Scared

[Sacha O.]

Two days ago, my right arm started to hurt. I’m back on woking on a comic book, and I’m working full time on it. I haven’t drawn with the tools I’m using since I started to get better, a year ago.

When the pain was at its worst, my back, shoulders, neck and arm were hurting. It was hard, but I desensitize myself with pretty much everything that I thought was causing the pain, EXCEPT real drawing (I draw digitally most of the time, now).

Now, I’m really scared to hurt myself for real. I wish I could believe it’s the same TMS as before. Sometimes, my hands start to burn for no reason, but that doesn’t scare me anymore. But the pain I’m feeling in my right arm muscle does scare me. How do I beat this ? It's the "original pain" that made me struggle so much, and now it's back...

 

[Ellen]

Hi Sacha,

It's very hard when our TMS returns, but it is very common to have a relapse. My advice is to 1) don't catastrophize 2) accept that it is TMS 3)remind yourself you got rid of TMS before, and can do it again 4) go back to the basics of TMS treatment (read, journal, etc.).

You can recover again. Stay calm and do what you need to do to treat it as TMS.

 

[Sacha O.]

Just a quick message to say that since this summer, I have drawn A LOT. There was pain in the begining, but soon enough, it was gone.
I draw, I work on the computer, and everything is fine.
You were right Ellen, I did recover

 

[MWsunin12]

The fear will perpetuate the pain. That's what I found for myself. If I let myself fall in to fear, the hole gets deeper.
The other day I had a new symptom starting and I said out loud to myself in the mirror: "Just stop it. Stop! All is well." Then, I went out and walked around the block quickly, looking and observing everything except myself. It went away.