Day 6 - Kristina

If you are having some doubts about the TMS diagnosis, take some time to journal about it.

I do still have some doubts but mostly just about fatigue and my right heel. I can see how the back pain is not due to a structural issue or because there is some potassium deficiency. Also, since telling myself it has nothing to do with potassium or magnesium, my body has calmed down and I have been on the same dose of mag and potassium for about a week now. Prior to coming here, I was constantly changing the dose because I thought my fluctuating symptoms were due to taking either too much or too little. But how does the brain cause my adrenal glands to not produce enough cortisol and how do I get it to stop. I understand telling my brain to stop sending pain signals and the pain goes away immediately. If I tell my brain to stop sending wrong messages to my adrenal glands can the fatigue go away immediately as well - as in, my brain stops sending false messages and my adrenal glands suddenly produce right amounts of cortisol?

The little bit of doubt I have is about fatigue (low cortisol) and the right heel pain. Two nights ago I was walking and it was very mild. I ran a few times and that night my heel hurt so bad I could barely walk. It continued to hurt badly yesterday and today, while better, it is still pretty painful when I walk. Because there seemed to be a direct correlation with running it's hard to believe that it's "just" my brain, although I understand how the brain would use this to create pain and distract me.

Question To Ponder
Briefly take a few minutes and write down some of your fears. Why are you afraid of these things? (Use your own journal or print this page).

I am afraid that I will never regain full health. While I have seen tremendous healing from chronic Lyme, hypothyroidism (off meds after 20 years), food reactions, and more, the stuff that is lingering (fatigue, pain, trouble sleeping) seems relentless. I can't imagines spending the rest of my life living the way I am living now.

Maybe there is also some fear about going back to work, although I really want to work again. I am a database programmer and I am not even sure that's what I want to go back to doing. If I do go back to programming, I have a lot of catching up to do as I have not worked in 5 years. There is fear that I am not smart enough to really make it as a programmer. Maybe that's part of the reason I got sick. Maybe my brain thought it would be better for me to be sick than have to face fears of failure.

 

Hi, Kristina. I think that somehow you have to make a decision about your career. You have great skills in the workforce as a database programmer. You are concerned whether you can catch up with programming developments over the past five years. I'm a writer, but don't have programming skills. Maybe you can find someone on the Internet who can help you learn about updating those skills. Or maybe you need a different career directions, a variation of database programming, or something different. Maybe you can do a Google search for latest developments in database programming. Try not to let any of this worry you, and journaling about your career anxieties is bound to help. But you don't need to write about it more than once. Your subconscious "gets it."