What TMS Actually Feels Like, According to People Who Finished a Course
Six weeks of daily appointments is a strange commitment. We asked twelve people what nobody told them beforehand.
By Elena Marsh · Editor
The clinical description of transcranial magnetic stimulation is accurate and almost entirely useless as preparation. A coil rests against your scalp. It delivers magnetic pulses. The pulses induce a small electrical current in the cortex beneath. None of that tells you what the room smells like or how you will feel on day nine.
The first week is the hardest, and not for the reason you expect
Almost everyone we spoke to described the first three sessions as physically uncomfortable — a tapping sensation that several compared to a woodpecker, and a scalp ache that lingered into the evening. Nearly all of them said it stopped mattering by the end of week one.
What did not stop mattering was the schedule. Five days a week, for six weeks, at the same time each day. People with rigid jobs found this harder than the treatment itself.
Nobody feels it working
There is no moment. This was the most consistent theme. Improvement in TMS tends to arrive as something noticed in retrospect — a week where you answered your messages, a morning where getting up was not a negotiation.
Several people described being told by a partner or a colleague before they noticed it themselves.
What to ask before you start
Ask how long the clinic's intake appointment is. Ask whether the same technician runs your sessions. Ask what happens at week three if nothing has changed — a good answer involves adjusting the protocol, not waiting it out.
Ask about the cost of the full course, not the per-session price.
Keep sharpening the protocol.
One protocol breakdown every other Tuesday.