Gone a while and returning with new perspective

I spent quite some time here earlier in the year, especially while I was doing the SEP, and then I went away for a while because I could not convince myself that my ankle pain was not structural, and had had a relapse. I intended to pursue (and have pursued) physical treatment and TMS communities are often not very supportive of that (though this one is less dogmatic than others).

Officially from the medical diagnostics I went through, my diagnosis is peroneal tendinitis of the left ankle with no substantive findings on MRI. This is what I call a "TMS compatible diagnosis" because there is no finding other than pain and inflammation. My physical therapist works with me on soft tissue rehabilitation and joint alignment throughout the lower body plus muscle strengthening, and I also get trigger point massage as further soft tissue treatment. The physical treatment has helped me greatly since the relapse. But my patterns of symptoms are still somewhat mysterious. I had a smaller relapse this week for no very evident reason.

Talking to my trigger point therapist today, she said something very insightful. We talked about my frustration in being unable to identify a clear cause for the increase in symptoms and she empathized with that. I said - knowing that she is the type to be open to this - that perhaps there is an emotional factor. She said "Of course that's possible. How could it not be? It's all the same thing."

This was for some reason an epiphany for me, even though this is, at some level, exactly the point that Sarno makes - that the mind and the body are one. Both physical and emotional traumas or injuries have an impact on our bodies. My ankle has been physically traumatized multiple times, and it seems clear to me that it has scars of a sort from those incidents, and from the poor/incomplete rehab that followed. But that in no way excludes that some symptoms I experience in my ankle originate in emotional reactions. One could play off the other - my mind could cause tissues in the lower left part of my body to tense up and snag up, which then causes irritation in the sensitive, off-balance areas of my ankle. Or my mind could just cause pain straight up.

I don't think it matters a lot to figure out the exact mechanism, but it matters a lot to identify the ways that we have been traumatized, the ways we experience pain, and address those. In my case I believe some of those ways are physical where my ankle is concerned and I need to continue to address them physically so that there is not a trace there, a susceptibility, for my mind to take advantage of, and predisposing me to continuing injury. If a mind can un-adhere scar tissue, that mind is more powerful than mine! But I also can't neglect the emotional as I have been, and put the entire weight of rehab in the physical realm. It's not just my left lower body that ails. It's less about "treating TMS" than it is about living my life in a way that's healthier for me emotionally, more honest and aware.