Miss Metta
Peer Supporter
Hi all
Recently I posted a question regarding TMS and weight-training, but I have doubts.
Recently I managed to recover from TMS leg pain after 18 months, and so I (elatedly and jubilantly) returned to swimming. There were a number of methods I used, a number of issues resolved, but I don't know which or what finally allowed me to go back in the water and not feel pain. (My dishy doctor had something to do with it by telling me that how could I possibly hurt myself swimming when there was no cause for my leg pain?). It was 2 weeks after that conversation that I tried swimming and found I was mostly pain free. So he might have had something to do with it.
So after 2 months of this, I decide to take up weight training again. I have not touched weights in 22 years (I am now 50). When I took up weights in my late 20's, I quickly developed all sorts of problems with creaky and unstable joints, lots of pain all over my body whenever I worked out. I saw many physical specialists who all said that I had hypermobility of the joints and that this was what caused these injuries/pain when lifting. Apparently hypermobility puts greater strain on tendons as there is nothing to 'hold' it all together and hence pain and greater risk of sprains strains and injuries in athletic pursuits. I tried many things but nothing worked and in the end, after 3 years, I despairingly gave up training.
Now that I know about TMS, I can look back at that time of my life and see absolutely for sure a number of huge, huge stressors going on (a divorce, having to go back to live with my mother which is highly toxic to me and kills my spirit, returning to school after 10 years, and being in love with someone who wasn't in love with me....). Some physical therapists recommended I quit weights and just do pilates (which admittedly helped with the instability of joints). I did this.
Armed with this knowledge, and new view of my past, and having overcome the pain for swimming, I decided to give weight training another go. However a month in, and I'm experiencing the same old problems that I did 22 years ago, and in the same locations. I keep telling myself that my motivations are different now, I'm taking care of myself now, not hating myself, and trying to change myself to fit into an ideal, and that this is TMS and its being tricky.
However what makes me feel a bit doubtful is that whereas with the swimming, what helped convince me it was TMS was that prior to the onset of pain, I had had many extended periods of time where there was no pain. So it was easier to accept TMS diagnosis.
But with weight training - and I have tried to revisit it several times in my life but always with the same old pain flaring up, -I cannot claim that I have had any period of time other than a few weeks without pain issues. The few weeks where I was relatively pain-free in the beginning were always just a build up of strain.
I refuse to get 'checked out' because I know what the structural diagnosis will be because the sites of pain and the type of pain is exactly as it was in my 20's. They will again say I have hypermobility and not to lift weights. But I love weights which is why I keep trying! Plus when the swimming pain came up 18 months ago, I got MRI'd and examined again.
So to the title of my post: is TMS hijacking my history? That is, because my subconscious knows that I have never been able to experience the pleasure of lifting weights for more than a short time before winding up in pain, is it tricking me into believing this is really a physical structural issue? I'm tending toward believing that since I've never experienced anything else, that I do have a structural problem that makes weight lifting painful for me.
Interestingly today as well as the burning in my arm and shoulder and elbow that's come on there was also some pain my ankle region around where I used to get the pain associated with swimming. I told it it really was being very silly trying to pull that one, since there was no way my ankle had done anything to do with weight training. The ankle pain gave up and went away, but the arm and shoulder pain - which feels like strain, not normal muscle soreness- remains.
How can I approach this ? So hard to tell do I really have an issue, am I overtraining, or is it TMS playing me?
thanks all
Metta
Recently I posted a question regarding TMS and weight-training, but I have doubts.
Recently I managed to recover from TMS leg pain after 18 months, and so I (elatedly and jubilantly) returned to swimming. There were a number of methods I used, a number of issues resolved, but I don't know which or what finally allowed me to go back in the water and not feel pain. (My dishy doctor had something to do with it by telling me that how could I possibly hurt myself swimming when there was no cause for my leg pain?). It was 2 weeks after that conversation that I tried swimming and found I was mostly pain free. So he might have had something to do with it.
So after 2 months of this, I decide to take up weight training again. I have not touched weights in 22 years (I am now 50). When I took up weights in my late 20's, I quickly developed all sorts of problems with creaky and unstable joints, lots of pain all over my body whenever I worked out. I saw many physical specialists who all said that I had hypermobility of the joints and that this was what caused these injuries/pain when lifting. Apparently hypermobility puts greater strain on tendons as there is nothing to 'hold' it all together and hence pain and greater risk of sprains strains and injuries in athletic pursuits. I tried many things but nothing worked and in the end, after 3 years, I despairingly gave up training.
Now that I know about TMS, I can look back at that time of my life and see absolutely for sure a number of huge, huge stressors going on (a divorce, having to go back to live with my mother which is highly toxic to me and kills my spirit, returning to school after 10 years, and being in love with someone who wasn't in love with me....). Some physical therapists recommended I quit weights and just do pilates (which admittedly helped with the instability of joints). I did this.
Armed with this knowledge, and new view of my past, and having overcome the pain for swimming, I decided to give weight training another go. However a month in, and I'm experiencing the same old problems that I did 22 years ago, and in the same locations. I keep telling myself that my motivations are different now, I'm taking care of myself now, not hating myself, and trying to change myself to fit into an ideal, and that this is TMS and its being tricky.
However what makes me feel a bit doubtful is that whereas with the swimming, what helped convince me it was TMS was that prior to the onset of pain, I had had many extended periods of time where there was no pain. So it was easier to accept TMS diagnosis.
But with weight training - and I have tried to revisit it several times in my life but always with the same old pain flaring up, -I cannot claim that I have had any period of time other than a few weeks without pain issues. The few weeks where I was relatively pain-free in the beginning were always just a build up of strain.
I refuse to get 'checked out' because I know what the structural diagnosis will be because the sites of pain and the type of pain is exactly as it was in my 20's. They will again say I have hypermobility and not to lift weights. But I love weights which is why I keep trying! Plus when the swimming pain came up 18 months ago, I got MRI'd and examined again.
So to the title of my post: is TMS hijacking my history? That is, because my subconscious knows that I have never been able to experience the pleasure of lifting weights for more than a short time before winding up in pain, is it tricking me into believing this is really a physical structural issue? I'm tending toward believing that since I've never experienced anything else, that I do have a structural problem that makes weight lifting painful for me.
Interestingly today as well as the burning in my arm and shoulder and elbow that's come on there was also some pain my ankle region around where I used to get the pain associated with swimming. I told it it really was being very silly trying to pull that one, since there was no way my ankle had done anything to do with weight training. The ankle pain gave up and went away, but the arm and shoulder pain - which feels like strain, not normal muscle soreness- remains.
How can I approach this ? So hard to tell do I really have an issue, am I overtraining, or is it TMS playing me?
thanks all
Metta