TMS vs getting older

Hi there.

Hope you're all well. In the ongoing battle with our minds and emotionas in accepting a TMS diagnosis I just wanted to ask a question. I am 36 now and over the past few years I have had 5-6 episodes where my lower left back has a lot of pain and I tilt to one side and it's excruciating for a few days and eventually eases off and life is okish again.

This has happened more frequently recently. Could one not purely argue that this is a result of getting older and that muscles/joints are more susceptible to repetitive injuries? I guess I am asking why has this flared up more frequently in recent times? OR does TMS work in that way as we get older and so despite it actually being TMS, you are likely to get more moments like this as you get older?

I have read Sarno's work but just don't remember if that was covered and as I constsntly battle with my mind about TMS, it just sometimes feel like it's me getting older and the flare ups are more frequent.

Is that simply my mind taking advantage of my age and the doubts that creep in with age?

Cheers
Mihir

 

My answer is absolutely NO.

When I was your age, I could not do a single push-up, I had substantial pains in my upper back, 5 years later I got a serious lower back pain, could barely walk half a mile. 4 years ago I was told that I should never put any pressure on my wrists and that I needed a surgery to save myself, which I refused.

I am 62 now. I recently got myself to 40 pushups in a single set. I have no back pain, I run half-marathons and hiked couple marathon-length hikes, each in a single day. I go backpacking with the 30+ lbs backpack and my back feels great on the trail. I climbed a 4400 meter peak last summer and plan on doing more, if coronavirus does not get me :=).

Like you, I thought that my pains were a matter of aging. Turns out, all my pains were TMS. Read this:

https://www.amazon.com/Defying-Verdict-Defeated-Chronic-Pain-ebook/dp/B0834Q46SM/

 

Thank you both so much, very helpful responses. I've been running a lot recently and on some runs my back just doesn't like it after 3-4km. Whether it's muscle soreness or just TMS, I keep going believing it's the latter as this simply wasn't there a month ago but it's maybe the doubt creeping back in. I do the daily reminders but don't always feel the improvement I crave and being completely pain free has been rare moments in the past few years.

I will read that book for sure and it's inspiring to hear you both being active and being able to do so much activity. I am certain this is all TMS, it#s just trying to unlock that part of my brain causing all this.

Thank you!
Mihir

 

I Missed this post when it went round the first time, but YES, what they said!

I can throw a baseball harder, for longer periods and more accurately than in my 30's (I am 54), I can hit a ball farther and I have zero pain.

If you look at the date of your OP it was right when this current FEAR narrative in the world started getting broadcast...It has me all kinds of pissed off. THAT can be a TMS starter.

just something to chew on.

peace

 

If you keep running, pain eventually goes away. Well, sometimes it moves to the another place - but then you know it is TMS!

 

I’m 29 years old. Every time someone mentions that they developed back pain around my age (especially at 30), I raise an eyebrow. Given that Sarno said over 90% of lower back pain cases are a result of TMS/the mind-body connection, I believe there’s a strong connection between our perception of age-related milestones (such as turning 30, which is still quite young) and pain. My mother, who is twice my age and is very similar to me (she also has Ehlers-Danlos and dysautonomia), says this aligns with the experiences she has had as well. The mind-body connection is powerful, but we can overcome it.

I started noticing severe joint pain shortly after I turned 28 and had to take multiple rounds of antibiotics. Because I had read horror stories about strong antibiotics and also people reaching their late twenties and early thirties, my body clung to that idea, especially as an Ehlers-Danlos patient with funky joints. I ignore it and it quickly goes away every single time I’m stressed out and experience those symptoms.

 

Hi all, just wanted to update.

I read and replied to the early messages on the 13th of May. On the 14th I ran my best time yet with less pain and have been quicker and more consistent ever since. I still have pain, but am ble to push through it more now. It's amazing how easy it is to not put things into practice or to not realise that you are not going through the daily reminders effectively.

I don't know if I attribute everything to 'repressed emotions' or anger but I feel it's a mixture of that, day to day issues/pressures and maybe ghosts of the past.

I also have a horrid muscle knot giving me issues but can't tell if that's anything to do with this or not but gives me pain every morning and a bit over the day. Also decided to recead the book by you @TG957, quite an incredible journey you are on. I still have a little bit more to go but thank you as well.

Dorado, agree with you. It's a funny one as I mention all of this being in the mind/brain but it's also a tough one to talk about to people you don't know as well, or even those that you do that are just so difficult to get through to. If this isn't accepted by mainstream medicine, it's hard to convince the average person about the power of the mind when it comes to real pain.

Thank you all for taking the time. I'll keep using this thread and forum.

Cheers
m

 

Wow! Great progress and so fast! Congratulations!

 

Fear of age and mortality are certainly a factor in TMS, I know this for myself at least. I have always enjoyed being "physical," when I was young it was playing HS sports and weight lifting. At around 40 I took up long distance running, something which I am particularly poorly suited (I'm a fast twitch sprinter, not a slow twitch distance runner). Yet I am dogged and determined and I've therefore become pretty good at it, by common standards at least (qualifying for the Boston marathon is one example.

Yet there is some part of my subconscious that is attached to this idea that it is 'bad' for me and that I'm doomed to a life of waking up every morning sore and creaky and that my knees hurt etc. I've come around to the idea that this is TMS but it is so ingrained (not just in my subconscious but in public perception of being this extremely active late in age), that it's a hard thing to let go of. My method of coping so far has been just to grin and bear it and that works to an extent but it's been different than a particular spot of chronic pain and working to make that go away.

 

Just wanted to reply to this post I started some time ago. I actually started playing football again in the summer of 2022 and then around 6/7 months in my back started to go 15 mins into a game and I struggled since then and haven't returned as it happened a few times in a row. Same stuff, feel it lower left and then it is painful and in spasm for almost 5-6 days until it's better again. So I stopped as it kept happening.

I was actually doing well last year, doing PT, no football but then around October my back started to feel it again and since then it's not been easy, it's my back or my right hip flexor every morning too. My back had a bad episode last week where it tilted to one side and then through the spasm it would tilt slightly the other way. The double way tilt never used to happen.

I am trying and have lots of people in my ear to see this person or that person and I just don't want to go there. I am trying to go through the program and convince myself that it's just TMS but feels a long way to get back to doing the things I love and also not having my weeks just not wanting to play sport or do fitness. It goes back to my original post about it being age related which all your responses helped for. But equally I had my first spasm lower left back when i was 17 and it's always been the epicenter of pain for me.

Does that mean my trauma or repressed emotions could be prior to that or has TMS just latched onto somewhere I have had pain my whole life? Just hard to make sense of it but ultimately I am 40 and just want to get back to sport. I will read one of the books recommended above but it's so hard to get to the root cause sometimes.

 

That's a peculiar sentence. It doesn't latch onto a place where You've had pain your whole life. ..it is WHY you have had pain your whole life. I see you said you read the book...one read through is not gonna get most people with chronic pain better...it is an instruction manual for a complete change of perception...a TEXTBOOK with lessons, directions masked as 'suggestions' ...but as someone who is 100% better, I can assure you Sarno was f-ing with us... everybody I read posts from who is not 100% better, misunderstood or breezed over a section....that's where this forum can come in handy..but not discussing the symptom, as it is not the cause....My bad relationships and repressed RAGE about life situations is always the culprit.

I play baseball every chance I get. I mis-played a ball this week that hit me at about 90mph and I have ZERO pain...hell of a bruise, but no pain, because I have reconditioned myself to how I perceive pain, what its causes are and what its causes are NOT. Since I read Sarno and integrated it into my life, I have had many, many accidents ...fell in a pool, fell two stories off a building (broke my spinal vertebrae) had my thumb cut off and re-attached, went over the hood of a car with my bike, been trampled by a crowd at a concert (yes, trampled ON)...uh...drilled with a thousand baseballs and other things I have probably forgotten...except for normal soreness I have had zero issues with them.

i HAVE had a few 'tickles' where pain has come out of nowhere or SEEMED to be associated with an activity, but every time I got the book out and started again on page one reviewing the 'current LIFE things' going on versus when the pain came...it always went away as I worked through the book...usually in a day or two...sometimes hours and sometimes immediately..it has depended on how well hidden the real issue is. I am talking about a few weeks pain out of decades, whereas when I was still being treated in the 'system' I was basically in different degrees of intolerable pain most of the time.

There is No question I have seen asked on this forum that isn't addressed in "Healing Back Pain" which is my go-too-text.

..and back to your OG question. When I read the text and made an Identification with the Diagnosis and then began the work, it reframed everything that ever happened to me.. My 'story' changed. I had to let go of all of my 'conditions' and see it in context of my ANGER and frustrations and alienation and loneliness and Shame and a whole lot of other things that to be frank, are sometimes a lot scarier than me limping around

Most of us reached a 'limit' situation where the system basically told us we were f-d and we got put on the junkpile. The miracle of this work is losing all fear of doing any activity (other than sucking at the activity).

yeah...check it out.

 

thanks both for your replies, really helpful. I guess one question I have which related back to the original thread question, is why is the pain and symptoms more severe now than say 5 years ago and 5 years before that? So I can accept the diagnosis of TMS, but given the pain has bene around for 25 years but has gotten worse with age, is that because the body is naturally older, so any TMS pain is likely to hurt more as a result? OR is that just the way TMS works?

I hope the question makes sense, for example at the age of 17 when I first had a 'spasm' it didn;t tilt me to one side that first happened at 33/34 and then loads better for a period and now more frequently and for longer periods during impact sports. I guess the severity of the pain increasing with age is just something I am trying get me head around given it stems from a similar spot but the symptoms are just worse now. cheers, mihir

 

It’s because of your increasing anxiety, fear and stress. It has 0 to do with age.
Have you seen videos of 95 year old runners (one woman started running in her mid 80’s!), elderly people playing tennis, swimming etc.
Sure they probably get some pain at times (they are human), but a day or two later they are back at it.
These are people who don’t pile inner stress and anxiety about symptoms or the way they perceive themselves in the world in general.
Do the work.

 

Where is the LOVE button that this post deserves!

And gee, B-ball, hit by a ball about 90mph???

 

My two cents is that you have more shit to be angry at now, more old stuff pushed down even further, and perhaps more wisdom coming close to uncovering it which is scaring the beejeezies out of you making it worse.

It doesn't matter if there is more pain now and it's not something you have to figure out. That overthinking about things we don't need to think about (rather than the stuff we DO need to think about (our hidden anger/rage) is what gets us in trouble.
Whenever you think about your symptoms or questions around why is it this way or why is it that way -- switch your attention to -- the real W question -- what are you angry and enraged about?

 

The idea of "getting older hurts" is such a fixed aspect of our paradigm now, it's hard to imagine it not even being the case. Think about how something "generally accepted" as much as that is might be doing to your psyche and subconscious.

 

It Hit me around the 300 or so out in right field..., directly in my tit...it bent my stainless steel nipple ring!
Exit velocity is the new 'stat' we pay attention to and from working in a simulator, any ball that is a line drive past about 275-300 feet is approximately 90mph....to hit a homer you need to get it up around 100-105 (my personal best is the low 80's, but I digress)
I actually thought I was going to miss the ball ..I over ran it and it hit me w/o ever touching my glove. I still had the presence of mind to pick it up and throw it into second, so the guy only got a single.

My Center fielder and a few guys came out and asked if I needed to come out of the game. That is when Sarno kicked in... I knew that the mentality right after an injury has a lot to do with your perception so I said no...and then I screamed NO!!!! It HURT, but I knew to NOT let it win....and, Except for my teammates teasing me about being an old POS, I had nearly forgot about it until I got home and saw the purple and Yellow nasty.

It is not a 'tough guy' thing... it is realizing that by the time you notice your in pain, the worst part is already over. And the thing that would have been most likely to trigger TMS was my feeling like a Dinosaur and not really needed on my team, the actual diminishing skills as I get older, rage about GETTING OLDER , blinder, slower, dumber,etc. My ego just doesn't like seeing things that used to be within my abilities slip away, so I have a lot of 'talks with my head' so it doesn't get traction and start some other crap

I have had things like Dental issues, Male issues and other things that started with a 'real' thing and later were clearly only hanging around because my TMS latched onto them and said "Hey...he might believe THIS!"
Remember, Sarno said he still didn't know what a 'strain' was after being an orthopedic doctor for forty years....but my friends come down with them all the time. Stay vigilant!