The pain makes me feel really afraid and I'm making some progress.

Wanted to share some insights/progress with my TMS journey:

Last night I had a strong stress/emotional reaction to which I gathered evidence for this being TMS even more. After my reaction and conversation...my whole back was stiff and pain and it was hard to even roll over in bed. But on top of that...very mild symptoms that I thought may have been TMS but didn't really care about so much, such as a mild difficulty moving my neck in one direction and sharper muscle-like pain on my shoulder, completely ramped up in pain to where it was difficult to move my head at all and sleep on my pillow without pain. The neck symptoms have continued into today. That was pretty wild for me to observe and experience.

I'm feeling split. I'm excited to have such strong evidence that my body is responding to psychological stress, but I'm also struggling with not caring about the level of the pain. It freaks me out that my body has the capacity to cause these strong reactions and it's hard adjusting to responding to my stress in more effective ways. I can just tell that it hurts and that I don't want it to get worse. My husband and I are doing better at responding to this psychologically. He refers to the pain as TMS with me and reminds me that the pain is causing no harm in my body and that I'm okay. I think it's hard to not focus on what hurts.

 

This is the million dollar question/answer!!! Each one of us will be different but the gist is to accept the pain. Don't try to put meaning into it. Don't be afraid of it. Don't think of the future and that you may have this pain forever. (This is where my brain can go to!)

Sometimes I succeed with this. Sometimes I don't. I was able to apply this to insomnia and it worked. I told myself that even if I get 2 hours of sleep, I will be fine and will be able to go about my day. I also just stopped caring what time I actually fell asleep and just let my body tell me when I was sleepy. Within a couple of days, my insomnia was gone.

But it's still hit or miss with my main symptom because I do have a lot of fear with it. Sometimes I can override my fear and then it goes away (both the symptom and the fear). Sometimes my brain gets caught up in it and I go along with it before I can catch myself.

Congrats on getting more evidence that this is TMS. You have the power to get well-you just need to find what works for you. Sounds like you are on your way!