Scared, twiching, tingling, and anxious...

Greetings,

Short story long, over the last 5 months I've developed bilateral parathesia, tingling, and burning in the toes of the feet, while the sciatic nerve is "pissed off" (as per PT) and the legs are frequently twitching in the calves and sometimes up to the hips. Nobody has any answers, anybody, especially when they discover that it's bilateral.

I've had (4) MRI's, an x-ray, EMG, two complete blood panels, and according to all the providers (neurologist on down the food chain), I'm healthy as a horse and completely 'intact'- go for it!. Easier said than done, since I'm a long-distance cyclist and it's difficult to go much longer than an hour on the bike at this point-- whereas I used to be able to ride up to 42 hours at a time. Like I said, long-distance. So I've gone from long days in the saddle to little to no time at all. This in and of itself is incredibly depressing-- which is exactly what I've been for the last 3 months now. On top of that the not-so-latent anxiety has taken on a life of it's own. The providers can say that 'you need to get the emotions under control', but-- easier said than done when my otherwise active lifestyle has been turned on it's head and I'm not burning off the energy.

I would completely buy in that this is stress-induced, as challenges and changes on the home-front have been building up for some time now. I knew something was inevitable, but I didn't see this one coming at from right field. ugh!

I don't doubt that the body is responding to the situation, but how do you tell whether the symptoms are anxiety/stress induced vs. TMS-- and, most importantly, how do I know that what I'm doing is actually helping rather than delaying healing? I've read Healing Back book and watched the DVD, but right now I'm still in the 'work with PT to see what kind of effect the nerve glides/flossing has on the symptoms' phase. I know the suggestion is to discontinue all PT-- which makes total sense, but it's comforting to think that I can actively do something that may be helping.

Scared, twitching, tingling, and anxious...

Regards! Thanks for any and all help so I can get on the right path...

 

Hi Mate, just a quick note that I also experience these symptoms chronically.. and this came about after a very stress filled and anxious period. Nothing is found to be wrong with me although symptoms mimic peripheral neuropathy. If I think back on the progression it's logical the way that the more I stressed about my health the worse my body got.. I'm sure you will find the same. There are many takes on these mind body disorders and whether it's simply a physical manifestation of stress and anxiety and a hyperstimulated nervous system that just needs time to reverse, or whether repression of emotions etc is the cause at a subconscious level.. and every explaination in between. And I'm sure everybody is slightly different. For me I'm becoming more of the school of the former, and the fact that I have hyperstimulated my nervous system and this is kept in this state in part subconsciously as I have trained my body to be on high alert. My approach is to retrain the subconscious system via conscious intervention. For some that may just be relaxation and acceptance, for others it's maybe dealing with repressed shit or approach to life, situations, and the symptoms. At the end of the day it's all about taking stress load off and convincing your body it is healthy (as the inverse to this is what got me in this mess).

I'd start by sussing out Alan Gordon's program on here, as effectively a lot of the techniques all boil down to becoming indifferent to the symptoms (acceptance) and living a less reactive life in Thier presence.

Btw Howard schubiner recently emailed me regarding my symptom set (much the same as yours) and said he sees this very commonly.

Good luck and I'm sure you will heal.

 

Gusto,

Considering the symptoms have been amplified for the last week you don't know how much of a load this takes off my shoulders hearing this. Seriously.

It's exactly as you describe-- the more I stress about the symptoms the worse they are. At one point I was in such a jag that the entire lower leg was on fire. And this being a stress-filled and anxious time would be an understatement. Major, with a capitol M, life changes are afoot. Have been for a while, it's just finally come to a head and it needs to be dealt with. On some level I'm pretty sure this was the body's way of saying 'OK dude, this has gone on long enough... it's Showtime! Your hand has now been forced... You can thank me later'.

I can totally accept what everybody is telling me, there's no doubt the body is healthy, but the message isn't getting through to the subconscious just yet-- and certainly not with the nerves in their heightened state such as they are.

Thanks Kindly for the leads. They have been bookmarked and set to the home page so I can determine what it is I need to do next....

One thing I'm certain of is that I'm going to discontinue the PT exercises... I'm pretty sure they were just pissing off the nerves that much more, never mind the fact that all I'm doing is focusing on the symptoms for the following 2 hours after doing them to make sure they come down to a baseline.

Seriously.... Thanks!!!

 

No focusing on the symptoms is key. What you resist persists ... Accept that there is nothing wrong with your body and focus on living a positive life and it will settle down

 

I have the exact same thing. Multiple MRI's, L5, S1, Herniated Disc, Nerve Root Compressed. Sciatica, Blah, Blah Blah. After several epidural steroids I was doing pretty good (placebo) went in for scheduled surgery and the Surgeon, surprisingly, shoed me away saying that he wasn't going to operate if I wasn't any pain, and he actually admitted that surgery might not be a permanent fix. Primary Care doc somewhat supports Sarno's theories, and has advised me all along to AVOID surgery. This was all about 1 year ago, been dealing with it on and off for 5 or so years...

Regardless, it has been an extremely stressful time at work the last few months. I don't want to get into it that much, but when I say extreme I mean EXTREME. I have a job that requires a lot of concentration, is dangerous, and the pressure and requirement to perform day in and day out is often times mentally overwhelming. I'm an airborne news and traffic reporter for a major West Coast radio station. I always blamed a lot of my problems on riding in light aircraft (20 years of it) and turbulence. Just an excuse I suppose. My personality dossier ticks every box for TMS. It's almost like Sarno was writing a book about ME.

Again, been a really stressful time, and I am dealing with a minor acute flare up these last few weeks. Feet tingling, sciatica problems again, burning, pain "moving around" my leg. Twitching, cramps etc. etc. I can actually feel it get worse when I get pissed off. It's totally weird. I got frothed into a rage a few weeks ago about some minor, inconsequential BS, and my leg totally locked up. Mega Spasm. Once I realized what was happening and calmed my self down, I was good to go.

The Outcome Independence stuff has really been helping me recently, 478 Breathing Exercises and just going about my life without giving too much thought to the pain. I have a life to live, pain be damned!

 

Also, to add, fear is your biggest enemy. Please don't be afraid. As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

 

Understood re the Fear... the more I'm learning about this, the more I'm learning how large a component it is to overcome in the course of healing. And the more it's striking home on more than one level.
Having said that, how do you balance the fear of aggravating the pain vs going about life without giving the pain too much power, thought? Case in point, towards the end of the day the feet are in a super sensitive place and all I want to do when I get home is put them up and let them rest. On the opposite end of the spectrum for a couple days I did ignore the pain (inasmuch as that's possible), but discovered that it mostly just ramped up the symptoms that carried forward for a day or so, until everything settled back down again. So I suppose it's encouraging that it can "recover", but at what point do you just back down and regroup?

I've been working through the Pain Recovery Program, which has been extremely helpful, so I'm starting to wrap my head around the danger signal / normal sensation thing, but it's just so frustrating... ugh

 

As I'm leaning in to the various modes of healing I'm feeling drawn to the neural-pathway path-- which is not to say that I haven't processed more emotions in the last month than I have in the last 20 years (or more) of my life, it just seems to... resonate. I can wrap my head around it without delving into something that happened 45 years ago that may or may not be material to the current Super Stressful Situation (which is more than enough to trigger some manner of symptom-- in and of itself). Which is not to say that it may not have had some impact both in the past, or even now, but considering that the only time I've been hospitalized in my life was a broken collarbone when skateboarding a couple years ago, I consider my health to be without question-- at least until this all started, and now I'm doubting everything.

Either way, thanks again!