whirlingdervish
New Member
Hi everyone!
I'm so excited to have discovered this place! You're all amazing! I have a million questions but they're being answered rapidly as I work my way through the material on here.
My biggest problem I suppose is that I'm still at the 95-99% acceptance level. When I'm on here it all makes sense, but when I try and explain it to other people, especially my friend with Fibromyalgia who has tried everything but has never heard of this and is 'sceptical of miracle cures' then I feel less sure.
I'm not really struggling to accept that it's an emotional rather than structural root cause – that's fairly easy for me as there's basically no structural abnormalities anywhere in my body, and I do fit the TMS personality type to a tee. I suppose I more struggle to believe there could be any cure, especially any that would work this quickly. I hadn't given up completely on the possibility that I could get better but I'd started to believe my physio and consultant who said that in their experiences recovery would take months if not years. And slowly and subconsciously I suppose I'd been conditioning myself to accept that there might not be a cure.
A brief history of my case: I'd done ballet all my life but the intensity and frequency was increasing quite a lot about four years ago, and I started to get a dull pain in my left achilles when doing certain steps, and a couple of months later another pain in my right foot. Both of them felt similar to other issues I'd had, which tended to go away within a month or so if I eased off a bit on my training. These didn't – though I hadn't really rested properly because I was preparing for a big show. Then the left foot started hurting too. Then, about six months after the pain had first started, something seemed to change, in addition to these three points of pain, I also had a dull ache all over both feet which bothered me at ballet but also outside of it, when standing up or walking, which was noticeably worse the longer I was on my feet or the more weight I was carrying.
Eventually, about a year after the first pain had first started, I accepted that I really needed this to go away because it was getting in the way of life too much, so decided to stop dancing completely. That I was sure would fix it. While the three specific points became less problematic, the general aching remained, and the three points came back when I did anything particularly intense.
After I'd been two years with the pain, and nearly one year without doing ballet, with no improvement at all (and my life getting steadily more miserable), I read an amazing book on ballet technique which convinced me that I'd been doing some things a bit wrong, which my teacher hadn't picked up on, and that was causing the pain. That seemed a quite common problem in ballet, and was worse for people with flat feet, which I had. So I started back at ballet at a very gentle pace, with a big effort to improve my technique. For the next year still nothing changed. I did some ballet, I did some climbing which was another hobby of mine, but I didn't do either to a very intense level, which wasn't particularly satisfying. I avoided walking and carrying weight.
By this point (last October), I'd been three years with the pain, and had seen: a physiotherapist, an osteopath, a podiatrist, a massage therapist, a consultant in sports medicine, another podiatrist, two more physiotherpaists, a foot surgeon specialising in ballet dancers, another orthodics specialist, a Raynaud's specialist, and London's best ballet physiotherapist, been given four sets of orthodics, numerous foot and core strength exercises, numerous stretches, and a steroids injection to my ankle. Xrays and MRIs had shown almost nothing of interest other than an extra bone in my ankle (hence the steroids) which subsequent doctors said was completely unrelated. The only thing that really helped was the massage, but only for a few hours.
Despite the lack of improvement I felt like I'd found a good physio who had a plan to get me better. I suppose I'd also got to the point of starting to accept the pain and not dwell on it too much. I could live with it and if I got better that would be a bonus. I was starting to find things I was interested in and passionate about again and actually enjoying most aspects of my life for the first time in years, when all of a sudden I got a terrible onset of RSI, followed a couple of months later by back pain, achilles pain, shoulder pain, jaw pain, neck pain and knee pain. These have all gone up and down in the last year, leading me to a consultant who specialises in whole body pain, who recommended regular physiotherapy, private pilates classes, core stability exercises and stretches, and put me on muscle relaxant (pregabalin), ibuprofen and continuation of the Raynaud's medication. His next suggestion was to try botox injections to ease the tightness in my muscles.
That's basically where I was at until a couple of weeks ago when my boyfriend, who also has suffered on and off with RSI pain and numbness for a number of years and has tried everything ergonomic and is starting down the physio/osteo path, found Sarno and I devoured everything I could find on TMS, plus started to think long and hard about repressed emotions.
So here I am.
I'm basically pretty angry at all the doctors out there because they've all told me different things, and all been basically wrong. The three most recent people I've been seeing though had all been converging on a common message, but it still wasn't particularly convincing (combination of weakness in some muscles and tightness in other muscles meaning certain bits got overused and strained).
TMS by far makes the most sense. I guess I'm mainly afraid of getting my hopes up, again, that this might be the key to fixing my problems, when every other time it hasn't been. But I suppose I have to believe there is a cure, unless I'm literally prepared to believe that there is no cure – which I think, on balance, is harder to accept, at least now I've met all of you.
I'm definitely willing to learn as much as possible about TMS: reading books, hearing others' stories and really starting to reflect on my life experiences, personality traits and emotions. I've been noticing I have other TMS equivalents: Raynaud's, ezema, etc. plus a whole bunch of other things that I think may be TMS related but not sure. I'm trying to dedicate as much time outside of work as I can to this – it feels like a great new hobby: project get life back.
Already I've stopped all the medication and done everything I can to return to pain-free life: cycling, dancing, wearing heels, eating apples, etc. Though it's only been one week, some of the pain seems much better, while other bits are the same or slightly worse. Despite my remaining scepticism I'm incredibly excited, I feel more passionate about this than I have about anything since ballet. At the same time I am also fearful because if I have no restrictions on my life I will need to make some big decisions about what I dedicate my life/time to which is a hugely stressful prospect because I have never liked to make choices!
Looking forward to working together to fix this m*********** of a problem.
Whirling Dervish
I'm so excited to have discovered this place! You're all amazing! I have a million questions but they're being answered rapidly as I work my way through the material on here.
My biggest problem I suppose is that I'm still at the 95-99% acceptance level. When I'm on here it all makes sense, but when I try and explain it to other people, especially my friend with Fibromyalgia who has tried everything but has never heard of this and is 'sceptical of miracle cures' then I feel less sure.
I'm not really struggling to accept that it's an emotional rather than structural root cause – that's fairly easy for me as there's basically no structural abnormalities anywhere in my body, and I do fit the TMS personality type to a tee. I suppose I more struggle to believe there could be any cure, especially any that would work this quickly. I hadn't given up completely on the possibility that I could get better but I'd started to believe my physio and consultant who said that in their experiences recovery would take months if not years. And slowly and subconsciously I suppose I'd been conditioning myself to accept that there might not be a cure.
A brief history of my case: I'd done ballet all my life but the intensity and frequency was increasing quite a lot about four years ago, and I started to get a dull pain in my left achilles when doing certain steps, and a couple of months later another pain in my right foot. Both of them felt similar to other issues I'd had, which tended to go away within a month or so if I eased off a bit on my training. These didn't – though I hadn't really rested properly because I was preparing for a big show. Then the left foot started hurting too. Then, about six months after the pain had first started, something seemed to change, in addition to these three points of pain, I also had a dull ache all over both feet which bothered me at ballet but also outside of it, when standing up or walking, which was noticeably worse the longer I was on my feet or the more weight I was carrying.
Eventually, about a year after the first pain had first started, I accepted that I really needed this to go away because it was getting in the way of life too much, so decided to stop dancing completely. That I was sure would fix it. While the three specific points became less problematic, the general aching remained, and the three points came back when I did anything particularly intense.
After I'd been two years with the pain, and nearly one year without doing ballet, with no improvement at all (and my life getting steadily more miserable), I read an amazing book on ballet technique which convinced me that I'd been doing some things a bit wrong, which my teacher hadn't picked up on, and that was causing the pain. That seemed a quite common problem in ballet, and was worse for people with flat feet, which I had. So I started back at ballet at a very gentle pace, with a big effort to improve my technique. For the next year still nothing changed. I did some ballet, I did some climbing which was another hobby of mine, but I didn't do either to a very intense level, which wasn't particularly satisfying. I avoided walking and carrying weight.
By this point (last October), I'd been three years with the pain, and had seen: a physiotherapist, an osteopath, a podiatrist, a massage therapist, a consultant in sports medicine, another podiatrist, two more physiotherpaists, a foot surgeon specialising in ballet dancers, another orthodics specialist, a Raynaud's specialist, and London's best ballet physiotherapist, been given four sets of orthodics, numerous foot and core strength exercises, numerous stretches, and a steroids injection to my ankle. Xrays and MRIs had shown almost nothing of interest other than an extra bone in my ankle (hence the steroids) which subsequent doctors said was completely unrelated. The only thing that really helped was the massage, but only for a few hours.
Despite the lack of improvement I felt like I'd found a good physio who had a plan to get me better. I suppose I'd also got to the point of starting to accept the pain and not dwell on it too much. I could live with it and if I got better that would be a bonus. I was starting to find things I was interested in and passionate about again and actually enjoying most aspects of my life for the first time in years, when all of a sudden I got a terrible onset of RSI, followed a couple of months later by back pain, achilles pain, shoulder pain, jaw pain, neck pain and knee pain. These have all gone up and down in the last year, leading me to a consultant who specialises in whole body pain, who recommended regular physiotherapy, private pilates classes, core stability exercises and stretches, and put me on muscle relaxant (pregabalin), ibuprofen and continuation of the Raynaud's medication. His next suggestion was to try botox injections to ease the tightness in my muscles.
That's basically where I was at until a couple of weeks ago when my boyfriend, who also has suffered on and off with RSI pain and numbness for a number of years and has tried everything ergonomic and is starting down the physio/osteo path, found Sarno and I devoured everything I could find on TMS, plus started to think long and hard about repressed emotions.
So here I am.
I'm basically pretty angry at all the doctors out there because they've all told me different things, and all been basically wrong. The three most recent people I've been seeing though had all been converging on a common message, but it still wasn't particularly convincing (combination of weakness in some muscles and tightness in other muscles meaning certain bits got overused and strained).
TMS by far makes the most sense. I guess I'm mainly afraid of getting my hopes up, again, that this might be the key to fixing my problems, when every other time it hasn't been. But I suppose I have to believe there is a cure, unless I'm literally prepared to believe that there is no cure – which I think, on balance, is harder to accept, at least now I've met all of you.
I'm definitely willing to learn as much as possible about TMS: reading books, hearing others' stories and really starting to reflect on my life experiences, personality traits and emotions. I've been noticing I have other TMS equivalents: Raynaud's, ezema, etc. plus a whole bunch of other things that I think may be TMS related but not sure. I'm trying to dedicate as much time outside of work as I can to this – it feels like a great new hobby: project get life back.
Already I've stopped all the medication and done everything I can to return to pain-free life: cycling, dancing, wearing heels, eating apples, etc. Though it's only been one week, some of the pain seems much better, while other bits are the same or slightly worse. Despite my remaining scepticism I'm incredibly excited, I feel more passionate about this than I have about anything since ballet. At the same time I am also fearful because if I have no restrictions on my life I will need to make some big decisions about what I dedicate my life/time to which is a hugely stressful prospect because I have never liked to make choices!
Looking forward to working together to fix this m*********** of a problem.
Whirling Dervish
