Tingling and numbness is freaking me out

S

SSS

Peer Supporter
I've had what I now recognize as TMS symptoms for many years. Back pain, arm pain, chest pain, bladder pain, tinnitus and skin rashes. I've done a lot of work reading Dr Sarno's and other books and saw a TMS therapist for a 12 week focused therapy program and really felt this was helping me a lot - for example my bladder pain (diagnosed as interstitial cystitis) seems to be gone. But recently I've started having significant tingling esp down one leg but sometimes on my arm and face. I've had some numbness down this leg for a long time and years ago had an MRI that showed some issues with one disc did PT etc and had reoccurring back issues. I still believe this is TMS but the tingling is really scaring me and of course I did some googling and I also found this is a symptom of MS and now my brain just can't let go of the worry.

I absolutely hate to go to my doctor and get a bunch of tests done and I believe it's actually hard to test for MS anyway.

I'd appreciate any words of support and reassurance that this is TMS and will pass like all my previous TMS symptoms.
 
Hi, welcome:
It’s great you think you can recognize tms, but I sense you aren’t sure.
If your peace of mind will rely on ruling anything out, go for it to squelch your doubt.
Remember that tms can manifest as just about anything.
You mentioned you worked with a tms coach for 12 weeks. What tms self-care have you been engaging in since that time?
What’s been going on in your life that has been stressful? Events, thoughts, little things that have built up?
Are you a person with some of those tms personality traits that Dr. Sarno talks about in his books, besides being a worrier? These are the kind of things to look into, to focus on when you suspect tms is at play.
 
Hey @SSS - sorry to see you still struggling - have you by any chance revisited some of your older posts from when you first started? You can look at all of your content, or just the threads that you started, from your profile page. It might help to see the ups and downs as they occurred.

Fearing MS is a really common occurrence around here - but I can't recall anyone who was eventually diagnosed with it. The concensus seems to be that there is a whole category of "nervy" TMS symptoms that mimic MS really well. For what it's worth.

We always say that a new symptom should be checked out if it really worries you, and especially if the worrying will impede your chances of treating whatever it is as TMS. If you really want to avoid that, and if you're willing to consider a logical approach, I guess I would ask whether devoting a certain amount of time to your TMS techniques at this stage would be ultimately harmful?

Mind you, I don't know the answer to that, because I DID have my dizziness way back in 2011 checked out (and they couldn't find anything wrong, then I discovered Dr Sarno) but the way I look at it regarding things I DO know about, for example, I would always say that heart symptoms should be checked out immediately, but I would not say that for tinnitus, or for any number of vague and/or intermittent pain syndromes, nor, given my own experience, for vague and/or intermittent nervous system symptoms, like dizziness, balance, or various forms of GI distress. But that's me.
 
Cactusflower said:
Hi, welcome:
It’s great you think you can recognize tms, but I sense you aren’t sure.
If your peace of mind will rely on ruling anything out, go for it to squelch your doubt.
Remember that tms can manifest as just about anything.
You mentioned you worked with a tms coach for 12 weeks. What tms self-care have you been engaging in since that time?
What’s been going on in your life that has been stressful? Events, thoughts, little things that have built up?
Are you a person with some of those tms personality traits that Dr. Sarno talks about in his books, besides being a worrier? These are the kind of things to look into, to focus on when you suspect tms is at play.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your reply. I've definitely been going through transitions at this time - leaving a long time job and also experiencing the usual stresses of life around health issues for me and my family. I'd say I'm a people pleaser to some degree. I've been trying to focus on the concepts I worked on with my therapist - looking at the evidence of why this is TMS and why its OK to continue with my normal activities, and then thinking of the emotional triggers I have identified. I've started on a new workbook "The Pain Management Workbook" by Rachel Zoffness and am slowly working my way through this to remind myself of the TMS principles. I also watch a few videos by a TMS coach on YouTube and try to review the 12 reminders by Sarno. Hopefully this will all kick in soon.
 
JanAtheCPA said:
Hey @SSS - sorry to see you still struggling - have you by any chance revisited some of your older posts from when you first started? You can look at all of your content, or just the threads that you started, from your profile page. It might help to see the ups and downs as they occurred.

Fearing MS is a really common occurrence around here - but I can't recall anyone who was eventually diagnosed with it. The concensus seems to be that there is a whole category of "nervy" TMS symptoms that mimic MS really well. For what it's worth.

We always say that a new symptom should be checked out if it really worries you, and especially if the worrying will impede your chances of treating whatever it is as TMS. If you really want to avoid that, and if you're willing to consider a logical approach, I guess I would ask whether devoting a certain amount of time to your TMS techniques at this stage would be ultimately harmful?

Mind you, I don't know the answer to that, because I DID have my dizziness way back in 2011 checked out (and they couldn't find anything wrong, then I discovered Dr Sarno) but the way I look at it regarding things I DO know about, for example, I would always say that heart symptoms should be checked out immediately, but I would not say that for tinnitus, or for any number of vague and/or intermittent pain syndromes, nor, given my own experience, for vague and/or intermittent nervous system symptoms, like dizziness, balance, or various forms of GI distress. But that's me.
Click to expand...


That is a great idea to look at my past posts. I know what I will see as when I started on this journey I had no idea that I could be free of the 5+ years of food restrictions I put myself on to try to heal my bladder pain. A year plus later, its still amazingly joyful for me to just pick what I want on a menu vs. just the one or two items I "could eat safely". I am grateful to hear that my worries about MS are a common TMS problem.

I had a past experience where I had chest pains and definitely got that checked out. The pains stopped as I walked out of the doctor's office after he told me that nothing was found in my tests. I've had some similar pains/tingling/numbness before and they went away, so I'm pretty sure this is the same thing. Unfortunately my health anxieties seem to be increasing as I'm getting older, maybe as I see more friends and family age and have issues.

I will continue to work on this and I really appreciate your kind words.
 
Ah, the rage of age. In other words, aging is a known source of repressed rage that IMO is not acknowledged enough. Even though I eventually realized that I had anxiety-sourced TMS all my life, it was not based in any form of childhood adversity or trauma, and it had almost no effect on living a really fun, active, and satisfying life for many decades. Then I turned 60, and found myself in a full-blown TMS crisis that in less than a year had me well on the road to being housebound. Thankfully I found Dr Sarno and this forum in the nick of time.

My Dr Sarno book was The Divided Mind, with six chapters written by other medical and mental health professionals. I can't remember which one said it, but the moment I read that aging was a significant source of repressed rage, and thus symptoms, it was my TMS lightbulb moment. And the beginning of my recovery from what Dr David Hanscom refers to as The Abyss.
 
I have recently read some things about age rage.
Gabor Mate says that some of our unconscious rage probably begins in infancy. Something as seemingly benign as a parent, say not attending to a child in the crib when it needs it could spark separation anxiety in some. Then later in life we age: parents die or get elderly and we are face to face with morality, other loved ones pass, friends, family -and the feelings of some sort of loneliness, fear of being left alone surface but we can’t even really identify where they come from.
After moving from my home country (separated from family and culture), the death of a parent, grandparent and best friend, I totally get what he’s talking about.
 
I have some similar symptoms in my past fibromyalgia flares. Bladder, skin sensitivity, back pain, and pain in back of my leg. Tests ruled everything out. I am now certain my brain is the problem as I am learning I can turn some symptoms off quickly. My worst symptom in a flare is always the last to go. In past I also had tmj, si joint pain, ibs flares. The list goes on! I am a perfectionist, so I am the personality type for this.
 
MS is easy to test for -- my neurologist told me that if I was as symptomatic as I was and if it was caused by MS, there would be spots all over my brain MRI. I hope you feel better!
 
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