Once you discover you have TMS, it's something of a rollercoaster, as I'm sure many of you can relate. Learning the pain is not physical but emotional in nature is both refreshing and scary at the same time. It's refreshing for obvious reasons, but it's scary because it suggests you can't keep dodging some pretty big issues that are going on inside your head. I spent the last week going up and down with my moods, as I tried to figure out the root cause of it all. It turns out there's a big fat elephant in the room - my anxiety.
What I've managed so far is that I can largely control my daytime TMS symptoms. When they come, they don't bother me. I can sit for as long as I want, and if my back pain comes, I pay no attention to it and instead focus on what I actually sat down to do.
I think there may have been some repressed anger in there, which was the first emotion to come out. I also think that I've been putting a huge amount of pressure on myself, which hasn't helped. But the reason the pressure has been so dangerous is because it sets off my anxiety. On and off, over the last 10 years or so, I have had pit-of-the-stomach anxiety in response to particular situations. Sometimes they are situations I can explain, but most of the time it comes on for no reason I can rationally explain. When I get worried, I don't always feel it this way, but sometimes I do. Initially it came on because of feelings about my relationship, but since my brain developed the habit of producing this feeling, it began to come on through lots of other worries too. This feeling started up again last year when my back pain was creeping back. It's interesting to note that as I'm writing about this fear, the back pain I had several minutes ago is fading.
The real reason I reached out over my back pain was the way it affects me at night. It's been about an 18 month battle so far as I try to get a clear night when I don't wake up the next morning in pain. I get pain-free nights when I sleep on my sofa, but not on my bed, and the pain gets worse the more consecutive nights I sleep on the bed for.
I can control my daytime pain, but obviously, I can't do much about it at night when I'm asleep, which is my subconscious throwing a fit and creating tension that I feel on waking. It doesn't usually wake me up in the middle of the night, and I have no problem getting to sleep. But after several nights on the bed, I will wake at around 4am very uncomfortable.
So, I need to know what I should focus on. I think my anxiety needs to be the next thing I go after, but where to begin? Some people suggested Dr Claire Weekes' work, which I've had a listen to but doesn't really seem to be targeted at my kind of anxiety. I get the 'acceptance' thing, and the 'float' phenomenon (personally, I used to say to myself that 'anxiety dies if you don't feed it' as a way of reminding myself not to think about it or wonder where it's coming from) but it doesn't feel like it's talking in the way I need it to.
This isn't really a question, I know. I just wondered if it might get some thoughts from others on here.
What I've managed so far is that I can largely control my daytime TMS symptoms. When they come, they don't bother me. I can sit for as long as I want, and if my back pain comes, I pay no attention to it and instead focus on what I actually sat down to do.
I think there may have been some repressed anger in there, which was the first emotion to come out. I also think that I've been putting a huge amount of pressure on myself, which hasn't helped. But the reason the pressure has been so dangerous is because it sets off my anxiety. On and off, over the last 10 years or so, I have had pit-of-the-stomach anxiety in response to particular situations. Sometimes they are situations I can explain, but most of the time it comes on for no reason I can rationally explain. When I get worried, I don't always feel it this way, but sometimes I do. Initially it came on because of feelings about my relationship, but since my brain developed the habit of producing this feeling, it began to come on through lots of other worries too. This feeling started up again last year when my back pain was creeping back. It's interesting to note that as I'm writing about this fear, the back pain I had several minutes ago is fading.
The real reason I reached out over my back pain was the way it affects me at night. It's been about an 18 month battle so far as I try to get a clear night when I don't wake up the next morning in pain. I get pain-free nights when I sleep on my sofa, but not on my bed, and the pain gets worse the more consecutive nights I sleep on the bed for.
I can control my daytime pain, but obviously, I can't do much about it at night when I'm asleep, which is my subconscious throwing a fit and creating tension that I feel on waking. It doesn't usually wake me up in the middle of the night, and I have no problem getting to sleep. But after several nights on the bed, I will wake at around 4am very uncomfortable.
So, I need to know what I should focus on. I think my anxiety needs to be the next thing I go after, but where to begin? Some people suggested Dr Claire Weekes' work, which I've had a listen to but doesn't really seem to be targeted at my kind of anxiety. I get the 'acceptance' thing, and the 'float' phenomenon (personally, I used to say to myself that 'anxiety dies if you don't feed it' as a way of reminding myself not to think about it or wonder where it's coming from) but it doesn't feel like it's talking in the way I need it to.
This isn't really a question, I know. I just wondered if it might get some thoughts from others on here.
