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UK-Pete
United Kingdom
17 Posts |
 Posted - 01/10/2005 : 08:22:34
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I discovered this forum while flat on my back with laptop on a pillow - it seems that 12 months after being "cured" I have had a major relapse and could do with some advice. I'll give you my history - easiest way is to cut and paste from an email I sent to someone who I suspected had TMS, this goes to show I had even passed into the evangelical stage!
Bit of background - I have had back/shoulder problems for about 4 years now, shortly following a knee injury that never went away (an MRI scan showed nothing wrong, the consultant postulated tight hamstrings were putting undue strain on my knee). To start with it was a prolapsed disc in my lower back (confirmed by MRI scans) and I was in severe pain that affected my work and personal life severely. It didn't warrant surgery, as the likelihood of side-effects didn't balance the limited success rates. I was told by the consultant to 'learn to live with it' - no help whatsoever. After a couple of years I felt I could 'manage my condition' similar to you described - bit of exercise, a lot of avoidance of things that would cause me grief.
I then started to develop shoulder pains that steadily got worse - 'probably because my lower back isn't working and so the upper body is compensating' I surmised. A variety of medics etc have had a go at fixing me, I have had further MRI scans on my shoulder which told me 'there is nothing anatomically wrong' other than the fact my shoulder hurts like hell. Oh, and then my neck started playing up too...
I have not played sport since all this began, and am known to have 'a dodgy back'. I avoid doing things that I should be able to do. Because I have a reasonable income, and have access to BUPA getting in touch with medics has never been an issue. I have seen three consultants (i.e. the guy that you may eventually be able to see if your GP ever gets you high up enough the list), two chiropractors, two osteopaths, two remedial masseurs, at least three physios. I am also a sucker for any 'magic bullet' theory, so have a collection of books with 'the programme that will cure you'
Just before Xmas I was put in touch with a physio, who actually practises cranial-sacral therapy too. Most importantly he has an open-mind, and is very sceptical that orthodox thinking knows what it is doing re chronic pain and particularly back problems. This makes him sound a bit of a wacko, but temper this with the fact that his day job is as a physio for a premier league football team, and he seems to be able to get a bunch of macho numb-nuts (I'm stereotyping here!) to try an alternative approach. Anyway, I am not trying to sell you this guy's services, just point you in the same direction he pointed me to - Dr Sarno's ideas on TMS. Now by this stage I was getting a bit jaded about yet another magic bullet, but I decided to try this out.
The difficult thing about the TMS stuff is that it entails throwing in the bin all the thoughts you have developed over, in your case, 14 years. You may then start to think that everything in the talkback magazine is on the wrong lines, and as for all the medics/quacks I have seen over the years, well it would be nice to sit down with them again and explain my experiences with my condition(s).
The good thing about TMS theory is that it is easy. If you buy into the concept, then there are no exercise regimes, no tools to buy, and not much in terms of a wait to see results. The best thing is that I am starting to believe it has actually worked for me, a little bit of me is not yet convinced, but after hurting constantly for 2-3 years my shoulders haven't bothered me for a couple of months now (and my lower back pain is a distant memory).
I wrote this email in April '04. Excuse the UK references, but you get the idea. Since my email I have even begin my sporting activities again and all was well. Anyway, yesterday I get a low-back pain incident (while playing soccer, but before I had even kicked the ball, so no chance of it being a 'real' injury). This morning it takes me 10 mins to get out of bed and my back has seized up.
So what happens next? I have dusted off my Sarno book, done some thinking, but still in severe pain and effectively immobile. I will try and see my physical therapist (who put me onto TMS in the first place) but this will take time. So, do I take anti-inflammatories, do some stretching etc in an attempt to get mobile again or will this make things worse and allow my nasty unconcious to take over. I recognise that I probably need to reassess what is going on in my mind over a longer period - perhaps even try to see some form of analyst, but how do I cope until I can at least get functioning again (work, kids etc - don't mind sport taking a back seat for a while, but too long out and TMS is winning again)
Thanks for your patience
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Baseball65
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2005 : 08:43:40
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Hi Pete.
What you are going through is not uncommon to people who have had a complete resolution of symptoms.
To anwer one of your questions first,NO you should not take anti-inflammatories...nothing is inflamed if it's TMS,except for your subconscious mind,and unfortunately anti-inflammatories don't do much there.
Most uf us here on the board have had at least one relapse of considerable pain,some have had a few.
You did the right thing when you got down the book and dusted it off...I usually grab a hi-liter pen as well.There is something going on in your subconscious/emotional life that has necessitated a New distraction....it won't be something you are to aware of,or you wouldn't have gotten the pain.
Just start on page one again,and maybe grab a blank notebook and start brainstorming.....obviously somehting snuck by your "stress detectors" and has precipitated this attack.
The longer I have been doing this,the shorte these re-lapses have become....at first they were a couple of days...now they are literally minutes.
Glad to see you knew what it was right away....that is a sign that you no longer believ in the structural mythology....you ought to recover fairly quick..who knows...maybe by the end of the day if your a quick reader,writer thinker,meditator.....at one year mine lasted about 3 days plus or minus,but you sound much more attuned than I was than.
you're on the case!!
peace
Baseball65 |
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n/a
374 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2005 : 10:43:54
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Hi Pete
Baseball65 is right in saying that most of us who post here have had relapses and his experience of relapses being of increasingly short duration is my experience also.
The idea of a TMS personality is a valid one - and, I for one, come to this site because I find it a very good way to keep on track, even though any pain episodes I have had in the past year have been short lived and not severe.
You will have taken a knock because of this relapse - it doesn't take much for the pain/fear/more pain cycle to kick in when something like this happens.
As well as re-reading Dr Sarno's book, I'd take some strong pain killers until the pain subsides.
Keep us posted.
Best wishes
Anne |
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UK-Pete
United Kingdom
17 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2005 : 06:31:21
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thanks for the advice. Fortunately I am able to see the physiotherapist who put me onto TMS theory in the first place. I have an appointment tomorrow, so hopefully will get some advice.
One question that maybe shows I am a bit rusty - if the pain is caused by unconcious emotions, how will brainstorming/journalling help (surely by definition, without some involved psychotherapy support, our concious mind cannot uncover what the unconcious is up to?) First time round for me it was easy - just read the book and gradually the symptoms (shoulder pain) faded, never to return(yet)...Unfortunately what has come back is my original low-back pain (bulging disc confirmed by MRI etc etc). Keeping my TMS-is-the-answer hat on, I surmise that this is the nuclear option for my unconcious - knowing that this really "disabled" me five years ago and dominated my life for too long.
I have accepted I need to go back to the reading and the thinking (which I was able to drop 8 months ago) but what concerns me is how to deal with the day-to-day pain (currently too immobile to work as can't sit down/drive etc) without programming myself into thinking I have a physical issue. My back muscles are in spasm; I believe this is due to TMS and brought on by the mind. Do I have to unlock the spasm only by mental means, or can I take some anti-inflammatories, get some manipulition etc whilst I think psycological? |
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Baseball65
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2005 : 08:24:30
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Hi Pete.
The reason the brainstorming works,is that in doing so,we are re-programming the brain to think about psychological things when we have physical symptoms.This is showing the brain we know by what processes it is causing the pain,and that we don't need it to "help" us along .
As far as anti-inflammatories,nothing is inflamed....as far as manipulation,you might want to go to www.quackwatch.com and read about chiropractic "manipulations".....there is nothing a chiropractor can give but a placebo cure.
Doing either one of these propogates the ideas that we must disprove...that there is a physical/structural reason for the pain.
We work on the head,cuz that's where it all begins.If you are in really bad pain,take a painkiller.That's what Sarno recommends(remember...he's been a Dr. for a long time and he said this is the most painful thing he's witnessed in all of Medicine!)
I noticed: quote:
I have accepted I need to go back to the reading and the thinking (which I was able to drop 8 months ago)
....that's pretty significant.Everytime I had had a recurrence early on,inevitably I had decided I no longer needed to do these either.
You're going to do what you're going to do,....the best thing you can do is take a hrad core painkiller,kick back,and read like a madman...
Peace
Baseball65 |
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n/a
374 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2005 : 09:00:32
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Not everyone needs to get at the underlying unconscious emotions. The knowledge that these are causing the pain is enough. Its sounds as though that was all you needed when you first dealt successfully with your back/shoulder pain.
You may need to tackle it somewhat differently this time. There is no one sure-fire method that will work for everyone. I certainly needed to get into the causes of my pain and that involved psychotherapy - not easy to get under our NHS - I had to fund it myself, but it certainly was useful in helping build up my defences agains't further attacks of back pain and anxiety/depression.
It's interesting that you found a physio that is so in tune with psychological causes of pain because it was also a physio who first took my ideas (before finding out about TMS) as to the cause of my back pain seriously.
As far a pain killers are concerned, Dr Sarno says that no inflammation is involved in TMS, but as most of them work also as a painkiller, they would give you some relief. Personally, I'd stay away from them because they will re-inforce the idea that the pain is structural.
Again, I agree with Baseball65 - take a hard-core painkiller. Would your GP be willing to prescribe something? Another possibility would be to get an appointment with a pain management specialist. I don't know what provision is like in your area, but here, in NE Scotland there is only one, I think, so I asked my GP to arrange a private appointment with him - told him all about my pain and my ideas about psychological causes. He was very sympathetic and suggested Tramadol SR (a slow release strong painkiller) combined with low dose amytriptyline (it's an old fashioned anti-depressant that is used in small doses for it's pain killing properties - no longer used much as an anti-depressant). Together they were very effective and gave me the confidence I needed to get up and doing things again. I got a repeat prescription for them which meant any time I had a flare up I could get more.
One word of warning, if you do decide to do as I did and get a quick private appointment get him/her to write their recommendations for your GP to fill out. If you get an actual prescription from them it costs a fortune. The actual consultation cost £75. That will vary from area to area, of course. |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2005 : 10:36:02
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DearUKJames,
I did a beautiful, thoughtful post, (IMHO), to come to your rescue yesterday, and g-d d--n it, %&$x^z*, m----- f---ing, SPYWARE, a--- h--les, THEY SHOULD BE HUNG BY THEIR HEELS, took over my computer and I lost two great posts. But it doesn't bother me as much when that happens anymore, because, I realize I get as much benefit from writing the posts as others may. Being the TMS goodist/perfectionist that I am, I will try, try again.
You need a TMS booster! It concerned me when you said you recovered and was able to "drop" the TMS work. I cannot personally conceive of not thinking about TMS for sometime each day. I exercise my body each day, why would I not exercise my mind's-health system each day also. TMS thinking to me is changing my old way of thinking that is disablling to a new dynamic way of perceiving the world around me that is enableing.
So what do you need to do for TMS first-aid? You're on the fence. You're talking physical at times but some of TMS theory has stuck too. You realilzed that there was no objective cause for your back to spasm. You didn't get hit; you had just started playing; it came out of the sky or rather your unconscious. To help ease your fear, my guess is that it will go away in about a week. Maybe gradualy and one morning you will wake up and it will be gone and you may not even think about it. That's what happened to me once. My TMS migrated to my neck shoulder for a week. It was very real pain and stiffnes. But it was a big TMS breakthrough eppipahny for me. Like you there was no rational physical "injury" cause. It happened while I was driving. TMS shut down the circulation to my right neck/shoulder reason for a week. I was well indoctrinaated in TMS theory my then and didn't panic, go to a doc or PT, and had quit all meds by then. It went away in one week entirely. It was uncomfortable and stiff - very "real" feeling - but not HARMFUL.
So for practical ways to give yourself a TMS booster, of course return to the Sarno knowledge penicilin, that you "dropped" because you got well. We get colds and headaches every so often, and that is accepted why not an occasional TMS muscle attack? Colds and headaches, I am sure, have a TMS basis. Go to page 26 (if I recall) of MBP and look at the Rahe-Holmes list of life events, (both bad and good) that cause "disease" through interal rage. That's a good source to find the situataions that are causing your unconscious to create your current back-pain flare-up. I can usually find four to five life situations that cause leaks into my rage-reservoir.
Something I am currently doing is listening to Dr. Schechter's cassettes in my car. I am finding them very useful in re-freshing my TMS penicillin knowledge. As for pain-killers and physical therapy or stretching, you can do them but not with the thought that they will directly help you to get fixed. They may sooth you but only "you" will fix you in the long run. Your spasm will go away in a week or so if you do nothing physcialy to help it.
I would not stretch it. This was debated on the board a long time back and the feeling was working the spasmed region in the accute stage only serves to focus on the physcial and serve the purpose of the TMS gremlin, to distract from the emotional and focus on the physical.
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UK-Pete
United Kingdom
17 Posts |
Posted - 01/14/2005 : 09:11:40
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Been about 5 days now since the flare up and things are much better. Not pain-free, but by no means disabled now, am doing bits of work from home (as I am a goodist and would feel guilty otherwise!). Fully intend to go to watch a football match tomorrow, which will involve sitting down for long periods and a long walk to and from the stadium. Fortunately watching my team will allow me to vent all sorts of emotions, so it will be a form of therapy anyway - just pity the players if they perform like last week!
I have spent the last couple of days re-watching the Sarno videos and one area left a few unanswered questions. He states (in response to an audience question) that everyone has unconcious rage, and implies that everyone must have some level of TMS syndrome (or equivalent e.g. excema). Now, as not everyone in the West is "disabled" by such conditions, does this means that some people have more serious rage than others? (and hence have to find a more serious outlet by increasing the pain, excema, depression or whatever?)
Extending this further, Sarno implies that you don't need to (or can't) reduce your unconcious rage but you can just understand it and its causes better. When this level of understanding is reached, your unconcious realises that creating the distraction e.g. TMS is no longer working and so stops. However, if your rage is still there and TMS resulted as a means of distracting you from tipping the rage into the concious mind, the rage must find another outlet somewhere. Does this mean that once you are a sufferer of a mind-body condition you are destined to just keep getting a series of different conditions, as your unconcious tries to keep one step ahead of us? Or that eventually the rage must surface when all distractions have failed and that everyone that Sarno 'cures' eventually goes bananas  ?
The only explanation I can think of for this is that you CAN influence the level of unconcious rage, and that all the pyscological work either removes parts of the rage by fixing the underlying problem (e.g. convincing your unconcious mind that it is OK to have negative feelings about family) or at least reducing the rage by acknowledging it.
I think I may have to forget the football tomorrow and go off to study for a PhD in Freudian affairs instead |
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Cured 12 months ago - but it is back!
