worst TMS pain flare up in about a year. any advice and support is welcome

so a little back story. i first learned about TMS in dec 2015/jan 2016 and began applying the things i learned from Readin sarnos books and on here and had steady, if not quick, results. by february i was back to mild exercise, by march i was back to lifting weights and by May i was in full swing with working a physical job and doing intense workouts on top of that 5 or 6 days a week. of course i had some ups and downs with TMS pain symptoms but the flare ups and have been very mild until about 2 hours ago.

i was at work, having a good day and pain free. at this point the fear or preoccupation of pain in the back of my mind is pretty much gone. anyways i sit down to have a break and as soon as i stoop up that's when the pain hit. mostly in my right outer hip and into the lower back. very typical TMS pain but very severe.

anyways i'm home now. the pain has eased up a bit and in fact getting out of my car/walking in it had subsided by A LOT, although has seemed to return. i have no doubt in my rational mind that this is just TMS pain but of course there is always that bit of doubt somewhere in your brain trying to convince you it's a physical problem.

anyways i'm really just looking for any support, encouragement or advice. i'm going to go over the daily reminders and maybe journal down some emotional things that are bothering me (might use this thread for that)

 

so it's the morning after. the night was pretty rough. was up on and off all night, hard to get comfortable. the pain was pretty severe any time i tried to move.

earlier this morning i was really letting the fear get the best of me. now it's later in the morning, pain is still there but not as bad. few things i'm doing/thoughts i have had.
-i'm taking it easy today and i'm not going to push myself to hard. i'm doing some household chores and won't lay in bed and mope all day but i'm not going to be to hard on myself. i feel like i work so hard most days, i deserve to be easier on myself today. as i'm going about doing laundry and dishes and other chores i'm really trying to be indiffrent to the pain. it's just a sensation, not a real injury. i'm also not shying away from feeling the physical pain and i'm not pretending it's not there.
-i'm not going to get too preoccupied with finding the exact cause/underlying emotions. i know it's caused by TMS and repressed anger is usually the key emotion to TMS pain and that's all i really need to know. physically i'm fine, i'm not injured. i'm aware that TMS is playing a trick on me and that's all i really need to know. i did some journaling and thought about what is bothering me and i might do some more later, but i'm going to leave it at that. trying to narrow down the exact emotions that are burried deep in my unconscious mind is not only most likely impossible, it's just not necessary.

on that same not i'm not going to focus to much on changing myself/who i am. i was really starting to beat myself up and pressure myself on this, thinking that would be the key to getting over this flare up.

 

so today was kind of blahh. i tried my best not to let the pain get the best of me, but at the same time being kind and forgiving to myself. i have laid in bed a lot but have also been up and moving around a lot. i got my laundry done, cleaned up all my dishes and took a shower. all of those are things are normally no big deal but today they seemed BIG and i'm proud of myself for doing them.

i'm trying my best not to get frustrated and try to force this flare up of pain away.

one thing i would like some advice on is what to do about work tomorrow. i work a physical job, have been there for about 10months and have not even considered calling in b/c of TMS pain. i'm going to plan to get up and get ready for work and go in but if the pain is still pretty severe to the point getting dressed is painful i will probably not go in. in the past i have been successful with getting mad at the pain and really pushing on through it but i'm not sure if that's the best move in this situation. i tried that at the first sign of the flair up but that really didn't seem to help and just turned into me beating myself up over it.

 

Hi there, King, and welcome to the forum! That's an interesting and frustrating story of sudden unexplained pain you've got there, and I sympathize! I've had one similar situation, and one not similar in length, but certainly in intensity.

You can read about my intense headache experience here, to know that you're not alone in this kind of thing happening to any of us, at any time:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/bookmarks/137/view-item (Bookmark | TMS Forum (The Mindbody Syndrome))

And this incident: about a year and a half after I started doing this work, with a lot of success, I was vacuuming my carpeted stairs one day, and I swear, the moment I thought "geez, I really need to shampoo this carpet" I felt this intense shooting pain hit my lower back and off to one side. It was intense, and it was bad. I laughed it off and said "classic TMS" but it didn't go away. I went to the gym for my weekly training session, and we tried to take it easy but it got worse.

By the end of the week I was hobbling around and using a ski pole to walk. I called my PT who couldn't fit me in, but he recommended a little book by an Australian chiropractor, who I think incorporates a lot of mind-over-body thinking in his simple advice, and after a few days of following the quick and easy exercises in his book, AND believing his advice that I could achieve a full and permanent recovery (not hard for a real TMS believer) I had in fact completely recovered by the time I saw my PT a couple weeks later. And, it's never happened again - I think that was probably 2013.

To me, it's a perfect example of how the thought that causes the pain doesn't have to be deep or ancient. Was it really just annoyance at the inconvenience of having to clean the carpeting? Perhaps, or perhaps it was the last straw in a series of annoyances, and if that was the case, the intense back pain certainly took my mind away from petty annoyances, and forced me to slow down!

My headache story is pretty much the same - even though it involved my mother. But it was very current emotions that were causing the unconscious distress, and getting in touch with them solved the pain.

The problem with back pain is that once your muscles have pulled themselves into a knot, it may take longer to calm them down, compared to a tension headache. Don't ignore the temporary relief that can be achieved with pain relievers (I'm a big fan of ibuprofen when it's indicated!). There was study done sometime in the not-too-distant past that revealed that taking an OTC pain reliever can help with psychic pain as well as physical pain.

Good luck, and keep us posted!

~Jan