Pain clinic - dispondent

I went to the pain clinic today armed with everything I know… it was horrible. He said I had structural changes due to my injury that would mean I would never be out of pain, and he gave me a book from 2004 which was “learn how to live with your pain” he told me that he absolutely did not believe in TMS or that my pain was psychogenic in nature. I asked what structurally he believed was wrong, he said he didn’t know (but yet it seems ludicrous that it could be pscho logical, baffling!)

How utterly dangerous these doctors are.

I left in 9/10 pain having had a much better week, but still he doesn’t believe me. I’ll get back into my Sarno books after that and continue what I’m doing, I don’t think I’ll be going back. His words are still ringing around my head “learn to live with permanent pain” but yet couldn’t tell me the cause only that my neck is permanently changed from the injury but couldn’t physically prove that, mad.

 

Mine just kept wanting to do epidurals or nerve ablation in my neck. No thanks.

 

They have to eat too, these doctors...

 

On one of my last appointments with my PT she offered to loan me a couple of books on pain neuroscience, which Lorimer Mosely had contributed to. She'd never heard of Sarno or Alan Gordon etc. The books she offered were incredibly close to the TMS approach, talking about calming your nervous system—but not quite. I think my PT's well-meaning but not so helpful advice was to learn what the triggers are for flares and just avoid them forever. She suggested doing a meditation every morning and asking myself, "What kind of day is today going to be?" (Of course in practice that sounds like a scary thing to wonder! I've found it's much better to say to myself, today is going to go great, and anything that comes up I can handle). What I have ringing in my ears is when she said "our goal is to reduce the flares or at least make them more predictable, if it's not something that's necessarily going to get better."

This is all to say that even in the best case scenario—I really liked my PT, she was really kind and genuinely took an interest in my case, and was actually trying to help me to the best of her ability—the medical model is just wrong, and you can't do any good operating under an assumption of reality that is incorrect.

If your symptoms have been better while consistently following the TMS protocol, I say don't question it! Keep going! It feels crazy to me that it's working, but then I think back to how I was even a few weeks ago and I cannot factually deny that there have been improvements, some of which feel incredible even though they're small things.

Hahaha.

 

I’m sorry @HealingNow
I understand.
My general practice Dr. we use for preventative medicine does not believe in TMS. Luckily the PT I use now does, although their practice uses the word “somatic”. I haven’t been to my GP in years because I don’t want to deal with their attitude….

 

It's unfortunate that many health care professionals offer up nocebos. We just have to ignore them and continue on with our TMS approach.

 

Just shows how with doctors it's pot luck what you get advised, and on the NHS it's also a postcode lottery... because if you were living in Plymouth and had been referred to the local pain clinic there (where Prof Hyland and his colleague Dr Davies are, who authored that NHS booklet that I posted up about on another thread) I'm sure it would have been a totally different story. Absolutely ridiculous to advise you that you've got to live with pain and not be able to tell you exactly why! The mind/body work you were doing was helping, so stick with it... As always, we'll all be rooting for you.

 

It was Plymouth but apparently fibromyalgia and neck pain are different… ludicrous. Instead tonight I’m partying with pain and I’m going into this year happy as ever to have found my cure. Happy new year one and all!

 

I'm flabbergasted that it was Plymouth of all places! And all I can is that I was formally diagnosed by a NHS pain specialist and a professor of rheumatology as having so called 'fibromyalgia' and one of my chief symptoms was neck pain, which I suffered with for many years (until I did mind/body work) and I don't suffer with it now (because of the mind/body work). Glad to hear that you've dusted yourself off from that awful experience. Here's to 2026 being a very good year for all of us!