraction, preventing adequate attention to and management of emotional issues.
Why?
Dr Sarno's Distraction Theory Explained
It is very common to shy away from "negative" emotions and to not be taught how to process them in a healthy way, as we are often told not to cry or get angry or sad during childhood. When I say "negative" emotions, I refer to anger, rage, sadness, fear, guilt, despair, shame, disgust, hopelessness, helplessness, and frustration, which are actually normal and part of our human experience. This is mostly because expressing these emotions has not always been socially acceptable and is often labeled as a sign of suffering, discomfort, or weakness due to the potential negative social consequences of acting upon them.
As we repress or suppress these emotions, the subconscious brain perceives them as "danger" and consequently tries to alert us by creating pain or discomfort, an already established mechanism to signal danger upon injury, infection, allergens, foreign bodies, or tissue growth. This occurs because it is falsely believed that it is more socially acceptable to suffer from symptoms than to attend to these "dangerous" emotions. The brain is actually trying to protect us, albeit with inaccurate data, perceiving danger when there actually is none.
If we are not successfully distracted - meaning if we do not become frustrated and fearful enough about our initial symptoms, new symptoms will be created elsewhere to get more attention and eventually serve as a new distraction.
It is very important to note that even if the brain is creating these symptoms, by minimally cutting the oxygen flow to organs (Dr Sarno's hypothesis), and even if diagnostic tests and imaging can be perfectly normal, symptoms are very real and very well felt. In fact, psychosomatic symptoms can be the most debilitating and frustrating symptoms especially because of their chronic nature.
The term "Tension Myositis Syndrome" was used at first since it was initially believed that the muscular system was mainly where symptoms were created. Then, since other systems such as the nervous system was shown to be as well, Dr Sarno changed the term to "Tension Myoneural Syndrome".
Later on, many terms were used to describe TMS, also known as psychosomatic symptoms, such as Psychophysiologic Disorder, Neuroplastic Pain, Mind Body Syndrome, Perceived Danger Pain, Stress Ilness... which all mean the same and are treated in the same way: by learning about the role of the brain and emotions in chronic conditions. I personally still like to use the term psychosomatic symptoms; however I mention TMS extensively on my website because, I want to trace the method back to its origin: Dr John Sarno's initial TMS theory.
It is important to start using these terminologies and not medical ones since, as we said, the root cause is purely psychological, it has nothing to do with tissues themselves, and symptoms can move around and co-exist if they don't get enough attention. Another main reason is that medical terminologies are usually associated with negative prognosis since they are commonly known as being incurable, as opposed to TMS which is known to be treatable and curable once we start feeding the brain accurate information. Since we are trying to do that, language and connotations we use around symptoms are very important as well, but more on that later.