Birdie
Peer Supporter
Hello everybody,
I'm new at this forum and want to introduce myself! First of all: I'm sorry for my very poor English, I hope you will understand me (I'm from Germany and TMS is unknown here).
A few days ago I found some interesting text in the Internet from Dr. Sarno and by reading it I thought “oh my God, this could be me”! Of course there are many doubts whether it's really TMS, but it sounds logical to me!
Since adolescence I'm afflicted with lots of symptoms, most of them being chronic.
Recently I ordered Sarnos book “Healing back pain…” (of course in German, otherwise it would take me ages to read) and was a bit irritated about some things he wrote concerning the muscles being ONLY afflicted by TMS. He subscribed the back (lower back), the neck, the shoulders and the gluteal region to be afflicted by TMS because of having a higher percentage of “tonus fibres”.
Therefore my question: could it also be TMS if there are mainly ore only other muscles afflicted such as arms, legs, hips? Ok, I have also aches in me left buttocks as described by Sarno, but no lower back pain or pain in other parts of the back.
The other thing I’m doubtful about: Sarno writes about Trigger Points. And he also talks about trigger points concerning fibromyalgia. I often noticed a synonyme use from “trigger points” and “tender points” in the literature, but there are important differences. Trigger points are clearly palpable, there is a typical “referred” pain and a “jump sign” pushing then; they mostly get better or disappear (at least short-term) massaging them (they’ve been described mainly by Travell/Simons). Tender points are also very aching, but getting not better after treating them physically nor are they palpable…
So I ask me if Sarno is talking about the trigger points as described by Travell/Simons or in fact tender points which are typically in fibromyalgia (but calling them trigger points). In the case of fibromyalgia there are often both conditions: tender points and co-existing trigger points (a very helpful article to differ tender from triggerpoints, unfortunately from a very physiological point of view: http://homepages.sover.net/~devstar/TrPs_and_TPs.pdf)
And this leads me to a further question: are TMS and “myofascial pain syndrome” (defined as triggerpoints in several different parts of the body) the same phenomenon, only the reasons took as a basis were different? Travell/Simons proposed mainly physical reasons as “muscular imbalances” or injuries while Sarno proposes unconscious feelings and, as a reason, aches produced by “mild oxygen depreivation”? What do you think about this? I’d be very, very interested in your opinion (preconditioned somebody understood my funny English J ).
Ok, now some short information about me: I’m a 34 years old female from Germany, diagnosed with “somatoform pain disorder” and “myofascial pain syndrome”, what a surprise
.
My “pain-career” started when I moved out home with 18 years. After a year I began suffering from terrible heel-pain, neither related to plantarfascitis or heelspur (I meanwhile know this sort of pain, it feels quite different) nor to m. Bechterew or other causes. It appears while standing or walking, getting better while lying down or sitting or reducing pressure by wearing cushioned insoles. I have Metatarsalgia too since childhood and sustained several fatigue-fractures (splayfeet + osteopenia due to defiency of Vit d3). Walking barfoot is causing hematoma along the hole sole of foot. My subcutaneous tissue feels too thin and too soft, feels like walking on my bones without any cushioning when I walk. A very, very painful condition! MRT showed mild inflammation, fibrosis and herniation of the subcutaneous soft tissue, but nobody had a good explanation therefore. I think my psyche activated some stress-induced processes which afflicted my soft tissue. I don’t think it’s a hazard that the foot-pain occurred when I moved from home. I relate my feet for “independence” and “self-dependence” and that’s exactly where my main-problem is!
Do you consider this theory as possible? Or perhaps: what else could cause this "mysterious" condition in my feet?
So for about 16 years I can’t stand longer than 10 minutes and can’t walk more than about 1/ 4. mile. My legmuscles are shortened and atrophied, I think my grandma is much more fitter than me...
But then, with writing my doctor-thesis, everything got worse (I couldn't believe this was possible). Since that I wished I had “only” my footpain.
It started with a “normal” tendovaginitis in both hands. I had not written for a long time and then suddenly wrote about 40 pages a day. But, even after a few weeks of pausing, the pain didn’t disappear. Both forearms and upsides of my hands felt burning and tensed. The physio told me to stretch my arms, but stretching worsened the pain. In order to continue with my doctor thesis I bought “dragon-speech”; but it doesn’t really work for that, too many foreign words. So I started to dictate the text to my husband; poor husband!
One year later, I spent 8 hours on an ale-bench and next day 8 hours on a very uncomfortable chair in the auditorium. I noticed strong pain in my right buttocks down to my leg. After several month of severe pain in both arms (couldn’t write) and in my buttocks (couldn’t sit for an hour) I decided to give up my try for the doctor-thesis. But the pain remained!
I admit to the fact that dealing with this thesis stressed myself out nearly to the maxiumum (I'm an anxious and very perfectionistic, pessimistic person, perfect condition to TMS, isn't it?)
The doctor found lots of trigger points, most of them in the piriformis and the gluteus-muscels. Self-massage worsened the triggerpoints, but dry-needling helped a lot to ease-up the situation, meanwhile I’m able to site for some hours painfree (but for a person being not able to spend much time on my feet thats really worst case). But: sitting for a longer time is still impossible and I still suffer from pain in both arms. In the meantime I also suffer from a chronic epicondylitis, a “runners-knee”, a “jumpers-knee”, "plantar-fasciitis (over and above the mysterous heel-pain), shin-splints and so on. Unfortunately there’s not “only” pain, my elbow is swollen and the ultrasound showed joint bruise. Ignoring the pain wasn’t successful as the swelling got worse (rheumatismm was excluded).
So I’m sitting here, unable to work or to live a normal live. Nearly every spare time activity is causing pain and, that’s disturbing me very much, swelling and inflammation. If it was “only” pain I’d perhaps be able to do some normal activity; but every try resulted in the increasing of inflammation. So what should I do?
Some more information: I do psychoanalysis for 8 years now, without any improvement concerning the muscle and tendon-pain! I guess my sticking point has something to do with not being self-dependend. Problems flare-up in situations relating to "stand on ones own feet"
As long as I can remeber I suffer from feelings of abandonment (my mother died a few weeks after my birh and after 1 year I lost my fostermother, inbetween there were two long stays in the clinic). And thats only the tip of the iceberg.
The only thing that helps for a short time is massage and muscle relaxans, but it doesn’t last. One trigger disappeared, the next goes up! One to nothing for the trigger-points, I throw in the towel.
Ok, this was a very long self-introduction, thanks for reading and sorry for the mistakes, I didn’t reread…
Best wishes,
Birdie
I'm new at this forum and want to introduce myself! First of all: I'm sorry for my very poor English, I hope you will understand me (I'm from Germany and TMS is unknown here).
A few days ago I found some interesting text in the Internet from Dr. Sarno and by reading it I thought “oh my God, this could be me”! Of course there are many doubts whether it's really TMS, but it sounds logical to me!
Since adolescence I'm afflicted with lots of symptoms, most of them being chronic.
Recently I ordered Sarnos book “Healing back pain…” (of course in German, otherwise it would take me ages to read) and was a bit irritated about some things he wrote concerning the muscles being ONLY afflicted by TMS. He subscribed the back (lower back), the neck, the shoulders and the gluteal region to be afflicted by TMS because of having a higher percentage of “tonus fibres”.
Therefore my question: could it also be TMS if there are mainly ore only other muscles afflicted such as arms, legs, hips? Ok, I have also aches in me left buttocks as described by Sarno, but no lower back pain or pain in other parts of the back.
The other thing I’m doubtful about: Sarno writes about Trigger Points. And he also talks about trigger points concerning fibromyalgia. I often noticed a synonyme use from “trigger points” and “tender points” in the literature, but there are important differences. Trigger points are clearly palpable, there is a typical “referred” pain and a “jump sign” pushing then; they mostly get better or disappear (at least short-term) massaging them (they’ve been described mainly by Travell/Simons). Tender points are also very aching, but getting not better after treating them physically nor are they palpable…
So I ask me if Sarno is talking about the trigger points as described by Travell/Simons or in fact tender points which are typically in fibromyalgia (but calling them trigger points). In the case of fibromyalgia there are often both conditions: tender points and co-existing trigger points (a very helpful article to differ tender from triggerpoints, unfortunately from a very physiological point of view: http://homepages.sover.net/~devstar/TrPs_and_TPs.pdf)
And this leads me to a further question: are TMS and “myofascial pain syndrome” (defined as triggerpoints in several different parts of the body) the same phenomenon, only the reasons took as a basis were different? Travell/Simons proposed mainly physical reasons as “muscular imbalances” or injuries while Sarno proposes unconscious feelings and, as a reason, aches produced by “mild oxygen depreivation”? What do you think about this? I’d be very, very interested in your opinion (preconditioned somebody understood my funny English J ).
Ok, now some short information about me: I’m a 34 years old female from Germany, diagnosed with “somatoform pain disorder” and “myofascial pain syndrome”, what a surprise
.My “pain-career” started when I moved out home with 18 years. After a year I began suffering from terrible heel-pain, neither related to plantarfascitis or heelspur (I meanwhile know this sort of pain, it feels quite different) nor to m. Bechterew or other causes. It appears while standing or walking, getting better while lying down or sitting or reducing pressure by wearing cushioned insoles. I have Metatarsalgia too since childhood and sustained several fatigue-fractures (splayfeet + osteopenia due to defiency of Vit d3). Walking barfoot is causing hematoma along the hole sole of foot. My subcutaneous tissue feels too thin and too soft, feels like walking on my bones without any cushioning when I walk. A very, very painful condition! MRT showed mild inflammation, fibrosis and herniation of the subcutaneous soft tissue, but nobody had a good explanation therefore. I think my psyche activated some stress-induced processes which afflicted my soft tissue. I don’t think it’s a hazard that the foot-pain occurred when I moved from home. I relate my feet for “independence” and “self-dependence” and that’s exactly where my main-problem is!
Do you consider this theory as possible? Or perhaps: what else could cause this "mysterious" condition in my feet?
So for about 16 years I can’t stand longer than 10 minutes and can’t walk more than about 1/ 4. mile. My legmuscles are shortened and atrophied, I think my grandma is much more fitter than me...
But then, with writing my doctor-thesis, everything got worse (I couldn't believe this was possible). Since that I wished I had “only” my footpain.
It started with a “normal” tendovaginitis in both hands. I had not written for a long time and then suddenly wrote about 40 pages a day. But, even after a few weeks of pausing, the pain didn’t disappear. Both forearms and upsides of my hands felt burning and tensed. The physio told me to stretch my arms, but stretching worsened the pain. In order to continue with my doctor thesis I bought “dragon-speech”; but it doesn’t really work for that, too many foreign words. So I started to dictate the text to my husband; poor husband!
One year later, I spent 8 hours on an ale-bench and next day 8 hours on a very uncomfortable chair in the auditorium. I noticed strong pain in my right buttocks down to my leg. After several month of severe pain in both arms (couldn’t write) and in my buttocks (couldn’t sit for an hour) I decided to give up my try for the doctor-thesis. But the pain remained!
I admit to the fact that dealing with this thesis stressed myself out nearly to the maxiumum (I'm an anxious and very perfectionistic, pessimistic person, perfect condition to TMS, isn't it
?) The doctor found lots of trigger points, most of them in the piriformis and the gluteus-muscels. Self-massage worsened the triggerpoints, but dry-needling helped a lot to ease-up the situation, meanwhile I’m able to site for some hours painfree (but for a person being not able to spend much time on my feet thats really worst case). But: sitting for a longer time is still impossible and I still suffer from pain in both arms. In the meantime I also suffer from a chronic epicondylitis, a “runners-knee”, a “jumpers-knee”, "plantar-fasciitis (over and above the mysterous heel-pain), shin-splints and so on. Unfortunately there’s not “only” pain, my elbow is swollen and the ultrasound showed joint bruise. Ignoring the pain wasn’t successful as the swelling got worse (rheumatismm was excluded).
So I’m sitting here, unable to work or to live a normal live. Nearly every spare time activity is causing pain and, that’s disturbing me very much, swelling and inflammation. If it was “only” pain I’d perhaps be able to do some normal activity; but every try resulted in the increasing of inflammation. So what should I do?
Some more information: I do psychoanalysis for 8 years now, without any improvement concerning the muscle and tendon-pain! I guess my sticking point has something to do with not being self-dependend. Problems flare-up in situations relating to "stand on ones own feet"
As long as I can remeber I suffer from feelings of abandonment (my mother died a few weeks after my birh and after 1 year I lost my fostermother, inbetween there were two long stays in the clinic). And thats only the tip of the iceberg.
The only thing that helps for a short time is massage and muscle relaxans, but it doesn’t last. One trigger disappeared, the next goes up! One to nothing for the trigger-points, I throw in the towel.
Ok, this was a very long self-introduction, thanks for reading and sorry for the mistakes, I didn’t reread…
Best wishes,
Birdie
Veronica
. Always when I have extremly tensioned and tight muscels and want to move I have thoughts like "oh my god, I hope I won't injure again". Bad condition to recover, I know...
