Fish bone

T

Twinny22

New Member
My ocd/TMS brain is working overtime this morning. Last night, while eating salmon en croute, I pulled a 1cm fish bone out of my mouth. Then came the torrent of fears ie what if there was more than one bone in it and I inadvertently chewed it and it's lodged somewhere in my throat. I have no pain, just a hyperawareness of throat muscles. My brain will not accept there is no fish bone sitting in my throat and I keep visualizing it sitting there and panicking. Can anyone relate?

I had a similar experience 2 years ago when I misswallowed a gummy vitamin and was sure some of it was lodged so I went for a nasal endoscopy which was very painful and triggered a year long sensation of the soft palate. Of course, there was nothing stuck and in any case the gummy would have dissolved. What's different with this is that fish bone would not dissolve if indeed it was stuck. As I say, there is no pain and I can swallow normally although I am aware of every swallow now instead of it being automatic.
 
Twinny22 said:
My brain will not accept there is no fish bone sitting in my throat and I keep visualizing it sitting there and panicking. Can anyone relate?
Click to expand...
Yes, I can really relate to how frightening this kind of OCD loop can be, especially when you've had a similar experience before. It sounds like your brain has latched onto the uncertainty of “what if there was another bone and I swallowed it?” and is now making you hyperaware of every sensation in your throat.

I think the difficult bit here is that the decision isn't really “Can I prove there definitely isn't a fish bone?” because OCD will keep coming back with another what if? The decision is more: “Given what I know right now, am I going to investigate this further, or am I going to accept that I can't have 100% certainty and carry on?”

You could try the STOP method when you notice yourself getting pulled into the loop:

S — Stop: Notice that the “what if?” thought has appeared without immediately reacting to it.

T — Take a step back: Remind yourself, “This is my OCD asking me for certainty. I don't have to solve this thought.”

O — Observe: Notice the throat sensations, anxiety and mental images without checking, repeatedly swallowing, feeling your throat, Googling or seeking reassurance.

P — Proceed: Stick with the decision you've made and return your attention to whatever you were doing.

The aim isn't to make the thought or sensation disappear. It's to change how you respond to it. You may still get the thought, “But what if there really is a bone?” and you can practise responding with something like, “Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I'm not going to keep investigating this thought.”

That's the really difficult part of OCD — learning to tolerate uncertainty rather than performing a compulsion to get rid of the anxiety.

Obviously, genuine physical symptoms are different and shouldn't simply be dismissed as OCD. If you develop significant pain, difficulty swallowing or breathing, bleeding, or other concerning symptoms, seek appropriate medical advice. But if the main problem is the escalating need to know for certain, repeatedly checking may just keep the OCD cycle going.

You don't have to win an argument with the thought. You just have to stop feeding it.
 
Thank you so much for your thoughtful advice. I have no pain or other symptoms you mentioned and, of course, I really don't know if there were any other bones in the fillet other than the one I took out. My ocd wants me to believe there was a sizeable bone but the actual bone I removed from my mouth was about the width of dental floss and 1.5cm in length. And naturally my OCD wants me to assume there were other bones and demands certainty that there weren't before it stops pestering me.

I'm in the UK and we have a tv programme in which contestants eat all sorts of jungle insects - bony, fleshy, crunchy etc. Makes a salmon bone seem relatively innocuous. I also have to ask myself (if I swallowed any further bones (I think salmon en croute usually uses boneless fillet so finding one bone iet alone multiple bones is rare), why am I assuming one would get stuck in my throat when it could just as easily glide down my throat.

In terms of the hyperawareness of the throat area since the salmon meal, I suspect my throat muscles are tense and the strategies you have suggested plus a TMS approach is the way forward.

Not going to lie though, the temptation to book an ENT appointment for reassurance is tremendous and I don't know if I can resist it. That has been my modus operandi all my adult life and has triggered other obsessions off the back of any procedure I have asked for.
 
Twinny22 said:
Not going to lie though, the temptation to book an ENT appointment for reassurance is tremendous and I don't know if I can resist it. That has been my modus operandi all my adult life and has triggered other obsessions off the back of any procedure I have asked for.
Click to expand...
You have peeled back the veil on this now and know that it is not a road you want to go down. This is a point in time that you can change old patterns instead of repeating them. You are now on the road to recovery.
 
Ellen said:
This is a point in time that you can change old patterns instead of repeating them. You are now on the road to recovery.
Click to expand...
I so agree with what Ellen says, @Twinny22. It's a gradual process but you can crowd-out symptoms and change old fearful patterns by deliberately turning your focus towards all the little things in life that give you joy...

 
Thank you Ellen and BloodMoon. I know I have to break this nearly 40 year pattern of identifying an ailment (real or imagined) then running to consultants, requesting procedures and then developing an obsession as a result of said procedures. It's exhausting! And a result of OCD demanding certainty and closure over anything health related.

Learning about TMS is a game changer in terms of making sense of my medical history. TMS and OCD are a challenging combo but I am going to try and break old habits, I so want to change my way of thinking so that there is no panic and obsession over any minor injury or ailment.
 
Twinny22 said:
TMS and OCD are a challenging combo
Click to expand...
They are akin though because they both involve distraction, fear and anxiety, so with mind-body/TMS techniques you can 'kill two birds with one stone', so to speak.

Do you already know about the totally free mind-body/TMS programmes that you can do on this TMSWiki? If not, then let me know if you're interested and I can give you the links to them.
 
Twinny22 said:
Thanks BloodMoon. If you can send me the links that would be great. I have seen references to them in various posts but not yet checked them out.
Click to expand...
They are as follows—many people find them extremely helpful:
I should explain the following because many people who are new to the mind-body/TMS world find the options confusing—I know I did...

The Structured Educational Program is based more on Dr Sarno’s approach. In simple terms, this approach is that the brain creates symptoms to distract us from emotions such as rage or anger because it views those emotions as dangerous for us to feel or express. For example, if we are annoyed with our boss, it fears we might do something like hit them on the nose; they might hit us back, and we could then face other consequences, such as losing our job and being unable to pay for food or a roof over our heads.

Alan Gordon’s programmes focus more on the idea of a generally fearful brain that creates symptoms almost automatically, and on addressing this through neuroplasticity.

I and others believe (and have often found through our own experience) that for some people—not everyone—both processes may be involved; and indeed these forums are described as being for “TMS and Neuroplastic Symptom discussion”.

Most people start with the 42-Day Structured Educational Program and then they do one or both of Alan Gordon’s programmes if they need to (but it's also fine to do it the other way around).
 
Thanks so much. For me personally, Alan Gordon's theory makes more sense but I am open minded to all resources. My symptoms jump around from one body part to another. I've recently come across the term 'sensory gating' which seems to apply to me in that my brain can only do its OCD or TMS on one body part at a time.
 
Twinny22 said:
I've recently come across the term 'sensory gating' which seems to apply to me in that my brain can only do its OCD or TMS on one body part at a time.
Click to expand...
That’s interesting. I wonder whether ‘selective attention’ or ‘sensorimotor OCD’ might be a more accurate term than sensory gating, since sensory gating usually refers to filtering out repeated or irrelevant sensory information. Maybe you have you read something that contradicts the latter though? And if so, perhaps there are some new ideas relating to this re approaches to recovery? I'm always 'all ears' regarding any new research findings and approaches in this field.
 
I found the 'sensory gating' term on AI because I asked why, when I was obsessing over the fish bone incident, my other symptom vanished - my other symptom being post traumatic clitoral nerve sensitisation which has been causing months of nonstop soreness (I have done a post on this!). I have always found that my sensorimotor OCD jumps around and there are never 2 concurrent themes. Now that the fish bone fear is loosening, the nerve sensitisation has come roaring back.

It would be interesting to explore any links between sensorimotor OCD and TMS. Do you have sensorimotor OCD?
 
Twinny22 said:
Now that the fish bone fear is loosening, the nerve sensitisation has come roaring back.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you have a little bit of transitional overlapping. I don't have sensorimotor OCD, however that's how my mind-body/TMS symptoms behaved. There was always one prominent symptom that lasted a long time and then eventually it gradually reduced in intensity and went, only to be replaced by another prominent symptom, but in my case there was always a 'background' of widespread muscle pain going on while other symptoms were popping up like in a game of whack-a-mole.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top