TMS, Anxiety and Trauma

A bit of back story about me. I’m 51 and have been symptom free for a few years now. I do get flair ups from time to time but they usually subside quickly. I know what they and I don’t fear them. One of the last symptoms to subside was the feeling of having to pee when I didn’t need to. This one was quite insidious 5 years ago, and it comes up from time to time now but not close to how it was. It seems to correlate with social anxiety for the most part.

Last week I had a routine colonoscopy. My wife had one the week prior and she had no issue with it. I was not worried about it in the slightest. The night before I couldn’t sleep at all. All night long I felt the rush of adrenaline and my mind wouldn’t settle. Just thinking about random stuff not even fearing the procedure. The next day the feeling of anxiety was even more elevated, especially when I was at the hospital prepping for the procedure. The feeling of the need to pee was also there. I had to pee a few times in the 20 minutes waiting for the procedure and only a few drops came out each time. While waiting, I would just sit there and feel the anxiety and try to soothe myself. My logical cortex brain was not worried at all, but I had all the anxiety feelings which felt like they were coming from somewhere else. I wasn’t ramping up my anxiety with my thinking brain, which I do tend to do. Well, I did the colonoscopy, and everything went well. I didn’t need to pee at all afterwards and the anxiety was gone.

Looking back, I started thinking about the anxiety I had waiting for the procedure. It didn’t come from me worrying about the procedure. It really felt like it came from somewhere else and now I think it was a trauma response stored in my amygdala or somewhere sub-conscious.

When I was 13, I spent a month in the hospital with a 3rd degree burn on my leg. The operations, time alone from my family and recovery process were very painful. A few months later I broke my nose which required a minor operation to set it back in place. During the procedure I remember waking up while they were packing my nose with gauze, and it was very distressful in my half-conscious state. I ended up recovering well from these operations and never really thought that they caused any lingering trauma until now. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like most of my unhelpful personality traits, amplified central nervous system and addiction come from trauma but more from my early childhood attachment/relationship trauma not from this early medical trauma. This was the first time I saw a connection between the time I spent in the hospital and waking up during the surgery and my TMS symptoms.

I’ve always known that my TMS comes from anxiety and fear, but this was really the first time that I saw a distinct link between anxiety/fear and my sub-conscious trauma. I now really believe my traumas are the spark that has amplified my central nervous system and TMS.

I just thought I’d share that experience with the group as I thought it was very enlightening for me and maybe is relatable to others.

 

Yes @JanAtheCPA , good insight. I wasn't really thinking about isolation and abandonment, mainly the fear and pain. I will definitely think about that more.

 

@william999 100%. that's exactly what I felt.