Day 6 Too many fears...

Briefly take a few minutes and write down some of your fears. Why are you afraid of these things?

I think I was always fearful but I was typically able to Distract myself by keeping myself busy all the time. When I first had knee pain three years ago that slowed me down a bit but then I was able to come back out of it. This year has been the worst of it. I've had no choice but to slow down because of my pain and boy did all of those Hidden fears begin to Compound. I was so afraid that my back would get worse and back pain was Never going away and I'd have sciatica and Neuropathy forever. I think At that point I was able to at least distract myself at home with video Games for a while, Until the carpal tunnel Symptoms came in. At that point there was no distraction anymore.

The carpal tunnel started four months ago and my anxiety skyrocketed once I no longer had gaming to distract me. Fear and panic took over my entire existence, not to mention far more pain. My World had become very small because I wasn't going anywhere anymore and it was worse when I started working fully from home And there were no more fun Distractions (Or fun at all really). I had a slight Drug Interaction issue so I began having pharmacophobia and wouldn't take any pills for fear of drug interactions. I wouldn't eat certain foods anymore because I was scared that they would cause me to have more anxiety because I had anxiety one day when I ate garlic and that Set the stage, Not to mention fearing sugar for its inflammatory properties. Forget drinking certain herbal teas. I'm still trying to get over these fears.

every night for months I would get a wave of panic in the evening for no reason . Thankfully I think I'm finally past that. I still fear sleeping at night because I'm afraid I will wake up with vertigo (It tends to come on while I'm sleeping). I also get tension headaches when I try to sleep which make a very anxious process for me considering I used to Love sleeping.

One thing that has helped me so far is getting out more often. I've been a hermit so finding activities outside of the house that I feel safe doing has been essential. Journaling has been helpful too. I also have had a Pretty good about a success with the "DARE" Method since learning about it. Educating myself about TMS of course has helped too.

I think some of my biggest hurdles in my TMS journey right now as it applies to fear would be:

• Exercising (I can do some light exercise though)
• Playing video games
• Walking on the sidewalk in front of my house (I can walk elsewhere but for some reason my sidewalk is sketchy in my primitive brain's opinion)
• walking on uneven terrain such as grass or dirt
• Bending over (Thankfully my husband puts on my socks for me)
• Driving
• typing on my phone (I use voice to text constantly)

I think the fear of these activities just stems from me being afraid of making my various Symptoms worse, maybe because there is a part of me that still believes that this is structural.

 

Hello Sam, thanks for posting! I just wanted to let you know that you aren’t alone - some of the fears and hobbies you have are very similar to mine. The biggest one for me is gaming - I first started experiencing symptoms in my thumb and palm on the thumb side of my right hand about a year ago. Gaming is my biggest hobby for leisure, so losing that completely for fear of hurting myself further made the year very hard for me. Even holding a controller seemed to bring on pain

I’ve only recently gained the confidence to start playing again for limited periods (usually an hour or so), some days it seems to hurt after playing and sometimes not at all (even though I do go looking for it sometimes). I also switched to voice texting about 6 months back, but I’ve started making myself type on the phone more since learning about TMS. It’s been really surprising how much I can type now when I was afraid to type just a few sentences a month or two back.

my symptoms have not all vanished (in fact I’ve developed some intermittent pain on the ring and pinky finger side of the right hand/arm) - I have a feeling that my body is just swapping symptoms, so I’m trying to stay strong. The daily videos by Dan Buglio (Pain Free You on Youtube) have seemed to be helping me over the last month. Lots of good info - stay strong! I’ve had some dark days, but I know that there’s hope and am working to stay the course.

 

Thank you so much for your response!! that's interesting because my pinky and ring finger have been super numb lately when they weren't at onset of my hand/wrist/elbow pain either. I almost wonder if it got worse after I saw a specialist that told me I had both carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel (not going back to her btw).

I think it's great that you've been getting back to gaming!! I think I'm ready to start gradually trying to come back to it. I had somewhat of an "aha" moment last week and I think it's starting to sink in that I need to just really start doing things normally again. it sounds simple and I probably should've understood that to begin with, but I don't think I had fully accepted TMS. I'm actually finding that the less I care about my symptoms the more I'm able to do. I am already typing a bit more on my phone as well in the past week. I'm happy for you being able to do more and it gives me hope as well. thank you for sharing your story with me.

keep at it you've got this!!!! also Dan Buglio is amazing! I found him not too long ago and I really enjoy his videos.

we will get back to gaming like we once did soon enough!!