Questioning

I am questioning the TMS diagnoses because my pain is not something that appears with certain triggers, it just always feels like muscles and things in my legs are wrong and causing pain in my knees. Every time I walk or stand it is there. It's hard for me to not see this as physical when it doesn't seem to increase with certain triggers or emotions but it's just constant. It makes me fear that something has gone wrong in my legs and I'm stuck like this forever. I'm really struggling.

 

Hi, Dfranks, and welcome to the site.

I think the fact that you found is a great chance you can be helped. I had the same fear that my pain would last forever, and for awhile my pain was constant to. I was over a year in pain and there are others who had pain longer than me. The good news is that the sooner you find out its TMS the sooner you will recover. What are your symptoms? What books are you reading? Are you going through the program on the site?

Triggers can be subconscious too, just as well as the emotions. Do your legs hurt when you are at rest?

 

Many wise people would tell you that FEAR is exactly what keep your symptoms stay with you. Trauma, strong negative emotion is what start your symptoms, but fear is what keep your symptoms alive. If you can find a way to stop your fear and worry about your health, you will be cure.
Get rid of tms/anxiety is easy, get rid of fear is much more difficult for many people.

 

You say that there aren't physical triggers, but it happens when you stand or walk. But those are physical triggers It's pretty common for leg pain to present with standing and walking. My guess, because most of us would find it implausible if our legs hurt more when we didn't walk!

 

TMS symptoms typically are constant, although they are also vastly different for different people.

All that energy you're using to focus on your symptoms, and to find an exact match for your symptoms and the way they display, is just another distraction, and it's a really good one for keeping you in pain.

Anxiety and fear will also do a good job of distracting you and keeping you in pain.

Your brain's goal is to keep your ugly and dangerous emotions hidden away. Everyone has them, so be assured, they are there.

Your goal is to figure out what they are, so you can show your brain that they are not the end of the world and that you won't be jumped on by a sabre-tooth tiger if you spend some time looking at them (because your brain still thinks that you are living in a cave in a dangerous primitive world).

Good questions from cirrusnarea:

These are proactive and constructive activities, but I'm a little concerned that you're surfing the forum and the wiki and finding a lot of information, but that what you really want is to find a reason why your symptoms might not be TMS.

You may need to stop searching and researching, and do just one thing, and I would highly recommend that you read Hope & Help For Your Nerves by Dr. Claire Weekes. You can probably get it at your library (my library has all her books) but it's also available online from Amazon, B&N, WalMart, and Target, the average price seems to be about $6.