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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
 Posted - 03/05/2011 : 19:33:39
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Since all this came on about 1.5 years ago, my personality has changed dramatically. It was worse, and I've made strides towards getting back to "who I was". I've fought the anxiety and the depression, and have made good strides.
I was watching an old re-run of House, and he was taking Methadone to help his chronic leg pain, and the Meth killed the pain and improved his personality. House had no pain and everybody was upset. The other characters were worried about his reactions to the med but underlying it all was their thinking (I believe) that he had to just "suck it up" and get on with life.
Has anybody been distressed at their personality changes due to pain and the reactions of others to your "troubled personality"? Does the distress at "not being yourself" lead to more anxiety? I really cannot bring up any pain problems anymore to anybody, because they don't want to hear it. I don't blame them. Most dismiss TMS. It gets to be a lonely battle sometimes.
What do you do to adjust or cope?
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healingback
United Kingdom
134 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 00:19:00
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LHi back2life2010 completely with You on this one... since my pain started I have lost alot of friends... people don't want to listen to you going on... I think in someway their afraid to catch the 'bad luck' being of the tms type personality I've had alot of illness. . One thing after the other... my friend's get fed up of me not being able to go out, this has led to a lot of resentment on my side, them not being the people I need them to be, i also suffer a lot with anxiety now, being housebound practically for a year does that, I find I've become half the person personality wise than I was before, almost like I have to put on a facade that I'm still the strong person, except I don't feel it, I feel that as I've found out about this tms, and doing really well with it, I should be estatic I've found the key to why I have had illness after illness, but instead I just feel weak, that I could of let this happen, that I'm one of the weaker ones because I seem to have people around me that aren't effected half as much as I am.... so although this isn't a positive post on the effects of what tms has done to my charater, physically I'm doing much better, which is a major thing to be happy about.
This to shall pass.... |
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susan828
USA
291 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 06:54:20
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What a great question. Yes, I am extremely distressed at what has happened to me. In my dark moments when I am in a state of panic over a new symptom and can't see my way out and feel I don't want to be alive anymore, I am worse than distressed.
I remember my younger days (even though I have been like this since childhood but had some "normal years"), when I was a teenager and carefree, or later in life when it wasn't so bad. My friends are also most likely sick of hearing about my symptoms. There are some people I would like to be closer with but I think they don't want the burden of being my friend. They probably think they'd be stuck with hearing this stuff forever.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and try to knock some sense into myself. Or I journal or just talk to myself in the hope of snapping out of a mood of fear and self-absorption. I envy other people who just "live" without this craziness in their head. Sometimes I think it's just my nature and I will never get well.
I read Sarno last night instead of letting the books collect dust. I plan to keep reading. In answer to your questions, yes, it leads to more anxiety when I feel lousy about what's happened to me. What I do to cope is listen to music, distraction, writing (journaling), cry, talk to the friends who understand, or post here, or read the posts. Lonely battle indeed. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 13:29:42
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I must say I love "House." One of the very few TV shows I watch these days.
I'm not sure why many (most?) of us feel the need to tell people about our symptoms. The only one I really open up to is my wife, though I try to do it in a neutral, non-self pitying kind of way.
We're well suited to one another in just about every way, but she's a superwoman type. Never, ever gets hurt. Runs miles further than me, and much faster.
One of these days I just might make her get tested for performance enhancing drugs :>)
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susan828
USA
291 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 13:42:10
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Art, most of the people who tell others about their symptoms want to know if their friend has experienced it, for reassurance that it's a normal pain and nothing serious. Every book on health anxiety says that reassurance is the worst thing we can do.
If you look at the health anxiety boards, that's all you see. I've done it myself and occasionally still do. Sometimes the fear is so great that people put what's better in the long term aside, just to make it through the day, hour, minute when anxiety is overwhelming. The reassurance is just a temporary fix but in desperation, it works. |
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wrldtrv
666 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2011 : 14:20:44
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Yes all, it is a lonely battle, because as you say, nobody understands or wants to hear it(don't blame them; anyway, I usually don't share any more than brief details and then get off it). And really, the main reason we even tell others is for that reassurance we hope to find. But, as you say, Susan, big mistake. For the short-term reassurance we may find, there is a price to pay. We get addicted to it and when we can't find it, our anxiety accelerates. Even so, I do it again and again, though more mindfully nowadays.
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2011 : 09:04:40
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This episode of pain has contributed to the breakdown of a relationship, someone I wanted to marry. She said that her "feelings" had changed since we got back together. Right after we reunited I came down with my strange symptoms. Related? Probably. Maybe. I knew that we had had differences but that the 5 years apart (I thought) might have made our goals closer. Not so.
So I had to take a choice. It was going nowhere, and I thought contributing to my problem, so as hard as it was I had to speak the words.
It hurt, too, that during the 1.5 years she never visited me at my home or spent any time doing anything with me besides going for drinks and dinner.
I won't condemn though, as I know I wasn't the same person I was when we got back together. It was one month and then the pain started.
I have had blessed friends who have put up with me, and I try not to burden them.
For most, chronic pain is not understood. They don't know what it does to a person. |
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jaya
USA
175 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2011 : 11:41:56
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my friends basically up and left my life, my family is slowly following them-i was looking at pics the other day of myself before the tms, i was happy vibrant glowing, then pics from about 5 years ago, the glow is gone, kinda like somebody blew out the candle.
tms has basically in a nut shell hijacked my life, all after my mom died, however im starting to see not having her control my life is a godsend-sorry so blunt. i believe she was a tms candidate also. plus she was majorly bipolar-very bad situation for an only child at home with mom while dad is working...kinda like having a b-52 bomber flying over you house all day. |
Edited by - jaya on 03/07/2011 11:43:16 |
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2011 : 18:28:33
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jaya...
quote:
i was looking at pics the other day of myself before the tms, i was happy vibrant glowing, then pics from about 5 years ago, the glow is gone, kinda like somebody blew out the candle
Yeah, a friend I hadn't seen in awhile mentioned that the spark had gone out of my eyes. For so long I felt like I was walking around dead.
Today I am working with somebody for the first time in years, and I'm on the other side of the country, and I had the most comfortable day I've had in probably 1.5 years. Even jogged this morning.
I think there's hope to regain our old personalities; however, I think that we will be much wiser, and at least I will be much more emphatic towards those in pain or with anxiety and depression.
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HopefulAli
Canada
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2011 : 00:36:08
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Hi gang,
This one was something I felt I could relate to... Have been dealing with chronic pain of one sort or another for over 7 years (widespread tendinitis, tinnitus, and back pain due to "degenerative disc disease" most recently). I have run the gamut of emotions like I am sure most of you have- from hopeful to severe depression/hopelessness.
I was lucky enough to have a pretty good family and friend support system, but even so, I felt (especially) friends losing their patience with me. In my darkest times it was very hard on my parents because they felt helplessness and useless to prevent or heal the pain. Their frustration would sometimes come out as anger.
Looking back on it now, I can see that a major part of my life (and my personality, I am sure) was dictacted by pain. I had become a person with chronic pain-- a chronic pain sufferer, and that put me in an unenviable category, and a rare one for such a young person.
In many ways I feel more like the "real version" of myself as I am coming out of it. But as others have said, I do think that I am more sympathetic and understanding to those in pain, physical or otherwise. That sticks with you.
I think we will persevere. |
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2011 : 06:58:50
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HopefulAli...
quote:
I had become a person with chronic pain-- a chronic pain sufferer
This can be the scary result of focusing on TMS and on these forums. This becomes who you are: a pain patient, sufferer.
As I improve -- and my improvement is not by the Sarno book -- instant, after reading it, I am regaining my old personality and confidence.
Unfortunately, a fair number of friends and others important in my life, have fallen away. I can't blame them. People can only take so much. I never paid much attention to people who said that they had pain, but I don't think I knew anybody whose pain was literally life changing and debilitating. Yes, a sore knee or elbow, but it eventually cleared up. Even my mother had back pain, but not pain to a degree that was debilitating.
What really bothered me were the ones who said that "others were much worse than you". True statement. But I'm not "them". I'm me. Trouble with a lot of chronic pain is that most who have it are still moving about and going through the motions of their life. They don't look sick or "crippled" enough.
Somewhere in either Sarno or Weekes I read about a woman who said that she got no sympathy for her psychological distress but would if she talked about her pains. She might -- for awhile. Then when others and even yourself think you are crazy the sympathy will stop. |
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HopefulAli
Canada
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2011 : 10:14:36
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Back2It,
How interesting. What methods do you use - if not Sarno's- for improvement? |
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Back2-It
USA
438 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2011 : 17:46:02
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HopefulAli...
quote:
How interesting. What methods do you use - if not Sarno's- for improvement?
I think you might have misread my statement: quote:
As I improve -- and my improvement is not by the Sarno book -- instant, after reading it, I am regaining my old personality and confidence.
I meant that my improvement has not been "by the book", in that I was not one of those with an instant cure by reading. I am using Sarno's books and also the best of the all-stars on this forum.
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maldon
United Kingdom
6 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2011 : 05:14:41
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I said this before on another thread: my family prefer the new guy with TMS to the old guy with the bad back.
Pain, while horrible and frightening, has taught me to become a more thoughtful and more confident person. Pain was a much needed wake up call which I believe has saved my life. Yes I've lost years of perhaps quality experiences while lying on my back feeling very sorry and angry at myself but pain also led me to Sarno, an understanding of an emotional connection to my pain and the realisation that my negativity impacted badly on those around me.
Would I have been happier in the long run if I had never experienced TMS? I can't honestly say and the past is the past but somehow I doubt I'd be in a better place than I am today. I believe my back pain was a result of my anxious personality ie the pain was just a symptom of who I was. For over a decade the pain certainly added an extra element of fear and anger onto my already repressed shoulders but who and what I was in essence remained the same whether I was physically hurting or not.
Thanks to my desperate need to escape pain via Sarno and Eckhart Tolle I discovered a new way to think about life and my place in it and found salvation in my family's love.
I'm still afraid of the pain, and I suspect until I can conquer that fear, TMS will lurk in my deep dark places.
But I don't want to go back to being my old self and the occasional relapse of sciatica/low back pain reminds me not to. |
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Tippy
31 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2012 : 11:38:29
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Overcoming this thing (95 percent) has made me a happier and more confident person! Which I was before the onset of TMS.
Stephanie |
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The Personality of Pain -- What it's done to you
