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Hi all

My TMS symptoms started gradually last year, not that I knew about TMS at that stage. A couple of times during the year I remember driving to work and soon after setting off I would briefly feeling numb and slightly spaced out, I would wonder if I was having a heart attack and would think of pulling over, but I would 'think' my way through it and the feeling would subside. It was at the end of last year, that symptoms really started to appear after what was an unbelievably tough year both personally and professionally - my partners drinking problem was getting worse and she had tried to take an overdose at the beginning of 2014. For my daughter's sake, I powered on through and tried to keep things as normal as possible for her. My partner and I agreed to separate and put the house on the market. In addition, I'd also got a new boss at the start of last year too, who was, and still is manipulative, and micromanaging in the extreme, and loves to operate his team in crisis mode at all times. My mom had also been diagnosed with cancer last November and was scheduled to start Chemotherapy in the new year (she has now finished her course of therapy and is doing incredibly well).

Last December I had my first panic attack! Sitting in my lounge, I suddenly felt I couldn't breathe properly and I felt slightly 'out of body'. I decided to do a cardio workout figuring if this was some form of heart attack it would either kill or cure! The feelings subsided but returned at the beginning of this year. Lots of anxiety about a lot of things, driving in traffic, lifts, confined spaces of any description, moving out of the house, finding somewhere else to live, making sure my daughter was ok, holding down my job (I deliver leadership and personal development seminars and felt I couldn't do this anymore whilst my own life was in a tail spin!), the list seemed endless!! Along with the anxiety I felt shortness of breath and tightness in my stomach at all times in varying degrees of intensity. I'd gone my whole life just cruising through life, people who know me well would say I was one of the most positive, laid back people they knew, so when they saw me at the beginning of this year they were genuinely shocked at the state I was in (so was I!!). I've seen the doctor more times this year than I have the entire rest of my life. He put it all down to stress, and heart and lung checks came back all OK although blood pressure high. Things settled down a bit when I found a place to live and was able to have my daughter stay with me, but the tension in my stomach and chest was still there, and I'd developed pain in my right forearm and elbow which I put down to moving furniture. The tension in my stomach and chest lasted until April when I tried Emotional Freedom Technique (it was a youtube clip by Gabrielle Bernstein on getting rid of stress) and it cleared it immediately!! I remember just laughing to myself thinking 'where the heck has all that tension and discomfort gone?!!' I'd had it non-stop for 4 months, and an 8 minute youtube clip had just got rid of it!

I still had the forearm tenseness which sometimes included a stiff neck, but a few visits to a physio seemed to virtually get rid of that too. I remember being on a high. Confidence increased and I started feeling more like my old self. Fast forward 2 weeks later, although things seemed to have turned a corner, I'd already agreed to see a Cranial Osteopath. I still went to the appointment and explained to him that things now seemed to be really improving, he clicked my neck, clicked my back and that was that. Next day my neck and back and arms are really sore, and that is how it remained, gradually getting more painful and more consistent. I was now getting anxious that there was structural damage and that this pain was spreading over my neck, shoulders, mid and lower back, arms feeling sore, tingly and numb at times in my fingers!

I saw a physio who also said the pain was due to stress and that there was nothing structurally wrong. I started noticing that each time I either saw my doctor or the physio and they would say it was stress, I noticed the symptoms would subside considerably or even disappear for a while - so I knew it had to be something to do with the way I was thinking about the pain.

I started reading reading books like 'Mind over medicine' by Lissa Rankin, and 'The Tapping Solution for Chronic Pain' by Nick Ortner. They all started me heading in the right direction. I found a reference to John Sarno's work in the Tapping Solution last Friday, and since then I've been reading his books and listening to his audiobooks and I can already feel a huge difference. Sunday and today the pain in my neck, back and shoulders had virtually disappeared. I've noticed that there's a slight 'zingy' feeling that has come back to my lower left side of my back late this evening after I got a bit stressed getting my daughter to go to bed (she wanted to stay up with me for a while longer but she has school tomorrow and it was way past her bedtime).

It's early days, but I've had more relief in the past 2 days reading Sarno's work and reading this forum than anything else and I'm really hopeful for the future.

I'm looking forward to working through the SEP and growing through the process.

Thank you for reading - this is a loooong thread

Best wishes