Made Some Progress

Hi all, longtime tms sufferer here, just wanted to share the beggining of my journey. Am currently a uni student.

I had tms start around 5 years ago with a "whiplash" injury. It led to severe headaches. I actually largely treated those with physio...but the pain moved and showed up in my arms. Couldn't write or type, all tests came back fine, got a thoracic outlet syndrome diagnosis.

Funnily the pain in my arms started after I freaked out from getting the flu shot, thinking they had ruptured my bursa during an injection (I avidly engaged in the pain fear cycle -. -.) This happened 2 years ago.

I was very resourceful and found creative ways to overcome my disability. But the pain was always moving. My upper right side (neck, pec minor, bicep, shoulder, wrist) would remain in pain but one day I'd have tiniitus, another day tmj, another day gum pain or the pain would move to my other hand.

I read Sarno's book about a year ago, and started seeing a therapist and balling my eyes out reflecting on my childhood. But I didn't really believe this could possibly be the explanation. I was having a bout of tinnitus back then and it went away after therapy but I didn't even notice. So I quit therapy.

This year I got bad pelvic pain and bad hamstring pain. Also my arm pain went away for about a month (I had successfully become indifferent to it!). That's when I really realized I had TMS. I reread Sarno and read Alan Gordon's The Way Out as well.

Well I realized I was really scared of the arm pain coming back and as soon as I started to challenge my mind and say, "oh I know what you're doing" and started somatic tracking, all the pain came back.

On the other hand I challenged my hamstring pain which was more recent and it fully went away (before I couldn't sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes because my hamstring would hurt so much).

Now I've just started jorunalling. I also meditate regularly (following The Mind Illuminated) and I just realized that I've slowly been seeing results (ie the hamstring pain). I'm looking forward to seeing more results but this has been an eye opening experience. I can say for sure that this past month I've really been believing in TMS more and more. I actually found many meditation practitioners saying similiar things, emotions are stored as tension in the body!

For years I had explained to myself that I just had weird muscular imbalances etc, but I've finally gotten past that.

Looking forward to growing and developing more as I work my way through my emotions. Thanks for being such a great community and putting this amazing wiki together!

Cheers from Canada!

 

Hi manwar,

Great to hear your story, and your progress. It seems you're feeling your way through this beautifully. For each of us it does take time, takes attunement, and self-attunement which is usually lacking (for everyone, but especially TMS'rs).

Yes. And the same is true with attuning to your emotions. They are felt in the body, regardless of how they are connected to symptoms. So your mindfulness is really helpful to simply feel, develop tolerance for feeling on a deep level. Very connected to understanding yourself moment-to-moment, and connecting your safety/stress/inner tension/inner critic condition to why you might have symptoms. Thinking psychologically, that is, becomes more fluid as you attune to yourself, over time.

Wishing you the best in your work.

Andy