Introducing myself and wondering if my symptoms are TMS

Hi everyone,

I have recently discovered TMS wiki and have been reading quite a bit!

I woke up one morning last December with sudden symptoms out of nowhere - vertigo, dizziness, light headedness and tremor. Over the following few weeks I started also getting twitches, muscle and joint pain, shooting pains, headaches, fatigue, brain fog, racing heart and heart pounding, chest pain and rib pain.

My Dr first suspected Lyme disease as I’d had a fair few tick bites just before the symptoms started. I took a month of antibiotics but the symptoms didn’t really go away. The Dr did blood tests that showed an EBV infection but nothing else out of the ordinary and also a brain MRI which was normal.

I then saw a naturopath who said I definitely had Lyme and she started treating me with herbal medicine. The problem was that she kept telling me how sick I was and that it was a long road to recovery (I felt terrible but I realise now that made me way worse!)

A few months after that I started getting tummy pains and my dr found I had an h pylori infection. So I stopped seeing the naturopath and treated this infection with another round of antibiotics. At this point in time I had had a brain mri, abdominal ultrasound, pelvic ultrasound, exercise stress test, multiple ecgs, echocardiogram, colonoscopy, breast ultrasound and multiple blood tests which were all basically normal. Cardiologist diagnosed me with pots/post Covid tachycardia.

Around this time I discovered curable and downloaded it and started. I found the somatic tracking exercise which felt like a really good fit for me. I started doing the exercises and also read the Way Out and started seeing some improvement. On one of the first nights after getting curable as I was putting my kids to bed I just sat there telling my brain over and over that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was healthy, thank you for protecting me but I don’t need to have these symptoms anymore etc and for the first time I experienced a noticeable immediate reduction in symptoms. So I felt that was a good indicator that this was neuroplastic. Also I had times when I was performing where I didn’t feel my symptoms and they came back as soon as I finished playing.

Anyway, I’ve also seen a neurologist who sent me for a spine mri and said he thought I basically had post viral chronic fatigue and to keep going with my brain retraining!

I have been to emergency probably five times over the year thinking I was dying with the racing heart and serious lightheadedness and weakness, feeling like I was about to pass out. Every time they’ve sent me home saying everything is fine. My anxiety has been constant and I know I have developed terrible hyper vigilance about all my symptoms. During the period where my symptoms improved I started worrying about climate change and other things, and then I started feeling burning pains and more chest pain and back pain along with the dizziness symptoms returning and my focus came back to worrying about my symptoms.

So to any of you reading this thank you and any thoughts would be much appreciated. Directions to head in or just encouragement to keep following the path I’m already on. I think I keep alternating between thinking this is definitely TMS and then back to wondering if I need more ruling out tests or not. It’s driving me a bit crazy!

 

Hello @Jala
You symptoms sound a lot like TMS.
What you are going through seems similar to what Rebecca Tolin went through, many similar “diagnoses” - symptoms and infections that seem to show up on medical tests. I will post a link to her story below. She has recovered and now helps others.
Reading Sarno’s Divided Mind may further enlighten you to why these strange symptoms occur, and the Structural Education Program (free) at tmswiki.org (scroll down page) includes many methods to healing and mindset change like you are already experiencing. It will guide you through the psychological work.
Here’s a nugget from Rebecca: Although her symptoms were named CFS/ME she had many others too. 13 years of debilitating symptoms and unable to work, she now owns her own business!