Hello All! New Member and Possible Fellow TMS Sufferer in Need of Opinions

Stormshadow

Stormshadow

Peer Supporter
Hey everyone. I just wanted to say hello and I have to say that about two weeks ago if you would have told me I would be posting on a TMS forum, I would have looked at you like you had 10 heads since I had no idea what TMS was. I have been battling unexplainable symptoms and frustration for a variety of months depending on the symptom and I couldn't be happier that 2013 came to an end. I learned about TMS about 2 weeks ago when a chiropractor I was seeing for my neck and a variety of other ailments told me about John Sarno and some of his books. I purchased the Mindbody Prescription and like many of you saw myself and my situation in many of its pages. I believe there is a really good chance I have TMS, but there is still some doubt when it comes to some of my symptoms (especially those related to my arms). I have also made an appointment to see Dr. Paul Gwozdz in Somerset NJ on Thursday of next week who is a TMS doctor that I saw highly recommended in these forums. I hope you don't mind me introducing myself and giving some of my history and I would love to hear your thoughts on if you feel there might be a good chance TMS is the thing that has been adding so much suffering to my life in the past year.

From a personality perspective, I have always been a goodist. I worry about what people think of me; I worry when I think people are mad at me; I am a born-again Christian who desires to do the right thing in God's eyes; etc. I also am a bit of a perfectionist and definitely have an obsessive and worrying personality. I have always had low self esteem and trouble with guilt over a variety of issues in my life. I just turned 40 this year and I started battling depression and anxiety about 10 years ago when I went through a divorce. During those times I was in psychotherapy, a variety of addiction rehabs and on various antidepressants. About 5 years ago I came off everything and thought I was doing well with exercise, diet, my new faith, positive things in my life, etc.

However, 2013 was an incredibly stressful year. I battled for weeks about whether I should change jobs; I had a skin thing removed which was potentially cancer (but not so); my current wife and I sold our home (which I really did not want to do but it moved us closer to her family and further from mine); we had complications with selling that home; we then had to move in with my mom for 5 months which was completely stressful as she and my wife didn't get along; my wife lost her job and was unemployed 6 months; my company went through a restructuring; we then thought we found a home which fell thru due to inspection issues; we then found another home finally. And I had to do most of that work despite working long hours at my job. I guess I just wanted to say there were lots of life changing events this year.

In July 2013, my wife, her mom and I were rear-ended in a car accident. Nobody was hurt, even her mom who is 76. It really wasn't a bad accident. About a week later I started getting low back pain and some stiffness and spasms in my mid-back. Went to ortho who had MRI ordered which showed bulging disc in L4/L5 region. He prescribed physical therapy which didn't help much. During PT, I had a setback where I had to go to the ER for pain further up my back which immobilized me. I had been prescribed antiinflammatories and muscle relaxants and resumed PT.

In September 2013, both my forearms and wrists started hurting. I believed this was due to overuse since I had moved and started taking a longer train ride where I increased my time on my ipad. I also work on a computer all day and enjoy playing video games. Tried resting it, ortho examined me and said its no big deal and that I probably just needed PT and stretches. So I was going to PT for back and arms every day between the two.

In late September, I flew on an airplane for vacation and my ears wouldn't pop afterwards. They still ahven't. Just crackling. I also developed sound sensitivity in one ear. 2 different ENT's did hearing tests and did a brain and inner ear MRI which showed nothing. They attributed it to myofasical pain in the jaw and neck which was pressing against the ears.

After all of the above, I became extremely depressed and had lots of dark thoughts. My passion was playing video games and exercise and I couldn't do either. I was afraid to do sports and became obsessed with my body. I then started getting worse jaw pain even after starting to wear a dental mouthguard at night.

Depression and anxiety got even worse. In October I started also having numbness/weakness in my right leg. It would alternate between my ankle and now sometimes goes up my whole leg. It's like the leg is heavier or weaker than my left.

My hip is developing sharp pain as well and I developed a sharp pain in my groin area in that tendon that connects to the pelvic bone. I also just found out I have an inguinal hernia. So it is tough to know where the pain is coming from. The tendon/hip thing or the hernia.

My whole body is completely stiff. I've been to orthos, GP, acupuncture, PT, chiropractor, neurologist, rheumatologist. I had an MRI of my neck/cervical spine which showed no pinch nerves or anything major.

I also started developing serious pains in my neck and upper back trap muscles which would send referral pain to the back of my head and give me tension headaches which I never had.

I developed a complete obsession with my body. Some doctors told me maybe its fibromyalgia. Some said maybe my brain has been rewired to have a lower pain tolerance. I got to the point where I was living inside my body and realizing every sensation that it felt in fear that it could be some new symptom.

I know alot of the above is related to TMS. However, after reading the Mindbody Prescription, i was confused about the arms thing since that stresses me out the most. There is now numbness in some of my fingers along with the pain in the forearms. I had EMG's done a month ago before the numbness started getting worse the past two weeks and the EMG"s of my arms and legs were fine. Could I get a nerve issue in just a few weeks? I also didn't know if TMS could affect muscles in the arms since I thought Dr. Sarno only mentioned muscles in the back, butt and neck and only nerves in the arms and legs. But I can feel specific muscles in my forearms that are in serious pain.

Along the way I also became obsessed with trigger points. I bougth a trigger point workbook at B&N and became convinced that maybe that's what I was suffering from. But how could i have this many trigger points all of a sudden in 6 months? And doing the trigge rtherapy isn't helping much either. In fact, I'm just bruising myself and making me more paranoid.

I've started journaling about my feelings since I believe I repressed alot. However, there are tons of things in my childhood and stresses that I don't know if I'm that angry about them. The past week or two, i've been a littel less obsessed with my body and more focused on my feelings. even my therapist said these past two weeks she has noticed a change in our topics of conversation.

Anyways, I neeed to stop since my forearms are hurting bad now and I'm sure I'm boring you guys. Just was curious if TMS could do all of that stuff above? It's nice meeting you all and I'm sure we will be in touch.
 
The only thing I wanted to add is that I'm also deathly afraid of making things worse. If I do the eliptical at the gym and feel a twinge in my back I freak out and stop and panic. I also worry when I try to play my video games. I cut back on everything. I don't text. I don't use an ipad or handheld device. I only play my console games at home and keep it under an hour out of fear of making things worse. The past two days I've been noticing new pains in my thumb muscles and the base of my fingers and worry about that. Lastly, i'm currently attending a pain management clinic for all of the above where they do PT and acupuncture. I have a feeling that if I truly have TMS, i would have to stop going. However, there is that part of my brain that is like, well what if there is something wrong with my fingers that are numb and they need to strengthen or do nerve entrapment releases to get things flowing again in my hands and fingers and that isn't picked up by TMS. Also, about a month ago i had to go back on antidepressants to help. I was having severe panic attacks and couldn't function with all of the obsessing and new symptoms that were laughably popping up daily. Every day I would say it couldnt' get worse and then there would be a new symptom. Sorry for my rambling.
 
Hi Stormshadow,

First of all, thank you for your rich post. There is a lot going on here, and clearly you are putting a lot of thought into. So please don't apologise for sharing! By posting all this information, you can give all of us here on the forum a more complete view of what you are going through and possibly more to go off of when offering suggestions. Remember you slef-described "goodist" nature: You're feeling the need to express what's going on for you, and you need to prioritize that. There is no reason to feel like you are burdening some unknown cyberspace entities with your problems. Say your piece, the way you want to and those who want to help will respond. Who cares about the rest?

From what I gathered from your post, it seems that TMS is definitely a strong possibility, including the pain you are experiencing in your arms. Just because Sarno focuses a few kinds of pain, localised to specific areas does not mean there are not other ways for the pain to express itself. If you read a good number of posts on the forum you will see a wide variety of symptoms. With this in mind, it is also possible that the issues with your ears are TMS related. If I understand correctly, all of the doctors you have gone to see have basically been telling you the same thing: any of the "irregularities" that they see do not adequately explain the level of pain you are experiencing. Accepting this fact, and that the pain may not be physical is crucial on your journey to overcoming TMS. Seeing Dr. Gwozdz and getting a diagnosis from him can help you become convinced this is the case, so I think it's important to he what he says.

From what I saw in your story there are certainly some areas that may indicate you are repressing some of your feelings. What stood out was some of the things you characterized as the "stresses" of 2013. Job issues, health concerns and the sale of house. It sounds like the process of selling your house and finding a new one involved you having to "keep peace" between loved ones and being put in situations that were very straining on you. Furthermore, my guess is that you did not feel you were able to express how you felt about the situation. Taking on the stress, frustration and burdens of the other people in your life and putting their weight on your shoulders can generate very powerful feelings of resentment and anger that we normally don't consider acceptable, especially with regards to people we love. When we have these powerful, unacceptable feelings the subconscious will find something to distract us with. Enter TMS. When you are in pain it becomes the whole focus of your life. As you said yourself, you become obsessed with your body and physicality. There's not time or energy to worry about anything else! But believe it or not, this state feels safer to your subconscious than facing and processing the feelings you are having.

You can find a much more extensive description of this dynamic on the wiki page about the TMS Recovery Program here: Recovery Program.

I know this is a brief outline, but I encourage you to explore the above link and see how some of the concepts may apply to you. I would be happy to answer any further questions you might have. You're not alone!
 
Hello Stormshadow,

I could relate to several things you have been experiencing...neck pain, headaches, "trigger points", jaw pain, arm pain, ear stuff, anxiety...and I want to say that I think you are in the right place. Keep reading and learning about TMS as much as you can. I've got both Healing Back Pain and The Mindbody Prescription on audiobook so that I can listen to them over and over again. I need to be reminded frequently what is going on! I especially like Healing Back Pain because Dr. Sarno himself narrates it. :) Another thing I do from time to time is watch the YouTube interviews with Dr. Sarno or listen to the radio interviews there.

As far as your arms being a major issue for you, remember that your brain will affect the area of your body that you think is most important...that's how it keeps you in fear and focused on the body and out of the unconscious mind where all of the scary feelings are! You said yourself in your post that "the arms thing stresses you out the most".

The fact that your pain and symptoms are so widespread and move around is a major sign that you do indeed have TMS. And also remember, Dr. Sarno considers Fibromyalgia to be "a severe form of TMS". Many people labeled with it have healed completely.

Welcome to our forum!
 
Hi Stormshadow

My heart goes out to you. Honeybear and Alex have both given excellent advice, I agree with them that everything points to ALL your physical problems being TMS symptons. You can relax in the knowledge that at last you've found out what the problem is and how you can overcome it, which you ABSOLUTELY WILL.

I was in a similar situation to yourself, but generated by different circumstances. Although I'm not quite fully healed yet, I'm way better than I was. You sound scared to death like we all did before we found out what the real problem was. Fear of and obsessing about your symptons is the thing that keeps them going, that was the main area I needed to work on to make improvements, just follow the Recovery Programme and you'll be fine I promise.

We're all here because we've tried too hard to get everything "right" in life. You know what, there is no "right" so stop punishing yourself, it's not a sin or a crime or whatever to give priority your own needs. Like they tell you on the airplane, put your own oxygen mask on first before you try to help anybody else.

Here area some of the books which have helped me, aside from Dr.Sarno's publications :

The Great Pain Deception - Steven Ray Ozanich
The Meaning of Truth - Nicole J.Sachs
All publications both written and audio from Dr.Claire Weekes
You Can Heal Your Life - Louise Hay

I also use delta wave music to help me relax and sleep better, try it for yourself it really works, "Untold Depths" by Christopher Lloyd Wright is excellent. You can get all this material from Amazon.

It's OK, your OK, it just takes a little time to turn it around. Start by doing some breathing exercises for relaxation, just breathing deeply and slowly for 5 seconds, hold for a second then breath out slowly for five seconds in a set of ten when you start to feel panicked by your symptons.

Much love and blessings welcomea
 
Thanks Alex, Honeybear and Mermaid, i really appreciate your kind words and the time that you put into sharing your own experiences and offering up suggestions to me. The whole TMS thing is quite scary, but I do have some hope. It's just that so much of it and what I experience in terms of symtoms confuse the hell out of me. For example, some observations from this past weekend:

1. I started journaling about a week ago. I know that I have some things I have been angry about and i just let it out and let myself curse in words or say things like "I hate this person" or whatever. I didn't feel any relief in my symptoms while I was writing like alot of other people have said they've experienced. Granted, I probably have tons of repressed things, but I guess I thought some things would disappear.
2. This weekend I got into a sneezing episode which caused my lower back and hip to "give out". Sharp shooting pains in specific muscles in my hip and lower back have caused me to have a hard time after sitting awhile or whatever. I just don't understand that if this pain is caused by my mind and we are supposed to resume some physical activity because it can't hurt us, how can sneezing and jolting my back cause something that is almost like a pulled muscle. So if that can happen, wouldn't other physical activity and exercise potentially hurt me also?
3. The pain does jump around. Friday night, my ulnar nerve in my left arm went numb causing my pinky and ring finger to go numb. On Saturday, the other arm went numb. I want to play my video games or do other activities with my arms, but am afraid of making things worse.
4. There have been other times where I moved my head/neck sorta suddenly which caused severe neck pain. It almost seems like I have chronic muscle tension in all of my muscles which I know can be caused by stress and anxiety. I just wonder can TMS cause severe pain from various movements if we are supposed to be moving and being active. I thought things couldn't hurt us. There were two instances, one where I couldnt' move my neck for 2 days and another time where I was hospitalized for severe back pain and swelling in my back higher up than my bulging disc. Seems weird that that could be TMS.

Anyways, I know I'm all over the place. I'm going to make a list of some of these things and questions and ask the TMS doctor on Thursday. I just hope I don't come out of there more confused and with more uncertainty. I'm also afraid he will tell me I should stop going to Physical Therapy and I'll have to make that decision which will go against all conventional medical treatment. I guess I could try TMS treatment for a few months and always go back to PT somewhere down the line if this doesn't work.
 
I guess one other thought is that every massage or PT that I have gone to says that almost every muscle in my entire body is tight. Would that be from TMS? I also became obsessed with the trigger point concept. I keep poking around my body and looking at trigger point therapy workbooks to see where the pain could be coming from. I'm obsessed with looking for them and thinking that i must have had them. In fact there are specific spots that hurt like anything when I apply pressure on them and some masssage people have found actual knots at these spots. I guess that's why I thought I had triggers also. But it is also hard to believe that they could have taken over my body in just 6 months. I know it probably doesn't help that I keep referrign to that trigger point book every time I have new pain. The last few days I have felt sharp new pain in my muscles below my index finger which I have no idea why. Again, its just every day it seems like there is something new.
 
If Dr. Gwozdz does, in fact, diagnose you with TMS, then he most definitely will have you discontinue the physical therapy. To continue with it would only delay your healing. Dr. Sarno says you cannot heal as long as you are still doing things for the physical body thinking that it will help you in any way.

Every day you will find something new as long as you keep focused on your body. I also was doing the trigger point therapy for a long time. It did nothing for me. If Dr. Gwozdz diagnoses you with TMS, then you must throw those books away as well. Yes, TMS can cause every muscle in your body to be tight. The "T" in TMS stands for "TENSION".

You will have to believe 100% that TMS is responsible for all of your pain and symptoms, or you will not heal...even 99% is not enough.

Have you seen any of Dr. Sarno's interviews on YouTube?




Listen to these over and over again, and keep reading Dr. Sarno's books. Remember, your brain thinks it is doing you a favor protecting you from what lies in your unconscious mind. It is not going to give up without a fight!
 
Hey Stormshadow, one of my favorite GI Joe characters.

I just wanted to give you some hope in regards to your situation. It sounds like you have had all of the medical checks by docs and they can't find anything. The last thing left is TMS.

Your scenario sounds a lot like mine in terms of pain locations and the rapid movement of locations. If you would ahve told me 3 months ago that I would be on a TMS site I would also tell you that you are crazy. I am a 36 year old, fit, avid golfer and active person.

My hourney with TMS started 4 years ago when I was casually diagnosed with a skin condition called Rosacea by my GP. He was wrong but at the time I googled the issue and saw some horrible pictures on the web. I quickly became anxious and my face broke out like crazy. It actually mimiced the patterms of Rosacea but my Derms said it was dermititis and gave me cream which cleared it all up. Fast forward two years later and I started having stomach pains and so i googled. I started thinkinig I had colon cancer and again became anxious. I gave myself IBS, sharp chest pains and muscles, back pain. After I had a colonoscopy I was cleared and everything went back to normal. Fast forward to October 2013. I was having some issues that had 15 possible reasons for with the last being Multiple Sclerosis. After reading about MS and hearing a distant family member had MS I began to develop left leg and arm numbness, tingling, foot zaps. I was worried but my GP assured me I was fine. He said he could feel the knots in my leg muscles from tension. I didn't listen to him and started symptom checking my eyes an head since that was a common MS issue. I went looking for it and my mind found problems.

My GP sent me to a Neuro who said I was fine and they order a brain MRI. It came back clear. After checking with an opthamologist for my eyes, everyone said it was stress. I developed bad anxiety and became obsessed with my eyes and head. I started having panic attacks. Since my focus had shifted to my head, my leg issues went away 100%.

I stopped going out in public for fear of my anxiety showing. I stopped running cause I thought it made my head hurt. I second guessed everything I did, what I ate, if I used the computer cause I didn't want to hurt my eyes.

So I found this site and some of the great advice. I also started meeting with a therapist to have someone to talk to. I have made about a 90% recovery now. The one thing I picked up on your post was how things spiraled after your obsession began...how you stopped living your life, how you appear to be concerned about not being able to work out and play games.

Once you come to grips with TMS and accept it, I suggest you really start to evaluate the role that FEAR plays into all of this. I did the journaling, I did the digging for repressed emaotion on my own and with a therapist. I am not saying don't do those things but I also think you can get consumed in digging up the negative past.

Once I started focusing on FEAR, I started to heal. I realized that I was not living each day in the present but living in the "what if" future. Always thinking what fi I have this forver. What if I can't play golf. What if I can't enjoy my sons soccer game. I started to evaluate every present day action with the what if negative thought association. So for your example, If I was playing my videos I would be thinking what if I can't be normal and play these again.

I realized with the help of these people on the site that my thoughts were unrealistic. What proof is there that I will not get better? My mind was tricking me becuase I was caught in a fear cycle as Eric Herbie Watson calls it. I mean, I was fine just 3 months ago....docs said there is nothing physically wrong with me so what is holding me back from being that same person? FEAR.

So I started really trying to relax when my anxiety and pain was high. I also have started pushing myself to do things like run again, go out in public and do what I use to do. I am re-training my brain to acknowledge FEAR. My past has a huge part to play in all of this. But as strange as it sounds, I actually think it is the good things in life my perfectionism side of me gained that have caused me no real sense of how to handle the FEAR of health issues. I have had no adversity in adult life up until this hit.

So I just want to say.....I have created pain an symptoms multiple times in life and all have gone away. I have had the jaw pain, arm and finger numbness like you and it has gone.

DON'T give into the FEAR and stop doing what you love. That is the worst thing I did.
 
Hey Pingman. Thanks for your post. It was very encouraging and I can definitely relate to much of what you wrote. Especially the FEAR element. The minute I had my back and arm pain, fear spiraled and all the other symptoms started popping up. I thought I had made peace with alot of the things in my past so I'm a bit nervous to rehash and resurface all of those trouble spots and just make myself more sad. But i do think there is an element to the journaling that I need to do and some conscious effort to address the fear that you pointed out.

I certainly hope that TMS is real since that will give me some hope. IT makes me a bit nervous that 95% of the medical profession doesn't believe it and yet I'm resting my hopes on it and its recovery program. But there seems to have been a huge success rate by John Sarno so there has to be something to it along with those that have found recovery.

Fear and obsessive worrying have been huge parts of my personality most of my life. I just hope I can get those under control since if I haven't been able to address them thus far, how will I do it now. I've been in therapy before (not for TMS specifically) for anxiety and depression so I just hope there is something different about this time I guess.
 
Stormshadow, we will all be interested in knowing about your meeting with Dr. Gwozoz.
It sure sounds to all of us that you have TMS, especially since doctors and others have not found anything structural.
You do seem to be fence-sitting, though. And as Honeybear says, you have to stop thinking physical and focus
100 percent on TMS. Your conscious mind may not think you're angry about anything, but as Sarno says,
your unconscious mind knows you're not only angry, but anger built up over the years its perceives as rage.
And rage is the main TMS cause of pain. Pain does move around, too.

You may have also conditioned yourself to feel pain while doing some activities. Pain doesn't come from them.
You just have begun to think it has.

Try not to think of your pain all the time. Spend more time journaling or other ways of discovering your
repressed emotions. I love watching the video lecture Dr. Sarno has on YouTube. Herbie posted about it
and here is the URL. It's the best explanation of TMS I've ever seen.

http://tmswiki.org/forum/threads/this-is-it-guys-the-sarno-video-wow.3336/

Keep looking for those repressed emotions. They are what is causing your pain.
 
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Stormshadow said:
Hey Pingman. Thanks for your post. It was very encouraging and I can definitely relate to much of what you wrote. Especially the FEAR element. The minute I had my back and arm pain, fear spiraled and all the other symptoms started popping up. I thought I had made peace with alot of the things in my past so I'm a bit nervous to rehash and resurface all of those trouble spots and just make myself more sad. But i do think there is an element to the journaling that I need to do and some conscious effort to address the fear that you pointed out.

I certainly hope that TMS is real since that will give me some hope. IT makes me a bit nervous that 95% of the medical profession doesn't believe it and yet I'm resting my hopes on it and its recovery program. But there seems to have been a huge success rate by John Sarno so there has to be something to it along with those that have found recovery.

Fear and obsessive worrying have been huge parts of my personality most of my life. I just hope I can get those under control since if I haven't been able to address them thus far, how will I do it now. I've been in therapy before (not for TMS specifically) for anxiety and depression so I just hope there is something different about this time I guess.
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Storm - TMS is not real in terms of the medial profession accepting it bt thats nt really their gig right? They work in a world of treating the explainable via drug therapy or surgery. I can tell you this. My GP told me flat out that all of my issues are related to stress and tension. Th Neuro doc I talked to said it was most likely stress. My eye doc said your eye muscles are impacted by stress.

No one ever told me specifically I had TMS..... but they told me I had TMS = TENSION. So they set me on my way telling me to relax because it was tension without telling me how the tension was impacting me. Setting meup to fail becaueth pain was so real and scary.
 
Thanks Walt and Pingman and everyone else. You are definitely right that I'm fence sitting, but I would have to say I'm happy that I at least have strong belief that this could be a real possiblity and am completely open to it. I definitely see myself in all of the TMS materials and know my current life stressors, personality and past well enough to know that severe rage, stress, anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, sadness and loneliness can be repressed in there and causing all sorts of havoc in my life. I'm looking forward to checking out all of the videos that were shared with me today.

Question for you guys/gals that have recovered quite a bit, all of the muscle tightness and tension and knots and trigger points in your body, do they just loosen up when you recover and deal with your repressed emotions?

One of the main reasons I'm so afraid of physical activity are the sudden jolts and movements that seem to cause more pain because of all of the tightness. It just seems that as long as the tightness is there, I'm going to be prone to hurting myself since my muscles don't have any give to them. That's one of the reasons that I thought stretching was critical.
 
I can only speak for myself on how my issues went way. My first experience with severe sore muscles was two years ago with the colon caner care. I had created sme severe knot in my chest and stomach that felt like someone was sticking a knife in me. They were there for around two months. Ths was before I knew about TMS. When I got cleared of colon cancer by a colonoscopy my pain faded away within a matter of weeks because I no longer feared it... andI began running again.

This go around, my leg pain and knots were severe for 3 weeks. I ran 3 miles a day on that bum leg with some bad pain an tingling. Finally after about 4 days of running my confidence in TMS clicked an it started to subside. I was pumped....I realized ho the heck could I run 3 mils a day if I had an issue. For me...the belief alone has never been enough. Without the challenges I have never been able to convince myself 100% though.

With my head tension and sore eye muscles, It hasn't been so easy. They are really sensitive and it is hard to put them to a test. But I have bee abl to have have some wins here as well. I would say that I have seen about an 85% reduction in my pain and perceived light sensitivity withn 7 days. That is 7 days of finally standing up to my fears.
 
It's not always about "dealing" with your repressed emotions that will enable you to recover. Many people heal simply by "understanding what is going on". Dr. Sarno says that the anger (or other feelings) that you are aware of is not what is causing your pain. So you don't necessarily have to uncover some hidden thing in order to heal. Dr. Sarno says "knowledge" is the penicillin that cures TMS.
 
I was proud of myself for doing some journaling while typing out my journal on my laptop last night. I typically shy away from using laptops or texting or my ipad due to my forearm and hand pain but I said the heck with it, I'm going to journal that way since I didjn't feel like writing everything out. I can type much faster than I can write. To be honest it wasn't too bad. Kinda cool.

I definitely need to try some meditation. I've been having a hard time with that becasue of my ringing in the ears. A quiet environment tends to make me focus on the ringing. I even need to sleep with a humidifier on so that it creates enough background noise to drown out the ringing. I downloaded some guided meditations which are ok but I want something that will help me focus more on my breathing. I think either way it will take some practice since my mind is used to racing a million miles per minute.
 
Stormshadow said:
I was proud of myself for doing some journaling while typing out my journal on my laptop last night. I typically shy away from using laptops or texting or my ipad due to my forearm and hand pain but I said the heck with it, I'm going to journal that way since I didjn't feel like writing everything out. I can type much faster than I can write. To be honest it wasn't too bad. Kinda cool.

I definitely need to try some meditation. I've been having a hard time with that becasue of my ringing in the ears. A quiet environment tends to make me focus on the ringing. I even need to sleep with a humidifier on so that it creates enough background noise to drown out the ringing. I downloaded some guided meditations which are ok but I want something that will help me focus more on my breathing. I think either way it will take some practice since my mind is used to racing a million miles per minute.
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Hey Storm - just wanted to comment on your ear ringing. My wife develop the ear ringing ot tinitus in one of her ears a few years back. It was fairly loud she said when it first began. WE went to an ENT and they couldn't figure anything out. They suspected it might be a benign tumor pressure on her ear canal so they did an MRI. Turned up nothing so they said there was nothing they could do for it.

My wife is super strong mentally and so she just lived her life. I recall for a period she would comment on how annoying it was but soon she never said anything. Now, she has basically been able to forget about it and doesn't notice it unless I ask about it. She has also began losing hearing in her ear as well so the Dr. think she has some sort of ear issue for real but she just goes along without a care in the world.

My point is, you most likely have TMS causing all of yuor issue so use my wife as an example. She has a real ear condition but has been able to heal it or trick her mind into thinking it isn't there when it really is just by being positive. Think of what yuo will do when you start down the TMS road and things start clicking.

And..... think about how your life long struggle with anxiety and depression and perfectionsim will fall into perspective once you lick this TMS. You will finally have the tools you need ongoing to manage your issues.

That was one of the things I started to get excited about. I have now had 3 episodes of health anxiety and TMS and wondered how I would ever stop them ongoing. I feel like I am going to be better equipped to deal with my issues ongoing.

One more thing..... don't get too caught up with the term TMS. I was thinking about how you said two weeks ago if someone woudl have told me I was on a TMS site I would ahve said they are crazy. TMS is just tension. Just step back and think about how much we do know tension plays in health issues. Tension Headache, tense shoulders, tense jaw muscles from TMJ.

All tension really is stress = adrenaline output which causes tension. Staying in a state of stress all of the time causes an imbalance which it sounds like you are at.
 
Hi Stormshadow,

Following on to what Pingman says about the tension, stress & adrenalin, I think it would really help you to get a clearer picture of things if you read "Self Help for your Nerves", by Claire Weekes or listened to some of her talks on Youtube.

Bascially she explains the problem of tiring out our nervous systems with over stimulation, which causes physical symptoms. If we then become afraid of the symptons, we trap ourselves in a tension - fear - tension cycle, which we can only break by understanding the process properly.

To go about healing as though it is a challenge to be beaten in a hurry will only cause more tension, so take things a step at a time. With understanding comes healing, and understanding take time.

Just a note on the tinnitus, I used to have it constantly and now only occasionally. You can just ignore it, it's nothing.

Be kind to yourself, you're in good company so relax and go with the process and prepare to be amazed ! :happy:
 
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