Enter Label: using the crazy thoughts technique (CTT) to rewire your mind

Unleashing Healing Potential Beyond Reason

Dear Companions,

In reflecting on my almost three years of pain, I find myself navigating a complex belief system. At its core lies TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome), a theory suggesting that chronic pain and various medical conditions, from gastric issues to depression, can originate from neural dysregulation triggered by events like Covid. TMS proposes that by addressing the mind's role in perpetuating cycles of pain and fear, one can initiate healing. Now with extensive experience, I’ve unlocked a new level that delves deeper into personal thoughts and experiences, a concept I've coined as the Crazy Thought Technique (CTT) for rewiring the brain. This technique emphasizes individualized approaches to healing, acknowledging that what may seem unconventional to some can be profoundly effective for others.

Unique personal tactics abound in the Healingvrse. For example, I’m reading an autobiographical book called Train Lord about a young man who suffered from blinding headaches only to cure them by becoming a train conductor. And what about the heroic survival stories in a prior post. These narratives underscore the importance of thinking outside of the box to a maniacal extent, shedding practically every preconceived notion in times of crisis. What possesses more levity than a seemingly crazy notion? What can embed itself deeper than unrequited faith? It's craziness that empowers us to be prepared for change in the face of adversity, especially when there is scant evidence change will come.

We are taught that insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But in the TMS world, and indeed in the world of survival, one must do exactly that. One must unlearn that precept entirely and approach every activity, which has certainly yielded pain in the past, as though it won’t. Take my three-hour bus rides to the city for instance. Originally it took me two weeks to recover from each ride, and in fact, for the most acute year, I was unable to approach the idea of it at all. Then, the recovery period was shortened—eight days, then seven, until finally I could do a trip there and back within four days. I’ve probably done more than 20 trips with one thought in mind: this trip will be the one that won’t hurt. I simply have to believe that even though the pain is there, it is not inevitable.

Anyone who has fallen into the TMS rabbit hole, and thus a protracted period of misery and medical mystery, has encountered fundamental principles that require a leap of faith:

1. Pain is neuroplastic; the brain can learn and administer it without reason.

2. Fear perpetuates the pain cycle, reinforcing the danger signal.

3. Reducing fear can diminish pain intensity.

There are many recommended resources on how to approach this, which I posted about here. from journaling to cultivating an indifference to pain. However, as one delves deeper, an amalgamation of TMS principles and personal introspection emerges. In CTT, I’d advocate for harnessing TMS principles to cultivate ideas that transcend reason. Much like a nursery rhyme or a childhood dream.

It worked for me to address my fear of flying. When I was ten years old, I had a dream that I was going to die in a plane crash, and it was so visceral that I always looked for those clouds when I travelled to console myself during turbulence—large puffy white ones, practically juicy, and low hanging. I would peer out the circular windows and tell myself, as the plane croaked in the jet stream, hey, nothing to fear, those aren’t the clouds I’m going to die in! It’s a farfetched notion, of course—that some dream I had as a child would portend my demise and serve as a visual cue to go off of, but nonetheless it served to calm me in the scariest of plane rides for thirty years. So now, I’m trying to find a new sequence of clouds to work for my Long Covid situation.

You cannot rely on any system to provide the most healing ideas for you, in the same way that I cannot tell you my cloud dream to erase your fear of flying. You can start using the affirmations preloaded in the app, but eventually, you are going to have to draft your own.

I remember learning from Curable to smile or laugh in moments of pain. The Facial Feedback Hypothesis suggests forced smiles can signal happiness to the brain, leading to genuine improvements. For pain rewiring, engaging neural pathways associated with positive emotions and coping mechanisms regardless of how one feels can potentially reduce pain intensity and emotional impact over time.

Smiling like that would feel a bit phony to me. Instead, I will laugh like a maniac, sneer like a toad, snarl like Nicholson in The Shining. It does not always work to sever the ties to pain, but it does provide a big F-U to it, which can give courage. And courage has a way of works itself out into your system, downstream. In other words, it’s an investment.

I also add on strange adages or affirmations that I have devised for myself, which again, if uploaded to anyone’s Insight Timer app would provide incontrovertible evidence that you have the wrong phone. For instance, lying in bed with a migraine, pissed off, missing out on the world, I will tell myself, today is tomorrow. I’ll be in pain, and simply say, don’t worry brain, it’s not even today right now, its tomorrow. I can see how that may make zero sense to you, but to me, it connects back to the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons that I used to love as a kid where he devises a transmogrifier to get out of doing homework. Somehow, I am able to think: if its tomorrow, or anytime but now, I hurt less. And I believe.

Transmogrifier

I have gone as far as buying my pain flowers. I could make the argument that even spreading a bodily fluid on the wall, a generally assumed to be crazy behavior, can provide release, a channel for your anger under a torment, and thus, not wrong, if it works to heal. These are all brain games, and the best of brain games are ones that go above the mind, into a territory where logic and reason do not work and plug into the beautiful place we can call faith. Find the ideas deep in the recesses of your thoughts—words and experiences that could never make sense to another person, but when paired together by the self, form the basis of faith, strong enough to pull yourself out of the abyss.

While becoming a train conductor may not be the panacea for my pain, I remain open to unconventional ideas. Kotler healed years of chronic Lyme that rendered him bedbound by finding flow through surfing even when he could hardly stand up. I’ve had my eye on learning to fish out here in Long Island, and perhaps I’ll carry with me a stuffed tiger as a companion.

In closing, I invite you to share your own Crazy Thought Techniques (CTTs). I would love to hear how you defy convention, making your own music in the Healingvrse. After all, that’s the sweet spot.

With Much Love from the Healingvrse,

Rebecca