Well, I have a creative mind! I have found that since I started working on TMS a few years ago, and for the most part I am painfree these days, my sub-conscious has come up with a very long list of new scary symptoms. I have found that the less I pay attention to them, the faster they go away. And its not just paying attention to the symptoms less, but also refocusing on what is going on in my life and how I feel about it. For me, strange new symptoms is a signal that my mind is trying to distract me from something I don't really want to feel or deal with. Or perhaps I just need to slow down or I have fallen into my old ways of putting too much pressure on myself. I get weird pains and sensations all over! About a month ago my wrists started feeling achey and shakey. Hard to describe but just weird. It freaked me out a bit because I had never felt it before and it was on both sides. What did that mean...? Today I was washing my car and I noticed that I hadn't thought about it for a while and that the weird wrist pain was gone and then just like it responded to a cue the grip in my hand felt achey and my wrists hurt. I had to laugh. Really? You are getting pretty obvious! For a while I was getting a strange numbness in my front teeth and nose. One day my calf started twitching. I often hear a little ringing in my ears. And sometimes a pounding in the back of my head like a drum. A few years ago my knees hurt so bad I thought I had arthritis. Now they never hurt. I had extreme pain in my feet. Bladder spasms. Occipital neuralgia. Many years of chronic back pain and sciatica. Some vision stuff. Dizziness. Stomach upset. Headaches. Hip pain. Heart palpitations. Muscle twitching in various places pretty much everywhere there is a muscle. One time I had pain in my kidney area so bad I was sure I was passing stones or had a gallbladder infection or something. Rushed to my doctor and he gave me a muscle relaxer that I took once and it was gone the next day. Brain fog. Pain in my teeth and jaw. Panic attacks. It is a wonder I am still alive! It is a little embarrassing to list all these things but the point is, they all felt very real. They all were real! Our minds have an amazing capacity to create frightening, very painful and scary physical sensations that get us questioning, researching, worried, thinking that something must be terribly wrong physically. And actually, our bodies are absolutely fine and we are focused on the wrong thing to get out of pain. The pull is so powerful that we will have surgery, expensive tests, miss work, don't get out of bed, damage relationships and live in misery to avoid completely accepting the TMS diagnosis. What are we truly afraid of? I am not a doctor, but I can pretty much guarantee that your sudden leg pain, ringing of the ears and skin rash, are not life threatening. I am a breast cancer survivor and the funny thing is, I spent a whole lot less time thinking about the breast cancer than I have all of these TMS symptoms! I got diagnosed, had a mastectomy, and then I was suddenly a survivor. Done. I am not trying to lecture you or sound too emphatic, I am just trying to encourage you. You are okay. Yes, your mind will throw all kinds of strange new things at you. Its not easy to move forward and not get caught up in it. But the more you practice and focus on the other things going on in your life, the happier you will be. This is only your first week and you are doing great!!!!
. I was wondering if that was normal, I guess it is. Your right, I keep telling my mind that when it hurts my body I will only pay more attention to my emotional state, not less. It seems to work (sometimes). Thanks for the encouragement!