Feeling very lost & unsure on what’s happening to my body

[Mason1996]

So I’m a little unsure of how or what to start with. So I’m going to try and lay out as easily as possible.


2022

I was working out at home doing squats with a barbell on my back (70kg) or so… loaded the weight on my back and both hands went numb, finished my reps and sensation came back to both hands but had tingling in left pink stay, I packed up working out and got a little worried/anxious. I even think I went to A&E that evening or the next evening to check it out. (Sprained nerves told not to worry)


Over the next few weeks I saw my physio I had seen previously for tinnitus and said I had probably bulged a disc, I spent weeks and months performing all the nerve glided/excises/stretches I could, the symptoms of tingling in the hand and burning scapular/neck pain would coke and go but as soon as I did some form strenuous work, at work or even push ups I would get the tingling in my hand and then the pain for a few days after, this went on for months.


I decided to pay for a mri and came back with a minor disc binge at c5/c6, was told this was the culprit and to carry on with physio so I did, around 10 months my symptoms worsened as again I was still doing a plethora of physio every day. This turned to numbness of the chest/back neck, aching in the pec, pulling in the neck, numb face, aching face (all left sided) as well as fatigue, still no doctors (NHS) would help me. I found Thoracic Outlet Syndrome through hours of research and thought I had found my golden ticket!


I paid for a consultation with a TOS specialist and got a diagnosis, I had many tests all of which had coke back negative except an ultrasound that said I had restricted blood flow in certain positions. From my research and the surgeon, TOS is generally a syndrome of exclusion. So with this I had surgery in march 2023


First rib removal and scalenectomy. I feel I should add at this point that the reason I was working out in the first place was because of my lack of self image, I had recelrye found a new partner who I struggled to see why she was with me, I constantly compared myself to people in her past, and even though they were horrible people, I felt far less attractive as them, and one thing I could change is how fit and muscular I was, so the nearly 2 years of not being able to work out and being on constant pain, put a huge strain on my mental, physical, emotional well-being, work became laborious, I cut myself off from friends and even the person who I had tried so hard to be better for. I’m fact she ended it 3 days before I went in for surgery, I can honestly say I’ve never felt so Low than being away from home in a hotel by myself, having lost someone I absolutely adored waiting for a surgery I wasn’t even sure would work.


Anyway I had 3 months off work and actually managed to make some new friends and kept busy, I met an amazing new girl who for the last year has been nothing but supportive and is a god send, as I stated the first 6 months was a little rough and didn’t see much improvement at all, however the end of 2023 and beginning of this year was great, I could drive and go to work without a numb face or pain in my back, I could workout without the aching in my pec or my hand tingling, in fact I remember thinking, it’s hard to remember how bad I actually felt, even though I was the one that lived it.


Unfortunately 4 weeks ago I woke up on a Sunday morning, feeling fine, I had worked out the day before, cleaned the house etc… my partner was away on holiday so I had a peaceful day to do some hobbies, however I either stretched wrong, moved wrong, I did something and ‘pulled’ my neck…


No big deal I’ve had stiff necks before from sleeping funny, I got up and started to make breakfast when I thought this is the most painful stiff neck I’ve had, but still I carried on until late afternoon when I decided I had to lay down, I had also developed a small swollen spot ok the back of my neck from the origin of the pain, I spent the next week off work as I could barley left my head up, I also developed all my old/new symptoms


Aching/burning scapular

Fatigued arm

Chest aching

24/7 tingling/buzzing sensation in my hand

Slight facial numbness


The first few weeks I just tried to not think about it but now it’s been a month I’m starting to worry that I’m going to be back where I was 18 months ago.


I’ve always wondered if it was all in my head, especially after the surgery when it didn’t seem much better, I eat healthy lots of fruit veg, nuts, seeds, chillis, turmeric, ginger, I use red light therapy, hot water bottles, still doing my nerve glides/physio etc… I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me or how to make this all stop, is my body broken or is my mind?


Last piece whenever my symptoms have gotten really really bad I’ve also noticed my left leg has always had slight aching, and the worst was the other day when I was doing physio laid on my back, I got up and even my left foot was numb and hurt a little for a day… I’ve tried to find some form of spinal explanation for this but have struggled. I’m sorry for the long long ramble, I generally try not to talk about it as physically to most people I ‘look’ okay.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Hi @Mason1996 and welcome. I am happy to welcome you to our forum, because there must be something here that resonated with you, and my responses below will reflect that assumption.

I have to admit that I only skimmed the details of your symptoms and treatments - partly because I'm a retired accountant, not a medical professional - but mostly because in the work we do here, the physical details end up not being relevant. It IS important that we know you've been medically checked out, which you have.

The key from now on is to think PSYCHOLOGICALLY and not physically. It's good to have this complete record of your symptoms and treatments, because if you decide to stick around and do this work, you'll be able to go back to this old post and be astonished at where you were at today.

I briefly sensed the reason you posted here when you brought up that old phrase "all in my head". This is actually true in a strictly neuroscientific sense, but we reject the negative connotation that society brings to that phrase. Because here's the thing: it is a scientific fact that ALL physical symptoms, sensations, and body processes originate in our brains. Your ability to breathe, walk, use your senses, and ultimately exist are entirely "in your head".

Symptoms and sensations simply do not exist at the perceived location of pain. To learn about this fact, look up the explanation for Phantom Limb Pain. The scientific medical community has stated that phantom limb pain is just as real as the pain in a limb which still exists. This is because pain in all cases is generated in the brain, not in the limb. Most importantly, our brains are more than capable of reproducing pain even though there is no physical reason for pain to exist, and they do this for psychological reasons. At some point, we unconsciously expect pain to happen, and our fear-based brains are happy to oblige, in order to keep us alert and on edge.

All of our automatic brain functions are really quite primitive - including the survive-at-all-costs response of our brains to what they perceive as danger. The problem is that this survival mechanism - which exists in all animals - has not had enough time to adapt to the modern world, which is a tiny blip on the scale of evolution. This mechanism is in our amygdala, which operates according to the primitive wilderness where life was short and dangerous, but the dangers were very few and very obvious. Survive just long enough to breed and raise the next generation - that was your job, and it was gloriously simple.

But then, for better or worse, humans evolved. And we did so too rapidly for our brains to adjust. Today, when your brain senses that you are in stress, it literally does not know the difference between a sabre-tooth tiger that is going to kill and eat you, or your boss who just criticized you. Or the a**hole who just cut you off in traffic. Or the pressure to be in a relationship, to do well at school, to eat right and exercise right and be connected on social media and remain aware of but try not to be dismayed by devastating and existentially unmanageable current events and politics and being a good citizen and keeping track of your bills and making sure your devices are charged and have the latest software and security protections and so on and so on and so on adding up to what feels like an infinite number of stressors over MUCH longer lifetimes than we were originally designed to live... all of these stressors being interpreted as life-threatening by our primitive brains even though in reality, most of us are lucky enough to live very safely.

The result is that many of us, especially those of us with certain personality traits, end up in a constant state of low-level stress and our brains are trying to keep us constantly in a fight-or-flight state. It is not physically sustainable.

Based on your medical history, I would say that you are in the right place to start working on this from a completely different viewpoint. NOTE: doing this work requires a 180-degree change in the way you think!

I generally try not to talk about it as physically to most people I ‘look’ okay.

Hah - welcome to the club! This is why we're here, where you can report on your progress and ask questions. Just pay attention to the advice to think psychologically and avoid the physical details. In referring to your symptoms, you can easily come up with a short generic phrase (such as "my back pain" or "nerve symptoms" or whatever) because the details are not relevant, and also we are not medical professionals.

If you are interested in continuing, please start by reviewing the information at our main site: tmswiki.org. There is a free Structured Educational Program there which doesn't require signup or registration.

We strongly urge everyone who is new to this work to read at least one book by Dr. John Sarno, MD, in whose honor and memory this website was founded. His last book was written almost twenty years ago, and the neuroscience of unexplained chronic pain has advanced quite a bit since his 2012 retirement followed by his death in 2017, but his work is still the foundation of recovery from mindbody conditions. Back in 2011 when I was suffering and in crisis, I stumbled by chance across his last book, The Divided Mind which includes chapters from six other mindbody specialists (five of them also MDs). You might prefer the one before that, The Mind Body Prescription, which is just him - he writes really well and gets his points across really clearly. His first two books were strictly about back pain, but his experience and knowledge kept advancing, and he came to recognize that what he called TMS (referring to muscle tension and pain) actually applies to many more conditions than just back pain or even just muscle pain. We still use "TMS" in his honor, but the medical/psychology world are leaning more towards MBS (Mind Body Syndrome) or PPD (Psycho-Physiological Disorders). It's all the same thing.

For inspiration and a good idea of the many different ways that different people experience symptoms and recover from them, go to our Success Stories subforum and start reading those posts. There's also the Thank You Dr Sarno project at thankyoudrsarno.org (I would go down to 2012 where most of the activity took place). Here's a great back pain story:
https://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/kos-thank-you (KO's Thank You - Thank You, Dr. Sarno) - at the bottom of this page the link for the previous story is "Forest's Thank You", Forest being the founder of our wiki and forum.

It's also absolutely essential to get control over your anxiety. Perhaps anxiety is one of those things that "most people" in your life are not aware of, but it's pretty obvious to those of us here - because it takes one to know one. THE book for anxiety was written in 1969, which makes it a bit quaint, by Australian practitioner and researcher Dr. Claire Weekes. It's a little book, easy to read, and incredibly compassionate about anxiety - and what to do about it. It has probably saved thousands of people all over the world for over 50 years now. Get it now: Hope & Help for Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes, MBE.

Good luck!

~Jan

 

[Baseball65]

Most of us have had to hit bottom with the 'Medical world' before we were ready to learn about TMS.
They always seem to have the answer and the micro-specific diagnosis and then we go "Thank God...now I know what is really going on"...and then we don't. It fails. The symptoms continue , get worse, move etc.

I always forget that the weekend when I finally 'snapped' and saw the Medieval Medical Model Money Machine for what it was, I had lost control of my hands and was losing feeling in my mouth and face...total neurological meltdown. My Main symptom had been back and hip pain with moving sciatica (it switched sides during the day) but as time wore on, I was shrinking into a complete useless POS.

You're ahead of the curve in that you know; you are beginning to assemble the real picture..it is integrally tied into your perception of who you are, you're failures and successes as a person and the RAGE that is created in the unconscious by your perception of these...whether or not they make any adult 'sense' is unimportant...nobodies unconscious cares about reason, thoughtfulness etc.

however I either stretched wrong, moved wrong, I did something and ‘pulled’ my neck…

You'll find upon inspecting your own experience closer that this was only a 'trigger'...something changed, happened and it was invisibly subtle ..to make sure you remained unaware, your brain and body conspired to create a distraction.
TMS Loves to scare you... "Oh no...what did I do wrong?"
You might have done something but it wasn't a physical thing..

I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me or how to make this all stop, is my body broken or is my mind?

Neither and both. TMS is an unconscious defense mechanism. If you go and order a copy of "Healing Back Pain" By John Sarno, you will immediately begin to understand that of which we are speaking...and with that information, you can become free of this forever.

I could cut and paste virtually your whole post and say "Yep...I believed that. Yep, that scared the shit out of me...Yep, Yep, Yep"

Get the book. This is a Mental and Physical program with relatively fast results BUT the 'cure' comes from the educational part of it...you are going to learn about you in a way youmight not have thought about before. But you are totally 'normal' if that's a consolation, which also means you will heal and quickly....weeks.

I have been free of this crap 25 years this may...just like you

peace

 

[Mason1996]

Hi @Mason1996 and welcome. I am happy to welcome you to our forum, because there must be something here that resonated with you, and my responses below will reflect that assumption.

I have to admit that I only skimmed the details of your symptoms and treatments - partly because I'm a retired accountant, not a medical professional - but mostly because in the work we do here, the physical details end up not being relevant. It IS important that we know you've been medically checked out, which you have.

The key from now on is to think PSYCHOLOGICALLY and not physically. It's good to have this complete record of your symptoms and treatments, because if you decide to stick around and do this work, you'll be able to go back to this old post and be astonished at where you were at today.

I briefly sensed the reason you posted here when you brought up that old phrase "all in my head". This is actually true in a strictly neuroscientific sense, but we reject the negative connotation that society brings to that phrase. Because here's the thing: it is a scientific fact that ALL physical symptoms, sensations, and body processes originate in our brains. Your ability to breathe, walk, use your senses, and ultimately exist are entirely "in your head".

Symptoms and sensations simply do not exist at the perceived location of pain. To learn about this fact, look up the explanation for Phantom Limb Pain. The scientific medical community has stated that phantom limb pain is just as real as the pain in a limb which still exists. This is because pain in all cases is generated in the brain, not in the limb. Most importantly, our brains are more than capable of reproducing pain even though there is no physical reason for pain to exist, and they do this for psychological reasons. At some point, we unconsciously expect pain to happen, and our fear-based brains are happy to oblige, in order to keep us alert and on edge.

All of our automatic brain functions are really quite primitive - including the survive-at-all-costs response of our brains to what they perceive as danger. The problem is that this survival mechanism - which exists in all animals - has not had enough time to adapt to the modern world, which is a tiny blip on the scale of evolution. This mechanism is in our amygdala, which operates according to the primitive wilderness where life was short and dangerous, but the dangers were very few and very obvious. Survive just long enough to breed and raise the next generation - that was your job, and it was gloriously simple.

But then, for better or worse, humans evolved. And we did so too rapidly for our brains to adjust. Today, when your brain senses that you are in stress, it literally does not know the difference between a sabre-tooth tiger that is going to kill and eat you, or your boss who just criticized you. Or the a**hole who just cut you off in traffic. Or the pressure to be in a relationship, to do well at school, to eat right and exercise right and be connected on social media and remain aware of but try not to be dismayed by devastating and existentially unmanageable current events and politics and being a good citizen and keeping track of your bills and making sure your devices are charged and have the latest software and security protections and so on and so on and so on adding up to what feels like an infinite number of stressors over MUCH longer lifetimes than we were originally designed to live... all of these stressors being interpreted as life-threatening by our primitive brains even though in reality, most of us are lucky enough to live very safely.

The result is that many of us, especially those of us with certain personality traits, end up in a constant state of low-level stress and our brains are trying to keep us constantly in a fight-or-flight state. It is not physically sustainable.

Based on your medical history, I would say that you are in the right place to start working on this from a completely different viewpoint. NOTE: doing this work requires a 180-degree change in the way you think!


Hah - welcome to the club! This is why we're here, where you can report on your progress and ask questions. Just pay attention to the advice to think psychologically and avoid the physical details. In referring to your symptoms, you can easily come up with a short generic phrase (such as "my back pain" or "nerve symptoms" or whatever) because the details are not relevant, and also we are not medical professionals.

If you are interested in continuing, please start by reviewing the information at our main site: tmswiki.org. There is a free Structured Educational Program there which doesn't require signup or registration.

We strongly urge everyone who is new to this work to read at least one book by Dr. John Sarno, MD, in whose honor and memory this website was founded. His last book was written almost twenty years ago, and the neuroscience of unexplained chronic pain has advanced quite a bit since his 2012 retirement followed by his death in 2017, but his work is still the foundation of recovery from mindbody conditions. Back in 2011 when I was suffering and in crisis, I stumbled by chance across his last book, The Divided Mind which includes chapters from six other mindbody specialists (five of them also MDs). You might prefer the one before that, The Mind Body Prescription, which is just him - he writes really well and gets his points across really clearly. His first two books were strictly about back pain, but his experience and knowledge kept advancing, and he came to recognize that what he called TMS (referring to muscle tension and pain) actually applies to many more conditions than just back pain or even just muscle pain. We still use "TMS" in his honor, but the medical/psychology world are leaning more towards MBS (Mind Body Syndrome) or PPD (Psycho-Physiological Disorders). It's all the same thing.

For inspiration and a good idea of the many different ways that different people experience symptoms and recover from them, go to our Success Stories subforum and start reading those posts. There's also the Thank You Dr Sarno project at thankyoudrsarno.org (I would go down to 2012 where most of the activity took place). Here's a great back pain story:
https://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/kos-thank-you (KO's Thank You - Thank You, Dr. Sarno) - at the bottom of this page the link for the previous story is "Forest's Thank You", Forest being the founder of our wiki and forum.

It's also absolutely essential to get control over your anxiety. Perhaps anxiety is one of those things that "most people" in your life are not aware of, but it's pretty obvious to those of us here - because it takes one to know one. THE book for anxiety was written in 1969, which makes it a bit quaint, by Australian practitioner and researcher Dr. Claire Weekes. It's a little book, easy to read, and incredibly compassionate about anxiety - and what to do about it. It has probably saved thousands of people all over the world for over 50 years now. Get it now: Hope & Help for Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes, MBE.

Good luck!

~Jan

Wow, thank you ever so much for the detailed reply! It’s nice to be heard and understood on so many levels! I really appreciate it.

I have managed to listen to one or two books from Sarno and I think Shubiner over the past year which is of course what led me here, I’m still struggling of course with fight between wanting to believe in TMS and believe I have something dangerously wrong internally.

i hadn’t seen the programme you mentioned above so I will certainly take a look at that this evening, again I really appreciate it!

 

[Mason1996]

Most of us have had to hit bottom with the 'Medical world' before we were ready to learn about TMS.
They always seem to have the answer and the micro-specific diagnosis and then we go "Thank God...now I know what is really going on"...and then we don't. It fails. The symptoms continue , get worse, move etc.

I always forget that the weekend when I finally 'snapped' and saw the Medieval Medical Model Money Machine for what it was, I had lost control of my hands and was losing feeling in my mouth and face...total neurological meltdown. My Main symptom had been back and hip pain with moving sciatica (it switched sides during the day) but as time wore on, I was shrinking into a complete useless POS.

You're ahead of the curve in that you know; you are beginning to assemble the real picture..it is integrally tied into your perception of who you are, you're failures and successes as a person and the RAGE that is created in the unconscious by your perception of these...whether or not they make any adult 'sense' is unimportant...nobodies unconscious cares about reason, thoughtfulness etc.


You'll find upon inspecting your own experience closer that this was only a 'trigger'...something changed, happened and it was invisibly subtle ..to make sure you remained unaware, your brain and body conspired to create a distraction.
TMS Loves to scare you... "Oh no...what did I do wrong?"
You might have done something but it wasn't a physical thing..

Neither and both. TMS is an unconscious defense mechanism. If you go and order a copy of "Healing Back Pain" By John Sarno, you will immediately begin to understand that of which we are speaking...and with that information, you can become free of this forever.

I could cut and paste virtually your whole post and say "Yep...I believed that. Yep, that scared the shit out of me...Yep, Yep, Yep"

Get the book. This is a Mental and Physical program with relatively fast results BUT the 'cure' comes from the educational part of it...you are going to learn about you in a way youmight not have thought about before. But you are totally 'normal' if that's a consolation, which also means you will heal and quickly....weeks.

I have been free of this crap 25 years this may...just like you

peace

Hahaha it’s great to hear and read stories from people that have recovered with neurological symptoms, as I feel whenever I read or listen to books/podcasts etc they refer to ‘pain’ a lot of the time. Which I don’t know if it’s for better or worse however in the conventional sense I haven’t felt much ‘pain’ more neurological symptoms.

I think this is what has always thrown me, so thank you for sharing and reassuring that it’s not unusual within this space.
Thank you for your reply!

 

[Fferrari13]

Right there with you! I’ve had the weirdest neurological symptoms all over my scalp for the past year. I joined the forum 24 hours ago after a sudden epiphany but have been on and off thinking my symptoms may be related to TMS for the past few months. After countless health practitioners, $1000’s spent, I’ve made more progress in the last 24 hours than I have all year. Keep going, as will I!