A slightly different TMS story.. Seriously long.. Just read TLDR :)

So, i am writing my story. I know it is not the most standard TMS story. I know, some people might disagree with me. That is not TMS or you are wrong or whatever... But I will say it anyway.

If I help even one person it is worth it. It is a pretty long story. If you do not want to read everything.. just jump to the TLDR at the end

I do not think that my story is relevant to people that have periodic pains. That sit for 8 hours in a plane and then have a stiff neck for a day.

I am talking mostly to those people who are obsessed with their pain. Who think about it most of the day. Who check several times per day if their pain is still there and their youtube and tiktok feed is like the one of a physiotherapist in practice

I have a crappy job. I work in radio oncology. On the one hand, you help save people, on the other hand you are surrounded by death. you are surrounded by sickness.
You see the mortality. First bell ringing!

I started working in my 20ies in a Radio oncology center focusing on children with Cancer. I saw so many people, younger than me getting sick. Many of them never recovering.
I had always thought that this is a sickness for old people. But obviously it can affect even young ones. I am not off the hook. Nobody is.

I guess the seed of the doubt and fear started growing in me.
Work continued for a few years. And then I started getting sick. It was bad luck and bad timing. I was about to be 30 and I had a tumor inside my nostril.

The good thing is that the MD told me from the beginning that it looked like a polyp (benign) but we need to take it out anyway. First of all to be completely sure that it is indeed benign and second, because it would eventually just grow and grow and I would not be able to breathe.
That was the second bell ringing. Even the small possibility of it not being benign (so being cancer, terrified me!) Luckily I removed it and it was benign. But in my head I started living in fear.

Months started passing and I started scanning myself. Is that pain normal? Is that lymph node bigger than it should be etc etc.. I became hypochondriac with cancer. I was seriously very relaxed with any other sickness but cancer terrified me.

For my bad luck after a few months, I started having some numbness in my arm and fingers. I did not pay much attention as that could not be really linked to cancer in my understanding. However, after a few weeks, when I was sitting with my arms crossed, I felt a hard lump inside my arm. I checked the other arm. No, it was not symmetrical. Only one arm had it. I went terrified to the hospital to get checked..

It was a tumor and the MD was not able to tell me or even guess if this was benign or cancer! Shit Shit Shit! Third bell ringing like crazy! 50-50 Cancer or not Cancer. We remove it and we see how we proceed..

As you can imagine I was just surviving, not living. Several weeks passed. MRIs, doctor visits and finally an operation. Luckily again the biopsy proved that it was benign..

After that, I remained still hypochondriac with cancer but I had a few months that I did not have any symptoms to link to any immediate threat so I started to relax a bit. Months passed, I would go regularly for football. One day after football in the winter, I am all sweaty and smelly and I get out at 0C/30F degrees to get the bus. The next day I have a terrible pain on my ribs on my back and I feel a bump.

Yes of course.. I was sweaty, went out in the cold and my muscle had knotted. That is what a non hypochondriac would think! Nope..You guessed it! Not me.. Some googling also gave me the option of heart issues, (but as I said, I was not afraid of heart issues, and then in the end of the list lung cancer! Was it the end of the list? I am not even sure anymore.. I had no reason to continue reading.. I had found what I was terrified of )

Of course when I visited a doctor, in 2 minutes they told me that this is a simple muscle strain and prescribed me some physio. From that time on I started monitoring my back.. Arms, shoulders, upper back, neck and very rarely low back..

Muscle pains, nerve pains moving around or static. Most of the times not at a 10/10 intensity. Maybe 5-7/10 but always there. Never a single day without pain.
This went on for years and years..

Around 6 years.. In these years I went to orthopedic surgeons, physiotherapists, chiropractors, massages and acupuncturists etc etc. Every time they would either not treat the pain or help a bit for it to go away but then it would jump somewhere else. From one muscle to the next one. Meanwhile my pains had started spreading to my neck, and knees.
Every time the health specialist would start with the phrase: This is nothing serious: We just need to train this muscle.. or we must just mobilize this rib or massage this, or change your posture. But according to all of them it was never anything serious.
But I was in serious pain and none of their solutions or treatments would solve anything.
I would become angry with them. But I started believing that I have nothing serious! So many specialists see no red flag. So I will not die from it.. but I might live my whole life with these pains!

At the same time I had changed job, still being in Radiation Oncology, so cancer patients, but in a standard clinic, not dealing with kids and most of the patients older than 70. And this is slowly the point that I stopped being afraid of cancer.. but I had already started obsessing with my muscle pains.

So, since I was fed up with professionals, I decided to take situation in my own hands. I started googling and reading! Anatomy, youtube physio channels and tiktoks.. I would obsess about the new channel I found that targets my exact problem, I would follow those exercises to have one of the following results:
1) Either the exercises would do nothing to me.
2) Or I would overdo it and I would be suffering with even worse muscle pains for several days after.
3) The best option would be that the pain would go more or less away, but then another muscle pain would kick in. I would then change my exercises to address this muscle and then I would be chasing my symptoms until I would eventually end up either overdoing it with exercises (see 2) or going back to my initial pain location.

My house would look like a gym, I would hit the gym focusing or rehab exercises and the time I was not training, I would google my symptoms and watch youtube/tik tok videos that have that "exact" exercise to solve my problem!

The dynamic changed.. I would monitor myself several times per day, check if I am still in pain. My life was miserable, I would wake up during the night because of pain. I was not able to sit on the floor to play with my kids, my pain was also to my neck now non stop, I started developing cervicogenic headaches.. My phobia had changed.. I was not afraid of cancer anymore.. I was sure it was a muscle issue. I knew it was nothing serious.. So many professionals had told me it was not. But I started to become obsessed to fix it. I started to become obsessed to monitor it.. To check if it is still there.

After having watched almost every video in youtube, after having done every single exercise, after training at home for years, nothing would really help it.
Until at some point I saw somebody in Reddit writing that if you have chronic back pain you probably need to read a bit about Sarno. And I did.. But I was so eager I was so obsessed with it.. that just like physio I overdid it. I read all the Sarno books, I found several videos about it and watched them.. I read books about TMS from other writers.. And there was something in common.. They focused on the fact that what you have is nothing serious.. That even if you have some abnormalities in your imaging they are normal..

But actually that was not my phobia.. I was not afraid that what I have is something serious.. I was just afraid that it would never go away.
So what I did.. I was reading all the books and media I could about TMS and I continued monitoring myself if I feel better.

Reading success stories and consuming TMS media is very useful if you think that what you have is something serious. You get persuaded that it is not something serious and that these things are normal. Like that, you let your body and mind relax and give yourself the chance to desensitize.

But this is not what I needed. I just changed my pain obsession from physio to tms. I was reading TMS books/podcasts/videos for several hours per day.. and checking myself after each paragraph if I am feeling any better.

One obsession had turned into another. After several months of trying this approach.. As you can expect, I started abandoning it. Obviously it was not for me.. It had not worked.. And if it had not worked.. Probably my issues were physical and not TMS. Or at least that was what I thought. I should go back to physio exercises youtube and anatomy and physio books.

Slowly I started going to my old habbits, exercising like crazy without getting any relief suffering and affecting my life.
After having recycled all the old and new exercises I thought to ask chatgpt. I would ask it to give me tests to do to find what is my problem and then I would follow the selected exercises for weeks. At that point the pain would have moved or increased and then chatgpt would suggest something else and this happened for several months.

And chatgpt is not perfect and very often is giving false information. But at the same time can name every single muscle and joint in the body, being a great/but flawed physiotherapist and at the same time has read every single TMS book. So one day after several months of following blindly the chatgpt physio instructions without much success, it suggested again to adjust my exercises to combat this pain that had changed again that day.. But this time.. I thought to ask it..

Do you think that I am oversensitized?

And it Replied YES! This actually explains all your symptoms better than every other anatomical and physiotherapeutical approach. Now before you say, yes but chagpt always agrees with you.

I have personalized mine to only agree with me only if facts agree with me. It should never agree with me or try to be polite if my opinion is not supported 100% by facts. It should always contradict what I say, if it is wrong in a direct and not gentle way. It is actually so direct to me that even replies to me as an @sshole some times.

And then it hit me.. What if I oversensitized not because I am afraid that I have something serious. But because I want to get over it so much that I am completely obsessed? I want to get over it so much that I monitor myself over time and I just obsess on it. So 180 degree change of approach. Every time I catch myself thinking "does that feel bad", "can I turn my head without pain?" I just ignore it.. I forget about it and do sth else..

If I am sitting in an awkward position and I feel my neck getting stiff, I just change position, I do not start exercising or stretching.. I just ignore it and go on with my life. And that has been a game changer. It has been a few weeks and I feel almost no pain. I feel happier, I feel like a new person. If you touch my back you will probably feel that I am still stiff.. but it does not annoy me.. I do not really feel pain unless I monitor it.. and even if I do monitor it.. I just ignore it.. It will eventually go away..

TLDR I wrote this story to share my perspective. I feel that TMS and oversensitization is not always there because you think that this is something serious. And maybe it was clear for everybody else, but for me it took a while.I think it is there for whatever reason but what you really need to ask yourself is..

What am I afraid of? What oversensitized me?

If you find the answer to that, you are half way to th esolution. If you are afraid that this is something serious, then probably most of the TMS approach like the course from Sarno will be super useful because they explain to you why what you have is probably not serious.

However in my case my phobia/obsession was that what if this thing I have which I know is not serious will never stop? And the simple answer is.. I created it.. Focusing so much to fix it and obsessing on it and monitoring it all the time made it strong.. And if I just ignore it.. it will perish.. When I finally made this thought after 8 years of consecutive back pains, everything clicked into place!

Knowing that is so liberating!

And I know that my phobia for cancer transformed into an obsession for my back and neck pain and now that I believe that I found my answer and now that my chronic back pain will finally ease probably I will get a new phobia or a new issue to redirect my mind.. But lets cross the fingers and hope that I am better mentally prepared and I will recognize it faster and beat it!

 

@dxdydz it was as if I wrote this, I see myself immensely in this. For me I've had a good run at the moment following Dan Bugulio's work and how he describes TMS as perceived danger pain. For me the danger is that I'll have to live in Chronic Pain forever (I'm only 28 and I genuinely started counting down the days until I get to be old and die when I was at my worst).

I am a pretty obsessive person, before the pain I obsessed and ruminated on other things. The pain just replaced the crippling anxiety. Sometimes I get scared that the anxiety will come back, and that probably contributes of not letting go of the pain.

I've started to obsess over rennovating my house again, which is maybe a good distraction but the key for me would to be at peace with no obsessions, this is something I'm going to work on with my therapist.

Thank you for your post, it's nice not to be alone!

 

Then I would try to do the opposite of what you are afraid.

If your "danger/fear" is that you will have to live forever with that. Your problem is probably like mine. You are afraid that it will not go away.
You are obsessed with it. You probably monitor yourself and check how severe and where your pain is and how bad is your flare today.

The way to make it go away is to ignore it.

If you are like me, following TMS work might not work for you.

I changed my obsession from physical to TMS before. I was consuming all the TMS media/info I could find. So I was still thinking of my pain for several hours per day.

Now I have changed my approach. I say "I do not care. At some point this will go away and I continue living my life." And everyday I think of my pain less and less. And everyday I have less and less pain.
But this is not my focus anymore. I consider a successful day a day that I will not think of my pain, not a day that I will feel absolutely no pain.

And my plan is after sharing my story here.. to disappear again and not follow this forum anymore as I feel I am weak and I do not want to obsess again with TMS.

I wrote my story here and I would like to go back to living my life.. and if I get some bad days.. so be it.. they will go away!

Of course I cannot vouch that this is what everybody should do. After all, there are many more experienced people than me in this forum. But I can vouch that this worked for me! And I have not been happier!

 

Thank you so much for sharing your story