Setback today - is it possible it’s still just TMS/another muscle twist/strain?

Hey guys,
I know I’ve posted a lot on here in the last few days but long story short, I’d been having a very good “good streak” with my symptoms (lower back/pelvic/hip pain), was feeling encouraged by everything I’ve read so far about TMS, and felt so much better I decided to help my dad move two cabinets. I didn’t have any pain while helping lift the first one, but the second one was in the back of a u-haul truck so I climbed in and sort of bent down to try and drag it towards me. I didn’t hear any weird noises and didn’t feel a pop/crack or anything like that at all, but I felt a twinge of pain (about a 4-almost 5) in one of the muscles on my right hand side and quickly stopped. That was this morning and while it didn’t hurt very much the rest of the day, tonight the muscle in that area hurts if I bend down and get back up. The area that hurts is this area here (pretty far away from my actual spine):


Is it possible that this was/is just a muscle strain related to TMS and not a serious injury?? I feel like I might be catastrophizing since I tend to do that and the pain felt/feels very much like a strained/pulled muscle.

I’m still relatively new here so if you look at my post history, I made a post a few days ago explaining my background/symptoms in more detail as an evidence list. It’s there if you’d like to know more info before replying. Any help would be much appreciated but a couple of quick things in context:

-my back pain is one of almost a dozen weird symptoms that started up gradually one after the next in random areas all over my body after getting sick with a virus in January (may have been COVID). I had been having dizziness, hyperacusis, jaw pain, headaches and more and had been in the most stress I’d ever had in my life for about 5 months before the back pain showed up

-I’ve never had any back pain ever before all of this started and had no accidents, injuries or falls to cause it to start. It came on gradually sometime in June over the course of about a week and has been there ever since

-I’ve had an x-ray and all that showed up was a small area of increased bone density on one side of my pelvis which (I did some research) can cause pain very very similar to sacrolilitis/inflammatory back problems but isn’t the same thing. And most people who have it have no symptoms and find it during a scan for something else. IMO it tracks with the “lizard brain choosing a place that makes sense on a scan to have pain” thing (what are the odds it would only start hurting AFTER 5 straight months of the worst stress I’ve ever had?)

-I had blood work done to check for inflammatory conditions and also thyroid issues and they were all clear

-from what I’ve heard from my old gym trainer + people who have actually had it happen to them, if you actually break/damage your spine it feels a lot more painful in the moment than this did. You can also have back strains that hurt a LOT in the moment but are ultimately just muscle strains - pain doesn’t always mean you broke something (my mom tweaked her back by bending/lifting something a year ago, didn’t need an MRI and recovered completely on her own within about a month, but when it happened her scream literally woke me up from downstairs and she was stuck on the couch/could barely walk for a week)

-I have an ear condition (which was actually one of the first of the many weird symptoms I’ve had and I’m curious if it’s also a TMS related thing) called hyperacusis that causes physical pain in my ears when I’m around loud noises, so I don’t want to do an MRI unless it’s absolutely necessary

 

Deeeep breath.
Re-read your post.
Lotta fear, worry, and the physical.
You may have simply strained a muscle (or you feel/think you did) and your body has naturally tensed up as a result of your thoughts about it.. you may have simply felt a sensation you disliked and you tensed up in fear.. you may have been in the “oh no, if I do this I *might* feel this sensation..,
Whatever it is, you reacted in fear, doubt, catastrohizing etc.. and that is all normal. Any and all of it is normal. What you can do now is choose how you are going to deal with the situation from now on.
Options: recognize all the TMS traps our mind quickly reverts to (not just the situation but your general health anxiety ang anxiety period) your own patterns and just casually watch them without judgement.
Congratulate yourself for attempting to step outside your comfort zone re:fear - that’s hard. But now you know you are capable of working in that area.
Consider reading any book by Claire Weekes. She gives explicit direction on what to do anytime we find ourselves trapped in our head and the endless babble of “ what ifs” and “oh no!s”
Give yourself a break! Notice how you think about yourself and your body in these moments: I’m damaged, I’m a failure, I’m sick, I’m not doing this perfectly, I hate feeling stuff.. and consider offering yourself some empathy for the hard work you are putting into this and the realization that there is more to do.

You hurt, give yourself a little recuperation time and keep doing the good work!

 

thanks a lot guys I actually found a post that was very similar to the one I just made, about 10 minutes after I posted it lol! I guess it scared me because this time it happened while I was actually doing something and not just “out of nowhere” and it’s the first time in a long time that that’s happened.

For context, the reason I was helping my dad move the cabinet was because my stepmom (who is extremely bitchy and unpleasant and I’m now learning is actually the source of a LOT of my mental stress) refused to help or wake up my stepbrother and stepsister to have them help (she ALWAYS favors them over me in every way) and my other two siblings are babies, so I was the only one who could help my dad (who was extremely stressed at the idea of having to do all the lifting on his own before I volunteered to help). The moment this happened I was thinking all about how much I hated that I was the only one helping and how unfair it was.

 

There was also one good thing that happened today - while my family and I were walking around a store this afternoon, I started to feel the muscles in my right hand start to tense/twist up the way I wrote a few days ago that they did last week. I wrote about how that time, when it happened, I basically told myself both out loud and in my head at the same time to knock it off and within about an hour it lessened and was totally gone by the next morning. I did the same thing this time (under my breath cause we were in a store with people around lol) and it stopped and went away even faster, like almost on the spot. So I consider that my win for today lol.

 

@lucky_li0n_d@wg In another thread you wrote...

And here is that "something"...

I believe @JanAtheCPA has written elsewhere on the forum that it is one of her favourite mind/body techniques and it's 'up there' with me too.