c90danwaiel
Peer Supporter
Hi all,
Here's my answer for Day 4 of SEP. Can't help but feel I'm on to something here at the end, but there's no repressed trauma that I can point to (still, it's easy to see where the cycle of obsessing about symptoms began).
A quick note: my TMS is pelvic pain related, hence the reference to a urologist.
What was the most disheartening thing a doctor has told you about your symptoms? In what ways have you kept that in your mind?
Actually, most of the doctors I've seen so far have been fairly optimistic. I’ve usually been the one to catastrophize (I have OCD, so this comes naturally). My (second) urologist assured me, with a lot of confidence, that I’d get better. My PT assured me that I’d get better and this was entirely fixable. I wasn’t so sure, and I think that’s what led me to where I’m at now. Both of them assured me enough to provide initial placebo cures, but then I started to give up hope after I began to lose faith in their cures.
I did have one horrific (initial) experience, which really threw me for a loop. It was my appointment with the first urologist who I could get into after my pelvic pain appeared. Turns out, he was on probation with the medical board and was a general quack urologist.
He gave me two diagnoses: one was an incurable STD (I’d received a false positive just two weeks prior, that I didn't know was a false positive at the time, but had good reason to doubt it) and another with an incurable degenerative disorder of the genitals that I was told would slowly take its course over the next three years. He frankly didn't say much about the degenerative disorder - he left me to google that one for myself. In fact, he started leaving the room as I was asking questions. Wouldn't even give me a full 30 minute appointment.
Luckily, both eended up being false diagnoses (one through an additional, more accurate test; the second, by a second opinion by a much better urologist), but that night was the first time I ever drank so much that I got the spins and ended up vomiting. I thought my life was over.
That was all less than a month after my pain started, so that wasn't a possible trigger for my pain.
However, my pain started in earnest nearly a week after I originally received a false positive on an STD test. I was hyperaware of the areas which later developed symptoms and where I currently have pain. I wonder if that’s how the cycle started, to be honest. The first time I felt pain, I thought it was a symptom of the STD. It was just three days after the false positive on the test - I got a slight pang of pain. I pushed it back with my mind, but it came back later.
Still, there’s no major repressed trauma that happened at the time that I can point to. Can't help but think it's linked though. I was very stressed at the time, and spent hours glued to computer, researching symptoms.
I'm going to go on a related tangent here, but one of the doubts I do have about Sarno is that it's always about a repressed trauma. I don't feel like I repressed that trauma in any way, but I can draw a direct line between that initial stressor and the first ever instance of my pain, just three days later. Any thoughts?
Here's my answer for Day 4 of SEP. Can't help but feel I'm on to something here at the end, but there's no repressed trauma that I can point to (still, it's easy to see where the cycle of obsessing about symptoms began).
A quick note: my TMS is pelvic pain related, hence the reference to a urologist.
What was the most disheartening thing a doctor has told you about your symptoms? In what ways have you kept that in your mind?
Actually, most of the doctors I've seen so far have been fairly optimistic. I’ve usually been the one to catastrophize (I have OCD, so this comes naturally). My (second) urologist assured me, with a lot of confidence, that I’d get better. My PT assured me that I’d get better and this was entirely fixable. I wasn’t so sure, and I think that’s what led me to where I’m at now. Both of them assured me enough to provide initial placebo cures, but then I started to give up hope after I began to lose faith in their cures.
I did have one horrific (initial) experience, which really threw me for a loop. It was my appointment with the first urologist who I could get into after my pelvic pain appeared. Turns out, he was on probation with the medical board and was a general quack urologist.
He gave me two diagnoses: one was an incurable STD (I’d received a false positive just two weeks prior, that I didn't know was a false positive at the time, but had good reason to doubt it) and another with an incurable degenerative disorder of the genitals that I was told would slowly take its course over the next three years. He frankly didn't say much about the degenerative disorder - he left me to google that one for myself. In fact, he started leaving the room as I was asking questions. Wouldn't even give me a full 30 minute appointment.
Luckily, both eended up being false diagnoses (one through an additional, more accurate test; the second, by a second opinion by a much better urologist), but that night was the first time I ever drank so much that I got the spins and ended up vomiting. I thought my life was over.
That was all less than a month after my pain started, so that wasn't a possible trigger for my pain.
However, my pain started in earnest nearly a week after I originally received a false positive on an STD test. I was hyperaware of the areas which later developed symptoms and where I currently have pain. I wonder if that’s how the cycle started, to be honest. The first time I felt pain, I thought it was a symptom of the STD. It was just three days after the false positive on the test - I got a slight pang of pain. I pushed it back with my mind, but it came back later.
Still, there’s no major repressed trauma that happened at the time that I can point to. Can't help but think it's linked though. I was very stressed at the time, and spent hours glued to computer, researching symptoms.
I'm going to go on a related tangent here, but one of the doubts I do have about Sarno is that it's always about a repressed trauma. I don't feel like I repressed that trauma in any way, but I can draw a direct line between that initial stressor and the first ever instance of my pain, just three days later. Any thoughts?
Last edited:
