| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Pd245 |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 17:16:37
I’ve been taking a break from full-time computer work for the last two years to heal from what I think is an RSI from working as a writer in the tech industry for the last 10 years. Unfortunately, no healing has actually taken place. Resting just hasn’t worked. Neither has visiting every doctor in every branch of medicine in and around my city (from neurosurgeons to acupuncturists to psychics #9786;).
I’m ready to jump head first into the Sarno method, but am only about 95% sure I have TMS. I’m 100% sure that my symptoms are caused by tension, but don’t feel like my symptoms really match up with TMS, because they often don’t involve pain. I jump back and forth between thinking the cause is TMS, or that it is a tendency to store excess tension in my upper body (inherited from both parents) when I concentrate.
My symptoms are:
1. Every day I have spasms on one side of my upper body, which switch to the next side the next day, mainly around the rhomboid and trapezius regions. There really isn’t pain, it just really drives me crazy and threatens to creep up to my head and cause a massive headache. So I avoid everything. The spasms will centralize across the entire upper back, though, if I experience extreme tension or if I’ve overworked my upper body. This has been going on for years and I’ve had four rounds of botox, 8 months of physical therapy, a nerve block, etc. No doctor has been able to explain why they switch sides. My best guess is that they are caused by…
2. Trigger points in all of the muscles in my upper body, which cause spasms and severe tightness when doing anything with the upper body. After 5 minutes on the computer they sieze up. I don’t suffer pain from these – just the threat that they will turn into…
3. Headaches that aren’t really migraines or tension headaches (cervicogenic is the closest diagnosis), that range from noticeable to a 9/10 have-to-go-to-the-ER severity. They always start with muscle spasms in the neck and include tightness of the upper body muscles and burning pain along the side of my neck. Sometimes the tightness and spasms creep down into my lower body.
4. The symptom that prevents me from returning to work (and may have started all this) is that whenever I get in front of a computer, my upper body muscles freeze up terribly (even with good posture and ergonomics). I can be watching my boyfriend play Xbox games and it happens, I can be reading the Internet and it happens, I can be writing this very email and it happens. It doesn’t happen when I read the Internet on a handheld while laying down with my neck resting on a pillow, and it doesn’t happen when I watch TV. It gets really severe when I concentrate deeply on something on the computer, like when I write. It doesn’t matter if the task is fun or stressful. I’ve tried deep breathing, talking to myself (There’s nothing to be tense about! Bad body!) and my body just doesn’t listen to me.
I guess my questions are:
- Do these symptoms sound like TMS?
- Can TMS include tension without pain as a symptom?
- Can trigger points disappear with TMS treatment (including the knots and ropey muscle, which I have), or are Travell and Simons correct (the people that wrote the authoritative text on TPs) that they only go away with treatment, and that you can’t strengthen a muscle with a trigger point?
I have had MRIs, CAT Scans, bone scans, X-rays, test after test and they’re all normal. The only thing that’s come back is that in biofeedback, if I correct my posture the tension in my upper body eases. Also, I have ropey muscles and knots in my back.
I fit the TMS personality to a “T” and I’ve had most of the TMS equivalents at some point. Currently I also have stomach pain. I’ve had anxiety ever since I was a child, and this anxiety went away miraculously when the muscle problems started ramping up. I did freeze up as a child at night - I used to lay in bed as stiff as a board listening to hear if people were trying to break in. Perhaps there’s a connection between that and muscle tension now? (Conditioned response to concentration?) Not sure if the TMS method will help with that?
Thanks for any ideas.
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| 5 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 01/07/2008 : 20:45:22
Just a quick note - it's actually important to note that the alexis on this forum isn't me. http://lyspeth.com/rsi/ is my story and not hers.
Pd, Your symptoms definitely sound like TMS to me because they don't make any physical sense. You tense up when you see other people playing Xbox? You do realize that that makes no physical sense, right? :-)
Throw yourself into it. It's not 100% belief, it's 100% commitment.
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It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment. |
| la_kevin |
Posted - 01/05/2008 : 15:30:04
pd245, as far as "knots" go in muscles...before I came to the TMS theory, I went through two months of exhaustive work on my body. Daily massage and being stretched in a million dollar machine. I had knots on my legs to the point they looked liked cancerous growths to my therapists and doctors.
They did "stripping" and other methods of stuff on my "trigger points". They remarked daily how it was unusual and they worked tirelessly to smooth out everything in my body. I'm talking 10,000 dollars worth of treatment from a clinic dedicated to this stuff.
When I left the treatment center I still had chronic pain. I do know however that the "knots" never came back after that. I figured it could have been build up of fluid, from not exercising at all for years and being inactive, etc.
I really don't know what it is that made that happen, but I know I don't get them anymore.
Now about your symptoms, they "sound" like TMS. As you know, we can't diagnose TMS here, only give an opinion. But your symptoms fall in line with TMS. I also think that TMS doesn't necessarily need to cause pain to be TMS. It can cause dysfunction of something. Like muscles being tight when trying to move in a certain way, but the muscle doesn't hurt chronically. Or sleep disturbances, or heart palpitations. THese things don't necessarily hurt. But they cause one to worry and they get attention.
I would say that TMS is about causing "sensations" or dysfunction rather than pain.
Just my two cents.
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"It's not 100% belief that's required, but 100% commitment." Armchairlinguist(?) |
| mcone |
Posted - 01/05/2008 : 12:11:58
I'm very familiar with the mental quagmire of assessing whether my RSI-type symptoms are TMS or not. The whole idea of muscle knots and trigger points can be particularly confounding - the physical dimensions to these things, and the clinical experience we've had (or that others report) with trigger point therapies lends some credibility to those models.
And yet, based on some of the histories I've seen, even those that had pursued extensive TP therapy (with some benefit), could not achieve complete, lasting recovery until they undertook TMS work.
See here: http://www.lyspeth.com/rsi/ (This is the story of forum member Lexis). Additionally, some individuals have achieved complete relief without ever having done any TP work See here: http://podolsky.everybody.org/rsi/
So how does one reconcile the TP concepts with TMS? It seems likely that TP's are caused by altered tissue metabolism (reduced blood flow, toxic waste buildup, etc.) The RSI-treatment community would say these physiological changes are caused by unhealthy (i.e., static suspension) muscle use patterns - while Dr. Sarno describes similar TMS-precipitated physiological changes - caused by the nervous system.
I've concluded that the single most imporant factor in whether TP's emerge (or become symptomatic) is the nervous system - and the single most effective (or only) path to resolution (reducing them or making them asymptomatic) is the nervous system. Consider:
* The typical "RSI" onset pattern: Almost always occurs during or following a period of significant emotional stress and/or almost always occurs in individuals with anxiety.
* Even some of the conventional RSI literature suggests that stress is the key factor
* The multitude of complete recoveries using mindbody - and the general lack of longstanding efficacy for most treatments that don't bring the nervous system under control.
Personally, I'm pretty sure that I'm experiencing more or less the same thing as others with "RSI/TMS"; I can see that TMS work has resolved the issue for most folks that have applied it dilligently; and I think that some application of mindbody will eventually bring me a satisfactory resolution. Since the fall or so, I've experienced noticeable improvement (in my "RSI" symptoms) by challenging the pain, "letting go of the fear" and by consciously and affirmatively overriding and dismissing symptoms as they arise.
[I should note that I also find myself entertaining other overlapping theories - such as the notion that imbalanced nutritional/metabolic/systemic states could drive both the mental TMS equivalents (anxiety and depression) and the musculoskeletal physiological changes (pain/tension). Yet this is a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma - Is it TMS that is causing the anxiety/depression and the physiological changes (as part of an altered systemic state) or could there be some (as-yet-unidentified) systemic state that precedes the mental TMS equivalents and the pain/tension? This discussion is probably beyond the scope of this forum, but the success of Dr. Sarno's methods in applying the force of mind to overcome the syndrome is evident.] |
| Pd245 |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 10:45:20
wavy,
Thank you very much for answering my post. You really helped to put my frame of mind in the right place for the new year. I deeply appreciate it!
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| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 23:05:38
quote:
I’ve had anxiety ever since I was a child, and this anxiety went away miraculously when the muscle problems started ramping up.
This alone is enough to prove it's TMS.
I also have complex symptoms of tension etc. What you are describing is a kind of trauma where you are tracking these inner sensations from the point of view that there is something wrong with your body. It started when there was something wrong in your heart or emotions and you jumped it a few degrees over to obsess about the body thing instead. Working with TMS doesn't really involve so much detailed analysis - in fact it's about the opposite. Let it go. Keep letting go of thinking physically and keep turning your attention to the invisible elephant in the living room of your consciousness - namely the strong emotion behind the anxiety etc.
It's easier than many of us think when we begin the path. It takes quite a while to get how the very process of thinking about whether it's TMS IS the TMS.
Good luck. Let it be simple and easy. Just write a list of possible enraging things in your life, for example.
xxx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
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