Over the last month, I have co-led four sessions of a new TMS Healing Group on Tuesday evenings.
The purpose of the group is to allow diagnosed TMS patients to interact with and benefit from the observations and insights of other patients as well as get input from a PsyD therapist named Justin Barker who specializes in TMS and from me. Justin and I have worked together on a referral basis during 2020.
The first four weeks went very well. Feedback was excellent and two patients made substantial progress in pain, all patients improved emotionally. People feel uplifted by the sessions, more hopeful and leave with specific tools to benefit them when they have pain and to prevent pain.
This group may be an alternative for people who are not ready for individual therapy or who have done individual therapy and would like to add to or temporarily replace that therapy with a group model. I can see patients going back and forth between individual and group models. The Healing Group also has small didactic segments where appropriate. It is not a ‘support group’ although it has proven to be an incredibly supportive model. We usually ask for a four-week commitment to the weekly group, although this is flexible.
The fee is $100 for a 90-minute session.
We are changing the start time (to approx. 6 pm Pacific) to accommodate my patients from other time zones but they do have to have a TMS diagnosis by me or another TMS physician. This allows people from Mountain, Midwest, and Eastern time zones to join the group at a reasonable hour. it allows Wast Coast people to get home from work.
learn how the brain controls pain. emotions, stress
Truly,
David Schechter, M.D.