Many kinds of strange pains on face. I'm stuck please help!

Thank you for your reply.
Can I ask what kinds of TN you had? Is it a classical type of TN with a sensation like an electric shock?

Thank you.

 

I'm delighted that you overcame TN Balto, I have a distant memory of you mentioning it on tmshelp. Actually I agree with much of what you say. Any kind of pain anywhere could be TMS but we have to be sure (remember poor Susan?), and respect the times and people for whom it is not.

I realise that for many people, pain and tms are initiators into a vast healing paradigm, one so gentle and wide that it could never squeeze down the narrow aperture of Western medicine. I don't know how many this is true of, but people like Lily Rose and myself come from this perspective. I love Sarno but he was not the first. He didn't originate the idea that emotions and tension cause pain and disease. He is rather more unique in the insistance that one exclusively use psychological methods. Interestingly it's a fall from one Western method straight into the lap of another. Why should this be a problem? Maybe because Western medicine is the only system in the world that doesn't recognise energy, be that chi, prana or such. Older Western methods do, just not the ones we know. In healing paths possessing a more soulful dimension learning through pain and suffering is seen as but one way among many. Sarno provides a wonderful example of this.

I mention all this my dear because we are more mysterious than we can ever know. From the first moment we flimmer in oneness-with-mother in the womb to the second we post our reply here and beyond we are in dynamic flow.

It's said it would take our entire lifetime to process all the information that assailed our consciousness at the time of birth. How much must reside in our darkness?

All I ask is that we honour this and resist polarisation. I grew weary of the partisan nature of tmshelp. Let us keep this healing place warm and accepting.



(I half expected the comparison with discs but with TN the situation is more complex. Arteries and nerves embed and wrap around the nerve, it's not a fleeting pressure.)

 

I'll send you a private message later sweetheart. x

 

I'm like an English bus; nothing for ages then three roll down the road together.

Feel the need to say that my thoughts on TN are not my thoughts on Tiny Wings case. The poor thing has been through hell and everything that she speaks of certainly points to tms. She's not describing either variant of TN. It sounds like atypical face pain which even by the most conservative medical standards is believed to be psychogenic and treatable with psychological and/or complementary therapies. She belongs here, safe in our arms.

 

I was diagnosed with TN once by a Doctor last year...How good of a doctor is questionable...

it started as a migraine, at the worst of it it felt like the left side of my face was melting off, it persisted for almost 3 months and in that time I had seen at least 4 different doctors and was given four completely different diagnosis...(During my final months of school).

-Cluster Headache
-Trigeminal Neuralgia
-Hemicrania Continua
-Cervicogenic Headache

Cervicogenic Headache was what I accepted, mostly because of confirmation by a Chiro that I trusted (and desperation). Within several weeks the pain was gone, only to come back briefly at times of stress or anxiety. It disappeared for about 12 months, until I stumbled on TMS while desperately looking for a cure of my current pelvic pain. Funnily enough, when I started to treat my pelvic pain as TMS, the pelvic pain disappeared for a short time, only to be replaced by that same constant headache. After a few days, the headache disappeared and the groin pain came back with a vengeance.

I can really relate to your first post in this thread, about your different symptoms only lasting months at a time. I have suffered from this most of my short life (I'm 23); life halting symptoms...only to one day disappear, to be replaced by another.

At the moment it is pelvic pain, which I believe was actually triggered by a minor, very real infection. On good days, the headaches come back and on days I am symptom free, my anxiety is through the roof.

It has been a constant battle for years which I believe is now finally coming to a head, pain and anxiety is worse than it has ever been and I think it is because I am finally scratching at the inner workings of my mind. Ups and downs are intense for me at the moment but I will get there and so will you.

The biggest thing for me is to relax at every possible moment, grasp at the opportunities to let your hair down and take your mind off of your negative thoughts, no matter how much you want to curl up into a ball and obsess over your pains and anxieties. Some days it feels like I will never be normal but when I get my mind out of that blackhole that is my anxiety, I do feel normal, sometimes it only lasts a few hours but it provides me with hope and proof that there is another world to live in apart from this one I create for myself.

 

It's very easy to get hung up on a diagnosis. In the beginning it's simply a place to hang your hat, it helps soothe by providing some sort of starting point. For me it was only about symptomatic relief. Almost six years of mind-bending pain with no relief was insane. If nothing else it was laying down and reinforcing neural networks that are hard to undo. I needed some pain relief, something that targeted the origin. In no way do I confuse this with cure or healing. I know some people believe everything is tms but if this is so we need to refine the core belief that the pain is benign and causes no lasting physical change.

 

From "THE DIVIDED MIND", page 131:

"Another crucial therapeutic element became clear early on as well: the person must not only 'understand' the nature of the process but be able to fully 'accept' it as well. Not faith, but acceptance of the idea is essential. Blind faith leads to a placebo cure, if any. By contrast, acceptance and acknowledgment produce permanent results. Failure of acceptance is an impediment to 'cure' for some patients because inability to accept the concepts of TMS is one of the psyche's strategies for maintaining the process. As put succinctly by a young woman patient years ago, 'Denial of the syndrome is part of the syndrome.' In addition to creating pain, the psyche creates doubt--the better to keep the syndrome going."

 

Not EVERYTHING is TMS, but about 80% is. Modern medicine is great at dx'ing structural issues, sometimes TOO good at it, coming up with invasive allopathic solutions that may not be necessary to treat symptoms that might be or are TMS. When repeated allopathic testing reveals nothing is structurally wrong and doctors even tell the patient that it's stress or tension, prescribing tranquilizers and anti-depressants like Librium and Xanax, then it may seem useful to treat the chronic condition complementarily with TMS methods. Dr. Sarno said muscle, tendon and ligament pain is benign, but long time chronic pain can cause compensatory changes due to atrophy.

There are many citations in TMS literature and the cancer literature such as by Dr. Bernie Siegel that even serious conditions such as cancer, have their roots in deep emotional unhappiness. SteveO writes that cancer should be viewed as a part of us and not as an outside invader. Of course serious medical issues should be treated by allopathic medicine and TMS psychologically.