Need encouragement and ideas

Hi All, Its now been 2 months since i have recognized the TMS beast. Before then, I was in pain always and had RSI symptoms always. Now i know what this TMS is and I laugh and get angry at this bully. My cause or triggers are anxiety and fear. Ever since I have become fearless my RSI symptoms have gone mostly all when I am at home..LOL but none at work. I know i don't like my job. Previously my symptoms were always worst at work and better at home, so now I am having success at managing my fear and pain symptoms at home but not much at work. I am conditioned, work typing siting at my desk brings pains. I am able to see my fear and not be amidst it when I am outside work but why do I get trapped by TMS at work...??? I need encouragement, ideas, articles to read ...please provide me any source of information and help that you can !!

 

It sounds like you need to decondition at work. Unhooking the fear first is a good idea - thinking about how this doesn't happen to you at home, and so it doesn't make sense and isn't anything to worry about here either.

You might find other RSI success stories helpful, maybe even mine which you can find on the SEP Day 11 (http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Educational_Program_Day_11).

 

Thank you for your story! I have RSI type symptoms, too, and it can be so frustrating! I know there are emotional issues, but did you find for yourself that you had deconditioning in your muscles from avoidance of use? I hear crackling noises in my shoulder blades...I have upper body weakness. Also, from being in my head so much--being an achievement oriented intellectual--I don't have much body awareness. And I feel like I'm always in fight-flight mode and have chronic muscle tension, which then aggravates my pain.

 

Hi, shemps. I know about pain while working in a job I hated. I was a magazine editor for a major auto insurance compan, and while I liked the work, I hated the company. I put up with it for three years until it gave me the shakes, so I quit. I became a fulltime freelance writer and am still at it after 40 years.

I don't recommend quitting a job before getting another one, but you might give it some thought. Meanwhile, try to enjoy life after work and on weekends. Maybe do something creative that you'd like to do fulltime but realistically could only do in your spare time.

It seems to me that you associate work with pain, and that has created a conditioned reflect. You may be very unhappy at work,
but your pain (seems to me) is TMS, repressed emotions that may very well go back to your childhood. I began having severe back pain two years ago and thought it was structural, something heavy I had lifted. The pain led me to learn about Dr. Sarno and TMS, and long story short, learned that I had been repressing anger and feelings of abandonment and insecurity after my parents
divorced when I was 7. It led me to understand them better and to forgive them, and then my back pain went away.

I too urge you to take the Structural Education Program in that subforum. It is a program of daily practices that has helped a great many people, me included, to heal from TMS pain. It's a fantastic journey of self-discovery.

Good luck and keep posting.

 

shmps, it might just be your unconscious response to disliking your job. I have some symptoms that seem to be RSI so I find myself trying to limit my time at the computer when in reality, that may not be doing a darn thing to help me. We are, however, conditioned over time to think structural and that is where TMS parts ways with traditional medicine.

 

@Barb M. no, I didn't find that I was deconditioned in my arms or even in my upper body (which still tends to be tense and sore, milder everyday TMS but it doesn't interfere with normal life). I got back to normal activity very quickly. I think the notion that our arms become deconditioned is from the structural RSI camp, that "a keyboarder is an athlete of the small muscles" stuff. I mean, I wasn't pumping iron or anything, but I was able to get back to household tasks and regular work schedule very quickly, and I must have packed myself up and moved just a few months later too.

Don't believe the RSI - you're fine

 

Thanks everyone for writing. I have no doubts that its TMS !! I have RSI symptoms brought by TMS but I don't have any RSI (muscular or tissue problem). I don't think limiting myself with computer use will help. What will help is believing and believing 100% that I am safe and have nothing to worry. This is how i took care of my inner child at home but at work the TMS bully seems to be winning. And thats where i need to work.

Thanks again !!!

 

Shmps, tell your Inner Bully to go to the movies while you're at work.
You really are safe, at work and at home.

 

True walt !!!!