Wrist Tendonitis or TMS?

Hello all,

I am a musician who has been suffering with chronic hand, wrist and forearm pain for almost 2 years. I have been to 3 hand specialists, and none of them can find anything wrong. I've had an MRI, Ultrasound and EMG, all the results were clean. I tried resting for extended periods of time, and tried PT and a steroid shot, those didn't work either. The last doctor I saw said I *probably* have tendonitis, but he even admitted he thought it was weird I haven't healed. When I rested, I splinted and stopped playing my instrument for 8 weeks, I have rested on and off for smaller spans of time since, out of fear of making it worse. I did PT for 3 months with no improvement.
I have noticed that the pain absolutely gets worse when I'm stressed, though. It's primarily typing and playing my instrument that makes it hurt, but doing other things too sometimes triggers the pain, I started working out recently and the weight lifting really makes my wrist ache. I also have occasional muscle spasms in the area, and sometimes when I'm just sitting there doing nothing, it will suddenly throb for no reason.
The pain usually stays in the area of the left hand's pinky muscle, it moves up and down the tendon on that side of the wrist, and into the forearm, and even into the elbow. Back in August, I was going to a chiropractor regularly for a few weeks, and after a couple visits I got new symptoms, some aches in both my thumbs and my left elbow. I thought that was pretty weird, but luckily the thumb pain hasn't really persisted, it was bad for a little while but then just kind of went away, only flaring up randomly now, although recently my pain flareups have been spreading all throughout my left hand, into the thumb area too.
I've read the Mindbody Perscription, and I think a lot of it applies to me, I am a perfectionist and a high stress person, however I'm still having a hard time fully convincing myself it's TMS. The pain all started with some kind of physical thing, I was practicing my instrument one day, and then had a sudden shock of pain in my left pinky that radiated a little up into the arm. I had sharp, acute pain while playing after that, so I stopped and rested for 8 weeks. But when I got back the pinky was still painful to play, but this time it was a dull, nagging ache.

I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's TMS because I've heard tendonitis can also become chronic, but also I feel like I've done everything right for tendonitis, like rest and PT. Thoughts anyone? I really want it to be TMS, I want to go back to playing music and working out without being consumed by anxiety because of the pain, and fearing I could "permanently damage myself".

 

The belief is now that ALL long-term chronic tendon issues are TMS.
How is this a "physical thing" if you are a musician who has played (I presume) for a long time - doing the same thing over and over without an "injury" in the past?
It is very similar to people who think they have injured their wrists typing on a computer that they had typed on in the past for many years, same length of time per day.
The 'event' is just moment that your inner tension was brought to your attention.
Think back to the time of the onset of your pain.
What was going on in your life?

 

Really? That makes me really hopeful to hear that all long-term tendon issues are TMS. Do you have something like a video or book or something to quote that on, because I really need to have that reinforced so I can really believe this. Or some examples of this might be helpful. I'm having a hard time getting over the initial trial of really believing it's TMS when all this time I've been thinking there's something physically wrong.
When the "injury" happened, in the preceding months I had been struggling with my mental health quite a bit, due to a lot of music performance anxiety. I was really struggling and feeling down on myself, and the event actually happened RIGHT before a performance, I was warming up like 30 minutes before I was supposed to perform, and then it hit and I had to go tell my teacher that I hurt myself and couldn't play. It's true that I have played the piano for over half my life, and I've played very physically straining music for several hours every day and had no issues with long term pain before. I've always just blamed the pain on that one time, I assumed I pulled a tendon and didn't give it adequate time to heal, so it turned into tendonitis. Honestly though, even typing this out makes me realize how much this sounds like TMS. The fear factor is definitely a real thing, my teachers have reinforced it on accident (they meant well of course) but saying things like "you should stop playing if you're in pain, you don't want to permanently damage yourself" has really reinforced this fear. Now I can't play without that thought in the back of my head, whenever the pain inevitably comes. It's really tough to beat.

 

TMS is always 'protecting' us from something...
it is essentially an over evolved coping mechanism...cell growth is good...runaway cell growth is called cancer. Same principle different result

It is protecting you from that performance anxiety for certain, but also from other things...mostly about anger

There are so many 'give-aways' in your post I won't spoil it for you and tell you, But in the Books of John Sarno MD virtually every concenr you listed and your symptomology is essentially average and normal.

That one is really funny.... "In case you might die some day, you might as well die right now"

I am a musician. I have had all sortas of TMS episodes around performing and recording and the business end of it. And they have all gone away thanks to Sarno

Tendonitis is not 'a thing'..Oh, the pain is real, but it is invariably TMS. No 'injury' that happened 2 weeks ago hurts today, and something that happened months or years ago?

Like i said, I won't ruin the surprise, but I have seen a lot of people shut their life down over this and it's a sadder that permanently damaging anything. If that was even possible

 

Many tendonitis success stories: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/search/3303328/?q=Success+tendon&o=date&c[node]=26

The PPD Association used to list tendonitis in their symptoms section, but unfortunately they changed that page and only list a few symptoms now (which is a huge disservice to many searching for answers). Their web page is, however a remarkable resource.
https://ppdassociation.org/ (Psychophysiologic Disorders Association)

You may find their free tms quiz helpful.