Upper back TMS

Anyone here have/had upper back issues? Mine are so bad. It must be spasms. It tenses up so much and the rest of the day if I touch my upper back it's extremely tender and painful to sit down.

 

Yes, mine started in my neck and since I started challenging the TMS and working the program, it's moved to encompass my right shoulder blade and occasionally my entire upper back/shoulder area. My shoulders are also painful and tender. Totally feel you.

 

It's horrible. It's interesting because I'm sure low back pain is no joke, and can alter your walking abilities...but damn upper back pain feels like you can't breath, like your chest and shoulders are weak, makes me feel less like a man. I never had these issues growing up and am still only 26. I've had these pains every single day for 18 months and it's debilitating. I'm also working the SEP program on day 16.

 

Yes, I have had upper back pain. Especially around my right scapula, but also at times all over my upper back. It is never am acute pain. More an ache or tightness, but is very deliberating and depressing. I have had a few occasions when it was gone for a day or two. I was taking antidepressants then. So perhaps they reduced the pain? I think it ramps up somewhat when under stress and in fact started after a sustained period of stress and anxiety. It is like my muscles in that area are constantly tight/tense and have forgotten how to relax? The reason I believe it is TMS, is because of its duration and because the pain/sensations vary all the time. By the way the only physical way of reducing the pain is through heat. Heat really does help by, I think, upping the blood supply and thus relaxing the muscles. I too have let this become an obsession and therefore need to cultivate a new attitude of indifference. I have not yet succeeded in this yet! Good luck.

 

From what I've seen, it seems like TMS seems to really present itself around your early 20s. Sometimes a little sooner (late teens) sometimes a little later (late 20s, early 30s) so it makes sense for your symptoms to start then, but I'm new to this world so take that with a grain of salt lol. I know the thing that helps me the most with my pain is to stop what I'm doing, actively release my muscles in my shoulders so they aren't tense (I hold tension there pretty much 24/7 if I don't consciously relax, my resting position is to be tense lol) and after a few minutes once they're completely relaxed, I take 5 slow, deliberate deep breaths and envision oxygen flowing to my upper back and shoulders. Sometimes I'll envision a tornado sweeping through my upper back and shoulders or red blood flowing through, however it resonates with you the most. That takes my pain away pretty quickly for a while. It usually comes back but I just keep repeating that process. I'll do the Sarnos "tell your brain to shut the pain down" approach too, and that actually does help but it doesn't seem to be instantaneous for me. It seems to work on a delay lol I'll calmly tell my brain to stop the pain and then I'll realize a half hour, hour later that the pain has lessened.

Like fredb said, heat seems to help also. I'll take a hot bath with some epsum salt and just soak and focus on actively relaxing all of the muscles in my body and visualize my tension and stress leaving my body and flowing down the drain. There's been tons of scientific, peer reviewed studies on the effectiveness of visualization in healing and pain relief. My personal belief is that visualization helps us tap into controlling our autonomic nervous system - it's our brain's way of controlling the different parts of our body. They've shown that we can use visualization techniques to raise our body temperature, lower our own blood pressure, etc. So why not control pain and tension through visualization if we can control body temperature and blood pressure?

Have you been checked for a lung infection? I've had frequent lung infections the past three to four years for some reason, and each time I only know I have a lung infection because it becomes harder to breathe and my upper back starts to hurt a lot. I could have a lung infection for six months and the only thing that makes it go away is a round of antibiotics and my upper back pain stops and my breathing goes back to normal. Just something to consider, after reading about TMS, I think TMS could be causing my lung infections too, but that's just me.