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charbald
11 Posts |
 Posted - 04/05/2010 : 16:59:42
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Has anyone made the link between codependency and TMS symptoms? If so, I'd love to hear your story.
Long story short of mine is that I've always had back pain, neck pain and migraines (since under 10 yrs old). In January of 2007 I had what could be best described as a panic attack. Symptoms were tingling in fingers that developed into full hand & arm numbness & tingling. As it moved up my arm into my shoulder & upper back, my hand & arm began to worsen. They atrophied and began twitching. From here, my leg began tingling with similar migration & twitching up my leg. Then my arm began convulsing leading to a whole body convulsion. A few days later in the hospital I had a cold numbness (think frostbite) feeling in my left face & neck.
I had been rushed to the hospital because these symptoms came on over the period of about 2 hours. They ran every test on me possible and eventually came up with a diagnosis of Conversion Disorder. Essentially, it is a psychosomatic disorder where emotions become too much for my brain to process. Instead of dealing with the overwhelming emotions, my brain manifested these physical symptoms. I used Sarno's books to convince myself that these were not physical ailments & slowly I was able to use my hands & walk again. I still have tingling & some numbness/sensation changes in my right hand and right foot along with the cold feeling on my face. I am sure these are related to my emotions.
Now, 3 years later, I am learning that a close member of my family hid a serious addiction. Through counseling I have come to the conclusion that I am codependent. I am reading many books on the topic & going through a workbook to deal with it. There are so many similarities between the two. Anyone else had similar symptoms?
Is anyone else working through codependency too? |
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charbald
11 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2010 : 15:14:04
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Okay, so out of 60 reads, no one has posted. I thought I would give a bit more info on codependency and conversion disorder to maybe get one or two responses?
Here is a website that lists all of the possible characteristics of a codependent person. I thought there was a lot of overlap with Sarno's TMS personality. http://www.codependents.org/tools4recovery/patterns.php
Here is a description of conversion disorder. In my case physical therapy/ occupational therapy triggered attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder
Hoping to hear from someone out there.... Thanks. |
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catspine
USA
239 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2010 : 17:17:13
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Hi
Sorry you felt left out. I think the traffic has been slow lately. I was wondering about that but maybe it's a good sign altogether.
I did not know what Codependency or Conversion Disorder was so thank for posting about it, it's interesting. Are you still suffering from it? Have you found a way to curb codependency or a treatment if that's what you think you have?
I can relate to the physical symptoms you mention but those are common to other aspects of anxiety or mind/body syndromes (I'm also careful not to fall into the usual traps where it's easy to identify with a list of symptoms after learning the hard way). To a little lesser degree though at the worse time of the panic attacks that's pretty much what it was like and sometime in the middle of the night apparently for no reason. Now those drastic moments are gone and I'm so glad. I trust you'll be able to heal too.
I read the Wikipedia page you gave the link to on Conversion Disorder and the diagnosis seems to be reserved to extreme cases like permanent mental hospital patients. Are there different degrees of affliction by the disorder? How did you make the link between codependency and Conversion disorder? there seems to be a wide gap between the two although one may include the clinical signs of the other. More over I read that this condition is not permanent.
You may be right that there is a lot of overlap with the TMS personality but still it is called differently and there must be a reason why. When it comes to identifying mental disorders accuracy is of utmost importance because many condition may all looks pretty similar first and beside that what we don't know as patients is often the extra material doctors do know about that makes the difference to label these conditions properly. The problem is that at least in the USA the patients are often deprived from the essential information they'd like to have access to.I don't know why.
My point was that although tempting one does not want to jump to a conclusion too fast because conclusion also have consequences. What can be done is to safely try known techniques in relation to specific problems to eliminate the cause of the symptoms . It is a time consuming process because these technique need to be learned and tried and sometimes it leads nowhere but it was worth it in my case. Since with TMS there's basically nothing wrong organically the time issue is relative. |
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charbald
11 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2010 : 22:57:17
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Thank you for your response catspine.
I tried to post the link that best described my symptoms for conversion disorder. When I was diagnosed in Jan 2007, there was little on the web. At the time wikipedia referred to it as hysteria & said that it was a diagnosis common prior to the turn of the last century. Maybe this is why there is still lingering information on it referring to people in mental institutions. It also said that it was not an widely accepted medical diagnosis.
Treatment for conversion disorder is convincing yourself that your physical ailments are real, but created by a very primitive part of my brain to distract me from emotions. One difference from TMS as I understand it is that my brain has re-mapped the neural pathway (at least that's how my doctor described it). Instead of feeling an emotion in the moment, he believes my brain first elicits a physical response. (but how many of us have been told we need back surgery or chiropractic care to escape back pain?)
Just like TMS, the only way to move beyond the symptoms is to not be focused on the physical & consider it a barometer to emotional unrest. Work through the emotions and the physical symptoms simmer back down to my baseline. Most doctors agree that if all symptoms have not disappeared within 3 months of the first occurrence, patients only have under 10% chance of overcoming them.
Codependency has different physical symptoms for different people. Some people do not have physical symptoms at all. People diagnosed with codependency learned as children from a parental figure that perfection was required, emotions should not be discussed. They also were not taught healthy coping skills for stressful environments and therefore present a number of unhealthy ways of dealing with emotions. This can be GI issues, addiction, perfection, very low self-esteem, overly focused on the physical sensations, the need for control in relationships, etc.
It was in this description that I began to see the similarities with Sarno's description of a typical TMS sufferer. I recently read a book by Pia Mellody (the woman who first developed the theory of codependency). She describes how she pieced together the diagnosis about 20 years ago working with spouses of alcoholics. More recently she has expanded her research and include those living in an overwhelming, emotionally stressful environment.
Treatment is a 12 step type program with resolution of painful childhood memories, journaling, being upfront about emotions as they occur, recognizing perfection is a fallacy & setting reasonable expectations for yourself.
I also relate the 3 disorders: codependency, conversion disorder & TMS, because they are all on the fringe of the medical world. None have much mainstream research. They share extremely similar personality markers. What if Codependency, TMS and Conversion Disorder were different expressions of the same disorder? It seems the term codependency is mostly used by counselors or in 12-step type programs; TMS is a term mostly used when referring to back pain or body pain; Conversion Disorder is a medical diagnosis, but the patient has no physical abnormalities and is treated with psychotherapy. IS the only difference that they are diagnosed and treated by people with different backgrounds?
Does this make sense? I hope that you can understand what I am getting at here.
Thanks for taking the time to consider all my thoughts on this. |
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catspine
USA
239 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2010 : 13:33:52
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quote:
Charbald.
IS the only difference that they are diagnosed and treated by people with different backgrounds?
Does this make sense? I hope that you can understand what I am getting at here.
I understand your thinking about the similarities, as I'm nor a doctor in order to get an answer to this question I would ask one willing enough to help you with this because there must be something in the treatments that I imagine works for one case and not the other .As you mention codependency can always be reversed but after 3 months chances to overcome CD are slim.
If I read well you said you were diagnosed with CD in 07 and after 3 years concluded that it is codependency after undergoing counseling.
Do you mean that this conclusion comes on top of the CD diagnosis?
It sounds like you are still trying to identify what it is you've got because you're probably not satisfied with what you were told or with what ever treatment you tried.
So basically you're left with the choice to proceed by elimination starting with what you feel matches best in this case codependency i suppose.
Of course if what the psychosomatic disorder is called matters little to you nothing stops you from borrowing other principles from a different theory...and see how your symptoms respond to that but it's more like a hit or miss technique.
All I could tell you is that what you don't want is to let doubt creep in . If you do not know what to think then just don't think about it, try to remain in the present moment especially if you still suffer from panic attacks. In the mean time try to work on what you know at least you'll eliminate that out of the picture. |
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charbald
11 Posts |
Posted - 04/14/2010 : 23:46:00
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Sorry for my delay in getting back to you catspine.
So, to answer your question... In '07 I was diagnosed with CD by medical doctors. In '09 I discovered that my spouse was hiding an addiction. His therapist suggested I attend 12 step meetings for co-dependents since it is widely accepted by the psychiatric community that the mere act of being with an addicted person is more than likely a marker for co-dependency. So, I attended a few 12 step meetings & read up on the subject. While I don't necessarily fit the model exactly, Pia Mellody has a book that I thought addressed many of my over the top personality traits (perfection, insecurity, etc.). I found it helpful to delve into my past a bit with her workbook to uncover some of the possible reasons for these personality markers. Reading her book helped me to not put such high standards on myself.
I have no doubt I have CD. I was diagnosed after the most complete and thorough physical possible. Because Sarno's treatment did make 80% of my ailments go away, I believe that TMS is some sort of cousin or variant of CD. I've asked a neurologist, my personal doctor and my therapist for the difference & none have had an answer aside from "I'm not real familiar with TMS, doesn't it have to do with back pain only?" I think for someone like me, there is a lot to be learned from Sarno & other TMS dr's works. As for the codependency, I think it helps to think of it as a series of learned behaviors from childhood that predispose me to being a perfectionist, have lower self esteem, and be highly susceptible to others' physical ailments or emotions. It's not a disorder, but something that I should be working to overcome all the same in order to be as healthy emotionally as possible.
Thank you for helping me work through some of these thoughts. Originally when I posted I assumed that there would at least be a few people that were dealing with codependency and would be able to tell me their experiences. While that didn't end up happening, your posts have helped me clarify for myself exactly how I will look at the three going forward.
If you have other advice of course I welcome it. But at this point, the treatment for all three is to concentrate on healing the emotions and not worry about any physical ailments that are derived from TMS/CD. I am doing that by working through Codependency workbooks and by keeping Sarno's teachings firmly planted in my thoughts.
Maybe someday all the fields of health will recognize that these are related in some way. Until then, I'll keep trying to find a treatment that will work to eradicate the physical remnants of my emotional anger.
Thanks again. |
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charbald
11 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2010 : 00:13:02
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Well, interestingly enough, I clicked over to my account page to see if any old posts were saved in archives. I was wondering if i had posted a more clear definition from my original CD diagnosis.
Here is the thread : http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3039
I think that 3 years later, I am still searching not for a diagnosis, but for a way to overcome these vestiges of symptoms. I have read buddhist readings about conquering anger and A New Earth by Tolle. I think his discussions of the roles we use to define ourselves is especially interesting in light of some of the posts in the above thread.
Thinking about it now, maybe it's just my perfectionist personality looking for an absolute answer when it really doesn't matter. They may all be some variation of the same thing: repressed anger/rage/emotions that create unhealthy thoughts and sometimes physical pain/sensation.
I was looking for other like minded people to share this recovery journey with. Maybe you're all like-minded, but not using the same descriptive words. I'll try to be more chill about the whole thing. That's my codependency flaring up anyway. LOL
Cheers |
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catspine
USA
239 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2010 : 23:21:16
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Charbald
Thanks for the positive feedback.
I was answering your post before last when the new one came in. I went to the link and read the posts.
I also went back to the link you provided about codependency and read it again.
Whichever trait of personality applies to you I can easily guess that it’s not something one is born with but much more likely to be learned and practiced for a long time for fear of consequences if you did not comply but also maybe because of a need for it as I can see a few advantages deriving from codependency in spite of the problems it causes. Another difficulty with it may be that you may not realize that you’re doing some of this things while it’s happening and therefore have trouble changing the pattern in the moment unless your awareness is in active mode.
If I had to face the situation my first choice would be to acknowledge what there is and deal with each component separately at first (codependency at first and TMS or whatever after the first issue is taken care off. I’m not sure that perfectionism always plays to your disadvantage. You may want to make good use of the positive aspect of it and find out if it interferes or not with your well being.
You see you can have all sorts of tools available to you from one theory or another and it may serve you well as long as you can use your perfectionism to spot which one you need for what precisely . Identifying the similarities to the 3 conditions may help gather the material needed to work on the problems but you’d be much better off keeping these conditions distinctly separate when it comes to dealing with them so that you know what does what and where and when. This is an area where having control can be useful and efficient and this leads me to the next thing to consider:
In order to change a pattern of thinking or a behavior an important thing to remember if you want to succeed or struggle less is that you must have something ready to replace it with when the time comes. It helps if it is well defined ahead of time but it doesn’t have to be something new it can very well be another existing pattern which is also out of place and could be swapped for one another if it does the job. Since time is always needed to absorb and accept a different concept it’s always a good idea to have time to reflect on the potential changes.
A simple trick to keep perfectionism urges under control is to remember that everything is relative.
Be well be happy.
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Scottydog
United Kingdom
330 Posts |
Posted - 05/19/2010 : 01:22:51
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In my case many of my (what I now see as ridiculous) 'need to be respected' traits were due to having an alcoholic father and the cringeing shame that that produced in me whilst growing up.
Looking back I can see I was never 'me' when with others, instead always striving to be seen as an intelligent, capable, strong person that they would, in my warped view, admire.
I also had to offer help (interfere) and advice whenever anyone had a problem or complaint. Not realising that many people were just having a whinge about somethng - I must have come across as a real know all so no wonder I had problems making friends. Sadly, I realise now I had no genuine interest with the other person, instead was trying to maintain my 'admirable person' image of myself that I was obsessed with.
The last major trait was finding it impossible to show my feelings, living with an addict means you have to develop control for the sake of your own sanity.
These were my codependency traits, charbald, but also the ones which caused my tms issues.
I read Melody Beattie's Codependent No More which explained alot and helped me 'see the light'. It helped me understand the roles of other family members too.
I have also read many self-help books.
It takes a while to 'analyse' yourself so keep at it. I am sure you are on the right track. |
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Codependency
