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Alan has completed the new Pain Recovery Program. To read or share it, use this updated link: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/
Hello everyone,
For just under a week now, I’ve been feeling like I’m sinking deeper and deeper.
My main symptom, the body-wide burning sensations, keeps getting worse, and for the past three days I’ve also been dealing with terrible neck pain that is preventing me from doing many things. That’s something that never usually happens to me.
I haven’t gone back to my old habits. I know that all of this is due to TMS, and I’m trying my best to stay calm and keep living my life.
Unfortunately, the intensity of the symptoms means that I can’t do that in the same way I was able to for more than a month and a half.
I feel much more anxious and depressed.
I also feel a lot of tension and fear inside me.
Yesterday, I restarted the Structured Educational Program that I had put aside for a month and a half. I’m also going to do some Somatic Tracking sessions as well as breathing exercises.
About one hour a day, so that I don’t overdo it.
I have to admit that I feel a little lost, and it’s really difficult to feel like I’m back at square one.
Thank you, everyone.
For just under a week now, I’ve been feeling like I’m sinking deeper and deeper.
My main symptom, the body-wide burning sensations, keeps getting worse, and for the past three days I’ve also been dealing with terrible neck pain that is preventing me from doing many things. That’s something that never usually happens to me.
I haven’t gone back to my old habits. I know that all of this is due to TMS, and I’m trying my best to stay calm and keep living my life.
Unfortunately, the intensity of the symptoms means that I can’t do that in the same way I was able to for more than a month and a half.
I feel much more anxious and depressed.
I also feel a lot of tension and fear inside me.
Yesterday, I restarted the Structured Educational Program that I had put aside for a month and a half. I’m also going to do some Somatic Tracking sessions as well as breathing exercises.
About one hour a day, so that I don’t overdo it.
I have to admit that I feel a little lost, and it’s really difficult to feel like I’m back at square one.
Thank you, everyone.
Adam Coloretti (coach)
Well known member
Hi Thibaut, I'm sorry to hear about your uptick in symptoms, but I want to try and keep you on the path if I can. So long as you know it's TMS and your belief is still there, you aren't going backwards and you aren't back at square one.
Considering that you said you feel lost though, I want to challenge your belief. What are you assigning the uptick in symptoms to? Because if you know it's TMS, then it's not really caused by physical activity (it can be a conditioned response, but you have been doing a lot more recently and up until then, so an emotional trigger would make more sense to me). Can you see a link to stress? I find that true belief is found in this link, because not only does it assure you that you are ok physically, but it also points you towards what you need to focus on from an emotional standpoint. I.e. It not only confirms to you that your body is fine, but it also empowers you to do something about it.
What are you afraid of? It might sound like a silly question, but the answer is important. I understand frustration at the ups and downs of TMS recovery (which is normal) - frustration I can fully understand, but if you know it's TMS then there's a lot less to fear than there was when you thought it was structural. You already have proof that you can do it, it just needs more consistency (so the fear can't be around it not being possible). There seems to be a sort of gap between your claimed belief and your reaction to this flare, hence my question
Hello Adam, and thank you for your feedback.
When I say that I feel lost, it’s not because of TMS. I’m 100% convinced that I have TMS, and I have plenty of evidence right in front of me every day.
When I say I feel lost, it’s because of the return of these widespread body burning sensations, and why they have come back so strongly.
I feel lost when it comes to emotions, stress, and anxiety.
It’s as if I have a number of suspects standing in front of me, and I feel like I need to identify the culprit.
I feel like I don’t know which lock to open to get directly to the root of the problem.
Was it emotions that I didn’t process properly over the past few days? Was it an accumulation of anxiety that eventually made the bucket overflow?
To answer your second question about the feeling of fear I’m experiencing right now:
When I take the time to think about it, seeing all of this come back reminds me of the terrible months I went through before getting that much-needed break for almost two months this summer.
I’m afraid of falling back into that situation, afraid that it will last a long time, afraid that I won’t find the right way to overcome this TMS.
No matter how much I try to reassure myself and explain things to my brain, the fear is still there.
I’d like to come back to the stress you mentioned and the possibility of an emotional trigger.
Over the past ten days, my partner has brought up the subject of marriage twice. Once with her sister, while I was there, and another time on the phone with a friend.
We had planned to get married two years ago, but we had to cancel and postpone it because of my health. Then came the pregnancy and the birth of our daughter, so we postponed it again.
Seeing my health improve so much this summer, the idea came back to her. She dreams of getting married in December, so she started casually discussing it with her sister.
I want to marry her—I have wanted that for years—but right now, it feels too soon for me because of my TMS. I want to be able to fully enjoy the moment and be in the best possible shape.
So when I heard the words “marriage” and “December,” something inevitably happened inside me. I immediately thought, “It’s too soon. I won’t be ready.”
At the time, we were with the whole family, and I kept everything to myself. I wasn’t going to bring all of that up in front of everyone.
Last week, during a phone conversation with a friend, she brought up the subject again, and I had exactly the same reaction.
I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but I intend to do so very soon.
As for me, after reading your thoughts about stress and a possible emotional trigger, it’s possible that this could be one.
But how should I respond to these kinds of emotions if this really was what caused everything to flare up?
Thank you.
When I say that I feel lost, it’s not because of TMS. I’m 100% convinced that I have TMS, and I have plenty of evidence right in front of me every day.
When I say I feel lost, it’s because of the return of these widespread body burning sensations, and why they have come back so strongly.
I feel lost when it comes to emotions, stress, and anxiety.
It’s as if I have a number of suspects standing in front of me, and I feel like I need to identify the culprit.
I feel like I don’t know which lock to open to get directly to the root of the problem.
Was it emotions that I didn’t process properly over the past few days? Was it an accumulation of anxiety that eventually made the bucket overflow?
To answer your second question about the feeling of fear I’m experiencing right now:
When I take the time to think about it, seeing all of this come back reminds me of the terrible months I went through before getting that much-needed break for almost two months this summer.
I’m afraid of falling back into that situation, afraid that it will last a long time, afraid that I won’t find the right way to overcome this TMS.
No matter how much I try to reassure myself and explain things to my brain, the fear is still there.
I’d like to come back to the stress you mentioned and the possibility of an emotional trigger.
Over the past ten days, my partner has brought up the subject of marriage twice. Once with her sister, while I was there, and another time on the phone with a friend.
We had planned to get married two years ago, but we had to cancel and postpone it because of my health. Then came the pregnancy and the birth of our daughter, so we postponed it again.
Seeing my health improve so much this summer, the idea came back to her. She dreams of getting married in December, so she started casually discussing it with her sister.
I want to marry her—I have wanted that for years—but right now, it feels too soon for me because of my TMS. I want to be able to fully enjoy the moment and be in the best possible shape.
So when I heard the words “marriage” and “December,” something inevitably happened inside me. I immediately thought, “It’s too soon. I won’t be ready.”
At the time, we were with the whole family, and I kept everything to myself. I wasn’t going to bring all of that up in front of everyone.
Last week, during a phone conversation with a friend, she brought up the subject again, and I had exactly the same reaction.
I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but I intend to do so very soon.
As for me, after reading your thoughts about stress and a possible emotional trigger, it’s possible that this could be one.
But how should I respond to these kinds of emotions if this really was what caused everything to flare up?
Thank you.
Adam Coloretti (coach)
Well known member
Excellent!
Two things I would say to this. Firstly, does the evidence that you have already compiled give you a clue? Surely you've already seen some evidence of how your stress links to symptoms, so this can help to distinguish what's really going on - e.g. if there's a pattern of perfectionism in it all, whenever you feel pressure to be perfect there's an uptick - then that can help you to determine what is currently triggering you.
Secondly though, these links are much more important to me in order to establish belief in the TMS diagnosis. Once you already have, then yes they can help to point you in the right direction, but to me it all comes down to self-compassion. If you have a number of suspects in front of you, then don't you have motivation to address them one by one for your own sake? It's like if two suspects were 1. self-criticism and 2. putting needs of others first above my own - if I'm trying to decide which one it is then what I'm really saying is I only care about them for the purposes of recovering from chronic pain, otherwise I'm not bothered (so I find the one that's causing this, and the other one who cares basically). That's the opposite of self-compassion. I would say the vast majority of people who recover (myself included) do so because it clicks that this is about so much more than just the pain. It's about self-compassion and self-worth. This is obviously true because if it was just about belief for you then you would have healed by now.
I appreciate that - and I also appreciate the challenge of having seen what's possible only to seemingly be dragged back into it (that is its own unique challenge separate to being in pain all the time and not having any periods of respite/not knowing any better). You can't fall back into the same situation though, because a big part of why it became chronic in the first place was because you thought something was wrong with you/because you didn't know about TMS. Those longer exists, so there's no real reason to believe that it will last a long time, you're in the peaks and troughs phase of TMS recovery - but you can't ever be where you were because a big fuel source (thinking it's physical and not understanding TMS) is gone.
I would encourage you to potentially keep it broader (that's perfectly fine, it doesn't always need to exactly make sense in connection with the symptoms - appreciating what I said above) and give yourself that self-compassion to say that (although I know that in a way you are doing it to recover and that's unavoidable) you're doing this emotional work for your own happiness and because you deserve it. Additionally, if you're only doing it for the pain then that just puts way more attention on the pain, you're going to be checking it all the time as if to say "did the emotional work work?" That only heightens hyper vigilance and gives the pain unnecessary importance. The pain isn't really the problem (I appreciate the challenges it provides), it's the messenger for a larger problem (you don't need to define this super specifically, overall treating yourself poorly or something like putting too much pressure on yourself is enough).
I've never seen anyone who believed in the diagnosis and improved their self-compassion (whether that be through lowering people-pleasing, perfectionism, taking care of their needs more etc.) for its own purpose (not just to heal the pain) not at least significantly improve their TMS symptoms. @cafe_bustelo made a great post recently expressing a similar sentiment, as it clicked for him that this was about so much more than the pain.
I like your analysis and I think that's very possible. If you're prone to putting too much pressure on yourself, then there could be a lot of unnecessary guilt here which is triggering your alarm system. I appreciate that you don't want to disappoint her, and that is compassionate of you, but what's the fear? You're well within your rights not to be ready, you've already shown great improvement and you're on the correct path clearly. It all comes back to self-judgment, self-pressure (to heal quickly in this instance - which will never help when it comes to symptoms) and self-compassion to me (see how we can look at it broadly? You don't need to get overly specific) - if you addressed those here it would mean less guilt, less self-judgment and less fear - you can still be disappointed at potentially disappointing her - but you've got to take care of yourself and anyone would appreciate your desire to feel your best for the specific moment. That's an example of how a specific situation applies to more broad things to work on - pretty much any potential trigger can be linked back to self-compassion - as long as you're working on self-compassion, then that's always regulating to the nervous system and will always help pain