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Me and my abdominal sensations

Discussion in 'General Discussion Subforum' started by GAC, Jul 23, 2024.

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  1. GAC

    GAC Newcomer

    Hi,
    For me, this has been a long time coming, and I'll try to keep this brief, as I'm sure we're all aware, it's easy to write a book on our lived experiences. I have summarised my experience at the bottom for those who don't want the long read, and also posted some questions I have.

    About me
    I'm in my mid 30's, in a happy relationship with my partner. Doing well in work. Scored 0 on the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) test, I had a happy childhood. My dad fell seriously ill whilst on holiday when I was about 8, he eventually pulled through, and that's probably my traumatic childhood event, even though I was probably too young to properly remember much of it. My mum would always describe me as a worrier, but through much of my life anxiety was never something I sought help for, as I would worry about something and then move on.

    2022 - Where it begins
    There's not a gentle way to say this. I was playing with an object in my bottom, and when I pulled it out, it was red with blood. I went to A&E (ER to Americans), got checked out, they found nothing wrong and hypothesised that I had torn or burst a haemorrhoid.

    But now I had this low level pain in my lower right abdomen, and this is where my journey with Chronic pain begins.
    My GP did blood tests, stool samples etc. nothing came back abnormal. I was put on a long waiting list to be referred to gastroenterology.

    So I waited, waiting with the convinced position that I had done an injury to myself.

    In 2022, my dad also passed away under difficult circumstances.

    As 2022 progressed I experienced, brain fog, palpitations, headaches, vision issues (eye test came back fine).
    I felt like I was back and fourth to the doctors about a range of symptoms.
    (Looking back, much of these I feel are tied together now, but back then, I hadn't a clue.)

    2023 - Flare up
    In 2023 we took a trip to visit friends in the US. Whilst abroad, my left abdominal pain flared up. I went into full panic mode, panic attacks, racing thoughts, the works. A US doctor gave me a look over, thought it was diverticulitis and gave me antibiotics. No diagnostic tests were done at this stage. I came home soon after and the pain subsided.

    After I got back, I had a colonoscopy, it reported a few diverticulum (small out-pouching of the intestinal wall common with age), but no visible inflammation, biopsies also came back clear.

    The pain remained, but now it had a new best friend: Health Anxiety.

    2024 - Spiral
    My obsession around my health got worse, I couldn't break the cycle of worrying what might happen next.

    I was put on an SSRI, I read the leaflet, and at the bottom of potential side effects listed diverticulitis. A few days into taking them, my pain flared up again.

    The first quarter of the year rolled by, and I had a few further flare ups of pain after this. On one of the flare ups, a stool sample was taken which showed increased inflammation (getting this result triggered another flare up as it happens...). A discussion was had with the doctor as to what was going on, they settled on my stress and anxiety preventing the body returning to a calm state, my insides had become hypersensitized. (Gastroenterologist had also ruled out IBD at this stage). I was told that I had Functional Pain, effectively a hyper-sensitization of my insides where normal function was misrepresented as pain.

    By chance I was given a book to read by a friend. "The Way Out" by Alan Gordon with Alon Zov. It was revelatory. I consumed it in a week, absorbing page after page. As I read it, my pain didn't seem so scary anymore, I'd found a credible reason for my pain. For this week, the pain didn't seem so painful either.

    By time June rolled around, I'd not had any sort of issue for a couple of months until I was scheduled to take a work trip, and the night before, it reappeared. At this point, it had played its hand, there was a clear link between me going long distance, and my pain flaring up the evening before. I still went.

    During a subsequent flare-up one night (I'd been worrying over the course of the day) I practiced somatic tracking, something happened that I never expected, the pain subsided. I couldn't believe it! I was overjoyed, and now couldn't sleep due to excitement rather than pain.

    My fear of my pain had been broken, I was still aware of it, but I didn't fear it as much, I still have moments where it does, but I try to catch myself.

    My pain has now also developed on the right side of my abdomen, I've wondered if this is because I don't fear my other pain as much, but my body needs to keep me in 'fear mode'. Its honestly working too...

    Summary
    • Traumatic/stressful event made me and my body think I'd hurt myself.
    • Anxiety has built up over a few years
    • Repeating flare ups of pain were linked to anxiety, and the fear of it flaring up while I was away from home. Flare ups always happened just before going to bed.
    • Read "The way out", gave a change of perspective and hope
    • Pain started on the left side of abdomen, now occurs on the right side, but not at the same time.
    • I've since read a few further books by Sarno and Schubiner. I can see myself in many of the areas they talk about.
    • I've been in CBT therapy for my health anxiety, which has helped a bit, but I still can't shake the feelings of worry that come around sometimes.
    • have arrived at TMS/Neuroplastic pain as being the core of my issues, but my anxiety makes me second guess this frequently.

    The Question(s)
    What has brought me here, and finally brought me to make an account and engage with the community is some guidance on a few bits:-
    1. As you start to pay attention to pain, does it tend to move, is it trying to keep you in the fear state?
    2. Do you find anxiety makes 100% believing a diagnosis hard, does it matter?
    3. I feel like I struggle to commit to doing the necessary work, as though my brain is constantly distracting me to prevent it happening, can anyone else relate?
    4. Is emotional work always a necessary component?
     
    GAC, Jul 23, 2024
    #1
  2. JanAtheCPA

    JanAtheCPA Beloved Grand Eagle

    Hi @GAC and welcome. You are definitely in the right place, and thanks for the thorough background - I may have skimmed past the physical details, but it's important for us to know that you've been checked out medically, and you also gave us good information about where you're at emotionally and with your TMS knowledge, which is super helpful.

    I will respond to your questions!

    100%! This is so common, that a number of us actually warn people about this phenomenon as they are starting one of the programs. The good news is that this shifting of symptoms, which Dr Sarno called the Symptom Imperative, is really great news, and proof of the TMS mechanism at work.
    You bet that anxiety makes it hard to fully accept, and in fact this is a sign of the primitive brain mechanism that Dr Sarno labeled TMS. Our brains are actually wired to be negative so that we are always fearful and alert for anything that might threaten our survival in the primitive wilderness. Problem: we don't live in that wilderness anymore, but our brains have not evolved accordingly. For most of us who live very safely in the modern world, this primitive mechanism works for shit. This is what we need to work with and figure out how to manage.

    The second part of your question is whether this matters? You will occasionally find purists who insist that 100% belief is essential in order to recover. Most of us prefer to say that it's fine to start the work without 100% belief, because belief is designed to grow as you do the work and experience the changes.
    hahaha - 100%!!! Once again, this is the TMS mechanism at work, doing what it thinks is its job, which is to keep you on the alert for danger, and not getting distracted by emotions. Repressing emotions is literally its purpose.

    After a lifetime of anxiety and mild TMS, I've been successful at acknowledging my emotions and controlling my symptoms for 13 years now, since I overcame a crisis of symptoms back in 2011. The times have not become easier out there in the world, and now at age 73 I also struggle every day with the fear of aging and mortality. I am absolutely convinced in my rational and intellectual brain that a commitment to meditation would help me in so many ways, and yet I am so fucking resistant to doing it! Ultimately, I do my best not to beat myself up about that, and I continue to be very pleased with the high level of functioning that I still enjoy, which is far and above the bad shape I was in 13 years ago at age 60.

    And by the way, while it would be easy to sit here 30 years older than you and tell you that you shouldn't worry about being over 40, the truth is that our knowledge of mortality is always lurking behind us, and it should be taken seriously and openly acknowledged. Acknowledging aging and mortality as a major trigger for my TMS crisis at age 60 was a big factor in my recovery.
    That's a big YES. We see it all the time, when people who have been successful just by reading Dr Sarno or Alan Gordon, come back here months, yrars, even decades later, saying they think they need to "do the work". Alan's program here is great, but if you want to do a program that is more emotionally based (with much credit to Dr Howard Schubiner's pioneering workbook Unlearn Your Pain) we recommend the Structured Educational Program which is on our main www.tmswiki.org site. It's free and doesn't require any sign up. There's a subforum for posting updates while doing the SEP, and I wrote the first post in the Welcome thread with some personal advice for doing the program.

    My extra-personal advice for doing this work is to be open to emotional vulnerability.

    I think that temporary recovery is possible without it, but you've already realized that it doesn't last. I don't really expect you're going to uncover anything that is unknown or earth-shattering, but what you probably are carrying around without realizing it is the isolation and perhaps temporary abandonment that occurred when you were so young and your father was so ill. His recent death, happening when you are still relatively quite young, can't be without trauma. I lost my cherished father at 31, and I can see now the connection to a bunch of mystery symptoms that started at that time. My mom was 93 and I was 63 when she died ten years ago, and it was still traumatic to lose the other half of my roots, and I still miss her. It's abandonment and isolation all over again.

    My own ACEs score is technically zero, but when I retook it with a different perspective I realized that there was a period of time in which I experienced some isolation and abandonment when I was quite young. I was the first born and got a lot of attention from my parents, especially my older first time mother who'd had a miscarriage, so she transferred her anxiety to me, and then they had three more kids although they really only wanted one more, so I believe that the household was quite chaotic when I was still pretty young. I ended up being left to my own devices more than would be ideal, although my parents actually made it up to me later. The information about this time of my young life was not hard to remember when I opened myself up and allowed the feelings of little me to be experienced by 60-year-old me. It was uncomfortable at first, but ultimately it was really freeing.

    LOL, I think this post might be longer than yours.

    Do the work, and let us know how it goes!
     
    JanAtheCPA, Jul 23, 2024
    #2
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  3. GAC

    GAC Newcomer

    Many thanks for your words of wisdom. I've seen many of your posts across the forum, and they're so often filled with great insights and crucially, positivity!

    My pain shifting over to my right abdomen side has only happened frequently (I'd had occasionally aches here before, but nothing ongoing) once I'd started observing and journaling frequently. I think this has come about because of my fear that pain on this side means IBD (even thought doctors have ruled this out). Does the pain gravitate to places you hold pre-existing fear towards?

    I can see myself falling into the exact same spiral around this new sensation as my previous pain. New symptom -> Searching for meaning -> increased fear/worry -> increased anxiety -> noticing pain more

    This is a relief, my conscious mind understands and relates to my symptoms being TMS, because I tick many of the boxes for neuroplastic pain. But my health anxiety is desperate to have me clutch on to any other possible medical diagnosis. I feared (here's that fear again) that if I couldn't wrap up my health anxiety fixation, I would never get better, or make progress.

    You're not wrong about this. I've said to my mum that I want to have a heart-to-heart chat when I visit her next. I know I have emotion bottled up about it and I recognise that I need this talk to work through some of this. then see how I feel afterwards and what else needs attention.

    Is there a particular programme you recommend? I've been writing up worksheets from Unlearn Your Pain by Schubiner as it seems quite structured and easy to follow. With the intention of going through that day by day. Having said all that, I resonate a lot stronger with what Alan Gordon teaches, and so is his 15 day guide a better place to start for me?
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2024
    GAC, Jul 25, 2024
    #3
  4. JanAtheCPA

    JanAtheCPA Beloved Grand Eagle

    A lot of people resonate with Alan because, as we frequently discuss here from time to time, Alan has veered from the emotional side of the work, and is much more focused on the neuroscience behind neuroplastic pain. I think this is because it appeals to more people, because our brains are wired to avoid emotional reflection - which is a survival mechanism, pure and simple. And here's the thing: it's quite clear that his recent methods achieve quick results.

    HOWEVER!

    My personal belief is that the knowledge and some of the techniques offered (so generously!!!!) by Alan are extremely useful, and the knowledge about neuroplasticity is particular helpful to help visualize the retraining and rewiring that our brains require, BUT they don't go far enough. If there are conflicting and unresolved emotions lurking in your unconscious (and believe me, THERE ARE or you wouldn't be here!) you will recover better, faster, longer, AND with additional tools in addition to Alan's Pain Reprocessing Therapy tools, that you will be able to use for the rest of your life. The emotional work really helps you to learn to more easily recognize and then to be vulnerable to examining emotional conflicts when they arise (which they will keep doing, because that's life) and I have personally found that doing this resolves the conflict almost immediately. Literally in fact (short post which illustrates this).

    I said that Alan's methods achieve quick results, but I'm personally not convinced they are lasting results. This is based on a certain number of people who come back to do our Structured Educational Program after experiencing setbacks which their PRT skills do not resolve. I have no proof that this is the case - just a sense...

    The SEP was developed before I became involved in 2011 but I'm pretty sure that it is based on a LOT of the material from Dr. Schubiner in Unlearn Your Pain, but by being online it can offer additional links to outside resources. You could probably do it side-by-side with ULYP, and you'll recognize when the exercises are overlapping, so you certainly don't need to those twice! (Also, the SEP hasn't been updated in a long time, and some of the links are obsolete - updating is actually going on right now but it's a tedious process and we're only up to Day 8 I think.) If you go to the subforum for the SEP, the top pinned post contains my advice for getting the most out of it (probably applicable to Unlearn Your Pain).

    If you're interested in listening to Alan Gordon back in 2012 when he was MUCH more into the emotional side of this work, check out the two audio webinars he did for the forum in 2012. The links to them both are in my list of resources following my profile story (under the heading of favorite things... sub-category on the forum. Those two webinars were hugely influential for me and my recovery.

    Mind you - all of this is my opinion only - developed over time, but honestly, I don't waver from it anymore. There are different perspectives out there!
     
    JanAtheCPA, Jul 25, 2024
    #4
  5. GAC

    GAC Newcomer

    Just thought I’d drop a message here to say I have started the structured programme. Today is day 2. I’ve made commitments to my partner to help ensure I do the work each day, and to focus on doing it, rather than get 4 days in and get fed up. Let’s see where the journey goes!
     
    GAC, Jul 30, 2024
    #5
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  6. GAC

    GAC Newcomer

    Day 6
    I’ve ended up missing the occasional day, but keep coming back to it.

    had another one of those moments where your TMS diagnosis is just reinforced further. I caved last week and saw the doctor about the pain on my other side. I was told it was likely IBS or similar. I hadn’t even left the doctors and the pain had subsided and left. To be replaced with… lower back pain. Sorry TMS, I’m on to you now ;)

    Thankfully that went away very quickly.

    I feel like I am playing whack a mole with symptoms at the moment.
     
    GAC, Aug 7, 2024
    #6
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  7. JanAtheCPA

    JanAtheCPA Beloved Grand Eagle

    New acronym?
    TMS-WAM
    maybe just WAMS
     
    JanAtheCPA, Aug 7, 2024
    #7
  8. GAC

    GAC Newcomer

    This is as much for me, as anyone else who reads these forums. I am on day 12 of the Structured Educational Programme. Today I have been pain free, all day. Tomorrow may be different, it may be the same. The day after may be different, it may be the same.

    Through no change in activities, only through education, journaling, feeling emotion, and not fearing my pain. I have no pain today. I also have no anxiety, and haven't for around 2-3 weeks now. Previously I'd make it through a week, maybe 10 days and the feelings would return.

    I intend on finishing the programme, today has given me that incredible thing which I wish on anyone doing this programme: Hope.
     
    GAC, Aug 18, 2024
    #8
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