Day 1- burning nerve pain

In an attempt to be consistent and really give this TMS diagnosis a go I wanted to post my story. I’m 75% there in the belief but have days where I’m doubtful and discouraged.

I grew up in what I considered a “trauma free” childhood but looking back I can see areas where TMS was there. In kindergarten, I was so fearful that I would get a “stomach ache” literally every morning and the teacher would give me coke and some crackers to calm me down. I was deathly afraid something was going to happen to my mom and that she was going to be taken away from me. My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer around this time and my mom would be gone for weeks at a time to be with my grandmother for her treatments. I think this fear of separation from my mom started with this. I also had growing pains as a child “possible TMS” and got very car sick if we would go on trips in the car “also possible TMS.” I continued as an extremely fearful child- usually always afraid something would happen to my mom. I was/am 100% TMS personality- people pleaser, perfectionist, control
Freak etc.

My senior year of high school my twin sister “came out of the closet” as a lesbian and my family went into total chaos. This is my first memory of physically feeling my anxiety- heart racing, adrenaline, etc. Things were 100% out of control.

The following year I went to college and soon developed an eating disorder (exercise bulimia). I would eat small amounts and exercise excessively and place enormous pressure on myself to stay thin. I had horribly obsessive tendencies with eating. It also caused a lot of anxiety.

After two years of struggling I started coming out of the eating disorder behaviors but NOW ENTERS THE PAIN. I started having burning pin in my chest and left arm. Of course I’m thinking “oh no I’m having a heart attack.” I go to ER where they run tests and everything is fine. They give me with a muscle relaxer and send me on my way. The burning would come and go and got worse during my time in Physical Therapy school. I then went to multiple cardiologist, convinced something was wrong but nothing found.

Fast forward 4 years and my dad dies in his sleep from sudden cardiac arrest. The pain now never leaves. It’s burning in nature and has spread to the right side of my chest, my face, mid back, sometimes the front of both legs, my shins and sometimes top of feet. It also feels maybe like allodynia? Tight clothes make the burning worse. I can’t correlate the pain with any specific movements and I love to exercise. Exercise seems to help. I’ve had recent bloodwork done and nothing has ever come back as wrong.

some days I’m convinced this is all TMS and other days I’m convinced I have some horrible neurological disease. I have two small children and I long to be free from this pain/panic.

I have significant health anxiety and constantly
think something is wrong with me. I’ve been to doctors but am afraid they are missing something. I’m completely obsessed with my body and sensations that I feel. It distracts me 100% of the day and I feel like I can’t escape it.

I learned about TMS probably 5 months ago and am trying to commit the time to do the work although with two small kids home all the time it is hard. I think my belief is growing but it’s also hard because I am a Physical Therapist so this basically goes against my job. It doesn’t bother me that it does because I’m a stay at home mom in this season but I think it’s just hard to break into the belief.

If you have read this far, thanks so much and any and all input is appreciated. Just for timeline sake the burning chest pain started approximately 8 years ago so this has been on and off and now always on since that time.

blessings

 

Hi Emhaynes12,

Welcome to the SEP, and I am interested to read your story.

Everything you detail supports a TMS self-diagnosis. I suggest you make a bullet point list, which would include:
fear
growing pains
stomach upset
personality
---about 10 other items looking at your write-up.

Review this list, and perhaps put after each item some page number where you've seen this mentioned in Dr. Sarno's work, or note a success story, SEP learning etc. I really want you to keep seeing the evidence of TMS.

There is a long-standing member, a PT, who learned TMS work, and has many postings here. Here is one.
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/re-starting-physical-therapy.20334/#post-106830 (Re-starting physical therapy)

Also, here is the home page for this member, and you can see list of postings:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/members/mindbodypt.5246/ (MindBodyPT)

In short, I am very happy for you that you've found this TMS work, and I send you great encouragement on the journey. Post questions, keep posting SEP progress. You're a textbook case, and given some effort, I think you'll do fine!

Andy