Newbie question

[FionaH]

Hi I’m a newcomer. I live in Ireland and turned 60 today. 6 months ago I injured my hip but more painfully developed proximal hamstring tendonopathy. I’m not sure if I have neuroplastic pain or “real pain” from the injury which I’m told is notoriously slow to heal. I just recently heard about TMS and am curious as I’ve suffered with TMj, burning tongue, gastritis, anxiety, depression and other painful issues in the past.
currently my anxiety is severe due to worry about the injury.

My question is: do I need a definitive answer or is it possible to work with both sources of pain at the same time.
Thank you

 

[louaci]

The pain is real, whether you call it neuroplastic or "real" from injury. Personally, I feel there is no distinction between the two with the exceptions that someone is run over by a car, or shot, or hit by a hammer, etc. like sudden traumatic injury. If one is doing something in daily life and suddenly twisting an ankle, wrist, back, shoulder, knee, neck etc., once it passes the acute period, there wouldn't be much pain lingering for weeks, months, or years, or slow to heal. Remember when we are kids, we run and jump and rough play and sometimes injure ourselves, and guess what, do we have lasting pain? Most of time we don't, we cry and scream for a while, then we get back to playing and forget about the whole injury thing... Now that we are adults, facing a more complicated world, having responsibilities and all the other crap, and not enough play and fun, it would take us longer to heal from anything.

So to your question, it is hard to work on both "sources" of pain at the same time because the emotional work requires you to believe this "injury" or other symptoms are not important and the fact you consider it is still "real pain" from injury would be a big distraction to focus on your emotions.