RSI, Arms, trapezius, neck, upper back pain

Hi,

Intro

My name is Mark and i have been suffering sort of RSI Pain for 6-7 years now. I want to share my story since i keep finding ways why my pain isn't all TMS and i think it's keeping me from being able to heal. Maybe people recognize parts of my story and can help me to explain some of it.

I am a worrier, an over thinker and i need to get stuff to believe it. I am very very obsessive in life, also with the pain.

I have seen doctors, physio's, chiropractors, ortho. All told me they thought my body was fine. I never had scans because those specialists always tell me: you wont see anything because im not detecting anything wrong with your body.

My childhood has revolved around school. My sister was great because she aced everything and did the best education she could from 12 to 24. My mother was always worried about me because i didn't ace school. I did manage to do the highest education but it was tough. I was always pushed to do the best in school. I got love when i did good in school but for nothing else. I always chose the hardest and best education because i believed this was the most important thing and i would have failed if i didn't.

At the moment i'm 27 without a degree and i don't think it's that important anymore. But this and the fact i was very insecure and got bullied away from soccer which i loved as a kid might have something to do with me getting TMS?

From 18 to 26 i have been on and off in school and felt like shit most of the time. I couldn't make friends quickly and was insecure and i didn't like school but i felt like i had to do it or i was a failure. Also from 18 to 26 i have alcohol, gaming and sleeping pills addiction and from 20th i had pains in trapezius, arms and upper back, neck and shoulders.

I have a habit of escaping emotional pain by using alcohol, gaming etc. But i didn't experience some awful stuff other people on here experienced so i don't feel like i got pain because of things i experienced.

Here's some of my story.

2011

So what I can remember is that i started to get anxiety in about 2011. I was skipping Uni everyday and was drinking all day and playing some sort of chat game called IMVU. At some point i started getting anxiety which kept me awake at night. I don't remember how and why but this went away at some point.

2012

In 2012 i was working out a lot and at 1 point i felt pain in my upper right trapezium muscle, because i am so obessive about everything i ignored it and kept training. This resulted in a lot of severe pain in the upper trapezium. I still went on training 1 more day after that i took a week rest because i was scared i would fuck up my body. This pain got less but never dissapeared. I just kept training with it but i could never work out atg my usual level anymore because the pain got worse during training when i put pressure on it while bench pressing or doing shoulder workouts. I had this for half a year and got scared it never went away and i felt so bad the 1 thing i loved so much, working out was ruined forever. ( this pain never went away and i still have it today, it still gets very nasty after a while when working out.)

2013

Then still in 2013 I took some drugs that year and 1 time i took a lot of speed/amphetamine and ended up in the hospital with a lot of fear and a 170-180 heart rate in rest. They kept me there for a night. After this my life changed completely and i had panic attacks everyday ending up in the hospital a few more times. But all tests were okay. I kept getting the panic attacks everyday thinking i would die of a heart attack. The only positive thing was it kept me off the drugs, since i didn't dare taking it anymore.

At this time i felt so miserable cause of the panic attacks that i went gaming for 16 hours a day to get distracted from the anxiety. Because i was still anxious and tense i would probably sit in front of the PC with tensed muscles in tensed positions. At 1 point i started getting pain in my right fore arm. And i got scared went reading about RSI and got really scared because i feared i had gotten rsi. Because i was so miserable in life and was addicted to the gaming i didn't stop and it got worse and the trapezius injury got very bad as well during the gaming. The trapezius injury got the worst its ever been when i kept gaming tears almost left my eye cause of the pain, i also got very very tired (cause of the pain i guess). I had to stop gaming, because the pain was so bad that it wasn't possible to keep going.

I went on vacation like 1 week after for 2 weeks. The pain went away almost completely and when i got home i went gaming again but in 1 week it was back so bad again like before the vacation. So i had to stop again. The hard part was that i was so tired the next few days i slept for 10-12 hours and still was tired. This is also a tough part for me to understand. I always am very tired when i have bad TMS/RSI pain i don't hear other people a lot about this?

Anyway i got addicted to gambling since this didn't require me to be active behind the pc all the time and still distracted me from the anxiety. But I still had to use the pc a lot just less then when gaming. The RSI got worse and worse. Then the next years i kept gambling and gaming a lot while also drinking a lot, binge periods of 2-8 weeks. The pain got worse and i started getting the same sort of pains in the left arm and trapezius. I don't think it would be useful to tell all about this time of my life so i will fast forward.

2018

SO in march 2018 i went to rehab for alcohol, gaming and sleeping pills addiction. The sleeping pills helped against the pain and anxiety, they reduce nerve pain. As did the alcohol, it reduced the pain. This made it possible for me to keep gaming 2 years prior till march 2018. So i went to rehab got clean, the pains got less. But pain in the right trapezius and arm got about 50-60% better after a month. But it stayed on that level, so i thought maybe it wont get better than this.

I got home june 2o18 got a book from a friend about self development and got hooked. I started online stores and worked on those. But the RSI pain got bad again after some time and once again it was too much to handle so i quit using the PC and Mobile (on mobile it gets worse even faster then when using the pc).

2019

In january 2019 i got a job as marketeer, no clue why i thought that would be a good move since the pain got worse again cause i had to be using a pc all the time. I started getting bad anxiety with the pain also. When i am behind the pc and start to develop more pain i always get anxiety with it. This got so bad that i called in sick in june 2019 and im since then at home. Meanwhile during 2019 i did game a lot again as well. During this time i felt very dizzy, tired, headaches and had a lot of anxiety and a lot of physical pain in both trapezius, neck, arms, hands and upper back.

Now

In my resting days from work now i can't even read without getting bad pains. And i am scared to use the pc, to read or do anything that fucks up my body. When i do something and i feel pain i am thinking: great... this will take a few days to get better now i fucked it up again, now i am back to where i was a few days ago and the healing has to start over. These kind of thought. Now i know this fear causes more pain and since i learned about tms i have been able to do more with less pain. Because i try not to get fear when i feel pain and just keep reading or using my mobile.

But i still have a lot of pain, just less then before i heard about TMS. Thus at times i start to doubt it all again cause i get too much pain. And i think how can i have TMS when i ignored pain symptoms for 6 years and used alcohol and sleeping pills to ignore the pain and keep gaming when my body gave signals i had to stop. I ignored them for 6 years. I think my left body pain is TMS and i think all the pain gets worse because of TMS and fear. But the right pain and the right trapezius pain which i got from sports injury and after by ignoring that pain when it got worse using pc etc how can that be TMS. I feel like i fucked up that part of my body and it is ruined... So im struggling with the whole TMS principle for myself.

Some weird thing is that a colleague told me about her eye twitching sometimes. Not long after my eye started twitching, i got this for 6 weeks now for 8+ hours a day.

Ending

I find it hard to tell a good story since i don't remember everything and it's a lot to tell. What i forgot to tell is i also get fast uncomfortable heart rate, racing heart, i get burning feeling in stomach and my heart also skips beats sometime which freaks me out. The heart skipping beats got worse over the years, but sometimes i don't have it for weeks then i get like 10 in a row and on multiple days.

Sorry for the long story, i forgot a lot of stuff but yeah