Hearing loss/ facial numbness

Hey @Bagpuss. Sorry you're back, although glad to hear that in general you are progressing!

You did the right thing by getting a new symptom checked out, and I can totally see why these are stressful manifestations. It could be TMS, but it could also be a weird-ass viral or possibly bacterial infection, and those can take all sorts of strange forms. Don't forget that our immune systems are constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY) fighting off and rejecting infectious and toxic invaders and abnormal cells before they can proliferate and cause harm. This is normal, but if our immune systems are a little weak for whatever reason, stuff can take hold.

The immune system's primary response to infection or injury is inflammation, and inflammation can have all kinds of bizarre physiological effects. It is already well-known that inflammation is a significant factor in the Big Three: heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, as well as the obvious autoimmune conditions. The thing is, stress also invokes immune system responses. The connection between stress and inflammation is well-known.

You could be looking at a combination of stress that weakened your system, allowing an infection, which results in inflammation, and then you've got the additional stress of anxiety which leads to more inflammation - to the point where "is it TMS or not?" is completely irrelevant. Invoking your TMS skills IS relevant, however, because they are very helpful to self-healing.

Sometime in the last year or so I had quite a number of days of weird head-and-ear numbness and hearing abnormalities that were pretty alarming, but I can't remember if I went in for an exam or if I just called the consulting nurse or maybe talked to my doctor. I felt like it was probably a viral thing, which I am always quite sure I can resolve on my own, but I thought I better run the symptoms by someone who could tell me if there was anything of immediate concern, and what, if anything, to possibly watch out for. The only treatment I gave myself was hot compresses on my ear, extra attention to hydration, and possibly an anti-inflammatory just for good measure (note that steroids are anti-inflammatories - do not take NSAIDs when you are on steroids!).

More importantly, I adopted an attitude of "I'll just keep doing this for a few days with the assumption that it will pass with time and self-care". Which in fact it did.

Nicole Sachs calls this "wearing it loosely". It's finding a way to maintain your equanimity while you wait and see, because it is pointless to tie yourself up in knots worrying about possible outcomes. It's healthier to acknowledge that uncertainty is very uncomfortable, and to accept that you're going to have to live with it. Stressing yourself out over the uncertainty will create even more stress-based inflammation, which is the last thing your body needs right now.

In other words, you can help boost your immune system by remaining calm and practicing a little bit of simple self-care as I did.