Day 1 First thoughts

Hi all,
I just signed up to attend the educational program… I hope that this will improve my chronic pain problem which i have since about 3 years.

I am hopeful because I found that some details of my pain which are unexplainable from a physical perspective fit quite well with descriptions of TMS:

- Onset of the misery after a particular stressful time at work
- Daily time patterns of pain which are related to my average work hours (but also on weekends) and disappearing over night (thank god)
- Magical interim painfree times on vacations (with pain starting again on the airport to fly Home)
- Major Location of pain shifted 3 times during the last 3 years such that one type of pain got replaced by another:

The first phase (most horrible) was pain which is usually described as „occipital neuralgia“, accompanied with anxiety attacks. After about one year that pain resolved (cause unclear to me) and after short time (of euphory and then despair) was replaced by slowly growing wide-spread nerve pain in legs and arms. This lasted for about three quarters of a year and then slowly got better with less and less flares. I thought i had made ist through last summer but then in october the third type of pain struck me: something what usually is called intercostal neuralgia, pain between ribs, quite well located in the middle back on my left side. That i have until today…

I should add that this is the second time in my life that i have chronic pain. The first time (which was even more traumatic for me) was 15 year ago in the second year at university. Back then it took 2.5 years to resolve and from 2007 until 2018 I had beautiful years without any pain problems.

I tend to get anxious and depressed when the pain is strong but from the beginning the good thing was that I knew the pain was independent of physical activity, in fact the pain often disappeared during sports but set in again some time after coming to rest. The bad thing is that I cannot relax very well until the pain disappears in the evening.

Ok enough for now…

You all have a good day!

 

Yes, absolutely sounds like TMS and exacerbated by anxiety. That's a great thing that it goes away in the night.

Shifting location of symptoms, shifting times of day of symptoms, changes if on vacation or relaxed: all characteristic of mind-body pain. If it were a true structural/physical issue it would not change like that. I assume also no definitive physical diagnosis from a doctor?

I think you are definitely on the right path, exploring what is available on this forum or other sources, like Curable.

 

Hi all,

oh man… my symptoms have changed again in the last days. Back pain is gone but cervical headache/occipital neuralgia seem to come back. It is not as bad as it was 3 years ago but at the moment increasing day by day (with disappearing over night).

The onset was particularly interesting: I was standing in a cue relaxed when I suddenly felt that the muscle tension below my scull changed from one second to the next. Maybe it was triggered by my starting to explore past traumatic events via journaling.

Happily i am still quite relaxed and not falling into the anxiety attacks I had 3 years ago. I try to stick to the methods learned here about cognitive soothing etc. and continue the journaling.

I guess it will be a hard time again but maybe I am better equipped this time…