'Day 1"

Hi everyone, Iv been suffering with chronic neck pain the last 2.5 years. Im 28 yrs old from toronto. The pain started on my left side 4 months after a car accident. Then 6 months after that the right side started. Now the right side is worse than the original left side. I fully believe that TMS is real but still cant grip the fact that this severe pain im in is caused by my brain. Its so hard to grasp. I can physically feel the knot/lump in my neck when i press into my neck i can actually recreate the pain. Its so mind boggling. Ct scan the night of the accident showed nothing, also an mri last year showed nothing. The pain is bad and has ruined the last 2.5 years of my life. I always fear that ill have this pain forever and ill never get better. Im determined to feel better though and am not giving up.

 

Hi marine89. I'm new here too and I can definitely relate to the disbelief. My pain is in my right pelvis/sacrum and it also followed a car accident. It's been 2 weeks since I read Sarno's book and though I've definitely made progress, every time I feel a hint of the pain worsening again I go right back to the fear that it's structural. Have you had any relief since learning about TMS and doing the mental/emotional work?

 

One thing that comes to most people when they get into TMS or any other psychosomatic condition, is that they associate the cause of the pain from the brain with it being "in your head". People automatically think that someone is suggesting that they are crazy or the like. I dont know if you have read the whole books and done any of the exercises, but the physical symptoms of TMS/MBS are totally real. You have only one nervous system. You dont have a nervous system for your muscles and another for TMS symptoms. So, when you get a pain, your brain uses your nervous system to arrest some amount of oxygen to a specific part of your body. When a muscle stops getting the normal amount of oxygen it creates pain. The muscle is asking for its oxygen to be brought back. Travell and Simmons did extensive studies on trigger points and found out that what makes up trigger points is oxygen starvation. This is the basis for Paul Davis books on trigger point therapy. So basically what you get are trigger points in your muscles. They are terribly painful and dont show up on either MRI or X rays. Oddly, they can be seen with some special type of sonogram, but they are very small. Next time you buy raw steak cut a slice and watch the muscles fibers,now imagine a spot smaller than a pin head in one of those fibers not allowing blood to flow thru that point. There is your trigger point. You can have not one but several on one spot, and your muscle will bulge a little bit in that area. You can feel them with your fingers like you described, and if you massage them, they will be incredibly painful. It is no coincidence that what Sarno points out in his own experience also mimic what others in other areas of medicine have found out. If you massage this spots carefully after applying heat, they will start to dissipate and you will feel better, but what is keeping that knot is the brain because it is sensing fear. As you progress in allowing to feel the pain safely and assuring you that there is nothing to be afraid of and that is only mild oxygen depravation, your muscles will relax and the pain will go away. Understanding the method your brain uses to cause you this pain is also liberating and will help you trust that it is TMS. If you have not read the books completely or done any journalling or affirmations, start by that.

 

no i havent. feel angry and frustrated

 

hi thanks for the reply and reassurance. Iv revently watch nicole sachs videos on you tube and started journaling every night. I notice with journaling that i keep talking and writing about the same things that bother me. Its always the same thing. Any advice on journaling

 

When you journal, the things that come to your mind can be from your conscious, your subconscious or personality traits. This is just opening up to yourself and asking what is there. Once you find what is bothering you, try to feel that moment. It is a situation that makes you sad? angry? anxious? Once you feel it, allow yourself to act (safely) on that feeling. Cry if you need to, shout out loud(try to be in a place you can do it),etc. If you experience fear just feel it, let your hair rise, feel how it goes thru your skin. The idea is to experience all this feelings from a safe place on a controlled environment. Once you have experienced the feeling, reassure yourself that you are safe, that your body is also ok, that you love and accept yourself regardless of the feeling or situation. You might not always get this kind of reaction.If it does not happen just keep journaling so you vent everything out. Try to recognize where that thing that bothers you come from. It is something from your childhood or a past event while you were growing?(most possibly subconscious), it is a situation that happen daily at work from a coworker or boss?( mostly conscious), it is something that bothers you because you are a perfectionist?(personality). Now, is there anything that you can do at the moment to address what bothers you? Can you just talk to the person that is causing your bother and straighten things out? Can it be fix by you doing something like buying a security system or getting a gym membership? If you recognize it is a personality trait, can you just relax and think in your mind that it is not worth your peace of mind and just let it go? A lot of things comes from our personality traits and how we react to perceived dangers or worries, and learning to see things in a slightly different way helps tremendously.Keep journaling daily even if you dont have stress or pain. Dont worry about correcting grammar mistakes while journaling, just keep writing with your eyes closed if possible. The idea is to get it all out, not stressing over being a perfectionist. There are things that you will be able to fix and others that you will have to change the way you perceive them, and that is the purpose of doing all this.

 

Marine89 I am so sorry to hear you're not feeling any relief. I can definitely understand why you'd be feeling angry and frustrated. Whenever I feel my pain I feel angry at myself because I interpret it to mean I'm "failing" at overcoming the TMS, even though I know being hard on myself makes it worse. Have you noticed if feeling angry or anxious makes your pain worse? That's one thing I noticed after reading Sarno's book, which helped me begin to truly question the idea that the problem is structural. I started writing those moments down in an "evidence sheet" to help me start believing the pain's source is emotional (e.g. "When I was angry at the kids my pain got worse.") The other thing that really helped me was forcing myself to do physical actions (very gradually) that I feared would cause pain. Anytime I did a feared action that didn't cause pain or didn't cause the amount or type of pain I expected, I added those to my evidence log too. I'm definitely not all the way there in accepting the diagnosis (even right now I'm having pain and my reflex is to blame it on physical activity from yesterday) but the evidence sheet has seemed to help. If you haven't already tried it, it could be worth adding to the journaling.