Intense Heel Pain - Plantar Fasciitis?

Hello team:

I'm back again with my annual "here's a new symptom, is it TMS?" post lol. So I would say recently, within the past year or two I have really gotten into running. I run several times a week now, usually running 3-8 miles at a time, and then usually getting in a long run on Saturdays up to 14 miles. I'm training for my first mini-marathon in a few weeks.

I've had knee, calf, hip flexor pain here and there, but I mostly just try not to think about it and keep running through it until I am able to take my usual recovery time after. Most of the time it just subsides on its own as either most likely TMS or just normal fatigue and wear. And in my recent running journey, I can say that I have never let any body pain prevent me from finishing a run or obtaining a new goal. Until now at least...

On Saturday, I set off with a couple of friends to run a practice run of 13.1 miles (mini marathon), I was off to a great start at about the 4 mile mark. I was probably on pace to set a new PR. My lungs and energy levels were both great. I was feeling some pain in the left knee that I get here and there sometimes, but I'm strong enough to run through that. But this time I started to feel some pain in the left heel that started to gradually increase. After about 6 miles, I noticed that my pace was falling off drastically. I was unable to keep up with my friends. I was putting forth as much effort as I could, but I just couldn't run full speed due to how bad my heel was hurting on every step.

At this point, I was still in the mindset of "mind over matter" trying to ignore the pain and just will myself to the finish line. But after mile 8, the pain was so agonizing that my jog was barely faster than walking speed. My friends convinced me to slow to a walk as to not "injure myself further". I had to walk another 3 miles before they could pick me up in the car, and the pain was pretty intense with every step at this point even at a walk.

In the back of my mind, I'm always thinking TMS, but I went home and put some ice on it anyway since it seemed like a sudden, acute thing (even though I don't really recall a moment where the injury occurred, just gradual increase of pain all of a sudden).

So now, its Monday (two days later) and I'm still limping around. Every step on my left foot is painful (especially in the heel). It's a deep pain inside the core of the heel. I can move my foot to a full range of motion with no pain or issue, but the trouble starts as soon as I put weight on my heel or foot.

So yeah, I guess I'm going to limit running until the pain subsides since two days of pain is still pretty acute. But I'm worried about this now, since I'm less than 3 weeks out from my mini-marathon race. My girlfriend thinks that it is plantar fasciitis, but I've never had this much pain in this area to this extent, so I'm not sure. Is this a common TMS type of thing that anyone is aware of? Probably best to give it a week or so to "heal", and if I'm still in pain than its probably TMS. Worst case scenario, maybe I can get a cortisone shot in order to run the race pain free and then just worry about long term solutions after the fact.

I was told as a kid when I played soccer that I was flat footed and should be wearing heel inserts (I was complaining to my parents about my feet hurting). But I ended up scrapping the inserts a long time ago, and honestly I haven't really had any issues since I was like 12 years old. So who knows, maybe TMS just finding old scars to open up or maybe a real overuse injury? Just wanted to get some thoughts on anyone who has experienced this.

 

TMS. Had it exactly with the same symptom and onset... I was working up 6 flights of stairs carrying monstrous amounts of tools up and down, when out of nowhere it felt like a nail was far up in my heel, but there was no surface pain or painor range of motion pain....just when I put weight on it. It went from annoying to really painful fast. Limping painful

2 days later,When I realized it was TMS I went back over the day it started..... The symptom started right after I told my sister NOT to be angry with my brother ...over something I was secretly angry about... so I went for a jog over a really uneven field wearing my workboots, all the while focusing on how angry at my brother I was....and the symptom went away.

Yes, it is that simple. But it's not easy

 

Thanks for the input, that sounds pretty identical to what I felt.

Yeah I'm pretty confident its TMS. As soon as I posted this, yesterday I went to the gym to lift weights and started getting sharp pain in the lower back that has been hanging around into today that I never really have any issues with.

The TMS has really been acting up lately and moving around. I'm not sure on the trigger really at the moment, but Friday was when I started to get some sharp body pains (which coincidentally also happened to be me and my girlfriend's 6 month anniversary dinner). I'm sure there is something going on there in my subconscious mind. As we all know, the primitive ID part of our brain can throw temper tantrums over stuff like relationships starting to get more serious, missing the single life, etc.

 

BLAM ! Homerun !!

I always base everything I ever say on the assumption that my experience is average....and after evaluating my own attempted incursions, what was going on in my life when I first got 'taken down' by TMS and by observing my friends and family... That is one of the Prime TMS causes. Relationship under currents of which we are not aware, or refuse to explore.

A lot of the unconscious benefits of playing the mating game get exposed for what they are.... Breed. Safety. Protect. Get along. Be a good guy or nobody will like me. Ignore all of the rage producing, modern "we're all the same' egalitarian BS that undermines men at every corner.
As I have become aware of each one it has lost it's power to distract, but the truths I have learned keep narrowing the road of sorts. It's hard to go back to playing unconscious mating games when you've been awake.

TMS has been a strange teacher. What you say is extraordinarily profound, but a lot of people are afraid to even entertain thoughts like that (which are essential for recovery) because there is a little voice that never sees the light of day which says "If I really held myself up to my highest ethics, I would NOT put up with this gals crap.... But I am lonely... this is bullshit...I'm in a trap!"

Most of the men I meet who have chronic pain have some sort of horrible guilt driven responsibility to a partner who is using and abusing the snot out of them and they haven't the juevos to walk away...sometimes it's useless dependent adult children.....same dynamic.

In "Healing Back Pain", Sarno talked about a guy who understood the principle of TMS, but was the center of a large dependent family and thought he was too old to unlearn all of the lifetime of ingrained thought and habit. I remember how crazy I thought that was... how could somebody understand what his problem is and not want to fix it?

20 plus years later... I totally get it.
Look at it now, while there's still a good reason to.!

peace

 

Yeah no kidding. I definitely have some soul searching to do I think. I would say on the surface we both get along great. We barely ever get in fights. I would say we have never been in a bad fight (I know that's a huge red flag for repressed rage and TMS lol).

But yeah I'm going to do some reflecting on anything that I could be repressing and in a rage about subconsciously that I need to allow to come to the surface. And it may be something dark and selfish by our societies standards like I wish I could still be single and date any girl I want or wish I was dating a super model, want more freedom, wish I could punch her sometimes, etc, etc

But anyways, I woke up this morning feeling better. I was walking with minimal pain, no limping. I did some practice jogs and felt good. I was confident that I was going to go out and run tonight and kick TMS's ass and put this pain behind me.

I got half a mile into the run and the pain was really ramping up, but I was still maintaining good pace and powering through. After 2 miles, the pain got to an agonizing level again. I was in intense pain, but I was able to finish 3 miles of running. But now the pain is agonizing again. I can't put pressure on my left foot at all without intense pain. It's a huge ordeal to even walk again.

So now all that doubt is creeping again. I went from 75 percent sure this is TMS to about 40 percent. I'm starting to think I should go get an x-ray and MRI just to rule out fractures or torn ligaments. But the other half of me is trying to stay strong and just keep running.

Pretty demoralizing to be in this much pain after the run, after I was feeling so much better. But yet again, I was able to run 3 miles (in agonizing pain), so could I really do that if something was damaged?

 

There is never anything damaged. Period. I have fought hard through 20+ years of this shit...and whichever thing I think I am 'hurting...maybe?' is unhurtable... or rather, the conventional attribution of pain to these normal aging things is wrong.Period. I am sure my arm tendons are shredded, but I throw pain free, without stretching or warming up.. I am sure my knees are torn and battered, but they only hurt when a new guy takes my place in the order and I have to be a 'nice guy' and pretend I am ok with it...It's ALWAYS the anger and never the 'thing I am fixated on'

..and of course conditioning and the Nocebo. Even listening to some other persons story of injury used to be enough to trigger a response in me in the exact same place. my unconscious isn't very creative.

I use my exercise time AS my TMS review time.

 

Oh yeah.. I have never gotten TMS from a clearly dysfunctional relationship... it's always when 'everything's fine'

 

Well, I broke down and booked an appointment with the orthopedic for tomorrow morning. I can't put any weight on left heel today without intense pain, and I'm limping around everywhere. The symptom is brand new to me (just started on Saturday), so I'm probably going to need some reassurance from x-rays, MRIs, that nothing is wrong for me to be able to accept this as TMS. But I will say that I am definitely reacting this situation in similar ways that I have in the past to TMS-related issues: stress, overthinking about the "injury", fear of not being able to run or worse not being able to run in my first min-marathon that I've been training for a year for.

I guess we will see what they tell me tomorrow.

 

Basically, my playbook is usually if I can't get over something by the simple "mind over matter" trick in a couple of days then I go to the doctor, get a diagnosis, and then see if its a real injury/condition or "injury" that has already been linked to TMS from Dr Sarno or Steve O's book.

 

So, x-rays were negative on the foot. The diagnosis from the ortho? Insertion Achilles Tendonitis. She gave me a boot to wear for two weeks, and says that normally she wouldn't recommend doing a half marathon right after this recovery period, but doesn't see much risk in doing this. She just says its going to hurt a lot when I do this race and after, so she recommends coming back for physical therapy excercises after the race.

So...now that I have the physical diagnosis, I can continue looking at the TMS approach. I wore the boot like she said for a couple of days, the foot feels much better. I went hunting over the weekend and walked up and down some pretty steep hills (with the boot) with minimal issues. I still feel the pain in the heel, but I can actually walk at a normal pace now without the excruciating pain that I was getting if I even thought about putting weight on the heel.

Now I'm at this crossroads, where I'm kind of 50 percent treating the "physical" symptoms and 50 percent treating the TMS, psychological symptoms. I'm happy that at least there isn't anything terribly wrong with my foot that I can damage by running. What I really want to do is just to say screw it and go for a run, keep just running through the pain. And then when I inevitably get the excruciating limp afterwards again, just to keep powering through and just run again the next day through the intense pain until I've effectively killed this TMS symptom for good.

I guess the worst case is that I just keep "aggravating" it and have a huge set back to where I can't handle the pain on race day and I have to walk most of the race in excruciating pain. That's literally the only thing I'm afraid of right now. I'm not worried about the pain in the moment, I just want to run my best race possible on race day.

I did some research on here, and found some old success stories of athletes who have treated achilles tendonitis with the TMS approach successfully, and even had some great success still in the running world. I haven't decided for sure what I will do next. Maybe I will just take the boot off and go on with my life like nothing is wrong. Maybe I will go for a short run tomorrow (feel the inevitable pain), then follow up with another run on Wednesday to prove to myself that I am strong enough to run through the pain. Maybe I'll hold off on running another week. Maybe, I really am injuried. I mean its only been a little over a week since the pain started. Decisions, decisions...