How do i know if i could have TMS?

Hi everybody,
My name is Daniel and i am from Barcelona.First of all,apologies because my english it´s not very good.Last year hasn´t been easy for me.Started with a lumbar pain on my lowback..after a few months an mri showed i have spondylolistesis and spondylolisis since i was 10 years old (i didn´t know until now,and i have been always a very phisicall person,professional footbal player included)...i never had pain until last year...MRI showed discal protusion too in L5-S1.
After a long year of neurologist and another doctors i refused surgery even the pain didn´t let me carry on with my normal life (my relationship ended basically because i couldn´t have sex due to the pain and people thinks the pain cannot be SO big if they see you as a normal person,however it showed me with the kind of person i was,so no big problem here)...and finally i discovered Dr. Sarno´s books last week and they took me here.
I would like to believe i have TMS,really ,because it gives me hope to continue with my normal life.Even i see myself how Dr. Sarno talk about his patients (perfectionist,do-gooding person,etc) i don´t know for sure if i have tms or not.I could think i have if i hadn´t spondilolistesis but ,on th other hand,a lot of people with that don´t even know in their entire lives they had this issue...because it doesn´t cause pain.
So i think may be if having that i have been all my life doing sports,football,fitness,swimming,etc...without any problem...may be i could have tms and get better and continue woth my life without pain.
But i don´t know how to get diagnosed properly,could you help me please?
thank you!

 

Hi Daniel.
In his book "Healing Back Pain" Dr. Sarno discusses spondylolisthesis. It's on Page 110-111. However to summarize, he himself implies he's never seen a case where it wasn't TMS. Than he tells about one of his patients who had that diagnosis... they decided to treat it as TMS and then go to the next phase IF it didn't respond. IT did.

Many of us here had/have serious structural 'anomalies' but have recovered all the same. I personally have stenosis, the herniated disc (L5-s1) . I have a congenital fusion AND since I have been doing this I broke a vertebrae in my back... No pain. My hips are massively out of alignment and I walk with a rolling elliptical gait (My friends make fun of it).all pain free

Like yourself, I was a lifelong athlete and when I first made it to the medical world they were like "You're a mess.... You should have been in pain your whole life!". But I had not been. I was a manual laborer (still am at 54...plastered a ceiling yesterday) played baseball, football, fighting, f-ing all american pirate...and then in one year and a half period lost everything.... your story sound awfully familiar.

I read that book in 99 when there was no internet. No one to check with, and only one Dr. On the west coast of america even making the diagnosis and he was on vacation.
I decided, like any good pirate, that I was no longer gonna listen to my Doctors.. they had 18 months and I was worse! I read "Healing Back Pain " over and over, paid attention to my own conditioning, anger and fear....not about my pain but in my Life.... and about three weeks later, it was gone. In 5 weeks I was back at heavy labor.

So I 'diagnosed' myself backwards. I treated it like it was TMS and it went away. That's what Sarno recommends on Page 110-111 for people with your deal.

People like that always get TMS. TMS tries to be believable and scary.... of course it picks something you will 'believe'...

I'll bet my favorite baseball glove that you have TMS

 

hahaha big thank you for your reply...it´s weird,but deep inside me ,reading how Dr. Sarno describes people with TMS i think oneself knows when it´s a TMS diagnose...but all that have given me faith and hope (something i lost this last year and that i am glad to recover) because that implies there is some chance to heal ...so i will take your advice and i will "diagnose" myself backwards..
Here in Spain the rate between back pain and surgery resolution it´s so huge..may be because it´s free due to the Public Health to go into surgery,and i am happy to find Dr. Sarno and all of you because until now,i only found creepy webs (facebook pages,medical forums,etc) which only were getting me into depresion.
Thank you Baseball65,enjoy that guitar...this last 2 days after reading Dr. Sarno´s books i returned to play mine for a few minutes but amazing minutes!!(1 year since i played for the last time because of the pain)