How to Approach the First Few Months of Healing Chronic Pain/TMS
When you first discover the mind-body connection behind chronic pain—whether it’s back pain, IBS, anxiety, or fatigue—it can feel both exciting and totally overwhelming. You might hear stories of people finding relief through TMS work, and wonder: Where the hell do I begin? Do I have to master everything straight away?
No. You don’t need to fix everything at once.
This blog will walk you through how to approach the first 1 to 3 months of healing—not in rigid steps, but in a grounded, manageable way. If you focus on learning, asking, doing, and living, you’ll already be on the right path to long-term pain relief.
Learn
The very first part of this process is learning.
Not obsessively, not to get it perfect—but just starting to understand what’s happening in your body and why. If you’ve got chronic pain that won’t shift—like IBS, back pain, or chronic anxiety—learning the science behind TMS gives your brain a new narrative. You realise your pain isn’t a mystery or a life sentence—it’s a message.
Learning could look like:
Watching TMS videos
Reading mind-body healing books
Going through resources in a pain relief community
Even 10–30 minutes a day of learning can start to rewire the way you relate to your pain. It’s the difference between feeling broken vs. feeling empowered.
Ask
This work brings up questions. That’s normal. You’re undoing years—sometimes decades—of fear, beliefs, and medical conditioning.
So ask. A lot.
Ask people who’ve been through it. Ask other people with the same symptoms. Ask practitioners. Ask in my community where everyone is either on the path or has already walked it.
Things like:
“Is this normal?”
“Why is the pain moving?”
“What do I do if journaling feels overwhelming?”
“Why do I feel worse after meditation?”
Asking questions will keep you from spinning out. It’ll stop you from feeling stuck. And most importantly, it’ll stop you from doing it all alone.
Do
TMS work isn’t just something you think about—it’s something you do. And the two core practices I recommend from day one are meditation and journaling.
These are not just wellness buzzwords. These are the tools that actually start to rewire your nervous system, uncover repressed emotions, and release the internal tension that fuels chronic symptoms.
You don’t need to “feel spiritual” or “love journaling” to start. You just need to start.
And yes, at first it will feel weird. You’ll doubt yourself. You’ll think, “Am I doing this right?” That’s where asking comes back in. And that’s where the community supports you.
Meditation and journaling help with:
Lowering emotional reactivity
Making sense of your pain patterns
Getting to the root of suppressed emotions
Building tolerance for discomfort (instead of panicking when symptoms spike)
Start messy. Start small. Just do it consistently.
Live
This might be the most underrated part of healing: you’ve got to live your life.
Don’t turn healing into a full-time job. Don’t spend all day watching videos or overthinking the work. That’s not healing—that’s obsession disguised as progress.
Give yourself time to:
Go for a walk
See a friend
Cook a meal
Laugh at a stupid show
Create something just for fun
Even if you’re housebound or stuck in bed, there’s still a way to bring in small, intentional moments of living. This is what grounds the work. This is what brings you back into the present—and back into your life.
What to Expect When You Actually Do the Work
So what happens when you commit to learning, asking, doing, and living?
A few things are likely to show up…
1. The Healing Crisis
This is something I see a lot: people start meditating and journaling, and suddenly things feel worse. This is called a healing crisis, and it’s totally normal.
Your nervous system is used to avoiding the real stuff—fear, anger, grief, tension. So when you finally stop running and start feeling, it can get shaky. The pain might spike. You might cry. You might feel like you’re falling apart.
You’re not. You’re just healing.
That’s why being inside a community is so important—so someone can remind you this is safe, this is normal, and this will pass.
2. Moving Symptoms (aka the Symptom Imperative)
You might notice your symptoms start shifting around. Back pain becomes stomach pain. IBS becomes migraines. Anxiety turns into jaw tension.
Don’t panic—this is a good sign. It means your brain is trying to test you. It’s trying to keep you hooked into fear, but the more you understand the game, the more you stop playing it.
Your job isn’t to chase the symptoms. Your job is to stay with the work.
3. Emotional Insights
Once you’ve been practicing consistently, you’ll start to notice something powerful: clarity.
You’ll start to understand what your pain is trying to protect you from.
You might realise:
You’re not setting boundaries
You’re stuck in a job that drains you
You’ve never fully grieved something important
You’re holding back your anger to keep the peace
This is where the deeper healing begins—not just pain relief, but life relief. It doesn’t mean you have to fix everything straight away. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
4. Gradual Relief (Not Overnight Cures)
Some people feel better quickly. Others take longer. You might feel a bit better one day and worse the next.
That’s okay. This isn’t a quick fix. It’s a real fix.
If you’re consistent, the needle will move. Maybe not every day, maybe not in straight lines—but it will move.
And if you stay stuck, or things feel too overwhelming, reach out.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to do 8 hours of healing a day. You just need to show up—with curiosity, with compassion, and with support.
If you're navigating TMS, chronic pain, IBS, back pain, anxiety, or any other lingering symptom, you're not broken. Your body is trying to tell you something. And when you start to listen—really listen—that’s when things start to change.
Ready to begin? Come join us in the pain relief community. You don’t have to do this alone.