TMS after Atlas Subluxation

I have been fascinated reading so many posts in this forum that mimic many of my symptoms. I took a nasty fall back in December and bumped my head pretty good, enough to break my nose. Shortly after that fall I developed all sorts of chronic symptoms including nerve pain, jaw pain, scalp pain, burning mouth, burning stomach and internal tremors. I saw doctor after doctor who all told me I was fine. Finally had an MRI of spine that showed some degenerative disc disease, but nothing operable, so i figured I just needed to try to deal with my pain through exercise and using my brain to control the pain. I finally did end up at an upper cervical chiropractor who found I had an 8 degree atlas subluxation irritating my brainstem. My chiropractor said most adults do have a misalignment. The procedure used to correct the misalignment was very gentle. Now that my structural issue is corrected, i am still left with severe central sensitization causing the burning nerve pain everywhere in my body. I have been trying some of the techniques I have read about here as well as techniques From Dr Claire Weekes and i can say that the brain does have a very powerful ability to keep the body calm, though it requires a ton of mental effort, at least from my experience. i am hoping I am on the road to recovery, but I wanted to post my experience and also applaud all of you who deal with this type of syndrome as it is quite debilitating in so many ways.

 

Hi @Ikelse
I have a diagnoses of essentially one vertibrae that slips and makes others get stuck. I can absolutely feel it when it happens.
However....
It's a sensation that doesn't really cause chronic pain. It comes and goes all by itself, and that's absolutely natural because our spine is always moving in a variety of directions. This is what makes a sublaxation as a "diagnoses" really impossible. It might be in this position while your chiropractor examines you, but chances things shift and move pretty quickly. For a time I had a chiropractor who was awesome. Although he didn't really recognize TMS he recognized fear and anxiety and discussed these things with me and made it really clear that things like sensitization etc. are what he had ended up really working with people on.
So please consider that you never had a structural issue, but that ALL of your symptoms after your fall were sensitization. After all, that must have freaked you out - bumping your head and breaking your nose. I could see that as a "what the hell else could go wrong" moment!
Of course it's taking you mental effort. Injuries often crank up the nervous system, especially when paired with fear and anxiety either about the injury ... or if the fact that the injury and your subsequent delving into mind body related topics have revealed that you just may have had a lifeline relationship with fear and anxiety at some point. Takes a bit to get things to calm down.
TMS is actually not a "syndrome". The mind/body connection is a normal function of being human. For some reason, some of us just get the meter stuck into a full "ON" position, and we just need to get some life balance so that our nervous system can flow through all of it's states.
Keep up with the work of Claire Weekes. I had really wild anxiety, along with chronic pain, depression and other really intense symptoms and was bed ridden for almost 2 years.
I still struggle with some pain and symptoms (and anxiety can come to visit again) but it's WAY WAY better and I live a relatively full life. I read books by Dr. John Sarno to learn about TMS and his techniques along with Claire Weekes. I'm not sure that Dr. Weekes methods can be utilized alone for TMS since she focused on anxiety. Dr. Sarno's work is a bit different, but that combo of genius minds can surely help you get the job done.
Some of us use other techniques like meditation and other Eastern meditative arts like calming Tai Chi or Qui Gong or yoga if you find movement calming. Others like to be in nature, or find the repetitive motion of calming activities like knitting to do the same thing. Yet others find running, baseball and other sports give their minds a break from the focus on symptoms. It's a balance of being able to "do the work" and also find times for fun and enjoyment of life that keeps us going!

 

Thank you cactusflower, and i could (and have at times) considered i had no structural issue. I have been a releatively anxious person most of my life with a propensity to please others at the sake of myself. At one point i could not turn my head to the left and had a visible high shoulder and a visible short leg. This threw off my biomechanics and i was walking with a hunch. Of course this could have been from the chronic tension I felt from the anxiety about my health. Whether or not I did have a true structural issue, it may have just helped me to think the chiropractic adjustment helped me. As soon as he adjusted me I stood up straight and my leg was no longer short and my shoulders were even!! I do look forward to the day when I can feel some joy again. It has been too long suffering depression and sadness and fear.

 

And I will say one more thing about this, my chiroprator was the only medical professional who ever told me that my body would heal and could heal, and that may have been the mental kick-off I needed to start doing some work!!!

 

Chiropractors and many other alternative practitioners are the people most likely to end up with patients with whom conventional medicine can find nothing "wrong", and many of them have done some searching or gathered some understanding that there is more going on than sometimes meets the eye.
Dr. Sarno was the conventional Dr. who dared to think outside of the box for his clients who had trouble healing from their "injuries" and discovered that many of his patients never had any "injury" or illness just chronic pain. He put science (which has since then evolved) and the machinations of the mind together and came up with what we now call TMS. So reading one of his books is essential for a good foundation of knowledge, plus he is very re-assuring. Claire Weekes is a great resource for the anxiety.
It's great you've recognized a life long relationship with anxiety. Anxiety is simply another distraction from what is really going on deep inside the subconscious mind, and is one of the traits many TMS folks deal with. Claire Weekes methods can help, but so can understanding a bit more of why we needed to rely on this distraction, and that's a large part of the work Sarno sets out for us to do. He asks us to look at our past, present and internal stressors and personality traits and see how these things have shaped our lives, and created an inner rage which, most TMS-ers find difficult to reconcile with. We're goodists, perfectionists, achievers, and can be very legalistic black and white thinkers. He asks us to begin to open our minds to the fact that the persona we have created is not truly in line with the people we are at our inner most core....and accept this as a matter of fact of being human. Rage is a normal natural human occurrence - our inner tantruming two year old that always wants it's way and is all about ME ME ME! While externally, our persona is often one of worring if we'll be liked, trying for some construct of being "perfect", not rocking the boat, working extremely hard, having to be the one to do everything, taking care of others before ourselves... in other words abandoning ourselves which creates incredible inner stress and rage which in turn puts the nervous system on high alert in fight/flight/freeze mode.
So after reading Sarno, (who is not a psychologist, so he doesn't go very deeply into a lot of this work and figures that we'll get to that point by beginning this inquiry into our past, present and personality). We often suggest people try the free Structured Educational Program which takes the basis of Sarno's work and gives us some great prompts to help with the internal exploration. You can find it at TMSwiki.org by scrolling down the page.
Another excellent tool is to use the ACE's test if you have not yet tried it. A simple set of questions that reach deeply. I suggest trying to do this as if you were a 6 year old being asked those very questions. It's eye opening. https://americanspcc.org/take-the-aces-quiz/ (Take The ACES Quiz)
For example: One of the questions asks if you were ever pushed, grabbed slapped or was something thrown at you: My answer as an adult might be No - because I wasn't in what I now think of in a violent way. But I was slapped, hit and punished physically and verbally by a parent who was consumed with anxiety about how my behavior and actions reflect on them as a parent, and could be very volatile for minutes or seconds (before dissolving into a fit of crying, that was blamed on me being "naughty"). Some kids might be able to brush this off. I took this all to heart so therefore, as a 6 year old, both the physical and mental "abuse" was subtle but absolutely an Ace's score.
This is how I suggest you try doing the test.

You're doing good work, and are on your way to building a really firm foundation!