***25 Years Chronic pain, anxiety, fusion, TMS. Low back pain again after 20 years pain-free!

Hi Kerr,

Notice you say : exersize ' what about just 'normal' moving ? Do you walk en move for normal tasks painfree or ?

The nerveblocks sound scarry to me , wouldn't dare that. What is RFA ?

 

The past few months I have either been sitting all day at work and then laying on my couch at home. So last week I started to get myself moving. I try to walk 20-30 mins every day, and also have been doing my own physical therapy to get more mobile and flexible. Of course, if I were to be following the TMS approach- none of that should matter because there should be nothing that needs exercise or PT!

 

Hi ,

'All day' sitting sounds hard if you are in pain.
I could not do that at the time : balanced it by breaking it up in pieces : sitting , walking , laying down : i know less work can be done : but you need to break up the sitting time (believe me i am a designer my computer is my friend and my enemy)
Bought a fitbit who is giving me a signal to move every hour. You are right about tms work telling us that it should not matter but to me it does. I cannot walk long distances (my foot) but i can do a lot of Tiny breaks. It helped me really with my back.

 

Thanks. Yeah, my commute to work is an hour, then 10-12 hours there sitting, then an hour ride back home. I try to get up and walk around as much as I can during the day.
When my back didn't hurt, I never needed to get up and walk. If it is TMS, I shouldn't even need to get up and walk, right? I don't know.

 

At one time I got so disgusted, and discouraged with my "pain" that I vowed to "rest" it until it healed. I rested for six, months, no exercising--the result was : "clinical depression". I was able to function minimally, drag myself to work, felt like a zombie, fearful of every action and driving around any corner. But mostly I stayed in bed. I lost all appetite, which has never happened to me in my life. My gf hand fed me yogurt mixed with trail mix. I lost a lot of weight, which I always wanted, but was not able to enjoy it, because I was too weak. I got worried when I felt my sternum protruding, thinking I was doing damage getting too thin.

I'll spare anymore details, after six months, I couldn't take "cabin fever" any longer. I got off my butt and started to move again. I walked, played tennis agian and swam. I regained the lost weight plus extra to weigh more then I had ever weighed before which I was not pleased about but mentally came out of the deep depression returning to "normal" functioning. I took some of the extra weight off and that feels good. It's good when you can put your pants on and not think all day about how tight they are.

Moral of the story, IMHO the worst thing you can do is to stop moving! This is a mindbody thing, and you need to keep your strength up to fight it when it needs fighting. Don't stop moving!

 

You can listen to TMS tapes during your commute until you absorb the KNOWLEDGE PENICILLIN by rote. There are probably some on Amazon and SteveO keeps threatening to finish his Audio Books and then play golf.

 

Thanks Tom. That is great advice. Last week i started moving again. I won't stop. I too went through a severe depression about 9 years ago. Same thing... no appetite, was hard to even get out of bed. I believe the anxiety/depression and the pain are all related. If that is the case, then that gives me confidence in the TMS diagnosis. Thanks

 

RFA or not, I guess our brains will find a way around to continue the pain.

Cut myself off above... Time to start working directly on my brain/psychology.

 

Kerr your case could easily be mine. I try not to focus on pain too much and do things that keep me distracted. It's hard but it helps. I've noticed that the more you care about pain the more it hurts. I've been suffering from neck and shoulder pain in my right side for more than 10 years. My last neck MRI haven´t had a change since the last one which was performed almost a decade ago, however, guess what??. Pain in my right side is 95% gone but shifted to my left side with dizziness along with it!!!!. These are the kind of things that make you retract from any physical-structural explanation for pain.

 

Yup! Ye' ol' SYMPTOM SUBSTITUTION! The TMS gremlin can be a tricky little bugger--but when you can laugh at it's lame tricks, instead of letting them create fear distraction, you are now playing it, rather then it playing you.

 

'Moral of the story, IMHO the worst thing you can do is to stop moving! This is a mindbody thing, and you need to keep your strength up to fight it when it needs fighting. Don't stop moving!'

Again, might not quite tally with the tms approach, but vis-a-vis moving: I sometimes suspect the stiffness/discomfort/pain/tingling can be the body's way to try and get me to move. If I sit looking at a screen for too long (especially just idly passing the time - which I appreciate you're not doing), I reach a point where I'm aware of locking up and feel an increase in symptoms.
I'm pretty sure I came across this years ago on some kind of pt website as well - hardly a peer-reviewed evidence but it kind of resonates with me.

 

Thanks Fernando! Yeah I am struggling most with finding something distracting enough to forget the pain for more than 10 seconds. The past 9 days I have been exercising everyday (instead of laying on the couch like I had been doing). The pain has increased and not improved. If it was psychosomatic, then why would exercising make it worse? That has me really confused.

 

Thanks Trellis. Yeah, as I said to Fernando just now, For the past 9 days I have been exercising everyday (instead of laying on the couch like I had been doing). The pain has increased and not improved. If it was psychosomatic, then why would exercising make it worse? That has me really confused.

 

Because maybe tha pain' message needs to be reinforced or because sometimes getting worse comes before getting better.
Also it didn' t work for me to ignore the pain. It was better to acknowledge it: Hi. There you are. Thank you for the message. Bye

 

I

 

I found David Hanscom's book Back in Control really helpful as he was coming at this from his experience as a spinal surgeon. And he describes so many of his own unpleasant symptoms and tactics to deal with them.