Chronic back pain for 1.5 years - My Story

Hey guys, my name is Patrik. Im 31 yo from Germany. I apologize in advance for my english, which isnt going to be perfect. I found out about this forum and im seeking for confirmation whether you think i have TMS or not, at this point i believe i match 95% of the common pattern for TMS, but let me tell you my story please. It has significant moments in it which made me a believer that it all might be the brain.

February 2024 is when it all started. I used to be a professional esports gamer. So i was sitting in my chair a lot. Not only that but i was doing Simracing, which means i used to have pedals in front of my feat and a wheel in front of my chest. While it all sounds like its just playing around, there were significant forces going on, pressing the pedals at 80kg force for many hours a day and having the wheel shaking you up a lot too. It goes without saying that the carbon seat i was in for most of the day is very bad for the back in general.

So i was practicing like any other day, while i slowly felt minor back pain creeping in while driving. It wasnt unusual so i kept going on. It got worse and worse and by the time i stopped i had a good amount of back pain. Still i wasnt too worried, it happened a few times before and i sort of knew i overdid it. A feeling as if you go to the gym after you havent been there for a long time and completely push your limit, it felt very sore. It was a sharp feeling and i was able to point exactly where it was, it wasnt across the whole back.

So i rested for a whole week, the pain reduced to basically zero and i felt i recovered entirely. So i went back to driving on the sim and returned to my routine. After 1 hour it came back, i stopped immediately and was depressed since i felt i have given it so much time. Not only did it come back tho it came back in an intensity i have never felt before.

I suddenly could not sit in my chair or in any chair in general. I could not lay on my back anymore. Any posture that would touch that area would hurt a lot. So the pain improved when i sat down but wasnt leaning my back to touch the chair.

The pain was a 9/10 when i sat down, every single time. Sitting for the most part of my year was impossible. I have not slept on my back since. The crazy thing about it is, when i go for a walk im completely pain free. So im constantly in this situation where im going from pain free to 9/10 pain every single day.

Obviously when i sit down and my pain is massive by standing up it doesnt go away immediately, but minute by minute its reducing, and basically no matter how bad my pain was i could get to pain free within half an hour if i have taken a walk outside. Obviously it would not last, the moment i lay down or sit down it would come back. So i was trapped in a spiral in which the only thing i can do all day is taking walks, which is impossible to do.

2 months have passed and i was awaiting my first MRI (in hindsight a significant moment, but i didnt realize it at the time). So the area i was precisisly pointing there was something visible in the MRI, very minor though. Funny enough it was found out i had an old herniated disc at the top of my back, which i was told was 6 months old and fully healed. Which obviously proves that discs dont cause pain because i never felt anything.

The doctor told me my spine looks good for a guy in my age, nothing to worry about, im a healthy person. I should go and resume back to my old life he said, i can do whatever i want, which was crazy because i was even scared to hold a water bottle to not trigger pain at that point.

So here comes the first major moment in the story. I left the building, went into my car and my pain reduced by a big amount. I got told i was a healty person, my fear of having permanent damage was gone for the moment and i was happy.

So the week after were the best ive had, i felt pain, but it was massively reduced. I told my girlfriend im going to recover very soon, i felt it got better every day and i was going for a lot of walks to accelerate the recovery. It felt as if i was very close to get rid of it.

But it wasnt to be. I somehow started to think about it more again, got uncertain again about whether the doctor was right or not. The pain increased, my fear increased and i spiraled back down to the biggest pain i had.

So i had seen a second doctor, he overlooked my MRI result and again said to me there is nothing to be seen of significane. I was so annoyed i could not believe it so i went to a 3rd. He also said the same thing.

So i went to doctor number 4, and finally he said the little bulging disc i had could explain it. So i finally found what i was looking for, someone to tell my i was damaged.

So he ordered me physiotherapie, which helped nothing, i felt even it got worse when he massaged it. I tried everything else the doctor wanted me to do, i dont know how its all called in english but it doesnt matter, i tried everything. None of it worked. But the physiotherapist said i was incredibly tense. And everytime i came back the same tension was there.

So now the biggest moment of the story comes, the moment i think back to every single day. Me and my gf went to Greece for holidays. The weeks prior i was so scared of it, i didnt wanna ruin it for her, she was so looking forward to it and i was not even able to sit for 5 minutes, so how would i manage to get through it.

The day prior to the flight i got kidney pain, something that i have had a few times before in the past, i was sleeping with the AC on and thats something i should not do. So i got incredibly scared of travelling with that, not being insured properly somewhere else in the world and potentially being in trouble if i had to go to the hospital.

It stressed me so much, for the very first time the back legitimately became my 2nd biggest problem in life after it dominated my thinking for 6-7 months straight.

So my thinking was dominated by this kindey problem and my back was completely pain free, in any position. I had replaced one problem with another. The first 2-3 days of our holidays i was completely pain free, something i have not since and not before felt at any moment for such a long time. It slowly and steadily came back to the more my kidney problem was out of my mind.

And i noticed since that day, the only way for my back to reduce in pain or get to a point of being pain free is when something else on my body hurts. Its as if my body can not focus on both things at the same time.

Im incredibly good at focusing on everything thats going on in my body, its always like i can not let go of pain when it arrives. I hold on to it, i can create an hyper focus and let them dominate my thinking 24/7

Prior to the back pain i was suffering from stomach issues for 1 year, no doctor was able to explain whats going on. And guess what, basically day 1 of my back pain was the last time i felt my stomach pain. A pain i was chasing for such a long time completely disappeared from one day to another.

Prior to that i had a longer period where i felt dizzy. So you see, im chasing issues for a long time, and they seem to increase in intensity every time something new pops up.

And all of what happened prior to my back makes me think the same thing repeats again. I somehow lost control over my brain, my body and im struggling to get it back.

I feel sad often times, i felt sad before my back pain started, sometimes im not even sure i would be happy even if my back pain was gone.

But for now my biggest dream in life is to get rid of this pain, it has dominated myself for so long now. Thousands of hours in my head where im going through all of what im writing down here, this is a short version of all the things that happened but its the first time i ever put it into words, it feels honestely good.

Thank you very much for reading and i wish all of you the very best!!

 

Thank you very much! What confuses me a little is the fact that most people seem to have pain when they get active. While for me its reversed, i have pain when i sit and lay down.
Almost as if my pain is more present because i am not distracted enough.

Something i have not figured out yet, and maybe someone can relate is, sometimes im so distracted its as if im pain free. But im not sure if i ever was. Im wondering whether the pain was there and couldnt be felt because i was somewhere else with my thoughts or if the pain was indeed gone and came back the moment i remembered. It sounds bizzare but that how it feels.

I also feel like writing this here, thinking about it, engaging with it increases my pain. I feel like its a good thing talking about it but the moment i interact with the topic its worse than completely forgetting it. But how do you forget something thats always present, thats the challenge.

 

And many years ago when i suffered from dizziness it was the same thing. Im sure many of you have the same thing, you wake up and in an instant you check on your symptoms. Its the first thought when you wake up and the last before bed. That would happen for me EVERY SINGLE DAY for over a year. It was impossible to not do it.

So i was none stop looking for answers, day in day out. At some point i was running out of steam, i surrendered to it. I accepted it. I told myself i will live with it and we will be partners, i have never choosen it, i never wanted it but from now on we will live together and i will manage. I promised myself to stop thinking about it and so i did. The dizziness was still there for a couple more weeks, but then one morning i woke up and truly forgot. Im not sure anymore how long it took me to notice, maybe even 2-3 days.

Someone in my workplace mentioned he felt dizzi, and then it hit me like i lightning strike. I remembered that i was always dizzi but i wasnt anymore. I couldnt believe it but it was gone, i literally forgot about it. Its hard to believe that that is possible but the power of the brain is beyond imaginable.

So long story short, i hope one day the same happens with my back pain.

 

Patrik,
This is what a lot of people do and it does help them get rid of their TMS. Before I knew about Sarno I got rid of several kinds of TMS by ignoring it. It does work and it can work for you again. But it seems like when TMS strikes again, usually it takes more to get rid of it. It requires some or all the homework that Jan listed above. You can definitely get rid of your TMS. And you should take hope —especially because you’ve already done it once!