Anne Walker

I started this story once and then deleted it. So much, hard to know where to begin. I have suffered from TMS for over 30 years although I did not know it. I searched, explored, hope, tried a million things, switched my focus from one pain symptom or some concern over my health to another. It was always something. All the time juggling a very stressful career, an unstable marriage, having children and taking on all kinds of additional side projects. For instance one year I moved an old Church from 120 miles West of Austin to 3 acres in downtown Austin to develop as an event facility. This was a side hobby. During this same year I was producing a big film, pregnant with my first child and my father passed away 4 days before he was born. Stress, drama and chaos have always seemed to govern my life. My severe chronic pain started in my early 30's with a disc ruptured in my lower back. I had intense sciatica and after several months of all kinds of alternative therapies, I had back surgery. This is also when the severe panic attacks first appeared. Over the next 18 years I had chronic back pain, sciatica, occipital neuralgia, plantar fasciitis, bladder spasms, what I thought might be chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, anxiety disorder, brain fog, panic attacks and the worst...benign positional vertigo. This Fall after making a major life career change and some personal disappointments, I had a bad case of Benign Positional Verigo which then moved into severe neck, should and occipital pain on my right side. It has been very constant the last 7 months and after researching chronic pain once again, I stumbled across information on TMS and this time it really clicked. I had read Sarno's book 18 years ago and spent months trying to release repressed emotions and uncover the traumatic event that was causing my back pain. But I don't think I really understood it correctly then. The pain is caused from the tension created by how I am being, how I am being today. Its the emotions I am repressing now, how I react to stress, the chronic negative thinking... Its not just uncovering something from the past, it is becoming aware and patiently changing how I am being. After several months of working on my TMS I am much more aware of how I am relating to the world, the fear, the pressure I put on myself, the constant self criticism. The trick for me is accepting who I am with love and compassion and changing how I am being without being critical of my need to change. At least this is what I am currently grappling with.