Day 1 Giving this a proper go

My story so far isn't anything remarkable. I'm a guy working in a creative field and I spend most of my days at a computer making things. Drawing, 3D modelling, coding, writing. I work hard (or at least I used to) and that's how I got good at what I do.
Seven years ago, I experienced this excruciating burning pain in my dominant hand. It was so bad I couldn't use the hand for two weeks. At the time I never got any medical opinion - I knew several people who work in my field that suffer RSI and I just attributed it to that and hoped I would never need surgery,

That initial crippling pain did go away, but from then on everything changed. I would notice my hand getting sore any time I'd spend more than a few hours working. If I pushed through it, the pain would develop into something much nastier and would take days or even weeks to recover. I managed to live many years like this, I would try all sorts of ergonomic devices and change my posture, take frequent breaks. Things that made sense to me, and they would help a little bit.

A couple years ago I made a big life change and gave up working for others, instead undertaking my own massive creative project where I'm fully in control.
This is where I noticed my pain getting worse so I saw a hand physio about it. It didn't help me, if anything it made the pain worse.
After that I hear from a friend about a pain clinic that helped their partner with RSI, so I look into that route. Their treatments are more alternative and I'm skeptical but open to trying stuff out. They were 100% convinced they knew what my issue was and were so sure they could make me completely pain-free within the year.
After almost a year of that I'm still feeling pain and now down many thousand dollars from their expensive treatments. When I brought up my concerns I was told "Unfortunately there are some people that we can't fully help." That was me done with it.

During that period at the pain clinic I'd heard online about Sarno's book and decided to give it a read. The concepts made sense to me... but I couldn't put aside the idea that my pain is from something structurally wrong with me, so I wasn't one of these people that miraculously get better just from reading a book.

I wanted to find out for sure what was structurally wrong with my wrist, so I get an ultrasound.
The results showed... nothing. No tears, no nerve damage, no degradation. Not even tendon inflammation. Honestly, not what I wanted to hear. If there's nothing physically wrong with me, then what am I meant to do from here? I started thinking about my future and how I'm only good at this particular set of skills, there's no other path for me. I also can't just continue working when this thing that used to bring me joy, I now only associate with being in pain. It makes me super depressed to think about.

And so here I am after revisiting Sarno's book, finding out there are actually others who have had very similar chronic pains and overcome it after attributing it to TMS. I think I have TMS. I wouldn't say I'm 100% sure, but I fit most of the personality traits and the pain seems to behave in a typical TMS fashion. It's mostly the emotional side of things that I'm less convinced by. I don't have some awful upbringing and I've lived a trauma-free life. I don't recall anything else significantly timed to that initial pain event (though it's so long ago I can't recall details). I'll be the first to admit I'm not emotionally in touch with myself, but I don't believe I harbour pent up anger and rage (the primary contributing emotion Sarno mentions). Plus the pain still manifests in a convincingly physical way - specific tendons feel inflamed, the wrist is stiff and clicky compared to my good hand, massage / heat and ice will give it temporary relief. If that is my brain making that happen then... I'm impressed?

I've explored the typical avenues of treatment and they just aren't working, so instead of wallowing I aim to learn as much as I can about TMS and take this structured approach to see if it helps. I don't have a lot to lose.

 

Welcome friend, you’re in the right place. Rage and repressed emotions play a role, but at its core this is nervous system dysfunction, plenty of things can throw us into fight or flight, the pressure of working for yourself could definitely be a contributing factor to the elevation of your symptoms. How we’re treating ourselves, how we live etc

there’s a big misconception that TMS means no physical changes. This isn’t true. I have huge muscle knots throughout my body as well as trigger/tender points, it’s just inflammation/tension from a dysfunctional nervous system. They’ll go away as I continue to make progress. Scrotal pain was my major initial pain following vasectomy, at its worst the skin was noticeably red, that’s gone now.

the brain can literally create pain anywhere, generate any sensation. Blushing is this same concept. The brain can tell the immune system to create inflammation anywhere.

 

Thanks for the reply - it's insane to hear how extreme some of the concrete physical symptoms people manifest from TMS. In my case maybe this makes sense since my own symptoms never fully aligned with any common persistent conditions that the physio would test for e.g. carpal tunnel, I wonder if my brain just didn't know enough to replicate it with 100% accuracy haha

I'll continue to keep digging and think on the emotional factors at play, but in general as my work life got more stressful the pain became more common. I used to pride myself on being an industrial stress compactor and just bury it deep down so I could keep working effectively, now I'm probably suffering from that.

 

Yeah definitely look into that. Actually brings me back to 4 years ago when I first got pudendal neuralgia symptoms, I wasn’t TMS aware at the time and had no idea wtf was going on (9/10 genital pain lol) and it made me leave a job I hated and forced me to take a few months off from work and martial arts- I was running myself into the ground. But after I quit that job the symptoms slowly went away. I didn’t really get the message that i needed some bigger internal shifts and now here I am. There’s so much stress in this life, we have a metaphorical gun to our heads, work or become homeless and starve. So much pressure. I don’t think it’s coincidence TMS went after your hands.

if you don’t already, I highly recommend meditation, ideally spiritual based non guided meditation. Helped me get over the dread that this physical reality can induce.

 

Well maybe theres a couple surprises on the way. My best advice would be to not go into this with endless notions about how you think you should be. Just keep writing and see what sticks.

The thing about repressed emotions is that you dont know theyre there.

I think youve made a terrific decision coming here. Awesome folks here always ready to help. I love this place