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Is this TMS? Rapid relevation and relapse

Discussion in 'General Discussion Subforum' started by garak, Mar 31, 2022.

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  1. garak

    garak New Member

    I'm a weightlifter. I've had RSI, at times severely disabling, since I was a young adult. For four years I had zero symptoms and my training was going incredible. Then out of nowhere, back pain, for the first time. No injury whatsoever. I was convinced I had some kind of disc issue, ligament tear, or something else fairly serious. In conjunction with other things, this ruined my training. It's been 9-10 months now. Rehab/acupuncture/McGill/McKenzie have not helped.

    I've read Sarno. I do believe in TMS and while I can't say for sure that I have it, I know millions of other people do. The pain is extremely weird, to say the least. Although I didn't get a breakthrough from the book. a few weeks ago, while taking an epsom salt bath, I realized that every time I do this, I recreate the pain trigger, since I'm laying on the exact areas of my back that always hurt. At that moment, I had a revelation: my epsom salt baths, done daily for athletic recovery for well over a year, caused my pain and then maintained it. I immediately stopped. Two days later the pain started dissapating. After a week, it was 100% gone. I told myself at the time, this probably isn't TMS, since I identified a physical trigger. But in the back of my mind I wondered if the physical trigger was completely irrelevant except for the fact that it was a placeholder for what I believed caused the distractons/pain. So maybe it was placebo effect. And if it was, then I don't have any back problem at all.

    A few days later, I was convinced it was gone. I tried light weights, and the next day, the pain came back, and now it hangs around again for the last 8-9 days. I know (and hope) this is a learned response, and that I'm really fine. I just wish I knew how to end this forever, and that it is in fact TMS.
     
  2. JanAtheCPA

    JanAtheCPA Beloved Grand Eagle

    Well, we all carry the TMS mechanism in the primitive survival region of our brains. It's just that it doesn't really work all that well in the modern world, and it goes haywire all too easily due to the inundation of modern stresses we endure now. So you probably do have TMS, and your epsom salt baths are triggering a combination of placebo and nocebo, leading you to be totally confused about what's really going on.

    You say that you've read Sarno - that's a start. The next step is to do one of the many free or low-cost programs that are available. Such as: our SEP on the main wiki, Alan Gordon's program on this forum, the Curable app, Dr. David Hanscom's Back In Control program (he's the back surgeon who quit doing back surgeries in order to concentrate on the mindbody component of back pain), Nicole Sachs, and many other well-regarded medical and mental health practitioners with TMS-based programs now (I know I've left some obvious ones out). The PPD Association has its own program for patients now.

    I recommend that you read Success Stories in the subforum to see how others have recovered. And start with one of our free programs and see what resonates, because everyone does this differently.

    Good luck!
     

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