Evidence List

Joulegirl

Joulegirl

Beloved Grand Eagle
I am experiencing some new different sensations in the same original area. It has scared me the last couple of days and I got stuck in the fear loop because the sensations were different. I take medicine to help with the symptoms but a lot of the time, it will just dull the sensations. So I'm adding on to my evidence list and I'm really buckling down on my journaling cause I feel like a hot mess right now. But I'm hoping that by sharing my evidence list that I can remind myself why I know this is TMS and maybe seeing this list might help someone else with their symptoms.

1. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong after multiple tests.
2. Sensations move around.
3. Sensations can be symmetrical.
4. Sensations can go away if my mind is busy. examples-cleaning house, gardening, going for a run
5. When I did the SEP program my sensations were more intense and then I ended up getting symptom imperatives on other parts of my body.
6. My OCD and anxiety skyrocketed when doing the SEP.
7. When I was at Top Golf, I got a symptom imperative and my original sensations went away for a bit.
8. Sensations in the original area change daily in intensity.
9. Sometimes pain goes away before I need to take my next prescription pill. In reality the medicine would be wearing off and pain would be increasing before next pill.
10. When journaling, the pain melted away after a breakthrough. It did come back but for a couple of minutes it was gone.
11. When I had a symptom imperatives I went to the chiropractor and I didn't feel any relief. I came home and took an ibuprofen and within 2 mins it felt like my brain was glitching and then my sensations popped up somewhere else and the sensation I went to the chiropractor for was completely gone. (what a waste of money going there thinking he would fix it!)
12. Another time, I was doing laundry and my brain just glitched again and the pain went away for about 5 mins and then came back.
13. I've had to increase my medicine to help my pain level. (This was before I did the SEP program and really knew what TMS was.) In Dr. Clarke's book he talks about a case where someone had such bad sensations that they kept increasing the meds until he was on high doses of morphine. (He mentioned even cancer patients didn't use that high of a dose!) I now refuse to increase any meds. They don't help in the long run.
14. Sometimes I think something will happen and it will. For example, I was worried my pain would increase in mid morning. And then it actually did. I'm sure my brain caused that because it was already in my mind.
15. I fit the personality type to have TMS.

If you made it through my list-wow! I wanted to post this for my records and see if helps anyone else out as well. Thanks for reading!
 
Mr Hip Guy said:
One of the Doctors that continued Sarno's work, I think it was Dr H Schubiner, had a technique he used when a patient had made long evidence lists that point to TMS. After such compelling evidence, his phrase technique was "the investigation is over, start treating it as TMS."
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I used his method. Mine is on here somewhere, it's a mile long.
 
Joulegirl said:
4. Sensations can go away if my mind is busy. examples-cleaning house, gardening, going for a run
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This is probably because you're participating in 'mindfulness' (without intentionally trying to do so)... Just a thought, but perhaps meditation might provide a breakthrough for you and/or intentionally regularly practising more mindfulness, concentrating on what you're doing and going with the flow of that will help. Also, I'm a Brit so I'm having to guess that Top Golf is a golf practising range or a chain of golf courses... if so, playing golf can be meditative too and so can doing the laundry. I think your evidence list is also serving to point out a promising direction for you to head in.
 
Thanks for pointing how sports and chores can be meditative. They're all something we can do on "automatic" and therefore allow our mind to wander. You can gain a lot of insight in yourself if you pay attention to where the mind wanders in these moments.
 
Mr Hip Guy said:
Thanks for pointing how sports and chores can be meditative. They're all something we can do on "automatic" and therefore allow our mind to wander. You can gain a lot of insight in yourself if you pay attention to where the mind wanders in these moments.
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I guess it can work on several levels... Firstly, as you say, your mind wanders and if you choose to pay attention you can notice when your brain comes up with some profound realisations... maybe a solution to a problem or perhaps an insight into what you might be worried or angry about that you might then decide you need to work on... Secondly, it enables you to see that a lot of your thoughts are actually unhelpful stuff to let go of (to just be observed like clouds passing in the sky, as they say) and become more and more practised at doing that... Thirdly, concentrating on the task at hand is liable to slow the thoughts down for you to get some peace/head space because if you're really paying attention to how you're folding the laundry, your brain can't be focused on anything else other than folding the laundry. When my husband is trimming our garden hedges he always looks so peaceful and I've asked him what he's thinking about and he said "not much other than doing the trimming"; he seems to naturally be able to practise mindfulness. I think it's interesting... When you're gardening, cleaning etc., are you concentrating on the task at hand or paying attention to your thoughts, @Joulegirl, when your sensations have reduced?
 
To that end, I can recall many times in the far past where I was mowing the lawn and ruminating/mulling over some argument I had and how I would've phrased things differently. Sadly alot of those were online "debates" in some bulletin board like this one. What time and effort wasted.

Nowadays, I might do that occasionally (I tend to ruminate) but I tend to come up with solutions to things during these meditation sessions.
 
BloodMoon said:
When you're gardening, cleaning etc., are you concentrating on the task at hand or paying attention to your thoughts, @Joulegirl, when your sensations have reduced?
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Honestly, I just get busy focusing on what I am doing and then after awhile I just notice my sensations are gone. I really feel like my brain is just so busy/loud all the time, that when I need to focus on something (like gardening) it gives it a break. Now I just need to practice mindfulness more when I am resting. I never realize how loud my brain was until I became aware of TMS and did the SEP!
 
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