Day 3 Most Disheartening Thing a Doctor has Told Me

The most disheartening thing doctors tell me is "Sorry, I don't know how else to help you."

I'm 25 and have had low grade back pain on my right side for the past 8 or 9 years. I've seen many MD's, chiros, PT's, naturopaths, osteopaths, massage therapists, etc, etc. There's nothing outstanding that is structurally off with me other than a slight curvature in the back and some hypermobility.

A friend recommended this highly regarded orthopedic specialist to me. She was incredibly kind and even offered me a free trial of prolotherapy - an injection treatment I had never had before that could actually cure my hypermobility syndrome! I was beyond excited and incredibly hopeful. Got the injections but never felt a lick of difference over the next week. When I checked in with her she refused to continue treatment with me because she didn't want me to pay for something that wouldn't work. I'm glad she didn't just want to make a quick buck from me but I also was left without any other options to look into. I was crushed.

Other disheartening things that I'm not a fan of are "Oh you are so young so you will recover quickly." Then when weeks turn into months and months it's "Well this thing has been going on for years so it won't resolve quickly."

These types of things have stuck with me a bit in that they make me feel like I am this unfixable, insidious case that confuse doctors and become a pain to deal with since I don't get desired results. It makes me distrust the medical community (both conventional and alternative) and also blows my confidence to heal my body.

 

Hi happyliltrees,

I quote you above because your description of yourself is supporting evidence that you suffer from TMS. It is very common for those of us who don't respond to treatment, or confound physicians/practitioners have TMS. So you're drawn, luckily into a path of real healing. Good luck in your journey.

Andy

 

The truth is there is nothing wrong with you. You have pain stemming from neural circuits in the brain that can be turned on or off. It's reversible ("dynamic") pain and all it is at the end of the day is anxiety somatized (through the body). Get off the merry go round of the medical mill and all the quackery and bs. Chronic pain is poorly understood by the vast majority of practitioners and they are operating from a faulty diagnosis that there is something physically wrong with you when in fact your pain is psychological in origin. You are already well but just don't realize it yet. There's no money in the actual treatment, and that is why the medical and alternative industry of quacks and quackish "treatments" like prolotherapy don't promote the mind body approach. There is now a plethora of studies showing that surgery and chiros and other kinds of treatments are no better than placebo or doing absolutely nothing. This kind of pain is super common and totally within your power to get better. Decide that there is nothing wrong with you and read "Unlearn Your Pain" by Dr. Howard Schubiner. Also make sure to watch his lecture on YT that is posted on this site (it's from July, Commonwealth Club California ). Once you have the knowledge you will be so empowered and you will never look back and waste your time and money on useless "treatments" for something that isn't there to begin with.

 

Thanks @Andy Bayliss & @miffybunny for replying, it really means a lot. @miffybunny I added the YT video to my watch later playlist, thanks for the resource.
Just to be a bit more clear, is it totally feasible for TMS to manifest as an ongoing tightness that prevents my muscles from fully relaxing?
(I feel like the answer is yes but it's nice to get some confirmation). If I understand it correctly then what's happening is my brain got triggered from something (stress, anxiety, personality traits, traumas, etc.), to develop neural pathways that experience this tightness and misalignment. So does this mean that the pain/tightening experience is just a neural pathway or is this circuitry actually causing my body to BE tight and misaligned?
For example I got a massage and the person could feel the difference between my right and left shoulder (the right had more knots and felt out of place). Are the brain pathways contributing to this actual physical condition?

 

Everything you wrote is correct. We generate a ton of inner tension with our chronic negative thought habits, as well as when we repress emotions . All of this tension has to go somewhere so most commonly it manifests as muscle tension. The signals coming from your brain's danger center are not causing "misalignment"but merely sensations of pain and tightness and muscle contraction. When you lose the fear around the symptoms and you calm down the brain by feeling your emotions and letting go of them, changing your neg thought patterns to better feeling ones and reducing stressors in your life...you are no longer activating the danger center so the brain doesn't feel the need to distract or protect you anymore with signals. The amount of tension in your body is directly correlated to the amount of internal tension produced by your thoughts and emotions. When we think the same thoughts over and over, what we are doing is actually reinforcing those pathways. By looking at those sensations with detachment and lack of fear, we train the brain out of that fear-pain-fear loop (or fear-tightness-fear loop).