obsessed for searching reassurance

[adyxon]

I am struggling with pudendal neuralgia / pne now Tms for a good while. I never been diagnosed with that but my symptoms of burning pain while sitting in telling my mind thats structural .

Since last December I am trying TMS approach .

I need an advice from you guys :
In the morning when I am very anxious I became obsessed for internet reassurance.

I have read it every bloody corner of the internet. I know every user on every bloody forum . I am hyper obsessed of searching and searching again.

The worse mistake I did is searching in that freaky pundendalhope forum before. Despite I put my self a ban on that forum the damage was already done. I still have in my mind peoples who never got better.

But now I am spending hours and hours every day just reding the same succes stories on this forum. I became basically addicted.

I am driving a taxi and when I feel pain my brain is looking for reassurance. Then start to searching again.

I don't know how to stop this ! I find reading the selection of success stories give me a big relief but in the other hand I am damaging my brain . I am leaving in my own world of pain and internet searching.
I am feeling I want to breake this cycle but seems very hard.

Anyone of you experience the same problem pls give me advice pls !

 

[Ellen]

I suggest finding reassurance inside yourself instead of looking for it from others. In other words, internalize the knowledge that you have TMS and can, therefore, recover. Take what you have learned from reading in the success stories and apply it to yourself. Come up with your own affirmations to tell yourself when you need reassurance. Develop an evidence sheet and review it when you need reassurance.

You can do this! You are on the right path.

 

[adyxon]

Thanks Ellen.

I had this shit but not that agressive years ago.
I was the same : obsessed and desperate
I was obsessed that the prostatectomy will cure my pain. One year I was searching every minute about that surgery. I jumped on the plane to Miami for surgery with dr Krongrad.
But two days before the surgery I was si afraid of it and I told to my self to give me another year to wait. When I came back from USA the first thig my depression and fear disappeared. That year was crucial. During 3 years period I had mild frequency but didn't affect my life in any aspect. Mentally 100% and physically 95%
I didn't know about TMS that time but I had practiced the theory involuntarily.

But now just doesn't click

 

[MWsunin12]

I found it helpful to ask myself about being the "obsessive type" my whole life.

If it wasn't this PNE right now, would it be something else?

Try becoming "obsessed" for a while with something that isn't about your physical body. Learn something new that intrigues you.
Can you listen to great books on c.d. while driving?

Also, remember that PNE is one of those "current" health issues. Pelvic pain clinics are opening all over and you hear about it more and more. It's in the general consciousness now, like ulcers were in the 70's.
I had a nerve issue in my genital area too. I also made the mistake of reading other forums where the condition seemed hopeless.
Then, I realized that we aren't all that delicate. That women have pushed babies out of that area. Men & women have driven tractors and ridden horses and motorcycles, etc….and never had issues. We don't break that easy.

It's psychological. Keep telling your brain, "I am 100% willing to know that this is psychological."
Then, ask yourself what needs to change in your real life.

You can do this. Tell yourself you'll look at the forum for 15 minutes and that's all.

 

[dharn999]

I understand the constant reassurance of TMS, your observation that your obsession is part of the TMS is a good start. I went through this same thing last year when my pain started up again. I woke up, searched and read everything all over again. I did everything I thought I was supposed to in order to get better. I'm still recovering but now I have a better understanding of myself... all I can tell you is that there will come a spot that you have nothing else to read for reassurance and you will have to believe the diagnosis

Once you believe the diagnosis, you will see a major difference in everything around you and how your pain is effecting you. Hang in there, it works, it jut takes time and belief

 

[MicheleRenee]

I am in the same boat adyxon. When im not reading orthinking TMS my brain freaks me out and says "if you're not thinking about it then you don't believe it".

 

[sarah555uk]

I used to do the same thing so I understand you, was diagnosed with "vulvodynia" nerve pain some years ago and all I did was search the internet for 5 hours every day, it only made me severely anxious and I was crying continuously. In the end I had a bad nocturnal panic attack where I was yelling that I am dying (it was very embarassing the following day). I recall one of the ambulance paramedics (so lovely) kept telling me to stop reading forums since they present the absolute worst case scenarios and that those are very very rare! She then proceeded to tell me she's had cystitis for 6 full months which came and went for no apparent reason and said that sometimes these things can happen but spontaneous remissions are more common than we realise It really helped me put things into perspective. I'd much rather stay on these forums than god knows what other ones for pelvic pain ...this place is positive and feeds hope and calm. If it helps, I have started downloading calming apss for my phone like Pacifica and whenever I fell on edge I do some deep breathing

 

[Tennis Tom]

...all I did was search the internet for 5 hours every day, it only made me severely anxious and I was crying continuously.

I recall one of the ambulance paramedics (so lovely) kept telling me to stop reading forums since they present the absolute worst case scenarios and that those are very very rare!

...she's had cystitis for 6 full months which came and went for no apparent reason and said that sometimes these things can happen but spontaneous remissions are more common than we realise

...this place is positive and feeds hope and calm.

Great words of TMS wisdom!

 

[c90danwaiel]

Spending large amounts of time obsessively searching through the success stories forum? That describes me to a T last year.

I consider myself 99% cured of TMS at this point (had a flareup a while back, but it went away after a week). The vast majority of days there's no pain. Thought I had prostatitis at first, then chronic pelvic pain syndrome, then pudendal neuralgia. Ended up on pudendal hope too, and started to go down that spiral - almost had surgery done near the end, before I stumbled across TMS a week before it was scheduled.

Even though I'm 99% better now, and know for certain this is psychosomatic, I recently went back to pudendalhope to look at some of my old posts just out of curiosity about when I started to get better. It was crazy, to feel that sense of dread come over me again, reading about what others had gone through. I'm glad you're avoiding it.

I was able to overcome my own obsessive need for reassurance over time. Basically, I realized I was getting nowhere and that my obsession was simply perpetuating the fear. The fear that it wouldn't go away, or the fear that maybe not everyone can get better haunted me. And it drove me back to the success forums here, repeatedly. While they're certainly inspirational and they helped me a lot, my obsessive need for reassurance meant that they weren't enough; in my case, I have a variant of OCD called Pure O, where I tend to continually seek reassurance for fears (which then brings them back on, and I can get stuck in rut like that for hours a day). I began to notice that pattern emerge in my search for reassurance and was able to stop it.

Ultimately, what got me past the need for reassurance (and my TMS) was to focus on developing outcome independence. I should mention, that did come after I'd built up a pretty good evidence sheet to prove to myself that I had TMS by that point. But the key for me was to accept the pain and then not feed it with attention. I told myself that I had to accept my worst fear: the possibility the pain would never go away. When I did that, and told myself I could continue my life like before, even with my pain there (and began living my life like normal as well), the fear went away. When the fear went away, the preoccupation went away. And with time, I began living my life like normal and the pain began to fade away as I gave it less and less attention.