Struggling with patellar tracking disorder and self talk

I find myself increasingly frustrated with my patellar tracking disorder which means my knee cap doesn't sit in it's groove quite right. That being said I'm beginning to strongly suspect it's TMS. I've had mild pain for a couple of years now when I started bike riding more seriously. However, recently when I started squatting with a barbell I began to feel sharp pain in my knee (around three or four months ago). It came to a head two months ago when I tried to do a 200 lb leg press (something I've done before with only very slight pain) and I felt such bad pain that I stopped and went to physical therapy.

Since then I've been spending around an hour a day doing exercises and icing my knee and if anything it's getting worse and definitely not better. I had wrist pain that was just like this for three years (I put a stop to that nonsense 6 months ago), that used up an hour of my time or more. I've stopped squatting, but I have started running which I can do with no or very minimal pain. That might be making it worse, maybe? My physical therapist says most people recover from this in around a month and for me it's been two with no improvement!

I'm seriously thinking this is TMS and I want to stop wasting my time, like I did for my wrists. Does anyone have any experience with patellar tracking or advice or just confirmation that I am not in fact insane for wanting to stop my exercises?

On another topic, around three weeks ago I started having really positive self-talk and I felt amazing my TMS was so much better I had so much energy (fatigue is my worst symptom) and I was happier than I'd been in years. That uh didn't last long. My tms is back full force and I feel like kind of a failure and my self-talk I mean it's better than it was before but it's still not great. Does anyone have any advice about how to get back to where I was before? I mean my self-talk basically alone made it 50% better I keep on doubting that it could possibly be that simple, can it? How do I prevent my perfectionistic, neurotic, self-loathing self from taking over again?

Any advice is much appreciated thanks!

 

I would say that TMS recovery is not linear, you can expect set backs. However, the very personality that is prone to TMS tends to "catastrophize" and you are seeing mere setbacks as "oh, it didn't work, I am back to square one" when in fact you need to see it as "I proved I can fix it once, that means I can do it again."

(I also have patellar tracking issues - also called patellofemoral syndrome - and up until recently I hadn't even considered the possibility it might be TMS related but I'm thinking it is.)

 

Thanks for the advice I'll try to keep positive and remind myself that I can in fact get back to where I was!

I also read an article about patellar tracking: https://www.painscience.com/articles/patellofemoral-tracking-syndrome.php (Patellofemoral Tracking Syndrome (Is Mostly Nonsense))

It sounds exactly like back pain! For example 68 out of 108 people with no knee pain had laterally displaced patella. Swelling (which I have) isn't necessarily a problem either. No one can really agree on what proper knee tracking is and it's actually basically impossible to tell if someone has pain or not. So given all this information I think I'm going to quit my exercises and just learn how to squat properly.

 

Mine defies logic.

They tell you to rest it and don't do activities to aggravate it. I took a 4 month break from such activities when I had hip surgery and the subsequent PT for that. As soon as I got back to doing something involving that knee (single leg squats), then BOOM the pain came right back.

Sometimes it hurts when I cycle. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes going up or down stairs aggravates, sometimes it doesn't. I've been dealing with this for almost 4 years since I "tweaked" it doing some leg strength exercises in 2016. It's been with me ever since and countless PT and Ortho advice has left me in the same place as I started.

 

Yeah that sounds super suspicious, when I was reading that all I could think was that it sounded exactly like my wrist pain. I just talked to my physical therapist and explained that this kind of thing had happened before with my wrists. He said that not doing my exercises and waiting to see if it resolved would be completely fine and that I wouldn't be in any danger of causing any damage to my knee by doing that. Which in my opinion makes this entire thing even weirder, if it's not really a problem structurally. Come to think of it I was having knee pain in a different area (that's definitely tms and I'm ignoring it) until I got an x-ray on my knees and was diagnosed with this. So I'm not even sure this was ever causing me issues until I got the diagnoses. It might have been a bit tweaked by the my improper squatting but my tms symptoms might have just sort of migrated from my hands to my knee.

In conclusion tms is super weird. Even as I'm typing this my knee pain is like 75 percent better it just kind of faded as soon as I began to explain why it's probably tms.

 

Hi....I agree...TMS I know is even more powerful and crazy ...I'm 63 and when I think of my life from even 10 onwards (there was tons abuse issues all my life) I had asthma...chronic sore throats (I believe now from not being able to SPEAK OUT)...heart trouble..knee trouble..back trouble...eye trouble...bowel...hand...YOU NAME IT....I HAD IT.
But now...except for a few "real" issues (which btw didn't have pain but other stuff) I know for a fact...after 2 years studying TMS and dr. Sarno....EVERYTHING I HAD WAS TMS.
Do you know...they wanted to replace my knee....but when my bowels got inflamed...my knee became "perfect"....hasn't bothered me in 8 year s.
Ya. So......how is that possible?
THE SYMPTOM IMPERATIVE.