Hello everybody and welcome back to episode two of the podcast The Cure for Chronic Pain

with me Nicole Sachs, LC SW. And I'm here today for episode two of the podcast because I thought

that before I start interviewing patients and colleagues and thought leaders in my body medicine,

I thought I needed to tell you a little bit more about what I mean when I say journal speak.

If you listened to last week's podcast, you do know that I mentioned journal speak in my journey

when I was sitting at that deli and Dr. Sarno had instructed me that I really needed to take a

deep dive and understand the things that I might be repressing out of necessity, the emotions,

the experiences, the trauma, the things that had happened in my life by no fault of my own,

that I might have needed to stuff away in order to manage my existence. You know, they call defense

mechanisms, defense mechanisms for a reason because they protect us, they defend us and protect us,

and keep us safe in situations where we might otherwise feel so unprotected that we wouldn't be

able to carry on their responsibilities of daily life. And so there's a reason why we feel

defensive, why we feel dissociated, why we repress things. It's a function of our brain and

our nervous system. In fact, it's the same protective function that leads us to feel physical pain

as a result of emotional repression. So it's all coming from a well-meaning place.

But in any case, when Dr. Sarno first met with me, he said, listen, you are a patient of TMS,

you have a structural abnormality in your back. Some people have one that they can point out via

MRI and some people don't. Some people have a migraine or fibromyalgia or irritable bowel or they have

back pain and they don't have a structural finding. So it really actually is immaterial. It happened

that I did. And it also happens that TMS often finds its way into the place that you are most likely

to believe it. Because if you're thinking about the complicated, beautiful structure of the human

system. And if you're thinking that if the primary reason is to protect us, well, then they have to

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