Upper Back Pain for the First Time Ever

I am prone to TMS symptoms. I have had anxiety, heartburn, stomach discomfort (gas too), etc in different severity throughout my life. I most recently had chronic wrist pain that I suffered from for 8 months - receiving treatment such as cortizone shots and two unneccessary surgeries. I then read The Mindbody Prescription and was cured of my wrist ailment almost overnight. This book changed my life, and my understanding of TMS has been so fundamental to the restoration of my health.

Recently I have been under enormous stress at work. About a week ago a very intense back "spasm" appeared in my back. Symptoms include pain, weakness, tenderness, etc. I am certain this is TMS. However, acknowledging the source of the pain I have been unable to overcome this pain (so far). I am feeling miserable, and I am wondering how I may be able to overcome this newest manifestation of TMS!

 

I noticed after bench pressing this spring that a pain developed over my right shoulder blade that kept building despite the fact that I quit bench pressing. Like a tight knotted muscle group. In other words, the pain took on a life of its own apart from the physical activity that seemed to initiate it. However, in retrospect, I see that it started and intensified as I came up to selling my late parents' house on the San Francisco Peninsula. The reason you can tell it's TMS is that once it occurs, it becomes a programmed behavior that recurs whenever a similar pattern of emotional stress occurs. A couple of trips to an acupuncturist/TCM practitioner seemed to banish it. However, last week when some friends brought my late mother's ashes up to my new house in Sonora, I started getting pain in my left leg and, bango, a horrible bout of pain in my right shoulder following a weight workoout. You have to see the connection between your emotional life and the recurrence of pain symptoms if you want to establish the TMS diagnosis. Of course, it could be something medical and that needs to be checked out. But my right shoulder pain seemed so connected to deep emotions associated with my family that I'd say it's 99% TMS. To over-simplify perhaps, I'd say there are three preconditions to the onset of TMS symptoms: alienation, isolation and repressed emotions like anger and sorrow that are as often as not associated with old family issues and dynamics. To overcome such things requires, as Dr Sarno suggests, a good dose of self-knowledge.

 

Thank You! Perfectly timed for me to read this.
I have just taken over watching my 87 year old Mother ,and running a household again after 10 years of being single . I have been hyper vigilant about any TMS issues arising and setting aside time every day to reflect/review.

I woke up yesterday with Jaw pain...first time ever (52 yrs old). I realized that my Mothers 'editorializing' about family history has me flaming Hot Pissed off. She doesn't do it to me, but I have overheard her telling flat out FICTION to my GF over a cup of coffee. My Favorite piece went "So after my husband passed away , my children were grown so I began to travel a lot" ROTFLMAO. She began to travel alright...problem is, we were 5-9 years old. I grew up with a collection of baby sitters and distant family members 'watching' us (e.g. No parenting whatsoever) My mother had no use for children. She now has dementia and really doesn't even know I am her son... which has some deep irony in it.
I went out into the garage and had some private Gestalt therapy "LIAR...F-ing LIAR" and the pain is nearly gone...

Those preconditions you mention are spot on. Alienation in particular seems to be the theme of all the human condition.... us people who are TMS prone have to examine that closely. It's actually a gift, because once you take the time to look at it and the despondency has passed it is great fuel for seeking out a spiritual solution.... that is of course after I have dug out the very corporeal, shallow and mean feelings in that 5 year old inside who never really grows up.

cheers!

 

I can relate to what you are saying. My mom took care of us as children, but us being 5, I think it was too much on her plate. After being 20 years married, she went thru a bad divorce that left our household broken in more ways than one. After that, she had all this rage against my father that sometimes came in the form of unnecessary and overdone beat ups to us from the minimum provocation. She got cancer around her 60"s in one of her breasts and my sister cured her with natural medicine, but mostly by talking to her and finding out a lot of things that happened to her that she have never talked to anyone. The thing is that many years later I talked to my mom about all that beating that happened, and to my amusement, she said that I must be crazy because that never happened. Somehow, either she erased the memory out of shame or she was in a rage trance that did not allow her to see what she was actually doing. My father went on with his life and made another one, forgetting completely about us. He also got cancer but in a worst way, and had surgery, and also he have had a series of heart attacks. He might not know why he have been thru all this, but I do. You can try to consciously forget about your wrong doings, but your subconscious won't. Now that my mother is 82, I can't not talk to her about any of these, because there is no point really in bringing this to her. Even if she accepted it, what good is going to do to either her or me? I can only guess or theorize that maybe dementia and all those related illnesses are just ways of the subconscious coping with bad memories of things our parents did wrong. Just as some rape victims forget years of their life as they never happened, maybe our parents brain brings on the dementia so they don't have to look at our faces and recognize that they hurt us badly. My dad have been an asshole all his life, so we have talk to each other every amount of years, mainly when he have needed something from me. Last time was 3 years ago and I wanted to tell him all that I have inside, but I refrained from it, because he just have had a small heart attack. Then right after I helped him, he came back with the lies and his asshole self personality and actions. Then I regretted not saying what I had to say, because maybe I won't have the opportunity anymore since he is in his 80's. Anyway, I strive to be the better person. Im glad you can control your TMS so easily. I am still trying to reach that point. Thanks for sharing this.

 

The whole thing with me is the exact opposite: I didn't have an absentee mother so much as an absentee dad who drove me away from my mother with whom I was close. At least taking care of my mother (whose dementia was not that severe) brought me back in contact with her again. So my period of alienation leading to the development of TMS symptoms began with her death. That's when all the paradoxes of my conflicted relationship came home to roost and I developed a so-called "herniated disk" out running. Just goes to show that there are many different ways of creating the kind of ambivalent family relationships that lead to repressed emotions like rage and sorrow.

 

@ JoeHealingTms ..Remember.... I can 'control' it better because I have been fending it off since '99 (when I first read HBP). Mercifully, when it comes now and I can identify it quickly it leaves quickly. I also have the added benefit of the 4th and 10th step from AA which are both about 'inventory' regarding anger. The same repressed anger that causes TMS sends us to drink.

@ Bruce.... yes. Close family relationships are usually the most loaded for us. I remember reading HBP the first time and when he gets to the page about horrible festering rage from childhood I remember bawling like a baby. Losing my Dad colored everything in my life from age 5-23 til I had a burning bush type experience.

I used to be of the mind of "Oh..she's too old...I am not gonna rock her boat by calling her out on her crap". Now that we're under the same roof, a couple of situations have triggered me saying things I thought I'd never say. Not all of it, but I certainly don't pull punches about day to day practical stuff. Her hoarding and stashing stuff drives me bonkers and I no longer just ignore it now that I have to clean it up!

Sarno points out in HBP that the reason that we are goodists is also tied into fear of retaliation. As John Steinbeck once wrote, "If it's gonna be on my conscience , it wont be there very long"

We are all just passing through.

 

You're paraphrasing that old saw, aren't you? "You're gonna get it! Just wait till your dad gets home!" Dad punishes, mom protects - That's as old as Hokmah and Binah, the eternal male and female archetypes in the Kabala. But TMS always arises out of the contractions implicit in those gut issues you experienced (and suppressed/repressed) in early childhood before a strong sense of ego developed around your 6th or 7th birthday. I guess that's what Dr Sarno means too when you says you have to always keep paying attention to the psychological and ignore the temptations of the structural diagnosis.