New symptoms, feeling down and overwhelmed

Hello everyone this is my first post. I’m writing this because I’m feeling really down and hoping for any words of encouragement. I’ve been struggling with TMS my whole life but that’s too long of a story so I’ll just mention my recent symptoms.

For the past two weeks I’ve been having really bad pressure in my nose that radiates to my face and jaw. It got a lot worse today when I used a steroid spray because I thought the spray would help but unfortunately it made my nose hurt more and I feel I like my nose and upper jaw are numb and very painful at the same time.

How it started and why I think it’s TMS: for the past two months I had been experiencing symptoms of a yeast infection (just itching, no discharge) and tried using creams, and tablets for it but it didn’t help and finally the doctor agreed to do a swab and the result came back clear and the symptoms went away. The result came back on Monday so my brain had to find something else to focus on so on Tuesday I got another symptom. Mum and I bought little chicks and brought them to my flat because they need to stay in the warmth for the first few weeks. I had never experienced a negative reaction to chickens in my life even though we had some when I was young. At the end of the day when we finished setting up a pen for them in my living room mum and I went to the shop and she sneezed and I told her you better not be allergic to the chickens. As I said it I got so anxious about developing an allergy to them myself. When we came back from the shop and I returned to my flat and checked on the chicks I felt my throat hurting. From there it started. My nose and throat were very irritated and burning. It lasted for a few days and then when I was walking outside without a hat on and it was windy I developed a really bad ear pain. I went to the doctor and she said she doesn’t see any signs of an ear infection so she said the wind just probably irritated the nerve and it should settle soon. After the doctors visit my ear began feeling better so overall my ear problem lasted for like 4 days. I do sometimes suffer with problems with that ear but that’s a long story. During the time I had the ear pain my nose and throat stopped hurting but then after cleaning the chickens pen the symptoms started again and got worse. I want to mention that I do have an air purifier in the room with them and I wear a gas mask when I interact with them (my family and boyfriend think I’m crazy for the gas mask but I’m so scared of the symptoms). When I was cleaning their pen the air purifier showed a red light which means it was very dusty in the room and I began panicking even though I was wearing the gas mask. Since then I’ve had very bad nose and throat pain and pressure that radiates to my upper jaw which became numb. I also have a cough. I’m so scared of the symptoms. I did take antihistamines and they haven’t helped at all and when I used a steroid nasal spray it made it significantly worse (I only used the spray once). I don’t have a runny nose or watery eyes and I don’t sneeze and don’t have any usual symptoms of an allergy but also I’ve never been allergic to anything so idk how allergies feel.

I’m posting this with hope of encouragement to keep going. My family and boyfriend are sick of me talking to them about my issues so I thought I could make a post on here as I’ve only ever read about other peoples symptoms but never posted anything.

I do have some success stories with my other TMS symptoms and I got rid of them completely and I’m planning on posting about them on the success forum but these new things that are happening are making me very anxious and sometimes I feel like I can’t take any more

 

Hi Emi, I'm glad you shared your story. Sometimes even writing it out helps. I can relate to so much of this. I have allergy-phobias too. It's remarkable how our bodies can give us the symptoms we are most afraid of having, isn't it? I think that you can probably rule out any dangerous allergies since you feel the symptoms when you are not breathing any of the chicken dust. I wonder if the gas mask is actually putting a slight bit of pressure in that area and then your TMS is exaggerating that into real pain?

I'm actually dealing with tooth/jaw/nasal pain right now too that I think might be TMS. Mine started when I picked at some stain area on my tooth. It definitely could be the tooth, but then I remembered about TMS and realized that I was exploring the stain on my tooth because I was invited to do something that I really don't want to and am afraid to do and I was wondering how bad the stain on my tooth looks and if I could hide it. I declined the invitation which leads to the guilt/shame of that and there is still the up-in-the-air if I will attend the event as a simple guest. I have just begun to start to explore this from a TMS perspective. The situation with the people involved is complicated and there are lots of emotions around that. Lots to explore in my journaling which I haven't done for a long time and hopeful that when I get to the anger part and allow myself to feel it that it will relax the tension and that the nerves and muscles in that area will quiet down. I've had great success with that in the past with all my pains.

Likewise, I think you have some exploring to do. Do you journal and write down and get to your anger? Since it started when your mom sneezed any childhood stuff related to your Mom? Or exploring when you first started worrying about allergies in the past? If you haven't already done so, I find it helpful to get a piece of paper and write, "Who am I angry at?" and then let the answer flow. Let the pen in my had write whatever comes out without thinking about it. Doing this has released so many physical pains. It sometimes feel likes magic.

Wishing you good luck.

 

Thank you so much for replying to my post! I really appreciate you taking the time to encourage me to keep going. For the past two days I’ve actually been staying at a different place because I’ve been so scared of the chicken dust and only been going to my flat a few times a day to feed the chickens and I’m wearing a gas mask throughout the whole time when interacting with them. For some reason I keep thinking the mask is faulty because my symptoms are getting worse and have been considering wearing another mask under the gas mask although I’m ashamed to tell anyone from my family about this because they’d look at me weird. They’re not experiencing any symptoms and are interacting with the chickens normally. Poor chickens are scared of my gas mask and keep running away from me and I feel so bad about this because I really wanted to bond with them. They’ll soon be moved to my mum’s garden where we have a coop for them when the weather gets warmer.

I keep thinking that this is something I can overcome like I did with a lot of other TMS symptoms I haven’t mentioned in my previous post. Some of them started out of the blue and some started after an injury or taking medication. When I think about this it seems like this is just another symptom trying to fill in the void created by getting rid of past symptoms.

You mentioned that maybe the gas mask is contributing to the symptoms and that could be true because I keep tightening it around my face because I’m so scared of breathing in any dust. Hopefully I’ll laugh about it when it all passes. My family and my boyfriend already consider me crazy for wearing it and for freaking out about all symptoms and that hurts

I’m sorry you’re dealing with symptoms yourself. I really believe both of us can benefit from doing more TMS work. It sounds like there are a lot of feelings involved with you declining the invitation and the whole situation overall. It actually helped me realise that it most likely is TMS when I explained my story in my previous post and I’m hoping that you writing about the emotional connection with your tooth and jaw pain helped you as well. Our bodies can become so tense from emotions. I hope you’ll be able to get back to journaling and your symptoms get better.

I want to get back to journaling too. I’ve not done it for a few months due to symptoms in my right hand but it got better now so I don’t have that excuse anymore. Thank you for the journal prompts I really need to use them instead of focusing on the pain I will focus on the emotions. There are actually a lot of them when it comes to my mum, childhood and all the other stuff.

Thank you for your encouraging reply and I wish you all the best

 

The power of suggestion! That is very common and it's a very good TMS indicator.

Another good indicator

In all likelihood a guess but a potentially damaging one at that as it just puts another idea in your head - TMS seems more likely to me at this stage (I can't diagnose you).

Another telltale sign in that the panic and fear appear to be driving the symptoms, rather than anything in the air necessarily.

The key will be to reduce this fear and panic (through evidence and belief that it is in fact TMS - assuming it is - any further checks to give you peace of mind are usually a good strategy if there are any), which will then allow you to remove the mask (and potentially the air purifier too). Your brain can't help but think something is wrong when you wear the mask (that's not to say you have to rip the band-aid off, as I said it's quite a natural process in that once your belief rises your fear will reduce, allowing you to remove it as you'll have more confidence to do so)