Dealing with a flare up

TMS has been a wild and unpredictable ride. My last post a few months ago dealt with how I was stuck in my recovery and although my pain was mostly gone, it still showed up on most days at least enough to discourage me from doing anything. Over the last couple months I was able to move on with my life. I was caught up in the changes going on in my life and meeting new people that I left the pain behind. Suddenly pain wasn't an issue anymore. Now last Sunday all of a sudden I had acute pain in my lower back. The odd thing is that I've never had pain there before. It was always in my mid to upper back. Now I'm having pain all over the place. The muscles in my abdomen are all sore and tense, I'm having pain in my bladder area, neck, etc. So having my first major flare up in a long time. I get scary thoughts sometimes like what if I have something worse than TMS like Lyme's Disease, or MS.

A flare up like this is something that I've worried about in the past. Thankfully, it's not as bad as it has been in the past and I'm just hoping it won't be here to stay too long. I'm going to take the opportunity to read some Sarno and go over the TMS reminders, etc. Would anyone else like to share a story of a flare up you've gone through, how you dealt with it, what you learned, etc. ? Thank you.

 

Hi cirrus.
After recovering from foot pain so severe that I wound up in a wheelchair, I had trouble with horrible headaches. At first I was able to consider them TMS, and eventually banished them.
They returned during prime allergy season where I live, and I began to consider them allergy related. Finally, this year the pain was so intense that I consulted my dr. He said they sound more like tension headaches than migraines. Holy cow! TMS!! I began using all my tools, and low and behold--I can now cut them off before they go full-blown.
I've learned that

• TMS is even more all-encompassing than I had thought.
• If I'm persistent enough I can eventually find something that works.
• Sometimes the key to recovery is contained in someone's offhand remark!

Blessings to you as you work through this flare.

 

Thank you Gigi. It's just so disappointing when you are finally pain-free and it hits you again. You've been on these forums for awhile, and I remember you having had a few flareups. How are you feeling right now?

 

Pretty well overall, thanks. Late this afternoon I got a tension headache and none of usual trick have worked on it. It's lessened a bit, but if I take a pill I won't sleep tonight, so I'm muddling through.
How are you doing today?

 

Doing well, back pain is manageable, but I'm afraid to exert myself. I think it's important to not give pain power to affect how you live, but I am still always cautious to take it easy and not over exert myself. Dr. Sarno says that you cannot hurt your back through regular work and activity. But doctors say if you do you could injure your back forever. There is certainly enough testimonials of people who have really messed up backs but feel no pain. Perhaps this inner lack of faith in TMS is causing the pain to persist. This is my first really bad flare up in 3 years. And after about a week I feel a lot better. Not 100%, but a lot better. Having a bad flare up was on my list of fears but now after having one, I have to say it's not that bad. Maybe the pain could be worse, but I mean being in pain is not the horrifying thing i remember it as. I am getting through it just like I did was it first came on. It's not ideal, but it's not the end of the world either. I remember some nights after work I would lay in bed in agony and I was so upset the pain just kept getting worse. Now, if I just accept I am in pain at the moment and that it will go away, it doesn't get worse, and it goes away sooner. There is so much truth to the program of accepting pain has a psycho-physiological component that the medical industry ignores because a) it's not provable due to how intangible the results are, and b.) there's just no money to be made from it. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy to hide the truth, but grants are given to scientists in order to get concrete results, and TMS does not provide that.

I had a headache all day yesterday. I get them often. I find that if it doesn't go away once I've taken a tylenol or something, I begin to worry. If the headache is still there the next day I worry more. After all, headaches that last multiple days are painful, distracting, and scary. This flare up is causing pain in all areas of my body just like when it first hit me 3 years ago. I have pain all over my back, my bladder area hurts (where I had hernia surgery many years ago), the headache, and the sore muscles knots that we have are all over my body and more sore than usual. I don't know if I believe in fibromyalgia per se but Dr. Sarno acknowledged that although it was TMS, it was a more severe form, so I think it's okay to differentiate. I was never diagnosed with fibro, but there's no real way to prove it exists. If a person, usually a women has these symptoms and the doctor can't find anything wrong, they will sometimes diagnose the patient with it. I say usually women, because something like 80% of fibro cases are women and since TMS doesn't discriminate I think doctors are more likely to give women the diagnoses than to men. Also, and this is just conjecture, but it seems to me that travelling pain is more common to women, while men seem to get a 'bad back' at a certain age and usually a disc abnormality is found and its blamed on that.Anyway, forgive me for digressing, but I don't journal so getting on this site and writing helps me a lot to give me a forum where I can discuss these things.

 

Oh crikey, I know what you're going through. The pain goes and you feel bullish and happy, then some other pain comes along. Seems that tms is very stubborn, my anxiety is threatening to sky rocket because ear ringing is driving me to distraction. Shifted this morning and neck pain started, I listened to dr s on YouTube and that helps. It's maddening but as someone said on this forum to me, it went before and it'll go again.

 

Yeah, I wrote once under the success forum, and every time I think of writing a new success story it seems like I'm hit with pain again. A couple weeks ago I was feeling amazing. But I'm not complaining, at least it's easing up. I put up a Dr. Sarno lecture on youtube and the copyright holders had it taken down. Yes will go away, I imagine ear ringing would be bad. My ears ring for short periods of time on rare occasions, so I can only imagine it going on for days. I had neck pain for several years, whenever I would walk certain distances. Now it's shifted to my mid back, and my current flare up is low back. The fact it moves just proves its TMS.

 

Ah was that you who posted dr sarno's lecture on YouTube? Thank you. I realised it must have been taken down, nevertheless I'm sure many people, including me, benefitted from it when it was up. Am sorry you're getting flare ups and you're right if it's moving around then it must be tms. Lower Back pain is particularly nasty, had it years ago, it's hard to get comfortable. I seem to have had so many of the tms symptoms from sensitive bladder issues, to lower back pain, Gerd, severe neck pain and now ear ringing. I try and find comfort in the fact that it's moving upwards! maybe one day it'll disappear out of the top of my head altogether! Good luck cirrus.

 

I remember reading one of Anrew Weil's books and he wrote about a particularly nasty virus-like thing. They never discovered what it was, but it moved progressively higher up on the body until it departed. Scary! But at least it departed!