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Pain levels while focusing on other things

c90danwaiel

Peer Supporter
Hi all,
I have a question about pain and how your pain level is when focusing on other things than the pain itself. Prior to this, I was definitely familiar with psychosomatic pain. I'd have a few brushes with it before, but nothing at the level that I've dealt with these past few months.

I had been under the impression that psychosomatic pain would go away as soon as you quit thinking about it. Has that been the case for folks here?

If you're distracted and not focused on the pain, does it go away quite rapidly? Or is there more slow to adjust and it can pop up while you are focused on something else?

I've had a bit of both: my best days have been when I've intensely focused on work or school, or was occupied in social situations. However, I have had the pain pop up when I was focused on something else, especially on days when my pain was overall a bit worse.
 
The miraculous and infuriating thing about the TMS mechanism is just how unique it is for each person. We often see people here trying (and often failing) to corroborate the smallest detail of their symptoms with someone else who has the exact same thing. After having been thoroughly checked out by experts and told there is nothing wrong with them, of course.

If our brains can create physiological symptoms for no reason other than psychological repression, then they are fully capable of creating completely different symptoms that are guaranteed to be experienced by no one else at all.

Being focused on something doesn't mean that a negative thought can't pop up that your brain feels it needs to repress. This kind of unconscious thing is going on all the time, because our brains are taking in data all the time. And reacting to that data.

In our world, any sign that symptoms are coming and going for no logical reason means that they are TMS. Your experiences sound pretty typical!
 
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