jokeysmurf

I had anxiety when I was a child, only I didn’t know what anxiety was. It was never really s problem because it was acute and very short lived. I had my first wave of anxiety sensitization after grad school with my first teaching job as an adjunct. I still never really knew what anxiety or disorders were or that one could become sensitized. I learned about Claire Weekes and eliminated it in about 5 months. Life went on and things were ordinary.

After two moves, living in a city, a bad relationship under my belt and being passed over for a well paying job teaching full time at a university, things started to go downhill. My self esteem took a nose dive. I became harder on myself and my perfectionism was gaining ground. I started to develop back pain. It was still manageable but I had to lay down for hours, so I thought.

Still time passes and I go into a new relationship. This woman is great, intelligent, challenging, deep, passionate. She goes through grad school and I continue to teach Pat time. We move together and I feel at ease. Then I get passed over again and she gets a job. We move and I am in a new place. I start to feel a bit anxious again. I begin having some weird pain under my left rib that comes and goes. I eventually go to the doctor. Well she was a NP as it turns out. She tells me I most likely have an ulcer. Bad diagnosis, however being an obedient patient I believe her and I start experiencing more ulcer like pains and begin to try and “cure” my ulcer. After several weeks I go back and I am losing weight. She reevaluates and changes the diagnosis to pancreatitis. This diagnosis scares me after reading in google what it was. I avoid all foods with fats or oils as well as beer. The fear grows around food and the pain intensifies. It becomes more frequent and soon I becomes preoccupied with my pain and food. I eventually make an appointment with a gastroenterologist. By this time 3 panic attacks and trips to the ER reveal nothing. They Did blood tests, sonograms to check my kidneys (due to flank pain), everything comes back normal, actually they say I am very healthy except I am a bit thin.

The gastroenterologist puts me on gaviscon and carafate. Eventually the day of the endoscopy reveals nothing. Not a shred of anything wrong. That night I came home tired, angry and confused. The pains are still present and I am running out of doctors who will see me. Then my grandmother and aunt pass away. My symptoms begin to morph. At my worst I had the following.

Anxiety
Blurred vision which lasted about 8 months
Headaches
Neck pain
Back pain
Tooth pain
Foot pain
Night sweats
Rib pain
Chest pain
IBS
Calf cramps
Thumb pain
Sciatica
Dizziness
Ear popping and fullness
Sensitivity to sounds
Constant nausea this lasted about 8 months
Stomach cramps and pain
Pins and needle like pains all over my body
Popping joints or something similar
Insomnia
Fatigue
And anytime I ate food I felt overcome with pain or nausea if I didn’t have pain.

In short I was a sensitized mess. I left my girlfriend of several months to go home and be with my parents who could watch over me because this was too taxing on my GF with a full time job and rent. I withdrew from work and left. The symptoms continue as do doctor visits. One doctors says I have heavy metals. Another says I should be tested for HIV, another says I should be retested for everything I already had paperwork for. I was tested from Lyme. One thinks it’s Epstein Barr. One thinks it’s Addisons, another thinks I’m faking and so on. More tests reveal nothing. I felt I was probably dying.

One day I saw a YouTube video about a dr with MS who put her MS in remission with diet, exercise, and stress reduction. This was Dr. Terry Wahls. It was my first glimmer of hope. I decided to do the wahls protocol. I knew I didn’t have MS but whatever it was it had manifested so much that lost track of how it all started. However I knew it couldn’t hurt to try all these things. Before I started I reluctantly saw one last doctor and asked for an anti depressant. I needed to get some traction. In 4 months about 25% of symptoms stated to reduce except when I had horrible extinction bursts. I decided to go back and be with my girlfriend. I was still a wreck. I decided to go to therapy ( she suspected it was all psycho somatic). I saw a somatic experience therapist.

Months go by and I begin to improve. The pain isn’t as constant and some symptoms begin to lift. My anxiety was still horrible but I started to get glimpses of my life back. We delve into childhood trauma it reveals so much. However even at this point I don’t know about TMS and I still somehow believe that most of my symptoms were structural. This part is funny because I was eliminating symptoms through somatic work and yet I believed that my body had something wrong with it.

Finally I come across Dr Sarno through a google search chronic pain and celebrities. I figured if you have a disease or syndrome and if a celebrity has it then someone has tried to treat it. I watch his video. I laugh in disbelief. Months later after trying to become active again I get horrible back pain. I revisit Sarno only this time I don’t laugh. I find his books. I download them and listen.

I do the work hoping I will be cured in weeks to month. Nope. I listen to his second book. I finally come across Alan Gordon’s Pain Recovery Program and things really click with explaining how fear fuels pain. I revisit Claire Weekes the real work begins on December 2017. This becomes the hardest thing I have ever done, trying to live a normal life without pain. I return to work with many symptoms. I push on and I read Steve Ozanich’s book. By April I feel 50% better. By December 2018 I feel 75% better.

As of now I feel 85% better. I begin to realize how important fear is to pain and other symptoms. Somatic tracking allows me to feel pain or symptoms and under it...fear. I am becoming much more active and am practicing acceptance. As it turns out I didn’t really know how to practice acceptance, it turns out I was practicing tolerance, the kind where you grit your teeth and prepare.

This is where I am now. 2 months ago I finally had several days of almost no pain or anxiety followed by days of intense symptoms, followed by days of no pain or anxiety and so on. A see saw effect. My stomach pain has returned and has morphed into throat pain and hiatal squeezing and so on. It comes and goes. It feels as if I am walking backward in time and meeting my first symptom in reverse. My brain still wants to cling to structural even through I know it’s TMS.