How to keep doing things that cause pain

Hi everyone,

I'm new to setting up an account here, but have been looking around on the site for awhile. Thank you for having this support place!

I feel I know I have tms caused female pain after a very stressful couple years. And looking back I guess I've had "symptoms" for many years. But it became very very debilitating in the last couple. I've read most all the tms books. Finishing up Steve's now. And more recently have really shut off all physical ideas and treatments. I have no money left -I can't afford any more physical treatments anyway. Plus they never helped. You name them, I probably tried them). Medically nothing has been found wrong other than tight pelvic floor muscles, but after some more recent PT, even those tight muscles are being told to me to not be found tight like they were. Yet the pain still is there. So why the pain - all I come up with is tms. I had been feeling some very strong emotions of fear, guilt, and anger over things going on in my life in the last couple years.

I think ( know) the fear of the pain, and confusion of why it is there is just fueling this thing. It is what is feeding it. I believe in what I read to treat it by means of just trying to live life and do things you are scared to do. And try to put as little of thought into the pain as possible and accept and know it's psychological. I truly think my crotch pain is emotional. It's just not normal to hurt like I do in that area. Other people heal it! I never use to have pain like this! And no injury occurred prior to it! There's nothing physically wrong that doctors have found, I've had a hell of a difficult emotional year from crap going on, and the stressed tensed me up! That's what is. But I can't break this!

The conditioned responses are what get me! I do have moments of very little pain, but I also have the many times I worry of pain increasing from from a physical activity. Sexual intimacy is one of those! I have a great husband but because I've seen Intimacy increase my pain in the past, I fear it. I don't have pain during but more so after. I believe it's sub conscience fear of it hurting me later on. I try to tell myself it's ok and safe to be intimate, but I can't break my pain.

Excercise is another one. I can exercise, but I feel the pain come on worse later. I must fear it hurting me. So I don't even walk or run anymore. I have pain all the time. I have Better times of the day, but I still have pain daily, it's just exercise and intimacy I feel increase it. Yes I have a history of sexual abuse, but I don't think it bothers me anymore. I forgive him. It was over 20 years ago. And I do journal and meditate. I just feel like I'm on this verge. Like one "right" thought Change and miraculously the pain will leave. Please someone wave a magic wand over me!

I've had 3 kids and no pain after that- this is so crazy to have pain like this after no other occurance but stress.

So my question to you all is: How can keep doing things that I "think" make me worse after? Anyone else have this stupid Intimacy response? How did you break it? Even though my husband us completely patient and supportive, Feeling broken in that area makes me feel like such a failure towards my husband. Ugh, I just want to go through my days without thinking about my crotch anymore, to have sex, to run, to feel free like thankfully so many others have? Why am I stuck?

Thank you.

 

I'm 86 and a lifelong bachelor, so I can't comment on intimacy very well if at all.

I do think your pain after intimacy or exercising is because you fear you will feel pain. It is or may be becoming a conditioned reflex.

You might read Steve Ozanich's book, The Great Pain Deception, in which he said he kept playing golf despite aching all over, and that plus learning about TMS healed him. He journaled and discovered emotions that caused his pain.

Try telling yourself you are going to enjoy sex and exercise. Both are very healthy and helpful in healing.

 

This sounds sooo much like TMS. That's good that you've read Steve's book, it really helped me identify things too. I haven't had the exact thing you're talking about, but something similar. A feeling of tension down there and it was very annoying and started when I was going through a lot of stress. Stress can do weird things to the body, its hard to believe how much stress can affect a person and the myriad of ways it can present itself. Once I realized mine was stress related, every time I experienced the symptom I would reinforce to myself that I knew what it was and ignored it as much as I could. It was a TMS symptom. It eventually went away because I no longer worried about it or gave it power.

Like you suggested, you're dealing with a conditioned response and these are harder to tackle and take time, but its possible. I've had several of these and I was right where you are before. One was from middle back pain while exercising. The other was from plantar facsitis pain(heel and arch foot pain) I've had since I was a kid. I was shocked to discover on this very forum that foot pain could be TMS. I've been to foot doctor after foot doctor.

At first, I was in disbelief, but as I started paying attention to my symptoms, I noticed a correlation between doing things I didn't like very much, such as cooking or shopping for groceries, and the pain levels. Time went on and I continued to apply the TMS techniques. The first time I went on a grocery trip without foot pain, I went out to the car and cried afterwards. Mostly happy tears, but also tears of sadness that I didn't know about this all these years.

The same with my middle back pain. I had a HUGE conditioned response when I exercised that included my whole stinking back, but mainly my SI joints and middle back. I had went to the chiropractor off and on for years for these. My middle back didn't respond to chiro at all and I was in pain from it for 9 months straight every day. It finally got better from a dose of steriods, but it later came back. Thankfully, I knew about TMS by then and used the techniques on it. The first time I was able to do low impact aerobics without much pain in my middle back, I cried.

While I'm not one to cry in public or cry very often even in front of family members, having a good cry in private has helped release my pain in a way that nothing else has. I would say my pain is about 70% gone, and that is a big improvement. I still have times my back or feet hurt but it is way less and now I know what's going on and that is huge. Just remember, for some people it can take some time. Most people I think. Keep persevering. Use your TMS techniques every day, talk to your brain. Use positive affirmations a lot. Also, have you gotten counseling for the abuse you endured? If not, you should definitely look into that. TMS therapy alone won't necessarily be enough if you haven't gotten help for the abuse.

Finally, have you been through the SEP program on here? It is very helpful:

http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Structured_Educational_Program (Structured Educational Program)

Also here is a link to an article about fear. Fear and the conditioned response go hand in hand:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/understanding-and-overcoming-fear.8574/ (Dr. Schubiner's Blog - Understanding and overcoming fear)

Get better soon! You can do it!

E. Lynn

 

Hi Walt and E. Lynn

Thank you both so much for replying and Optimism and understanding! Deep down I know I believe anything can heal. I've seen it too many times to not believe that.

That's why I know my pain is stemming emotionally. I have ideas that I think are behind it, but recognizing them hasn't been enough. Yet. I did start the sep last year. But I still was seeking alternative physical modalities so counterproductive. I journal but do not feel good when I write the negative. I feel so much better writing about the positive outcome I can see.

It's very conditioned as you both understand. I will feel " better" upon waking. But then think of the pain that I endure all day as soon as I wake up so of course the pain increases as soon as I get up. I need to change this thinking. It's so hard not putting focus on what hurts.

I do focus strongly how quickly I heal from other things and that I have this amazingly strong immune system and rarely ever get sick. I burned my hand pretty bad yesterday and it removed a good layer of skin and really hurt. ( it was nice though while that hurt, I didn't notice my pelvis much ) now today the burn is very much healing with no pain. See my body knows how to heal an actual physical issue. So if the muscle nerve pain in my pelvis was physical it should have healed a long time ago. So There just can't be anything physically wrong I figure. I just need to break these stupid expectations of certain things causing pain. It's not true that exercise and intimacy are bad for me.

 

I replied to your other thread but thought I could add a couple of things to this one. Firstly that just because you feel as an adult today that your sexual abuse doesn't bother you, it doesn't mean that you don't feel the pain subconsciously. The subconscious mind does not know time. The hurts we suffer as kids we still feel like they were yesterday in the subconscious. This has been proven many times in experiments. The trick is to try to feel these repressed feelings that your mind is protecting you from. You say you are journaling which is great. But I found that journalling wouldn't be enough to get me to feel these repressed emotions. I however found that if I made a Web cam video of myself talking a person from my past, telling them my struggles, emotions and true feelings, really letting out all the anger and hurt. At the end of the video I would forgive the person. I felt silly while doing this but something changed when I watched the video back. When I watched it back I began to feel the pain. I could see the hurt on my face, I could see the anger. It was all written all over my face, but I just didn't feel it till I watched myself back. It was a strange experience. I believe that seeing the emotion on my face made me have empathy for myself and the emotion poured out. Sometime writing isn't enough. Try it yourself.

About exercises. At first I was scared to. Start slow, set goals, tick them off and increase them day by day. This is retraining your brain. It sounds stupid but when I was trying to walk/run again I thought I have to distract my mind while doing it. So instead of just walking and waiting for the pain to start. I walked or jogged while I was singing out loud while listening to headphones. There I was jogging down the street people looking at me singing in my terrible voice. The embarrassment was huge. But you know what, I was so too embarrassed td focus on the pain. I also did this while shadow boxing in the air. People thought I was nuts. Now I can run 90 percent pain free any distance without singing.

Distract your mind, do it gradually. It is also very very helpful to try to exercise in locations that you havnt felt pain in before. So go to a park your not familiar with to change it up. This will retrain your brain.

You've got this.

 

See Abigail Steidley:

://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/My_Success_Story,_by_Abigail_Steidley

 

Great strategies in this post. Thanks!

 

Thank you tennis tom. That us another great success story!