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Symptoms at their worse in the morning?

N

Nightfallibra

Newcomer
So I’ve posted on here a few times explaining that i have trigger fingers on both hands.

They haven’t improved much yet and im still trying to fully convince myself they are due to tms.

I wake up and all my fingers are stiff and trigger really bad. It takes about 5minutes of movement for them to go back to normal.

My forearms in the morning feel stiff and heavy as well.

I only get symptoms like this after long periods of being sedentary or sleeping.

Another strange thing is I can wake up in the middle of the night after having slept for about 3 or 4hours but not deeply and my fingers will be fine, then after having had dreams and slept deeply for another 3 or 4 hours my symptoms are back again when i wake up.

Does anyone know why this happens, is this related to tms?

Thank you
 
Who knows, but you might try something which can only be beneficial, which is to make sure you're fully-hydrated when you go to bed. Or, if you normally get up to pee, rehydrate before you go back to bed. Either way, before going back to sleep, ALSO do a brief meditation in which you visualize waking up in the morning with your hands feeling the same way - not stiff, and not triggering - and be sure to "convince" your brain that being hydrated is what your joints need so that they will be fine in the morning.

Convincing your brain of this is, in fact, making constructive use of the placebo effect to create a physical response with something that may or may not actually have a physiological effect. That being said, hydration IS really good for all of us, and nighttime is when we become dehydrated. So keep water next to your bed and drink at least 8 ounces before you even get out of bed in the morning. Both of these things (the hydration and invoking the placebo response) absolutely can not hurt, right?

Bedtime meditations and/or visualizations are extremely powerful tools which I use regularly. Years ago, shortly "after Sarno", I trained myself to stop clenching my teeth at night so that I could stop wearing my nightguard. I achieved this quite quickly but of course it takes a while to prove, so it was at least two years before I told my dentist that I hadn't used the guard in that long, and he had not noticed anything (no new cracking) in my 60-plus-year-old teeth. His response? "Good for you, keep it up!" He's 100% on board with stress and anxiety as the underlying causes of clenching, grinding, and TMJ.

I use deep breathing and visualization or calming self-talk if I wake in the middle of the night, restless or sometimes with symptoms of GI whatever, and a pre-sleep meditation to sleep throughout the night if I have a stressful early commitment the next day. These all work with a commitment to mindfulness.

I just had a memory of a teenage foster daughter who was on the fetal alcohol spectrum along with bipolar disorder. Getting her to stop and drink a glass of water was one of our go-to methods to calm her down during a meltdown. It invariably worked like magic, however long it took to accomplish. I do the same for myself whenever I don't feel physically or emotionally quite right. First responders know this. As do the Brits (I was raised by one), with the perennial offer of a cup of tea.

For more information about harnessing the placebo effect, just search that very phrase - it's a hot topic.
 
Great ideas from Jan!
I, too, find mornings the most problematic. I think it might be related to sleep cycles. Or maybe we are dealing with a lot of emotionally heavy stuff in our sleep at that hour? When I'm going through a rough spell, I wake up with adrenaline fear before my mind has even woken up to think about anything scary. Allergies also are rough in the morning.
You mention about after sleeping deeply. I think there is something related to that deep sleep but I'm not sure exactly what it is.
 
Hi @Nightfallibra,

I have seen several messages from you about trigger fringers. I would like to respond to this with my own experience last week.

Very recently a situation occurred that really upset me. I felt fear, guilt, shame and so much more. I tried to resist these feelings (I am an overthinker) and always try to analyze everything as best as possible and solve it in my head.

A day later I woke up with swelling on my thumb. I could barely move it and it hurt like hell. So much so that it kept me awake during the night. I then started watching TMS videos and doing exercises to feel the emotions I tried to suppress the day before, including meditations on YouTube that focus on experiencing emotions.

The result after the first day was that the pain was a lot less and the swelling also less. Today is certainly 50% less painful and swollen. I decided to start exercising again and can move my thumb almost perfectly again.

I am convinced that it is 100% TMS and so I am checking in on my feelings daily (without judgement).

Good to know: i had diagnoses (of suffered from) ankylosing spondylitis, iritris, frozen shoulder, neck pain, knee pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, rhinitis and now this trigger finger. All TMS related and healed from it.

John E. Sarno and others who shared their succes stories saved my life.
 
DutchTMSwinner said:
Hi @Nightfallibra,

I have seen several messages from you about trigger fringers. I would like to respond to this with my own experience last week.

Very recently a situation occurred that really upset me. I felt fear, guilt, shame and so much more. I tried to resist these feelings (I am an overthinker) and always try to analyze everything as best as possible and solve it in my head.

A day later I woke up with swelling on my thumb. I could barely move it and it hurt like hell. So much so that it kept me awake during the night. I then started watching TMS videos and doing exercises to feel the emotions I tried to suppress the day before, including meditations on YouTube that focus on experiencing emotions.

The result after the first day was that the pain was a lot less and the swelling also less. Today is certainly 50% less painful and swollen. I decided to start exercising again and can move my thumb almost perfectly again.

I am convinced that it is 100% TMS and so I am checking in on my feelings daily (without judgement).

Good to know: i had diagnoses (of suffered from) ankylosing spondylitis, iritris, frozen shoulder, neck pain, knee pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, rhinitis and now this trigger finger. All TMS related and healed from it.

John E. Sarno and others who shared their succes stories saved my life.
Click to expand...
 
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