Day 1 First day! and I'm already excited

After symptom imperative's short tour on my body, I finally decided to start SEP for myself, too!

I read Baseball65's success story, and it was one of the most amzing success stories I've read because he showed even a congenital physical "issue" does not necessarily make a chronic pain, which is beating the conventional medical education again. Very powerful...! This story gave me more confidence.

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Well, to track my history back...

I have experienced back, neck, and knee pain before, but I didn't know they were all TMS until I had pain on my left ankle. While I was limping a little and using crutches for my casted right foot, I developed a severe pain on my left ankle which was never injured. I took a 2-week leave from work and took a full rest at home, but the pain on the left ankle got worse... I was scared and shocked and went to my orthopedist to look at it, he said the ligament seems to have inflammation, and I got a steroid shot; the pain lessened for 3 days and came back with vengeance. I couldn't understand it only got worse while I was taking a full rest. I went to take ultrasounds test at physiatrist's office. Before the office visit, my pain was mainly on outside of the ankle and pain type was very similar to what I felt with my right ankle whose exterior ligaments was actually injured (and pain was like extreme soreness, heating, and tingling spreading on a large area), so I suspected a ligament issue.

After a palpation and ultrasound inspection, the physiatrist said, "Your exterior ligaments are actually perfect. Not even an inflammation. Instead, the ligament on the inside of the ankle feels a little weak, and it might be because you have flexible flat-foot a little. I don't think you need MRI because you can hardly harm your cartilage from limping a while." I was glad I don't have significant issue. The funny thing is, as soon as I got home, the pain mainly moved to the inner side of the ankle and the pain now felt rather stinging than sore/tingling. It was ridiculous! I recognized the whole pain was psychological, and this reminded me of the TMS success stories I read on the Internet. I read Healing Back Pain, and the pain went down to 40-50% when I finished the book. I'm just a perfect TMS type of person, have a TMS history, and was full of stress and fear with my right ankle's injury. As I just shutted down any fear or doubt on my TMS diagnosis on my left ankle, the pain subsided down to 90-100% in 1-1.5 week.

As soon as I was free from the ankle pain, the inner elbow pain bullied me, as some of people here know. But thanks to their help and support, I was able to ignore it and focus on other things and reduced the pain level down to 0-10%.

I think the ankle pain was from my repressed anger against the HR of my workplace as they didn't give me a sick leave and I had to use my personal vacation dates to take a rest. And then it was amplified with my fear of commuting in cast and crutches. This led to my elbow pain and presumably doubled my wrist pain. Thankfully, my wrists are recovering slowly but steadily now.

While I was in big anxiety and fear for future (i.e. why do I have to be sick here and there in my age? what if I stay sick for life? Why doesn't my right ankle recover soon?) I could feel the pain literally bullies me through all parts of my body. The back, neck, and knee pain came back intermittently, depending on my stress and fear level.

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Now I'm almost free from ankle and elbow pain (it comes back when I'm in fear, yuck!), I came to have a new symptom: pain in the butt. Because I tended to have stiffness in the butt while sitting for a long time since 2 months ago, I thought this should be because I sat too much (I sit all day at work and sit 1hr each to/from work).

One day on subway back to home, I felt stiffness again and changed my posture a little and BAMMM! a stabbing pain in the butt. The same level of pain didn't come back, but now I couldn't sit down without a soft cushion. Even with a soft cushion, I feel stiffness and pain right away. My "physical fear" rose again and googled what the symptom is. It's called ischial bursitis. I saw some people saying the pain spreaded to the whole butt and hip, mentioning sacroiliac joint syndrome or hip joint issue with labral tear, etc. I was SOOO scared. And while I was googling, I developed a new pain, hip pain!!!

My last week was a week of pain and fear. But after reading tons of TMS success stories of people who were diagnosed with SI joint issue or hip & groin pain, I now have less fear and decided to beat it with TMS approach.

I'm not sure if I were to write such a long story in this forum, but that's where i've been. My main issue: butt, hip, groin, and low back pain.

The fear on physical issues always shows his head when I'm off my guard. But I'll keep my confidence and strength.

As I beated my ankle and elbow pain with knowledge and support of people here, I need help again.

I can do this!

*A Life without TMS
Argh this would be wonderful.... I can now date... (a real date!) with my boyfriend, walk to wherever I can, sit down as long as I want to, and COOK!!! and start learning how to drive! Life will be so much better... even better than before I felt sick!

 

Hi, Seraphina. Posting a long entry is fine. It's therapeutic, like journaling about your symptoms.
I'm glad you've started the SEP program. It's wonderful and has helped many, many people to heal.

Yes, your life is going to be much healthier and happier. We need to know about TMS in order to become
healthy and happy new people.