Recovery Recovered from 18 years of pain!

The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Forum is created by people who have recovered from chronic pain and other symptoms using the techniques of Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Reading recovery stories can be a great source of hope for people recovering from their own symptoms. If you have already recovered, please consider sharing your story here. Just make an account and post your story using the sign up button in the upper right of this page. For help, please use our contact form.

Forest

Administrator
Staff member
Neuroplastic pain first started affecting me when I was a teenager. I was a bit of computer hacker, typing away on my Mac plus, when my forearms began to hurt. I visited a doctor about it, and was told that I had tendonitis from too much typing. I was sent to occupational therapy and told that I needed to be careful about typing too much.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the "tendonitis" only got worse. As time progressed, the amount that I could type or mouse before my symptoms started to flare up got smaller and smaller until, five years in, I couldn't type more than a couple sentences without some sort of flare up. Worse, the "RSI," as I now called it, began spreading into my neck and back. I became very limited in the amount of time that I could spend sitting in certain chairs, looking down at papers on a desk, or even writing.

Eventually, I graduated college. Holding any sort of job was a challenge, but I still had to support myself, so it felt like a struggle to survive. The pain levels always got worse when I did certain activities, and I had been trained to believe that if I didn't stop doing those activities the pain level would keep getting worse until it was excruciating. Experience had taught me that the worse I let it get, the more rest it would take to "heal."

My hands were so sensitive that I would develop writers cramp after writing even a very small amount of text. I tried using voice recognition software many times (I own 5 versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking), but whenever I did, my throat started to hurt. That terrified me because I didn't want to have to drastically limit my speaking the way I felt I had to drastically limit my computer use and handwriting. If that happened, how could I hold a job?

That was the way that my life was for over 10 years. I chose my jobs based on what I felt would give me the best chance of healing. I avoided dating because I felt like I needed to focus on getting some financial security. When I did date, I refused to get married because I felt like it was all that I could do to keep myself employed without worsening my RSI, so I knew that I couldn't be a good father or husband.

I had come across PRT-like ideas years ago, mostly from Paul Marxhausen's postings on the Sorehand mailing list. However, they felt to far-fetched to me at the time, so they didn't help me. What finally convinced me was stumbling across and reading a bunch of success stories last December that were written by people whose experiences were extremely similar to my own. That convinced me to push my boundaries a little. Doing so went terrifically, which helped me believe the ideas more. Crucially, it helped me overcome my fear of my pain. I could react to it calmly, and when I did, the pain started to melt away.

Eventually, the whole process snowballed, and now I don't limit my day to day activities at all and am enjoying athletic activities that I had avoided for a long time. I still have occasional flareups, but they don't bother me, even though I am doing far more than before. I just ignore the symptoms, and feel like I have my life back.

You can see me discuss my recovery in the video below:
 
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Tim Wells

New member
Awesome story, Forest! It's so cool how the success stories really made a difference. I watched part of video awhile back, but look forward to watching the whole thing, soon.

It's funny. I used Dragon Naturally Speaking, too. It was around 2005/2006 and I thought it was pretty bad (LOL!). Maybe it was just me. It's amazing how much better the speech recognition software is today.
 

MlleButtercup

Administrator
Staff member
I love your story so much! I would love it if you updated it. I think people would love to know how long you've been recovered and what kinds of successes you are enjoying in your life.
 
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