Is this TMS?

I joined this forum hoping to get some help.

I am a very sensitive person who has suffered from anxiety and depression since my mid 20s. A couple of years ago my anxiety got so bad that I experienced panic attacks due to scary physical symptoms, health anxiety and generally being stress due to years of suppressed negative emotions according to my psychologist.

I have been getting better but experienced a setback just in the past 2 weeks after experiencing tinnitus, head and ear pressure feelings and light-headedness and dizziness.

For a few years I have been experiencing occasional ocular migraine (migraine aura) where my vision becomes distorted and this last for half an hour.

I also have dizzy spells, migraine headaches, painful bowels like trapped wind which causes discomfort in my lower bowels and anus, lower back pain, upper back pain, tension in my jaw and head, full feeling in my ears, pain in either my left or right temple of my forehead that radiates behind eye, tingling sensation in my mouth or lips, muscle twitches in my arms, calf of leg and sometimes eye, feeling off balance and spaced out, heart palpitations and acid reflux. I also suffer from bruxism as I clench my teeth when I am sleeping and usually wake up with tense jaw muscles and high pitched tinnitus in my right ear.

A couple of weeks ago I suffered a bad dizzy spell when I turned over in bed. The dizzy spell disappeared but when I got up to go to the bathroom my bedroom started to spin. I was so bad that I had to hold onto the walls to get to the bathroom. Fortunately the dizziness disappeared but since then I have been feeling off balance and light-headed. I visited my doctor about the dizziness and he did a head manoeuvre tests while I was lying on a table but I didn't experience any of the dizziness whilst doing the test. My doctor suggested that it could be vestibular migraine considering I suffer from migraine anyway. This has triggered off a fear response in my and put me back to square one with my anxiety, panic and depression.

I have been getting stress though personal family problems and with Christmas coming up it is making me worse. I have also had violent dry heaving (trying to vomit) episodes in the bathroom which make my legs tremble.

Could all this be TMS?

 

To answer your question. Yes. It could all be TMS. The first thing would be to have a complete medical checkup to discard any physical illness by a medical doctor or a TMS doctor specialist. Dont be afraid of the dizzy spell. It is called vertigo. I had one just like you by the time that TMS was starting to act on me. I did the full set of audiologist test and the maneuvers to put back the liquid inside the ear area that is supposed to be, but that specific episode never happened again. Most probably, it is was caused by TMS it wont come back. Your brain just wanted to precisely put you back in square 1, because your brain dont want you to face whatever feelings that you are harboring. Whatever is in your emotional life now that evokes your past or your inner child, it is full active. Have you read Sarno's books and done any of the programs available in this site??

 

Thanks for the reply.

I had a blood test in 2015 when this was bad and my blood results came back negative except for slightly raised plasma viscosity which I managed to get back to normal.

I haven't read any of Sarno's books yet but I intend to.

 

Booyah! Migraines were Dr. Sarno's own personal symptom! When a psychologist colleague tipped him off that his migraines were a psychological defense mechanism, it changed his thinking from being a rehab doctor to developing his TMS theory. The rest of your symptoms that you cataloged and your personality traits also bode well that it's all TMS--as the Good Doctor said : "There are so many things little and big that are tms, I wouldn't have time to write about all of them" Dr. Sarno

Read the good books and if your health and life don't transform, consult with a TMS practitioner, many are listed at this site--why waste your money on clueless white-coats, snake-oyls, and voo-doo that will have you wandering the aisles of Walgreens for a social life and filling-up your medicine cabinet with drugs.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I've been watching videos on YouTube about TMS and it is very interesting. I have come to the concluding that this could be TMS because my headaches, pains around my body, dizziness and tinnitus started getting bad again after a family disagreement and argument. It is also worth noting that a I had a bad migraine headache recently in one side of my head and I went to bed. The next morning when a I woke up the migraine pain was gone. However, an hour later the pain returned. Same thing happened when I had toothache.

 

Sounds like you're onto something! I definitely recommend reading Sarno and other TMS books to gain a deeper understanding of it all. All of your symptoms sound likely to be TMS especially if the doctor didn't find anything that would be mechanically causing the vertigo. There are, of course, plenty of structural causes for vertigo but sounds like those were ruled out. Migraine is a TMS phenomenon, and frequently can be accompanied by vestibular symptoms, i've had patients with this. Taking a TMS approach when other things are ruled out is a great thing!

 

Hello artmuzz, its me wilson from panicend forums . Welcome to tms forum.

 

Thanks osca aelius for the welcome and everyone else who has replied to my post. I am feeling a little bit better due to the reassurance I have been getting on this forum but I still have slight dizziness/light-headedness but I had this dizziness in 2015 which lasted for months until late 2016 when the dizziness disappeared so I am confident that this episode will disappear too. I notice that the dizziness goes away when a I lie down. However, when I get up from my bed, chair or sofa my head starts feeling light headed and I feel a bit dizzy but not spinning dizzy just the sort of dizzy where I feel kind of drunk and a feeling I will faint or float away.

 

If it's TMS, then it's due to psychological CONDITIONING--in bed you're off the playing field and safe--when you get out of bed the game of life begins.

 

hi artmuzz and welcome,
take a look here for a flyer by Sarah Edelmann about psycho-physiological dizziness... http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/psycho-physiological-dizziness-syndrome-ppds.4599/#post-91391 (Psycho-Physiological Dizziness Syndrome (PPDS))

 

I just want to say that your symptoms sound exactly like mine. I have had anxiety my entire life, started when I was 16 after I had a panic attack while smoking a joint. After that, I batted anxiety attacks which morphed into GAD, particularly health anxiety. I've suffered from actual throbbing, painful migraines since I was 10 years old. When I was 25, under extreme stress trying to get through school and working full time, I experienced dizziness for 2 weeks. It was a rocking sensation inside my body that was pretty violent. I had the vestibular tests and heart tests and they were all normal. I met my now husband and my symptoms went away. After my second child and just two years into a new business that I started, I developed migraines, followed by BPPV. BPPV is exactly what you describe - crystals getting dislodged in the inner ear and affecting balance. I was able to treat it with the Epley Maneuver but ever since have been dizzy. I feel off balance all the time with positional dizziness, I have hyperacusis and my tympanic membrane in my middle ear now clicks whenever I talk. I have been told this is an anxiety-based condition. I went all the way to Chicago to see a top neuro-otologist and was diagnosed with a vestibular migraine and possibly some vertigo stemming from my neck. I still get headaches that feel like they are always in my left ear which worries me because I am petrified of Meniere's disease. I've been somewhat comforted that all the testing is normal, however, my symptoms are pretty debilitating. I have visual aura, too and I often feel dizzy just looking up and down.

What I have come to realize is that initially, I got BPPV because I was under a lot of stress and I did not have control over my life. The vertigo is about balance, which I did not have any of. I no longer have the crystals in the inner ear, however, I am still dizzy. It's almost like the fear center in the brain was activated and now symptoms are persisting. And the more testing that is normal, the more helpless I feel and the worst the symptoms get.

There is no doubt that I have had a fair amount of trauma in my life and that this trauma is causing my symptoms. But there is still a small part of me that wonders if there is something structurally wrong that they haven't found. I had an MRI without contract and a CT scan also without contrast and those two tests were normal. I wondering if I should do the angiography or MRI with contrast... although my symptoms do not fit into anything that would cause conditions those two procedures rule out.

I emailed a vestibular scientist once and told him about my story, the fact that this started with BPPV in my right ear but that my left ear gets headaches as well as ear popping and clicking, etc. I told him I had a "drop attack" which is something someone gets with Meniere's. I was incorrect when I stated that because what I had was not a drop attack it was a "quick spin" from doing the Epley Maneuver. Anyways, he said he thinks maybe, it's early Menieres. I constantly go back to what he said and alert my brain to danger and start to feel all panicky. But the reality is, I told him I had something that people with Menieres get and I was wrong. Perhaps, that would have changed what he presumed I had.

Anyone have any tips to really get into the subsconcious?

 

Hi Socolucci23

Welcome,

Let’s assume your vertigo is caused by a physical reason, my wife’s was indeed so, as Dr. Dudley a neurologist here in Thousand Oaks Ca, performed the Epley Maneuver on her to fix BPPV, she needed to go back one time and only and gets the occasional wobble. I know nothing of the other issues, but they could be connected and related. Sorry. I can also affirm that the Epley Maneuver works when a windsurfing friend self performed it and got back on the water to sail the next day. Stay with the doctors until your absolutely happy, most TMS issues are tied to the physical and you will eventually decide what is needed to heal.

My wife’s BPPV warranted $70,000 of tests MRIs and a stay overnight in the hospital. They take it very seriously as the symptoms mimic a stroke, which coincidently she had last Sunday, she is well and home now.

Thank you for your “bio”, for some reason probably “TMS Denial”, not many people bother with, it will stand you in good stead and helps the people you seek help from. You certainly have reasons for emotional troubles to exist and I can see life has been very tough for you.

Socolucci23 - Anyone have any tips to really get into the subsconcious?

Digging for repressed emotions can be a dawnting task, and some say not always necessary to heal. I posted some of my rare “reveals” in this thread; they may not be pertaining to “unpleasant emotions”, but are true events that showed me emotions can indeed be repressed.

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/one-repressed-emotion.17395/

As In said to another new poster earlier: “Stay with us, question and study, try, fail, understand and succeed, and you will be well.”

 

I feel a boat rocking sensation spaced out for about a year now i am worried i night stay like this my whole life I've been doing cardio AND trying not to worry living as normal as i can but then symptoms persist

 

Hi,

How are your symptoms now?

 

Fine

 

Hi Karim...it now 2022...but fyi..im experience exact same... horrific vertigo....going doctor tomorrow but im sure its Tms due to my acute ànxiety re horrific family situation etc ..hang in there my friend..Rene

 

I think you’ve accidentally quoted my post instead of Karim’s.