Ah Eskimo,
Thanks for engaging. I was so drawn to this thread, I suppose, because you appear to be a skeptical sort. It reminded me of myself. If you have read even once my posts on the old forum, you're well aware that I attempted to mount Rocinante and joust all the TMS windmills on the internet. I yelled bullshit at every turn. I just wanted a straight answer and couldn't find it for all the fear of stepping on the theory and theoretician. I've kind of mellowed a bit since then. I'm 54 and well past the need to find any answers to nervous illness questions. You owe no one anything, so you are free to find your own way through this mess. And believe me when I tell you I understand. I'm afraid to say that as time goes by you are less likely to have the type of person show up in your life that I did who absolutely would not hear my whines and excuses. She only wanted to hear my reports of accomplishments. This is desperately needed in your case. Mom and Dad won't do it. Too much history. You need a calm, dispassionate voice. I hope you don't mind my frankness.
In your responses on this thread, it appears that you might simply be suffering from information overload. You are getting advice from too many people, have read too many books, seen too many doctors and therapists, and so you now have all these arrows pointing in disparate directions. That's sort of the nature of forums. How you found this place is proof enough for me that you are here among fellow TMSers, OCDers, anxiety disorder sufferers, or whatever label you'll accept. So, instead of going through all the components of theories and treatments you have tossed for inanity, ineffectiveness or just plain moonbattery, what do you think is the most plausible reason that a person's neck aches 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 10 years? You might be one of the brightest people I have corresponded with, and yet it seems you have missed entirely the most fundamental, foundational, basic point: stress causes soft tissue tension and pain. It's listed as a primary symptom of GAD in the last DSM volume I consulted. Perhaps your analytical mind sees too many possibilities. Scan results negative for tumors, fractures, or other anomalies? You're weary of making excuses and trying to explain. So stop.
But why doesn't the pain go away? Easy answer. It is the sum of all the stress you've put on yourself to explain it, analyze it, glorify it, use it as an identity for a decade. It has its own zip code and gravitational pull. If stress causes your neck to get stiff, how does adding unrelenting stress BECAUSE your neck hurts make it go away? You seem singularly focused only on getting your pain to go away as if reading a book or attending a lecture has anything to do with it. This process is about identifying the absurd fears in your life that you use to erect limitations on your behavior and eradicating them. This is all you need to know. Your body is systemically affected by stress, so if you manage to calm your ruminations about your neck, don't be surprised if you notice your knee or elbow or something else hurts. Treat it mentally the same. It's all nonsense.
I see a few struggling people have grabbed ahold of your doubts and treatment failures and started a chorus of harumphs, which are in no way helpful to anyone. If you really, really want to get better, join Recovery, find an accountability partner, preferably a former patient who is willing to spend time listening to your situation and advising you. If anyone here is willing, that will do fine. But you can't dilute hopeful, inspiring thoughts with wallowing with the woeful. It won't work. Understanding one sentence will. Your symptoms are not dangerous. Have a great recovery and send me a message when it's over.
Thank you for writing again Hillbilly. I've been trying to just take this message on board and resist arguing/dismissing/rejecting, but I don't want to delay responding any longer for fear you might think I haven't read you carefully and gratefully.
... But I am struggling. It is not that I don't find your explanation plausible. Far from it. I have always found this sort of explanation of what I'm experiencing plausible, intuitive, and downright appealing. Not least because it's an explanation which also points towards a way out. The trouble is that this has been my operating explanation for a decade. I won't waste your time by droning on about how I've "been here already, done that, tried that, didn't work" (which
is how I feel, I'm sorry to say) and instead raise two specific concerns:
1. A central theme is a recognition that the symptoms are "not dangerous." I take this to mean that the symptoms are not evidence that the body is damaged or undergoing further damage in a biomechanical sense. I take it that this realization is extremely relieving for many ... for some maybe even enough to cut through the whole charade and move on with life. But for me, the belief that the symptoms are dangerous is not that I believe my neck is breaking down just because it hurts. Again it's more that I am terrified of stress, terrified of the damage that chronic stress is doing to my heart, my brain, and my appearance. And also that chronic pain
itself, regardless of cause (be it physical or psychological), is damaging to the brain, raises blood pressure, keeps cortisol high, etc. Of course you can say, as you did, that it doesn't help to stress about the stress. But how to get out of that toxic loop has totally eluded me for going on half my life now. Stress
is dangerous. That I'm still in constant pain
is dangerous, even if it's not the case that my spine is crumbling. And that's not even getting into the sense in which it's dangerous in that it has completely altered my personality, damaged my relationships, and made life a hellish experience.
2. I don't know how to counter the fact that at times throughout this ordeal, my life has been very ordered, 'adult,' active, social, balanced (fully admit that this is
not now, nor the preponderance of these 10 years), but that the pain and OCD and depression and anxiety and other physical symptoms were no less - nor less taxing - as a result seems to throw quite a wrench in this understanding of pain. Kozas is I think describing something similar. My aim here is certainly not to assemble some kind of chorus of doubters, but rather to get better. If 'living one's life' is the way out of this hell, why has it never made one damned difference for me. Here sometimes people also say "well maybe the symptoms didn't go away, but at least your life was more productive, you were more functional, isn't that better?" ... however I can say that throughout those more functional stretches I was at all times every bit as suicidal and could recognize that pressing on was not sustainable let alone curative. To be clear, I'm not talking about weeks or months long experiments in 'living life' and then giving up. I'm talking about years.
I will say I like your idea of finding a hard-nosed mentor who won't put up with my whining. And please no need to be diplomatic, what I'm looking for is frankness. I just want to get better.
Thank you again and I hope you're well
