Hello from Australia

L

lesterknight008

New Member
Hello,

I'm from Australia, and really hope that you are all safe!

I had a neck strain over two year ago from hitting my head against a wall which caused a neck strain on my right side with a headache.

I tried conservative treatment (pain relief medication and gentle neck stretching) for 6-8 weeks after the injury and still felt the tension so went to see a chiropractor to try and resolve it.

I had a neck adjustment during the first session, felt very tired afterwards, and went home to sleep. I do recall the adjustment being quite aggressive. The next day I woke up with a severe headache, feeling nausea, irritable, and feeling off centre. I was fighting the symptoms for the entire day, and then went to sleep at night time. I woke up throughout the night to my ears ringing.

Since then I suffer from severe headaches and migraines especially when in specific positions or performing or at least trying to perform exercise or sudden fast movements.

The neck tension is still there and feel like I'm getting used to the pain instead of it being gone which is quite sad. My tinnitus continues and my headaches/migraines end up with pain settling around my forehead and my eyes (maybe more so left eye).

I would like to ask whether these symptoms could be linked to TMS and if this can be reversed.

Is TMS also synonymous with Central Sensitisation?

One thing I can't shake is that it must be related to some form of damage based on the symptoms after the neck adjustment. To me symptoms = damage, and I believe that I have a condition that may be whiplash/concussion/mTBI, cervogenical instability, or CSF link/Inter-cranial tension.

The symptoms have been continuing for the last two years.

My Cervical MRI found subtle disc degeneration and bulging but nothing out of the ordinary for someone in my age group in my late thirties.

My doctor has diagnosed me with cervical radiculopathy, and my physiotherapist believes I have central sensitisation. I've been on a specific program with the physio for about 4-5 months and I wish some of the more severe symptoms would have disappeared by now to prove to me that it's TMS/Central Sensitisation (tinntus, neck tension/pain, headache/migraine when doing something intensive or when in specific positions such as reading on a bed, laying on a bed suddently, cleaning a low cupboard for example and reaching into the cupboard, lifting something heavy).

I've seen ENTs, Audiologists, several doctors, and I'm now planning to see a vastibular neurologist.

What are your thoughts on what tests I should ask, and do you think this may be related to TMS and fixable?

Thanks for listening.
 
Hi @lesterknight008 and welcome.

Central sensitization is a mindbody condition, so yes, it's a form of what Doctor Sarno called TMS. It's also equivalent to fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and other conditions whose names are simply descriptions of what the individual is experiencing, which is pain and fatigue, without an obvious physiological cause that the medical industry is able to "fix".

Have you read one of Dr Sarno's books yet? If not, that's where you need to start! Our main wiki has everything you need to find his books and other resources to start changing your mental and emotional connection with your body.
 
I really appreciate your reply, and for the advice. Is there a specific book you would recommend for someone having my specific injury?

I also wanted to ask at what stage do you stop with the diagnostic testing ie. Seeing specialists for more testing when symptoms persists for a long time.

One example I can read about is that people with CSF leak injuries sometimes need multiple diagnostic scans until the suspected leak is found. This usually takes a lot of patience from the person suffering as doctors don't believe there is anything wrong, until the discovery is made.
 
lesterknight008 said:
for someone having my specific injury?
Click to expand...
No, sorry - we don't pay attention to the details of physical conditions here. The concept of TMS covers many many different types of chronic physical symptoms - but TMS psychology can also be used to recover better and faster from actual injuries or illnesses.

What we call TMS is a condition of the mind which has been proven to create chronic pain and other symptoms for emotional reasons having to do with our primitive brains and ancient survival techniques. The awareness of this phenomenon is not new in human medicine and psychiatry, but Dr. John Sarno, MD, was the one who came at it from a different angle in the 1980s, and coined his own phrase for it: Tension Myositis Syndrome - and made the concepts extremely accessible to the average pain sufferer, in three books: Healing Back Pain, The MindBody Prescription, and The Divided Mind.

We still refer to it as TMS on this web site which was founded in honor of Dr. Sarno - but as the truth of TMS becomes more widely accepted by the medical and psychiatric communities, it goes by a number of other names incorporating the concept of the connection between the mind and the body.

If you want to order a book, I suggest Dr Sarno's last one, The Divided Mind, which includes chapters by five other MDs and a therapist. If you aren't ready to commit to that yet, start here:
https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/So_You_Think_You_Might_Have_TMS (So You Think You Might Have TMS) and read everything on the page. Then watch the 20/20 segment (from a US television documentary news series) profiling Dr. Sarno. It's pretty old, so the quality is not great: http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/the-classic-20-20-segment-with-dr-sarno.69/ (The Classic 20/20 Segment with Dr. Sarno)

Also check out Australian psychologist James Alexander https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/members/dr-james-alexander.543/ (Dr James Alexander)
His book is The Hidden Psychology of Pain: The Use of Understanding to Heal Chronic Pain
 
I appreciate all your help and guidance. I'll read the Dr S. latest book. May I ask at what stage did you go down this path? Was it after all the tests came out clear and the pain was still there?
 
Feel free to read my profile story, and then read some Success Stories - you will find an enormous variation in experiences and stories leading up to what is almost always a self-diagnosis of TMS.

Look, I'll be honest - I was doing really well for a number of years, but it's been tough the last four, and 2020 has been an absolute bitch, with a shutdown-related volunteer job that took over my life in the spring (edit: which I allowed to take over my life) and not in a good way. I managed to work myself into a case of sudden-onset RA, which is a real condition with obvious test results, and now I have to be a good patient and take it very seriously, which is hard for me to accept, because I want my symptoms to be pure TMS. I blame emotional stress and distress 100% - if not a certain level of despair as well. Which means I'm blaming myself, and that's a vicious cycle. So I'm taking the meds, but also doing my best to to apply TMS techniques, and working with a TMS therapist for the first time. The disaster that is 2020 makes this immensely harder.

As an obvious TMSer, you're on the search for a solution, and you want to do it in the most perfect way possible, thus your repeated questions about when and how, as well as the lengthy recitation of physical details (this is very common amongst newcomers, and I didn't actually read any of it, sorry - I've become skilled at skimming right past those to get the to real issues).

Obsessing about physical details and tests and results and specialists, constantly asking yourself what to try next when the current ones fail to produce a result - these are all distractions. I mean, do you see how it looks when it's said like that? These activities are designed by your primitive fearful brain to distract you and keep you in a state of hyper-vigilance in a world in which you are anxious and nervous - but in which, most likely, you are lucky enough to be physically quite safe, right? Your primitive brain doesn't know this. It thinks that your anxiety must mean that you are in imminent danger of dying from some wilderness threat, so it ramps up the fear and anxiety more and more. Until you make yourself sick and suffer symptoms.

If you truly believe there is something physically wrong with you, then you are in the wrong place. But if you're ready to get off the diagnostic merry-go-round, and try something completely different - then welcome. We have a ton of resources. But you must find your way to making a 180-degree change in the relationship you currently have with your body and your mind.

What we advocate here is getting in touch with your repressed emotions, and with facing your fears,. You must become mindful of how your primitive nervous system keeps you in a state of hyper-vigilance, worrying constantly about danger, in order to supposedly keep you safe. It doesn't care if you're comfortable or happy - it just needs you to stay alive long enough to breed the next generation - that's the goal of all life, right? This survival mechanism was fine when we lived in a primitive world with a very few, very tangible dangers - dangers which we rarely survived past age 25 or so. But this mechanism is completely wrong for the lengthy lives we live in the modern world, with its inexhaustible supply of intangible anxieties, past, present, and future, to say nothing of recent technologies which allow us to be bombarded with information 24/7.

So if you want to not just live, but also enjoy the longer life that modern medicine has given us, you have to be willing to make some radical changes in the way you relate to the not-so-wonderful aspects of modern life - starting, most likely, with facing your anxiety. That's where I had to start (see my profile and book list).

~Jan
 
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