Looking for support and guidance...

I will start off with how this began in the hope that one day if someone else experiences the same problem it may help them. To be honest I am also looking for a way to journal my experience and vent some of the frustration I feel and have felt, all year.

At the start of this year I was diagnosed with a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) the first one I have ever had and I am a 24 year old female. After taking antibiotics the feeling of irritation and discomfort remained. I work in the medical field so instantly feared the worst when the feeling did not subside. I googled my symptoms and after discovering "Interstitial Cystitis" I self diagnosed and spent months extremely anxious, monitoring every symptom I felt. My symptoms worsened and got so bad I ended up in the emergency department praying someone would help me. I did not want to have a cystoscopy as I feared it would do more damage. I lived in constant sorrow agonizing over my "damaged" bladder, imagining my future of not being able to have children, being in pain etc. I obsessed over the IC forums, looking, searching for anything and spent thousands on supplements with no relief. I obsessed over the symptoms I was feeling and spent many days which I would normally enjoy out in nature or socialising in bed with a heat pack between my thighs in constant awareness of my symptoms and researching the 100th supplement to help the pain.

I began to feel violated and victimized by this pain I was feeling. A lot of women describe pelvic pain as the worst fate a female can have, I believe this is because it interrupts our sacred feminine energy and you feel almost punished. It makes you feel unattractive, scared and useless. I was beyond petrified of this "disease" progressing but tried to hide my fear from my family and especially my partner. I feared everyone thought I was crazy. I felt resentment to everyone around me and felt a lot of the time like I was living in a different dimension where it was only me alone with my fear. I guess my worst fear was being consumed with this and not having the life I had always dreamed of. Becoming consumed by fear at such a young age.

So after months of supplements, obsessing and completely isolating myself I started taking magnesium and my symptoms vanished. I thought this was strange so I looked into it more. I believe the magnesium actually relaxed my nervous system not my bladder. I lived pain free not giving a thought to this condition for over 6 months.

I am about to graduate from University after 4 extremely stressful years of a Registered Nursing degree, I am not sure if I will secure a job, I have recently moved house and my body image continues to worsen despite always being told I am beautiful by people around me. With all of this one day a week ago my symptoms returned, constant burning, occasional stabbing pains in pelvis, feeling of discomfort. I did a meditation and asked my body what it was trying to tell me and what did it really want. I was told that the symptoms are stress related.

When I look back, for the last two years I have had one symptom or another. Be it rib inflammation (thought it would never go away became extremely anxious) to stomach pain (thought I had crohn's) People often say that Nursing students have hypochondria and laugh it off. This is extremely distressing and I've had enough. I think i've exhausted myself to the point where I dont even care any more if I do have a chronic disease.

I think the hijacking of a human body into a diseased state is what terrifies me the most. I see it as being paralysed, as in your mind is completely free and healthy yet you are trapped inside a diseased body. I know this is a negative and fearful mindset and i'm willing to change and re think my perception of chronic illness. Not just to help myself but also my future patients. After reading about TMS I know this is what I have. Does anybody know if health anxiety can be directly related to TMS? I want my inner child back, the peaceful child who laughed and played without a care in the world. I am sick of living in a state of constant fear. My life is wonderful in comparison to others less fortunate so I feel guilty for being so consumed by my own fear. My father also has Multiple Sclerosis and I love him more than anything in the world. I believe my health anxiety is subconsciously linked to his condition.

Hoping this forum will offer support and that I can support others through this difficult but most likely transformative time. I see it as an opportunity to re-haul my whole life and thinking process and come out healthier and happier on the other side!

 

Hi, Lana. You discovered magnesium and it solved your urinary problem, but it has come back and probably because you need to work on TMS, that some emotions are causing the pain. I suggest you start the Structured Educational Program, free in the subforum of this web site, which will help you to discover any emotions causing pain.

Meanwhile, I think you should read Healing Back Pain (and other pain) by Dr. Sarno. In it, he lists 12 Daily Reminders about TMS. Here is an extended version I like, by another member of this TMS community:


Herbie’s Extended Version of Dr. Sarno’s 12 DAILY REMINDERS

1. The pain is due to TMS. This is real pain or anxiety but it is caused by subconscious tensions and triggers, stressors and traits to your reactions and fears and also when at boiling point your conscious tension can and does also cause real pain.
2. The main reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. This means that when you get in pain or anxiety then the blood is restricted from going to your lower back, for instance. The blood being restricted causes oxygen deprivation which causes the pain. Remember, where there is no oxygen then there is pain in the body. Also, the pain stays because of fear.
3. TMS is a harmless condition caused by my REPRESSED EMOTIONS so even though you think you can harm yourself from the years of pain you have felt and how you feel in general -- so far no reports have been heard from TMS healing knowledge causing damage to anyone, it only helps.
4. The principle emotion is your repressed ANGER -- this means under your consciousness lies something that happens automatically to everyone. TMSers have repressions that are stored because of our personality traits, traumas, stressors, fears, strain, etc... When these stored repressions build and build, then eventually they cause the brain to send pain into your body to keep you from having an emotional crises. The mind-body thinks it is helping you.
5. TMS exists to DISTRACT your attentions from the emotions, stressors, tensions and strains of your personality traits because if you can get distraction then you won’t have to be in emotional turmoil. When you don't face and feel your emotions and they get repressed because you didn't want to deal with something -- they are just adding up in this beaker, ready to pour over and create real pain and anxiety in your body.
6. Since my body is perfectly normal, there is nothing to fear. So in reality when I fear the pain or anxiety I just cause myself undo strain and tension adding to the beaker of pain. If I fear, then I feed the pain, If I fear, it’s impossible to recondition. Fear keeps the pain and anxiety alive in the body through focus.
7. Therefore, physical activity is harmless. If I want to work against the pain I could but it’s better to lose some of the pain so when I start my life over I have to be in pain trying to heal because facing the repressions and all the other activities that cause the pain and reversing my fear and focus to them, then I can heal.
8. I am resuming all normal physical activity. I don't fear moving anymore. I believe in my body’s ability to heal now. I can move as I want. I will not fear moving with a bent back anymore. I will also practice going out and acting normal again, not in fear of what pain might do to me.
9. The pain is unimportant and powerless. Its only power is how it is hidden -- its illusion, its fear.
10. I will keep my attention on the emotional issues. I will think about my emotions and feel my emotions throughout the day. I will not judge, criticize or fear my emotions. I will not run from my emotional issues but face every one of them. I will feel my emotions fully and cry if I need to. Then I will release the emotion and get my mind and thoughts back to my life and living in the present.
11. I am in control of all of this. This is how I recover.
12. I will be thinking PSYCHOLOGICALLY AT ALL TIMES. This means I will keep my thoughts on psychological issues like happiness, fear and anger -- traits and triggers, conditioning and journaling -- The science behind mind-body/TMS healing, etc.... This way I will not feed my thoughts to the body -- that is a trick of TMS. TMS will always try to get me to focus on the body caused by the pain until I break its show and flair. When I get my attention off physical symptoms and on to emotional issues and psychological issues then I will not feed the fear of the physical issues anymore, thus making the TMS of no pain effect on the body. This will in return, give us the cure and become pain-free.

 

Lana, welcome to our forum! Your story is very affecting, and it's one we've seen many times, in many different forms. You've come to the right place for a supportive community of individuals who have recognized that our symptoms are not going to be cured by traditional Western medical practices.

And by the way, give yourself a TON of credit for figuring this out so early in your life! Imagine being able to raise children with this awareness - that's really exciting to me, because I was 60 when I discovered Dr. Sarno and turned my life around.

To answer your question, most of us who've been doing this work for a while know (as Dr. Sarno began to tell us in his later works) that anxiety, and depression, are both TMS equivalents.

We see a LOT of health anxiety here - I've been doing this for five years, and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that TMS and health anxiety are connected.

Walt gave you good advice about starting the SEP, and reading Dr. Sarno. You might also benefit from reading a very small book that has helped I don't know how many thousands of people since it was written it the 1960s - it's Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Dr. Claire Weekes. It's a quick read, the concepts are easy to comprehend and put into practice, and Dr. Weekes herself is so caring and comforting, she will make you believe that you can get through this. The book is easy to find, and there are also lots of videos of Dr. Weekes on YouTube.

As you are a new medical professional who wants to help others with this puzzle that is the mind-body interconnection, I highly recommend When The Body Says No, by Dr. Gabor Mate, MD. That particular book blew my mind - Dr. Mate goes way beyond Dr. Sarno - he's pretty radical, in fact.

I also recommend the movie, The Connection, which is all about the power of our minds to heal our bodies.

There are so many different things to read, and so many different ways to do this work, that it can be a bit overwhelming, but the nice thing about the SEP is that it introduces you to different resources and activities, especially writing exercises - so you can figure out what works for you.

However, I discovered that a vital key to doing this work is that you must have self-acceptance and self-love. Here's the thing: you need to love yourself enough that you know in your heart that you deserve to recover.

So my initial prescription for you right now is this: love yourself for being here, and for being willing to take on a whole new way of looking at your life and your health.

Keep us posted, Lana!

~Jan

 

Thanks so much Walt - this does make sense to me and further solidifies the fact that this is not a physical ailment but a mental one. I will print off these 12 things to remember and follow them as best I can.

Thank you Jan for your positive words, I already looked at Dr. Clare Weekes material online last night. I believe she will really help me I resonate with her concepts and her views that anxiety is actually triggered causing the person to live in an over sensitive state. This is how I feel. It is so much more empowering to know I have the power to heal from this and that it all comes from within. I have had countless doctors appointments where in the end I have left feeling embarrassed and angry. I was prescribed strong medication, offered antidepressants and sedatives yet none of the doctors gave me even a shred of emotional consolidation. So now I can see why my symptoms worsened - because my fear increased. I wonder how many of those poor women on the Interstitial Cystitis forums would benefit from discovering a Mind-Body approach. After being told time and time again that they are "crazy" and to "get on with it". Wow five years! you must be very well versed on the subject then and I am assuming from this that you have found remission from your pain, how amazing!

I will keep you posted!

Love, Lana

 

Lana, I've been an anxiety hog since birth (I realized when I started journaling back in 2011) and what I would tell you about my success is that now I have a very different relationship with my anxiety, and with TMS symptoms if and when they crop up. Yes, I've banished a lot of them, but I think the most important difference is that they don't frighten me anymore, because I recognize them for what they are.

The majority of my worst symptoms are gone - like chronic neck pain that I'd had for twenty years, digestive problems and disabling "5-ibuprofen" headaches that I'd had frequently off and on all my life, and more often after age 40. I also had a lot of neuro symptoms during my lowest point before I discovered Dr. Sarno. In the summer of 2011 I was in serious danger of becoming house-bound, but that fall I totally got my life back after discovering Dr. Sarno and this community.

I still get vague dizziness when I'm stressed, but I don't notice it if I'm distracted by other things. If I get a pain symptom (I sometimes get shoulder or arm pain now) I ignore it, or work through it, or if it continues, I have to stop and do some journaling and some mindful meditation to figure out what's going on, and eventually it goes away on its own. What really cracks me up is that in 2015 I had a bout of pain in my left shoulder for a couple of months. Earlier this year I had a different type of pain in my right shoulder. Neither was precipitated by anything I remember doing. My trainer at the gym (who specializes in us over-50s) was not too concerned, and worked on developing my deltoids a bit more and strengthening my rotator cuffs, while I worked on recognizing the pain as a TMS distraction and visualizing what was going on in my brain.

Because I still get stressed, and my nervous system still goes into overdrive, I guess I have to say that I still have anxiety, but I truly haven't had a panic or depression attack since the fall of 2011, which is awesome. So the physical effects still show up, but the disabling mental effects are gone.

I'm still working on the negative self-talk, but I'm a lot more aware of it now, so it has less power over me.

That's my story, and I hope you'll be posting yours some day!

~Jan