Any help welcomed... having some concerning issues

Hi everyone

1st time poster and have also posted this in Ask a Therapist so hoping they might be good enough to help too, but this is my situation and if anyone can give me any thoughts I would be very grateful.

I was a super fit person all my life and then a pain started behind my first rib at the back a decade ago. Ultimately this spread to my entire right shoulder girdle and incapacitated me with nerve pain. I was sent to Pain Management for 3 years and had neck injections and a load of meds with horrendous side effects which I have cut back drastically.

Currently I have numb, weak arms and a band of pain around my mid back to chest, some difficulty breathing and swallowing and now numb legs. Was admitted as an emergency to hospital and have C4-C7 bilaterally pinched/trapped foraminal nerve roots and a herniation over the anterior cord as well as T11-T12 paracentral bulge so my cord is being somewhat compressed. Over the past month and a half things have become so bad I have been bedridden and feel very light headed and unwell. Have been checked out thoroughly for fractures, cancer etc and none of that.

Am I too far gone for TMS to help?? My neurologist has suggested an elective C4-C7 discectomy with fusion and I am terrified having watched multiple YouTube videos of horror stories. The last thing I want is to get worse, but it has become to the point where my entire life has been for years revolving around pain and this year with medical appointments and alternative therapies multiple times a week. I have not been able to leave the house apart from for medical appointments for at least 5 years and all my muscles have atrophied.

I do have a lot of the TMS personality characteristics and the initial symptom came on after a protracted, stressful divorce, but I can't help wonder if this is sheer coincidence. It's hard to believe in this sometimes... but I want to.

Any thoughts, help, suggestions would be very, very welcomed. Where would I even begin with this? It almost feels as if my whole body is shutting down (it isn't) and there are so many things I want to do but physically can't because a) it hurts and b) I am terrified of making things even worse than they already are. A walk to the bathroom is enough to cause a severe flare up of symptoms. My main pain is between the shoulder blades just a little under where a bra strap would close and it is l like a HUGE spasm that is perpetually there, and the numb tingly legs. I do not have myelopathy.

Thanks so much for reading this.

 

I’m sorry for all your pain. I do think TMS work can help you greatly, to be able to function again you need to address your inner life, fears, angers and begin a slow progressive recovery. Because of your symptoms, I think consulting a TMS Dr. Would be a great choice. You may not have one close, but Dr. Hanscom does remote work. He is a back surgeon now TMS therapist. You might also like to see the film Love Heals. It follows Diana, who did have back surgery but found out that her back was not the sole cause of her pain. It explores a huge variety of healing methods.
This is Dr. Hanscom’s extensive website. https://backincontrol.com/

 

Cactusflower... thank you so much. That is a GREAT idea. And no I don't have anyone where I am whatsoever, but an ex spine surgeon honestly sounds like a great person to contact. Really appreciate it and your compassion I have never heard of that movie... I would love to watch it. Where might I find that, do you know?

 

I found the trailer on youtube. The movie has an website but I could not watch the actual documentary. You can subscribe, give your e-mail address, get a book etc. I just wanted to watch the documentary, that's it.

 

Sita is right, the movie is not currently available. They seem to release it for viewing every few months for a week, but said while it is entered in any festivals etc. they can’t show it. Sign up for email, they want to hear from folks who are in need too.
I understand some of what you are going through. I have some diagnoses of impingements, but found a spine surgeon here, who’s assistant agreed with me that many of my symptoms were not caused by them. Many were fro
Muscles so tight and contracted they were causing the actual pressure, creating many symptoms I don’t want to iterate here because your subconscious may pick up on my symptoms and create more fear (and symptoms) for you. The process to just begin regulating your nervous system may take its sweet time (or not, everyone heals differently). But learning calming techniques and realizing that it can get better, no matter what is going on, your mental suffering can ease and you can have more peace. To begin the process there are two free programs offered here, teaching a variety of self-regulating and internal discovery skills. The Pain Recovery Program is built to really help you conquer fears: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/ (Pain Recovery Program)
The SEP program really helps you turn your focus inward to personality traits and emotional patterns we have lived by that are no longer serving us: https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Structured_Educational_Program (Structured Educational Program)

The key is to go slow with either program. 1/2. -1 hr per day, break up lessons into multiple days if they take you longer. I took 3 months to complete the SEP purposefully, so I could slow down and digest each part.

 

Thanks to @Sita for researching the doc availability. And I echo all of @Cactusflower's advice 100%. Wishing you all the best. It's more than possible to turn this around and get your life back. Dr Hanscom himself did it, and so can you.

~Jan

 

Thank you to ALL of you. I am extremely grateful. I contacted David Hanscom last night and hopefully he may be kind enough to respond. I am intending to begin the programs on here, one after the other. I think one of my issues with this is impatience to be "fixed" because it is intolerable and also it creates fear which probably doesn't help at all. I had spent hours daily consulting Dr Google and ended up even more confused and desperate and this sometimes still happens due to sheer panic. So the advice to take it slow is something I must really take on board here.

Cactusflower... I already have the spasm symptoms plus tax, but I found it interesting that you said by your describing symptoms further I might somehow "catch them" - I have to wonder if this has happened by the aforementioned Dr Google consults as my symptoms have become more severe almost by the day after all of that!

Jan... I am avidly reviewing your profile links... thank you so much for all the work you put in on that, it's so interesting.

And Sita... I appreciate the movie info. Hopefully it will return soon.

Finally, may I ask how long each of you took to recover - and once you had calmed your mental state was it fairly fast after that? I have looked for stress in my life and honesty it is all about the pain and weird symptoms I have - I am caught up in this to the exclusion of much else, which I think has been exacerbated by so many consultants and doctors over the years (at one point I was having up to 4 medical appointments a week!!!), none of whom have seemed to agree on a diagnosis (some say spine, some say FND, some say CRPS and multiple other things, but nothing life threatening).

My current concern I suppose is what if this doesn't work? Didn't realize how anxious all this had made me as I am someone who puts on a brave face and that is becoming harder these days.

Thanks so much everyone again.

 

Spasms are painful but temporarily TMS equivalents. What if thinking will drive up all kinds of TMS equivalents but is really hard to stop unless you're completely paying attention to something else.

 

Nope, not gonna do that!

There are two main reasons for my answer:

1. "Recovery" really only means learning to manage your TMS brain mechanism to the point where you get your life back. What you will hopefully come to accept is that it is a human brain function that doesn't just disappear - it is always there, trying to keep you safe by keeping you in fear. You basically have to learn to love and nurture your poor fearful brain while you take control over that negative and fearful inner dialogue so you can get on with your life.

2. Everyone's journey is completely different, and everyone's definition of recovery is different. There are no absolutes here - which is one of the first lessons that must be accepted.

Oh, yeah - there's also a third reason why "recovery" is a slippery concept in the last few years - which is that sadly and frighteningly the entire world is suffering from a significant decline in mental health. TMS knowledge and techniques absolutely will help - in fact they are more important than ever to get through these times. I've had my own struggles and setbacks due to the state of the world, starting several years before the pandemic, which then delivered a big setback - but wow, I can't even imagine how much worse off I would be without my TMS skills and mindset.

It really is all about learning to change your inner dialogue, and permanently incorporating a set of mental and emotional health tools that work for you.

Best of luck,

~Jan

 

Here's the thing: it's worked for others, it might work for you.

The big point I noticed when I first came here 4 months ago -- the information is free. They aren't trying to make money from you. As someone who went through the Dr. Google gauntlet, this is extremely rare on the internet. There are so many grifters or true-believers claiming you need this or that to 'fix' you. The people here are posting because they are working through this and/or want to help people who are experiencing what they've experienced.

 

PS - You might go to the Success Stories Subforum and start reading those posts. You'll start to get a better idea of just how different this journey is for everyone.

Edit: and check out this other fantastic new response from @cain aven (which qualifies as a Success Story to me ) :
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/deconditioning.26214/ (Deconditioning)

 

Thanks again so much, you guys

Balsa11, thanks for that. Good to know it's all part of it, not so easy to conquer though as you say.

Cain, oh totally I don't think this is any kind of rip off anything, absolutely. It's wonderful that people are prepared to even help at all, honestly. And hopefully this will work for you AND me.

Jan, you did make me laugh! "No, I won't do that!" Hahahaha And I see why now you explained and very much appreciated the link. However, I am also a little confused - I may be misinterpreting what you said, so I wonder if you could clarify. Are you saying that essentially the pain never actually goes, but the mind body work simply allows us to feel somewhat better about it, look at it in a different way, respond to it less fearfully - or at least in your case? If so, this sounds a lot like Pain Management, with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which I tried some years ago but without much success for some reason. I haven't read the success stories yet but intend to (ironically I was seeing two pre-arranged medical practitioners so am responding late as a result). Many thanks for being so supportive so far. It's much appreciated.

 

As far as “catching” symptoms by hearing or reading about them, it depends on how well your brain takes these things on. My brain is pretty suggestible, so much so that on one TMS Facebook page, a woman posted a question about frequent urination. In the next three hours, I was visiting the bathroom every 10-20 minutes and going ALOT each time. I hadn’t been drinking anything more than usual. It was very strange but harmless and a great illustration of how the brain can influence the body’s functioning.

i wish you success on your healing journey.

 

I think (correct me if i am wrong), but PM is for structural injuries etc. If it is TMS — in all its variety and base simplicity — the pain goes away because the brain is sending the signals of pain based on tension (be it anxiety, or something else) and at some point it starts sending less. For my own example, I used to get burning pain from sun up to sun down in my hands and sometimes the feet, now I generally experience maybe 10 - 20 min a day, because i shrug it off when the sensations come and usually they go away on a couple minutes ( or 15 seconds). Brain is sending muted or an absence of pain signals then. In a sense this is management because it is still being ‘handled’, but for most of the day it isn't there or just a ghost of what it was. My stuff is TMS and not structural though, my nerves aren't injured, it was hyperstimulation across multiple years coupled to suppressed rage and 40 yrs of anxiety.

 

Sorry for the confusion, Diana. I'm referring to the fact that what we still call TMS (in honor of Dr Sarno) is a built-in, primitive brain mechanism designed to keep us constantly worried and on the alert for danger. The physical symptoms, as Dr Sarno explains, are designed to keep us in fear/alert mode and not dwelling on our emotions. Knowing this allows us to adopt techniques to actually acknowledge our emotions and convince our brains that we don't need the symptoms.

However, you don't "recover" from a brain mechanism. You manage it so it doesn't take over your life again.

The most important thing everyone needs to accept is that the details of individual symptoms are completely irrelevant. This is because our brains produce all physical sensations, and they are capable of doing so for reasons that are not related to actual injury or illness.

Therefore, what you are managing is not an individual symptom, but the emotional distress that your brain is trying to distract you from by throwing any number of symptoms at you. One thing we talk about here is the Symptom Imperative, which is the well known syndrome of brand new symptoms appearing shortly after you've managed to banish the old symptoms as just TMS. The really impressive thing is how often a new symptom will take the form of something never described by anyone else.

Which is why you should take a vow right now, while I have your attention, to never ask anyone about specific symptoms. If you're really concerned about a new symptom see a doctor. But asking it here is just another distraction!

Anyway, I can tell you that I suffered from debilitating neck spasms and headaches for 20 years before I discovered Dr Sarno in 2011, which resulted in completely and almost immediately banishing those two symptoms, never to be experienced since then. At the time, I was on my way to being housebound with multiple other symptoms, described in my profile story, and those are the ones that come back to plague me during times of stress, because I seem to have the skill to convince my brain that a pain symptom is unnecessary, but I have a lot harder time with nebulous things like dizziness and heartburn. The growing world dysfunction before 2020 was bad enough, and the pandemic threw me into a stress crisis that resulted in a diagnosis of RA in June of 2020. Which is unfortunately a measurable physiological condition requiring medication, even though I'm convinced it was caused entirely by the extreme distress of recent years, on top of a lifetime of untreated anxiety. Dr. Gabor Mate describes how emotional stress can cause physiological conditions in his brilliant book When The Body Says No.

I could go on about my own long list of symptoms, experiences, successes and setbacks, but the bottom line is that TMS affects everyone differently, the techniques resonate differently, recovery experiences are different, and setbacks when experienced are all different. Success Stories illustrate this really well.