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Carolyn
184 Posts |
 Posted - 12/07/2005 : 12:11:05
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I have not posted for a long while because I have been feeling pretty good. I have been suffering with some anxiety though and I finally started going to see a psychotherapist. I have been putting it off for months now but felt it was going to be necessary to finally get to the root of my TMS so I'd stop having flare-ups.
Just two sessions in and I am starting to get some insights about my perfectionism and inability to accept myself as good enough etc.. Then wham- almost immediately I have started having a lot of my old TMS symptoms again. Does that mean I am on the right track and am getting too close to something the TMS doesn't want me to know about? I think it is truely weird and also fascinating that our minds can work in this way. I would not have believed it if I haven't been living it.
I also wanted to add that, once you know what it is, TMS seems so childishly obvious in its attempts to get your attention. I was actually sitting in the therapist office at my second session talking with her and I started having that familiar pelvic pain (which I had not had for months) and then my left leg went numb. She noted that my body language and increased rate of speech indicated I wasn't comfortable talking about what we were talking about but I couldn't believe that my body had reacted so strongly and obviously to the conversation. I see it as a good thing because it just further cements in my mind that TMS is at the root of my physical problems. I am wondering, however, if now that physical distractions don't work as well on me if that is why I am now starting to suffer from anxiety.
Carolyn |
Edited by - Carolyn on 12/07/2005 12:20:55 |
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Becca
USA
39 Posts |
Posted - 12/07/2005 : 16:26:33
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Hi
I have noticed in myself the connection between diminished neck pain and increasing anxiety. I don't know what to make of it either. I had suffered from significant anxiety while in college-rapid heart, shortness of breath, feeling on edge etc. Then those symptoms seemed to go away for a number of years. Then came graduate school , strange MS symptoms followed by unrelenting neck pain. But I did not feel anxiety like I used to. so I figured that I was not stressed out. If I was stressed, I would feel panicy. so of course I did not see the connection between stress and pain. Maybe my mind figured that anxiety symptoms were not a good enough distraction, so pain was substituted. Now that I am focusing on TMs as the cause, my anxiety has resurfaced. Sometimes I feel absolutely horrible because anxiety eventually produces muscle tension, which exacerbates pain, which makes me scared, which causes more anxiety and pain etc. It is hard to separate one from the other. I wonder which I should tackle first-the anxiety problem or the pain problem, or maybe they are really the same thing and cannot be separated. I hope this makes some sense-R |
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vegomatic
24 Posts |
Posted - 12/07/2005 : 19:50:52
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Anxiety is a TMS equivalent. Treat it the way you would any physical pain.
To make a really long story short, I went from having OCD, to anxiety, to sciatica, to lower back pain, to numbness in my foot all in a period of a few months. This was all related.
One time when I got a flare up, I went from a headache, to anxiety to carpal tunnel syndrome. Eventually, these symptoms went away because I knew their source. I compare it to figuring out how a magician does a trick. Once you figure it out, the trick no longer fools you, and the magician no longer can perform that trick in front of you again. He must learn a new trick.
When TMS "travels," look at it like a good thing. You got it on the run.
The mind is very devious and will exploit any weakness you have to create a distraction. So it makes perfect sense that if the physical pain from TMS doesn't work anymore the mind will try to find something else. In your cases, anxiety. You're both on the right track. Don't worry.  |
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Carolyn
184 Posts |
Posted - 12/07/2005 : 20:47:10
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Becca,
I think the first step to getting better is to break exactly that cycle you are talking about- pain-fear-more pain etc. I think that may be one of the reasons truely accepting a TMS diagnosis makes you get better. Once you know it is TMS and you know you have some control over it, it no longer triggers the fear that it is just going to keep spiraling worse and worse. I now look at my symptoms as sort of a curiosity- hmmm wonder what's causing this -and am in awe that my body responds like this. I really am no longer frightened by my occassinal pain and it is always short-lived.
I clearly don't have it all figured out yet because my TMS does seem to keep reinventing itself. I find anxiety to be a very uncomfortable feeling as well.
Carolyn |
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TMS fighting attempts at psychotherapy
