Did anybody have pain that DID act convincing/realistic?

Hey all,
I’m in the middle of the trying-to-decide-if-it’s-TMS-or-not whack a mole of symptoms and have been stuck here for quite a while. The new symptoms seem to keep piling on with the latest being golfers elbow and wrist pain. The biggest obstacle for me is the fact that a lot of my symptoms in the beginning seemed to follow the “moving around randomly, starting/stopping for no reason etc” patterns you read a lot about here, but as time has gone on a lot of them seem like they’ve switched to “they hurt all the time” or “they don’t hurt as long as you don’t move or use that part”. There’s things about a lot of my symptoms that make them seem very convincing (golfers elbow is worse in my writing hand than the other hand, pain on one spot in my back started after straining it and then knee pain started after about a month of using my knees to overcompensate whenever I bent down bc I was afraid of the back pain, knees and elbows feel better after sleeping on softer bed vs a harder one).

Did anyone here have pain that acted very convincingly like that and then turned out to be TMS? Or read a story from someone who did?

 

Hi! I lot of people fall into that bracket absolutely, and that's why the TMS diagnosis for many is quite a leap. I had 6 years of pelvic pain that stayed in the exact same spot the entire time as my initial gym injury (I felt a tear like sensation in the spot on the descent of a squat) and it hurt with movement and activity - suffice to say I was convinced for the first 5 years that it was obviously structural and as a result of the injury (but it wasn't!)

It's a case of looking at all of the evidence in totality and following that - the more you try that doesn't work treating it from a structural basis the more likely it's TMS. Additionally, things heal so the longer time goes by the more likely it's TMS + the more symptoms you have the more likely they are all TMS. You definitely don't need to have every box ticked, and I reflect and think if I got hung up on my symptoms not moving or my symptoms always being triggered by exercise (as sort of non-TMS indicators) - I never would have committed and in turn recovered

 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!... I for sure did (and so have many members of these forums, past and present). I suffered a myriad of symptoms... listed below are just some of the ones that either started small and got a hell of a lot bigger or suddenly struck me down... with them all appearing to fit a structural/physical medical condition.


Your symptoms have increased because your body-mind is now shouting at you to attend to your emotions... to feel them and to safely express and release them.


· Chronic Fatigue/ME - made me bedbound for over 18 months and housebound for many years

· Widespread, severe muscle pain, severe muscles spasms – was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia Syndrome/Myofascial Pain Syndrome - made me bedbound for over 18 months and housebound for many years

· Stomach pain and other symptoms - mimicked an ulcer

· Mastalgia (breast pain) and mastitis (severe inflammation which was non-breast feeding related as I was post-menopause) - mimicked Inflammatory Breast Cancer

· Hand, wrist, thumb pain plus stiffness (severe: could not move my dominant hand for circa a year) - mimicked De Quervain's Tenosynovitis (tendon inflammation)

· Frozen shoulder (left arm) - totally unable to move my left arm and shoulder due to excruciating pain for a year

· Plantar fasciitis (left foot) - couldn't weight-bear and walk for 10 months as the pain was so severe

· Thigh pain – this was absolutely horrendous and made me bedridden for a month - mimicked Deep Vein Thrombosis

· Facial flushing across nose and cheeks reminiscent of the ‘butterfly rash’ seen in Lupus - mimicked Lupus

· Mottling on legs - mimicked Livedo Reticularis

· Ringing and other sounds in head and ears - mimicked tinnitus

· Jaw pain - mimicked TMJ

· Pain in rectum - sudden onset, searing pain, and then non-stop throbbing that lasted for circa a year - mimicked Proctalgia Fugax

· Tailbone pain - sudden onset, lasted for circa 2 years - mimicked tailbone injury/Coccydynia

· Buttock numbness and pain – sudden onset, lasted for circa 2 years - mimicked Cauda Equina Syndrome

· Pelvic pain - mimicked Pudendal Neuralgia – lasted circa 18 months/2 years

 

That’s great to hear!! That specific thing you mentioned sounds very similar to one of my specific things. There’s a spot on the right side of my back that it felt like I pulled/strained while trying to drag a heavy cabinet out of a moving truck and if I bend down in that same motion I sometimes get the same kind of pain in that same spot. The thing is that that was over four months ago, and neither the doctor or PT that I’ve mentioned it to have been able to tell me what it is. The best they could come up with is “muscle imbalance because of improper lifting” which, after all the TMS stories I’ve heard, I know that basically equals “we don’t know but we have to name it something so this is our best guess”

 

A mind/body explanation for that lingering back spot pain (4+ months after the initial strain) is that the original incident—dragging the heavy cabinet off a moving truck—acted as a trauma trigger, sensitising your nervous system rather than causing permanent structural damage.

Your brain registered the event as an unusual, sudden "dangerous overload", creating a hypervigilant alarm state tied to that exact motion (bending down similarly). Now, even neutral movements in that area fire off the same protective pain signal to "prevent re-injury", long after any tissue damage healed (or even if there was no actual tissue damage in the first place the alarm still rings just in case tissue damage might be caused). Stress, health anxiety, or subtle guarding (avoiding full use of the back) reinforces the loop, making the spot a focal point for diffuse, moving sensations rather than true strain.

The fix for this type of issue isn't more PT stretches and/or exercise drills but retraining safety: repeating the bend slowly in small doses while calmly noting "old alarm, body intact", gradually proving to your brain nothing bad happens, it's safe. Over time, the pattern fades as the nervous system stands down.

 

Agreed and I can totally relate to that. I agree with what Bloodmoon said too. It's in all likelihood already healed (PT would have helped it otherwise), and the remaining pain is TMS. We heavily underestimate our body's ability to heal. I mean it heals the biggest bone in our body (the femur) in 4-6 months and we are questioning whether yours can handle a muscle strain (if it was any more than that in terms of more serious damage it would have been picked up by doctors/PTs etc).

If our bodies were truly that poor in terms of regeneration, we'd have died off generations ago as a species. I think of a caveman thousands of years ago having to lift something and then straining their back, then telling the tribe my body is forever broken and I have chronic pain I'm out and I can't help us survive anymore! That might sound silly but those were the type of things I thought of in my recovery that really brought me down to earth and got me out of my catastrophic thinking

Also, I don't think anyone is truly balanced muscle wise, so if that was the issue then pretty much everyone would have chronic pain! I know people with some of the worst gaits and posture and they have no pain at all.