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Comment by markx2 | Hacker News Reader

"According to Dr. Sarno, many types of chronic pain are not caused by any kind of physical abnormality or tissue damage. Instead it is attributed to what he calls "unconscious repressed rage". How does that cause pain you ask? The theory goes that the unconscious mind will repress emotions in order to protect the conscious part of it4 from experiencing them. It will instead distract you by creating the sensation of pain. He calls this TMS"

I read the whole article and if that worked for you, great.

My RSI - diagnosed after scans in 2007/8 - was very much caused by tissue damage and all the positive waves in the world would have done nothing. I still have pain now after a busy week.

But then I'm the guy that says if you get migraines you should get a daith piercing as that stopped mine completely.

Us humans are much the same and so very different.

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Hey thanks for taking the time to read the article!

So what kind of damage do the scans reveal? One thing that is expanded upon by Sarno in his book is that he would scan the backs of normal people off the street as a control group when doing experiments. One of things he noticed was that these "normal" people (they experienced no chronic pain) had just as many physical abnormalities (herniated discs etc) as the chronic pain sufferers did! So I think what he (not me because im not a doctor) would say is: You may very well have had tissue damage in the past which probably healed at some point. So when you get a scan you can still detect where it healed etc. But that does not mean that your pain is anything other that "neuroplastic pain", ie, your body has healed but the "pain" has been remembered!

Wow that is a fascinating remark about daith piercings! I luckily dont suffer from migraines but migraines are another commonly attributed TMS symptom, so since you have that history it may mean you have traits that match the TMS personality...

According to the consultant, and this was a long time ago, they ruled out Carpel Tunnel and other causes, but there were clear indicators of damage.

At it's worst, if the main three fingers of my R hand touched, just touched, any surface it was painful. It really was RSI as back then I was mouse clicking many many thousands of times a day.

What fixed it for me, apart from slowing down, was to start using a Wacom pen/tablet. Even so, by a Thursday my hand / fingers hurt and I used a splint when not working.

I have read more about TMS since I read your post and while it could fit I do not believe it does. In part because of the very localised pain, and in part because ... it's hard and privacy destroying to articulate but no, it doesn't fit.

As for the daith. It worked for me. It has worked for my daughters. It has worked for a friend and also for a random delivery guy who looked rough one day, I suggested it and he came back a few days later to say he no longer has to chew codeine all day.

If something works for someone, great. But I don't go with generalising.

That Daith story is wild! Have you ever heard of anyone else talking about this or did you just accidentally discover it? Maybe something related to acupuncture perhaps?

Yeah good on you for having a look into TMS, it never hurts to have an open mind. Yeah fair enough about privacy. A lot of members on the TMS forum (https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/search/8552753/?q=hand+pain&o=...) go by psuedonyms and discuss stuff on throwaway accounts etc, if you wanted to check to see if anyone had something similar to what you had you could always use the search bar in the top right.

I think it is very probably related to acupuncture.

After decades of pain, and after blood tests, food elimination and an MRI I was told I just had Chronic Daily Migraines.

I then happened to read about the daith. Went into a reputable piercer in the city and asked for a daith.

"Which side are your headaches?" was the reply.

It was the Right, got a Right-sided daith and the next morning woke to no headache. None. Over 30 years of daily pain gone. Even now I do not get headaches.

I know there is no provable evidence but I know what worked for me and those I know.

I cannot dismiss the TMS thing but the way it is framed feels wrong.

Fascinating! I have a friend who sometimes gets migraines so I will tell them to check out the daith piercings. Thanks for sharing!

True but you're missing the part where your salvation lies in a named technique: daith piercing.

You believed in that. And it worked. The placebo effect is still an empirically measured effect. Vitally, it requires the consent of the one being "placebo'd".

You healed your RSI with your mind bro. Stop fighting it.

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