Day 8 Up to this point

Week 2! Today's writing prompt is to summarize our TMS treatment up to this point.

I've been studying TMS since New Year's Eve, so going on 4 weeks. Prior to then I had 14 months of near-constant pain during every waking hour. Sleep was (thankfully) mostly painless. The pain was usually a sharp pinch behind my right knee (right in that tendon), tightness-to-the-point-of-pain in my right calf, another needle in my right ankle, and numbness in my right foot. Sometimes the pain would move up into my thigh and lower back.

Just a few days after reading Healing Back Pain, I had 2 1/2 days of zero pain - it was completely gone! I actually wrote a long blog entry about my miraculous cure. But I decided to wait before posting, to make sure it stuck.

As I thought through things that might be causing repressed emotion, I decided to close my Facebook account. I really enjoyed Facebook and loved getting "likes" for funny things I posted. But I realized I was relying on it too much for affirmation, spending too much time on it, and at least twice a day I was infuriated by something someone else posted. I decided to take a break for 6 weeks to see if it helped. (I mindlessly typed the url 5-6 times per day over the next few days and then remembered my account was inactive. It took about a week to get out of the habit of constantly checking the site/app.)

A week after the pain-free 2.5 days, I took a long road trip with my family and the pain came raging back. I read The Mindbody Prescription while my wife drove. I had strong conditioning that the car was a place of pain. I had taken some benadryl to help me sleep in the hotel and it has caused muscle tightness in the past, so I blamed some of the renewed pain on that and quit taking it. The pain improved somewhat by the end of the trip.

Another week has passed and my pain is at its lowest ever (except for those magical 2.5 days that I hope were a teaser of things to come). I am able to sit in an office chair (I used a standing desk for the past year). I played 45 minutes of basketball last night and feel great this morning. I'm finding this structured educational program to be very helpful.

In fact, what I feel lately is not really pain, or at least not the unbearable kind. It's tingling - pins and needles in my right leg. But because it's the ghost of the horrific pain of the past, it makes me panicky and I have to remind myself that this is a huge improvement and it indicates I'm on the right track.

I'm feeling strong emotions come back. A couple of journaling exercises have made me a little weepy - I've never been much of a crier. I love basketball and last night I let the excitement of the anticipation and the actual game wash over me. I think my teammates thought I was a little crazy. "Guys! That was so fun! Seriously!" I sat in the car and just let the excitement overtake me. In the past, I would have tried to push it back -- "Calm down, it's just a game. You're feeling nervous."

I'm so happy to have found this place. Thanks to all who created and organized these resources. I am taking a cautious approach, but once I'm at 100% I will be TMS' biggest evangelist. I can already think of a dozen friends, family, and acquaintances who could benefit from this.

 

Reading your account of your basketball game last night makes me think that you are living more in the present and experiencing social interactions and moments for what they are. No censoring or overthinking. That's a really positive sign!

I'm on day 15 and have a similar story to yours in that the pain left and came back. I've had painful "sciatica" since last June and discovered Healing Back Pain in late September. I read the book in about a week and before I even finished my pain was 100% gone! I've lived with various forms of chronic pain for much of my life so this was a revelation and I became a total Sarno convert. I also wanted to write about my miraculous recovery but, like you, waited to see if it would "stick" before I posted my story. (It didn't.) An upsetting item in the news occurred a few weeks later and brought back the sciatica (though probably at a 7 or 8 on the pain scale, rather than a 10/10). I discovered this Wiki program over the holidays and started on January 1, though I take days off here and there to read Sarno or other books about TMS and just take it at my own pace.

This IS an amazing resource. We are lucky all of these people put this forum and program together. I really believe it will change my life--or at least my thinking about my life!