Day 33 - Question/Complaint

At this point I am a full believer in my TMS. By bilateral leg pain has decreased 60 or so percent and I am able to start doing bodyweight squats and deadlifting light weight. My one complaint or perhaps my lack of understanding of TMS is regarding a fresh injury. I tweaked my back while deadlifting. I noticed it while in the motion of lifting the weight. At the time it was sore but manageable. Over the last 24 hours it has stiffened up and has made moving very uncomfortable. Is this TMS and my symptoms moving? Or is this a back strain and I actually need to use heat and aleve. My one reason why I find TMS to be silly is I do not get answers until other options have been exhausted. I am no where near going to a doctor for my back and I likely won't given the information I have learned on bulging disc and the lack of pain. I will give this a few days to recover, but simply is this TMS?

 

Hello, remember that TMS symptoms often use real injuries etc. as triggers. So, at times, the two blend and it can be hard to see the line where the "real" pain ends and the "brain" pain begins. A slightly strained muscle is a perfect opportunity for the brain to create a new pain cycle. I see the same thing with my symptoms sometimes, like GI issues for me. One night of overeating that leads to legitimate indigestion, and all of a sudden I have heartburn and reflux for the next week despite eating normal/mild food. With your back, your recovery should be equal to the injury. Bad injuries present with severe pain. If you only felt a "tweak" during the exercise, then you should feel nothing more than a little soreness or ache for a while. If the pain worsens or lingers, you will know it's your brain taking over.

Key point: how long your back ache lasts, or how much of the current pain if TMS or not, does not really matter. If you sit around thinking all day about whether the pain is TMS or not, you are paying too much attention to it, and your brain will want to continue it. What matters is that you fully accept that you did nothing serious to your back, and only mildly strained it. Know that any structurally caused physical pain will not be permanent. Basically, just try your hardest not to think about it and carry on. All will be fine.

 

Hey, you're doing absolutely fine just keep going, about the stiffness i don't think so it's anything huge to worry, that happens give your muscles 48-72hrs to adjust on the other hand if it keeps on going it might be a sign of TMS, either way you can keep up with the SEP and since TMS use triggers this might be it but you got no harm considering it as TMS and keep going, unless you suffered major muscle injury which i don't think so looking at your post.

 

It gets confusing sometimes, so we look at it backwards.

I slammed my knee down fielding a ball Sunday... Didn't give it a thought. Continued to play, and worked out all day ...Monday it was fine. Tuesday while crawling around fixing someone's toilet I notice my knee stiff and my brain automatically searches for a 'reason'.... I slammed my knee down fielding a ball Sunday... Didn't give it a thought. Continued to play, and worked out all day ...Monday it was fine..Tuesday while crawling around fixing someone's toilet I notice my knee stiff and my brain automatically searches for a 'reason'... ad infinitum

See that? I actually didn't give the thing a thought until crawling around Tuesday A.M..... But my brain which calculates, figures and summarizes, automatically assigns it to the event. Then it tells the story chronologically. I've been through it so many times I can analyze my story composing sequence

I get hit, cut, banged into constantly BUT that particular incident happened while I was under a lot of emotional pressure, and it became a problem while I was sticking my face under someone's toilet...The part of me that needs to stay sane picked THAT time for a distraction and sews the events together
... just like you didn't notice anything for 24 hours... I would bet my paycheck your brain is just using it for a new episode.

Another TMS indicator is FEAR. Whenever a new or strange symptom arises that is TMS it always is telling this story "Something really weird is happening and you might not be able to perform some task... You better keep paying attention to me or something bad is gonna happen"... Yours sounds like it's telling you that you need to be careful

THAT is always the giveaway that it's TMS and not soreness... cause of the fear. Fear is more effective of a distraction than pain..Sarno said so too.

Our optical illusion of consciousness goes about it's business in strange circles.

 

Also, the pain of trauma Lessens with time, not grows.... TMS is sort of dumb that way. I got hit by a pitch Saturday... forgot all about it the next day because I WAS HAVING a GOOD TIME and laughed about it!

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I have been treating it like an acute injury with heat and some stretching but outside of that I have not been giving it much though. I am almost at the 3 day mark and am feeling significantly better. Enough that I know its nothing serious! Still more work to be done.