Day 10 Updates on recovery

[Needel94]

Hi everyone,

I’m happy to report I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m continuing to jog a few times a week, which has been a tremendous source of joy.

My biggest hangup so far remains the pain associations I’ve created with certain activities, like sitting on the couch, driving to work, doing dishes, etc. I made the realization today, during my journaling, that my back started hurting while driving during a really difficult period at a new job. I hadn’t owned a car for two years, and my brain, sensing to shift my attention away from the disappointment, created an association between the car seat and my upper back. I’m hopeful that when I get in the car on Wednesday I can catch this before it gets started.

I’ve also had an interesting intrusive thought in recent days. I’ve wondered: What if my pain is the result of the ablation I received in early November finally working? Maybe I’m just tricking myself into believing this is TMS? That makes no sense, of course, because I’ve noticed my pain increases with certain activities — but, when I refuse to mentally engage with it, it quickly dissipates. If I have pain one moment, but not the other, I don’t think the ablation can be considered responsible for the relief!

I’m also very angry at all of the doctors I’ve seen over the years. It’s a shame the mainstream medical community hasn’t accepted TMS. Doctors are supposed to help make their patients’ lives better; instead they took my money and didn’t help me. In fact, their doom and gloom made me worse. That’s a bummer.

But it doesn’t pay to focus on that! My goal for this week is, when my pain hits, to think about what might be bothering me emotionally at that moment. For example, today after I did some air squats and lunges, I felt a twinge in my back. Was it the exercise? Or was it something bothering me emotionally. Once I asked myself that question, and forced myself to confront the scary emotional thing, the pain dissipated. How about that?!

 

[Needel94]

An interesting update this morning: I’ve been experiencing those same twinges in my lower back/hip this morning. Felt it when I knelt down to make my bed, and again just now to sit down.

It feels like this is my TMS moving to a new body part, now that it knows my neck is no longer fertile territory. Although, is it possible I just need to stretch more before I do squats? I understand that thought is focusing on the physical, which we are not supposed to do — but isn’t it legitimate that some exercise can lead to pain if you don’t warm up/stretch correctly?

 

[JanAtheCPA]

isn’t it legitimate that some exercise can lead to pain if you don’t warm up/stretch correctly?

That might be old news. I worked with a trainer from 2010 (I was 59) until 2020 (69) and she kept educating herself about kinesiology and exercise, and the only warm-ups she had me do were to run the treadmill for 5 minutes before our session and then do some joint mobility for shoulders and knees before we got into the weight training, which included squats and lunges. She had me stretch at the end of our session. Come to think of it, the YMCA streaming classes I take do the same. The warmup consists of marching, shoulder rolls, arm swings, and gentle squats, and the cool down at the end is when we stretch. I think my trainer explained it to me once. Look it up.

Also, if you're already exercising regularly, I really don't think there's any way you can cause an actual injury by not warming up. We're just not that fragile! The most fragile thing about humans is our psyches.

A good self-talk reminder for you would be "our bodies are not fragile, but our emotions are".

 

[Needel94]

That’s interesting. I’m all really doing is air squats and lunges, so it’s pretty minimal impact, but my knees don’t feel great when I do them (which was the case the last time I did my squats years ago). Wonder if that’s TMS too?

I like “our bodies are not fragile, but our emotions are” a lot.