Need advice - big obstacle that I think I fully realized for first time today

I'm not saying that the neurologist you saw wasn't disbelieving you. However, what I will say about neurologists generally (from my extensive experience of them here in the UK) is that unlike a lot of doctors, they usually believe in mind/body issues and that the pain we experience is very real. However, their remit does not include getting involved in mind/body work, except in the case of Functional Neurological Disorder which is kind of similar to TMS (but does not usually involve the symptoms of hyperacusis) and so the majority of them don't want the hassle of telling patients what they believe is going on because most patients seeking their help are far from receptive to being told that their symptoms are 'psychogenic'/mind/body. (Indeed, before I believed that my symptoms were mind/body/TMS an enlightened chiropractor once wrote in a report to my GP (family doctor) that my symptoms were 'psychogenic', which made me very angry at the time, and I felt like punching him on the nose!)

 

I’m in the U.S., and ngl that makes sense but it just DOES feel like here a lot of ppl just won’t believe you if you tell them “the pain is real, but your brain is causing it” - most ppl are stuck either too far one way or the other instead (either thinking the pain is imaginary/not real, or it’s entirely body-related and means you’re broken)

 

I would imagine that most neurologists in the US would be like most neurologists here in the UK. However, putting neurologists aside, what most other people think - either to the one extreme or to the other extreme as you have described (which is the same in the UK as it is in the US) - is something that you personally need to reject and leave behind... because you are not imagining the pain (it's very real) and your body isn't broken when you are experiencing mind/body/TMS.