Bed bound to hiking through michigan

Hi everyone! I wanted to share my success story of chronic pain in the fourm of “cfs and fibromyalgia”. I want to say before I say anything else. You got this. You are winning by even knowing about this work and it’s not easy and we all know that. But trust me, life is beautiful after pain.

To begin, I got a cold virus in the beginning of November 2019. I was on vacation in Florida and was having a great time. However, I was under a lot of emotional stress from school. The sore throat wasn’t very bad, but I was so focused on recovering from a chronic cold that when it didn’t go away after 4 days, I freaked out. That time, the sore throat did become chronic. It stayed with just a sore throat for about 4 months till March of 2020, when I got a sort of flu. I’m honestly not sure that it was. It might of just been my brain creating new symptoms, but I got extremely bad body cramps and weakness.

That happened a week before my lacrosse season started. I was always scared for lacrosse. My main concern was always “how am I going to play lacrosse with a sore throat” or “how am I gonna play lacrosse when I feel like I have the flu”. This before I accepted my TMS diagnosis. So, in early March I went to lacrosse practice for a week. Before every practice I felt horrible. Slow, in pain, sick, etc... then after I felt much better and every night I thought, “what in the heck is going on with me? What could this be?” Then, mid March, the COVID 19 pandemic had came into our lives, effecting all of us.

At first, I wasn’t very worried about it? Because it meant lacrosse was no longer on my worry list, but however, I had much more to come. With a busy high school schedule and sports and a family to all keep up with, life was very hecktic. During the COVID pandemic in March, I found out that a vitamin d 3 defiancy can cause a sore throat and achy muscles. I thought I was saved. This was it! Goodbye pain! So, I took over 10 pills a day and got my labs drawn, however, they all came back positive. By this time I was house bound on some days. Feeling so weak it was hard to get out of bed.
I think everything coming back normal was the worst news I had ever heard at the time, but now I consider it the best. Aching muscles, throat sore, weak, feverish, I was looking for answers. I spent hours and hours on google obsessing over any sensation in my body. Then, sadly I came across something called chronic fatigue syndrome. Which scared the absolute hell out of me. After watching YouTube videos, it was basically the medical community saying I was going to be stuck sick in my bed for the rest of my life. And that there was nothing I can do to help it and it only has a 5% remission rate, and even after remission, most fall back. Scared out of my mind I spent days at a time balling my eyes out. It was the scariest thing ever. I thought I was going to die. I thought my life was over. I had no hope and that’s a very scary feeling which I’m sure a lot of people can relate to. However, I can say there definitely is hope.

After a couple months of hopelessness in bed, I asked my therapist who were the leading people in this whole “pathway pain” community. I honestly thought it was bs and never believed in any of the tms work we were doing before. However, I got into researching it, and bought the divided mind my dr john Sarno. I read the whole book in 3 days. Then, I completed dr. Howard Schubiners book “unlearn your pain”. Working through emotions never came easy to me, but I did it anyway and didn’t notice much of a difference in my symptoms. This made me want to give up at first. I said well, all these people got better in three weeks or so and I’m still not better! What the hell is wrong with me ?!

I can now say, nothing was wrong with me. Very little people get better with one program or a book read. And if they do, they develop other symptoms due to the symptoms imperative. So, after all this time freaking out, I found a YouTube channel called “Pain free you.” Dan Buglio is the man who runs it and he suffered from 13 years of back pain. He helped me realize you could be doing all the emotional work correctly, but if your staring at your pain and other symptoms all day, the pain and other symptoms simply won’t let go. I am now hiking and mountain biking almost daily. And I’m also training for a half marathon. Here are my tips and ways I was able to recover:

1.) Dont over complicate it. There is more than one way to get better. Don’t think that you won’t get better because you can’t feel your emotions. Or that your just not the person to recover because your life is to stressful. There are 3 basic rules. Feel the shit out of your emotions, sooth yourself, and go out and live your life. Don’t try to fix your pain all day.

2.) a attitude of authentic indifference. The reason I say authentic is because if your telling yourself you don’t care if you hurt or not, but inside your freaking out over the pain. I truely do believe that if you want your pain to go away. You can’t care if it’s there or not. You can’t let it impact your life. You can think about it, but don’t focus on it. When you don’t care about the pain, weakness, or other symptoms, it will let go by its own. I’ve heard a lot of people say that you won’t remember the last time you had pain, and that’s very true. There is no official finish line.

3.) Nobody is perfect. Go out and live your life and don’t worry about doing this work perfectly. You will get there, I promise.

I would like to say thank you to my therapist, Dan buglio at Pain Free You, Dr Sarno, and dr. Schubiner. These people changed my life forever, and they can change yours to.

 

Thank you so much for this! I've been fatigued for a very long time, and in fact a few weeks ago I saw that over a year ago on Facebook I'd been asking about meditation apps because of my chronic fatigue, and it was so upsetting to really look at how long this has been debilitating. But, even though I've recovered from TMS before (back pain), I can't shake the fatigue. Do you have any other specific details you can share? Dr. Schechter's 30-day workbook really helped me in the past, but not now. I know you're saying to forget about/don't focus on the pain, but I feel that whether I do or I don't, I'm slogging through the days. I'll look into Dan Buglio. You give me hope, and I'm happy for you!

 

Wow.. I remember that feeling. Your life actually WAS over in a sense... your life of believing the for-profit Medieval Medical World Sarno was so fond of dissecting.

LOL... so did I when I heard of Sarno. I had a strong desire to kick the first guy who told me about him and TMS.


You broke this down really well. I'd encourage others to use your 3 guidelines.

I've been painfree since '99. I have had a few mini-relapses, always around extremely painful emotional issues, but I only vaguely remember their times and place because of my changed ideas; to not glamorize or pay much attention to pain. I know my knee bugged me for two days at the start of baseball season but I couldn't tell you exactly when.

I dismiss it like an annoying little brother. "You can do whatever you want bro... I got some stuff I'm doing, so I don't have time to play with you right now"

You are really lucky to understand this so clearly at your age. You will probably have a tremendous positive impact on the world with your insights and ability to communicate. I am the only 'old' guy at work and all of my co-workers are in their 20's. One thing I'd like to mention is, the NEW added rage maker/pressure of Social Media is something we never had to deal with, and I see TMS coming to get younger and younger people.
That means we need younger and younger people being made aware of the dangers of Psychogenic symptoms/TMS. Virtually every guy on my crew has had a bout.... Inevitably they are having relationship troubles, Lifestyle changes or problems with work. TMS is no respecter of age.

We owe quite a lot to all of the people who looked deeper. Dr. John Sarno saved my life for 12 bucks!!!

Frigging awesome post!

 

Hi! I an very sorry to hear about your fatigue. i know how hard it can be at times. What really turned the corner for me was saying "well if im fatigued im still going to feel this way if im at home or living my life." I think that your fatigue is wired in your brain through fear focus and anxiety about it. And those same neural pathways can become unwired by doing the exact opposite. Im not saying to go run a marathon, but get out and do stuff you enjoy. Your pain and other symptoms will let go when you stop trying to fix them. Its not all about emotions. the mindset is just as important if not even more important than the emotions. For example, I felt so fatigued i felt like i could barely walk. But some of my buddies wanted to go out and play lacrosse so i said screw it, lets go. And not going to lie it was defiantly hard. However, after a hour and a half of playing and running laps around the track, the sensation of barely being able to walk, turned completely off. my legs felt fresh and it felt amazing.

 

Thank you so much it really means a lot to me. A lot of people are looking for that one childhood trauma because they think they still have pain because of something that happened decades ago. But most of the time that not the case! I have seen most people recover and become pain free when they truly do not care if they have pain or not. And it is definitely a beautiful thing to watch somebody get their life back. And yes i relate to that so much with social media. I always had to worry about what people thought about me all day long and what i was going to post so kids would think i was cool and that was def deeply enraging.

 

Thanks. I've been getting better at that in terms of getting up in the morning. For years I couldn't convince myself to get up early if I didn't have work or my baby waking me. But now, really living in this fatigue, I know without a doubt that whether I get up at 7am or 10am I'm going to feel the same exact way all day, so I may as well get up at 7. I gotta just keep doing that and having that same mindset throughout the day with everything else.

 

@samuelp180 , congratulations! Well done!

 

I had that 'one childhood trauma' . I was aware of it before the pain came. When I got well it was one piece of the puzzle , and when I worked with a shrink on Anger I saw how it framed a lot of my attitudes BUT , I didn't need to 'deal' with it to get pain free. Our personalities are largely pre-determined .I have always been a 'Nature over nurture' believer. I revisited it. I cried again.... but I always have. It's just there.

The Trauma (Father died when I was 5) was just something for my pre-determined character to respond to. It is just 'what happened'. I really believe the factors that set us up for TMS pre-date any trauma's we can remember. Just like the color of our hair, how tall we are and such are written in our DNA code, so is the personality characteristics that bring on TMS. Then our environment exacerbates the pre-existing stuff. My real time Job, Family and personal relationships were far more relevant than "How I got this way".

I really believe 'Helen's Story" in "Mindbody Prescription" is sort of an outlier. Most of us just need to look at the day to day annoying little gossamer's that end up breaking the camels back.

Just an opinion.

 

Well done, my dude! I'm glad you're feeling better. Dan seems like such a chill guy, and it always cracks me up when he refers to his neighbor as "jackass" in his YouTube videos xD.

 

Thank you!!

 

When you say fatigue, do you mean tiredness like you didnt sleep enough? or muscle weakness? Or a mix between them or anything else?

 

LOL me to, makes my day a little bit better.

 

I completely agree. Most people do not just reach in and kick out that one trauma and become pain free the next day.

 

Definitely not tiredness like I didn't sleep. It's like full-body and mind weight. I'd like to just be in bed all the time. I don't even feel a desire to get up and do fun things, because my body is so weighed down and my brain so fogged that what I really desire is to just lie down. (That's part of why I think this is different from when I recovered from chronic back pain -- my goal was absolutely to be painless. Here, I just want to sleep. My brain can't even really be motivated to think, "I want to play basketball! I want to make that new podcast I've been planning!"
I have a toddler, though, so that keeps me going physically. I have to get up in the morning for him, and I feel a need to take him to the beach, go on bike rides, etc. But I'm not being my true self even in these outings -- I'm not as silly and as active as I could be. I want to take him to the park and sit on the bench, not run around with him. And outside of the natural exercise I get with him (+ a 10-minute Yoga video I do often enough), I haven't truly exercised in 3 years. Before that I ran a 1/2 marathon! I even ran a 10k while pregnant, and then was fatigued for my whole 3rd trimester and don't think it's ever gone away. I didn't realize it hadn't gone away, though, because it was just masked at first by thinking it was sleep deprivation, and then the natural tiredness that comes with working and caring for a baby by myself. It's relentless, so I figured, yeah, Of course I'm crashing as soon as I put him to bed, that's natural. But for the last year+ I've recognized that it's something else. The amount of sleep I get doesn't change how I feel. Everything I do I feel like I fight to do. And if I take a break (sit down on my bed on my phone, for instance, when he goes in for a nap), it's incredibly hard to get back up. If I don't keep going, I'm just down for the count. Sitting down here typing feels like a gift because I don't have to stand up and do something physical.

 

I am so sorry to hear that i know its very hard as a person myself who has suffered from cfs. I cant speak for everyone but for me it was almost like i was sick and tired of being sick and tired or fatigued. I had extreme weakness in both legs and both arms. and my anxiety was through the roof about it and it was a big problem. Then i just said you know what im tired of this bullshit. The brain interprets your symptoms as a problem like its a danger. In cave man times, danger was known to be fatal. Your brain is interpreting your symptoms as dangerous when the are obviously not because if they were physical, you wouldn't be able to your body would of healed and recovered a long time ago. I know you might have heard this thousands of times and i know its very hard to do, but outcome independence is the most beneficial thing. You can keep doing emotional work if you would like, and i would say it might even be beneficial, but you probably are not fatigued from things that happened years ago. I think your case is more of a wired neural pathway. My symptoms didn't really go away or settle down until i truly didn't care if i had them or not. That is when we turn the corner and see the light at the end of the tunnel.