Video Games and My Chronic Pain Story

TL;DR: My hand issues were not caused by video games, but instead were largely caused by an inability to recognize and accept a number of emotions with which I didn’t identify. I always addressed my pain by the book. It failed me. I saw every specialist that made sense for my pain, some specialists that didn’t, had tons of tests and procedures done to help me, but it wasn’t until I began to understand these emotions, that I fixed a number of physical and emotional pains. In doing so, I now understand other aspects about myself, including why I left Twitch for years, leaving friends behind. I am sorry about leaving you behind and hope my reasons can be understood and help to teach others. To those that showed up to even just say hello to me on my return, you mean more to me than I knew. You made me feel like a streamer when all I set out to be was a speedrunner.

So, why did I leave Twitch? The second section goes into this.
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Within the past few months, I learned a lot about emotions, which helped explain a lot of issues I was having. To know yourself is one of the most powerful things you can do. I learned how my strong personality traits of people pleasing, perfectionism, stoicism, and legalism create conflict within me. Maybe the most important thing I learned in this was that we all experience shadow emotions. For every conscious emotion we identify with, there is an equal and opposite emotion that is in our unconscious. Failure to recognize this can result in a physical reaction. What I experienced was a knot in my stomach, anxiety, discomfort, whatever you want to call it. The knot was a number of emotions I failed to recognize and it goes away when I recognize the emotions.

My example of this is the reason I stayed away from Twitch. When I couldn’t speedrun due to my hand, I would watch my friends speedrun and would get that knot in my stomach. I didn’t like it and I don’t do things I don’t like, so I stayed away from Twitch for years. In accepting shadow emotions, I learned what the knot was trying to tell me. I hated and was jealous at others for being able to speedrun, something I loved, while I could not due to my hand. But these were my friends, I’m not allowed to hate them! Hatred and jealousy were emotions I did not identify with and would never begin to say I experienced. Does this mean I hate others? No, it just means those feelings are there. They don’t define me and they don’t have to define anyone. But those were part of me, as they are a part of everyone. This is being human.

We are a product of all emotions, both perceived good and bad, that we can experience. We collectively learned that some emotions are more acceptable than others, but we did not learn what to do with those “unacceptable” emotions. For me, these unacceptable emotions wound up creating phantom, but very real, physical pain which I have finally learned how to deal with. Oftentimes, people that grow up in broken homes will lack the skills to properly address their emotional needs. I did not grow up in a broken home. I had two parents that were always there for me and supported me in whatever I did. We just didn’t know how best to take care of emotions. My hope is that, by sharing my story, I can help others to learn this.

While people won’t share my exact emotions, I do believe there are a number of speedrunners, and people in general, out there that are unable to recognize their emotions, which led to a similar result in them disappearing, just like me. I learned to disappear from these speedrunners. Along the same line as this, that is why I communicate stuff like this through Pastebin. That is how those runners addressed where they had been upon returning. What I hope to demonstrate is that it is healthy and normal to experience emotions like these and acknowledging and accepting them is the key to dealing with them.

Everything below is long, but gives a more in-depth idea of emotional intelligence, which I lacked all my life, and how this lack led to my physical pains. I was big on mental health and staying positive when things got bad, to a fault, but I hurt myself in failing to recognize these emotions, in burying them. I think most people could find something to relate to and learn from in my story. I welcome any question through a discord message or a twitch whisper.

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The following is my story from the time I began speedrunning. The purpose of this is to show how important it is to know yourself. It’s a message I needed a long time ago. It includes some events which will not make sense at first. In learning all that I have, these aspects of my story will make sense. I will warn you, this story does deal with the loss of a loved one. It should be noted that emotional trauma activates your brain in similar ways to physical pain.

Speedrunning:

In 2016, I started speedrunning. This was the biggest confidence booster for me in my entire life. The laid-back competition aspect combined with my ability to work hard helped me establish a belief in my capabilities, which were always there.

In summer of 2017, I started my full-time job. This led to me struggling to balance my free time, which had greatly diminished due to increased work hours and a long commute. As a result of this, I stepped away from speedrunning around when the 1545 (multi-community speedrunning relay event I helped found and organize) finished.

October 13th, 2017 I came home from work to find that my mom had been rushed to the emergency room. To this point, my mom had been dealing with stage four breast cancer for the past nine years. This was the start of a resurgence.

December of 2017, I decided the most interesting thing about me was that I was a speedrunner, and began to practice again. My hope was to come back soon and bring down the records I had at the time (Spyro 3 and Sprashfecta).

March 12, 2018 I wrote a pastebin that I never made public. From it, I know I was telling people I was planning a return, which was uncharacteristic of me now. In it, I explained where I had been and why it had taken so long for me to come back. The last five months had been dealing with my mom and her cancer. In it, I stressed that there was always a plan, despite the constant setbacks. I decided against publishing it, but it is now public on my profile. The “Scoops” entry.

A week later, my mom died.

April/May of 2018, I began to have issues with my left hand. It was a strange numbness/tingling/fat feeling in my left pinky and ring finger. It was mild and an inconvenience, with Dr. Google telling me that it was likely cubital tunnel syndrome (like carpal tunnel syndrome, but involving a different nerve/pressure point towards the elbow and mostly different fingers) and that resting from the activity that caused the issue would be enough. I noticed it after video gaming and I assumed I held the controller too tight or something.

Through July of 2018, I continued speedrunning and promptly disappeared following the conclusion of the 1545 again. In my head, this is the last time I seriously considered myself a speedrunner.

June of 2019, I returned to speedrunning to help fill in for Crash 3 in the 1545. My heart was not fully in it. I detailed why in a pastebin from that month, which was the left hand issues detailed above. In the past year, I had left console gaming and gotten back into Runescape, a point and click mouse game. The most use my left hand saw was typing and the occasional F-key use. Despite all the rest my left hand had, the pain never went away.

Continuing in this month, I decided I wanted to try to get my hand fixed to return to speedrunning, like I had planned before, and had a nerve test done. It was negative. It said I was fine. The test administrator said that, because I was skinny, I had to be careful how I leaned on my elbows, as this was the most likely cause. I tried to run with this clear test and continue to speedrun, but the issues seemed to get worse. I am very conservative with injuries/pain and always did my best to listen to the pain and rest to get back to 100%, afraid to make an injury worse by doing something that caused the pain. You can bet there was no leaning on my elbow. With no resolution to the pain, like clockwork, I left after the conclusion of the 1545. The 2019 reason for disappearing was the same as the 2018 reason. I did not return.
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Life After Speedrunning:

Over the years, I made many attempts to get back, stopped by pain or a loss of interest. I tried picking Crash 2 back up on multiple occasions. Super Mario Galaxy 1, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet and Clank as well on other occasions. These all fell through. I tried various “simple” methods to fix my issue. Stretching, breaks, an elbow splint, not leaning on my elbow, nothing worked. It wasn’t like it was a debilitating issue, so I didn’t feel the need to see anyone, especially following that clear nerve test. I kept living, with days turning into years.

I got married in 2020.

In December of 2021, I rented-to-own a keyboard after a year and a half of debate. I learned and played every day. I was very excited about this.
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New Pain:

January of 2022, I awoke one morning to some chest/heart pain. I also had heart palpitations and pain in my left elbow. It was a weird pain. I felt completely fine otherwise. I went to the emergency room as that was the only option when you mention chest pain. They checked me out and found absolutely nothing wrong. My instructions were to see my primary physician (referred to as primary). I was embarrassed and dejected, feeling like I wasted my time and dignity. Worse so, I knew a fat bill was coming my way.

I saw my primary, who sent me to a cardiologist. Over the course of a couple of months, I had a good amount of heart tests done on me. Everything was fine. Everything. I had so many possible reasons in my mind as to why I had chest pain, but was told nothing was wrong. I was a perfectly healthy adult that stayed active, worked out, and ate well. The cardiologist told me the palpitations were common and due to stress. I laughed and told him I had nothing to be stressed about aside from these issues. I returned to my primary, and we went down the physical therapy route.
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The Spiral:

April of 2022, I began physical therapy. The chest pain had strangely moved at this point. It went to my left ribs, then into my shoulder blade in my back at this point. As well, since I sunk so much money already on healthcare, I decided I was going to fix my hand issues and really get back to speedrunning. I told my physical therapist about my issues I wanted fixed. These were the chest-rib-shoulder blade pain, my left fingers, and a third thing that had bothered me for as long as I could remember. This was a tenseness in the left side of my neck I associated with terrible headaches if I looked left too much. He said the neck and finger issues were likely related, but had no idea on the chest-rib-shoulder pain, which I deemed fine as it at least wasn’t my heart and didn’t bother me as much anymore. One last thing that developed alongside the moving of the chest-rib-shoulder pain was an ache in my right pointer finger after a few hours of mouse use.

Within a month of these exercises, my left hand went absolutely haywire, with my right hand getting consistently worse. It felt like the exercises I was doing were causing these issues to get worse. These started towards the end of my time with the physical therapist and peaked after I was done seeing him, before I returned to my primary. My left hand was the worst of the bunch as my original finger issues got worse and my thumb and pointer finger developed burning/tingling/pain, as well as other hand issues that came and went. My right hand was largely the pointer finger and began to just stick around constantly or show up with only a little use of the mouse. There were other issues and inconsistencies with my right hand.

I saw my primary, reported this, and got another nerve test, this time on both arms. She also had me get wrist splints and elbow braces and dress up like a Power Ranger. The worst offender of both hands was my left pointer and thumb. My left pinky and ring finger had been bothering me for years, so surely this test was going to come back as cubital and carpal tunnel syndrome in my left. The results? Carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist. That’s it. By that test, the left arm was fine. I was told I had a mild case in my right wrist that likely wouldn’t need surgery.

I said, “Ok, I guess carpal tunnel syndrome is just this finger pain. Guess it isn’t trigger finger.” Of note, carpal tunnel syndrome manifests in many different ways. Some people get wrist pain, where the carpal tunnel is, while others get finger or hand pain. Some people even have no symptoms. At this point, I had stopped basically everything I did. No more video games, no more keyboard, no more housework, no more reading as reading felt like a strain on my hands while holding the books. I had to work. I worked a desk job. I used my foot pedal to mouse click, I got an ergonomic keyboard, a vertical mouse, and used text-to-speech to work as best as I could. But the vertical mouse actually made my right finger worse, even though I didn’t use it to click. And the ergonomic keyboard caused my left hand to flare up worse. I listen to pain, remember? I was resting as best as I could to try to beat it. By the time I saw my primary again, I couldn’t work. My right hand had developed burning and electric shocks when I worked, specifically in the finger gun section. I went on disability leave, with an orthopedic surgeon (referred to as ortho)  appointment coming up. Despite how much of my life I gave up, how easy I took it, I got worse.

I looked through a bunch of other options, as many as I could. It sucked. One source says do this and this, the other says don’t do that, only do this. The surgery is the only option, do everything you can to not get surgery. Massage is the only fix, massage is worthless. A steroid shot helps, a steroid shot will sabotage your inevitable surgery. Use ice, don’t use ice, only use heat. I had massages done to try to help, I was already splinting my wrists and elbow, I had another massage scheduled months out. I saw a gastroenterologist as I found something about non-heart chest pain caused by acid reflux, which I had a history of. Some of this seemed to tie into hand issues. The gastro essentially said there was no reason to check me. I saw the ortho, who gave me the option of splinting, which I had been doing to no avail, and surgery. I tried to stay with the conservative treatments and wanted to avoid surgery, so I said no surgery at this time. At this point as well, I had rotator cuff pain in both of my shoulders and was given another physical therapy round for the shoulders. Separately, I developed middle-back pain that came on in the last couple hours of my sleep. I developed pain in my right butt cheek and thought I was sitting too much. Eventually, my pinky toes would begin burning, my right knee would bother me, I would deal with lower back pain. I was falling apart.

This would have been towards the middle of June of 2022 at this point. Following the ortho appointment, I had acupuncture. That night, I had the worst burning in my left hand. It was the worst pain I ever had in my life and I ended up on the couch with my arm elevated, eventually falling asleep. I taped myself up with kinesthesiology tape the following day and my pain at night was more tolerable. I saw the ortho the following week, saying I needed both arms cut open. We went with just carpal tunnel release surgery in the right wrist at this time, with an attempt at occupational therapy (a form of physical therapy) for the left arm given the lack of a diagnosis.
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Surgery and Recovery:

In late July of 2022, I had the surgery and was back to work two weeks later, not quite fully recovered. I still had right pointer pain that I told my ortho about when I got my stitches out. I was told that if it were nerve-related, it would heal. I should mention, I had already been checked for trigger finger by this point. Carpal tunnel release surgery has a 3-6 month recovery period before you are back to 100%. With my vertical mouse and a conscientious mind about wrist and arm positioning, I was hopeful I could stay at 100% once I got there for the rest of my life, doing most of what I wanted to do. After having so much that I couldn’t do, I was happy at the thought of being able to do things again. The problem? That never came.

A month goes by (late August of 2022) and I am supposed to be able to do most of what I did before with breaks. I started Final Fantasy 5, so happy to just be able to play anything. But… my right forearm burned when I played. Well it’s on the computer, so I’ll remap it to play with only my left hand to beat it at least, guess my right wrist isn’t ready enough. I was concerned and saw the ortho and he said that I should be fine and to give it time. Time passes by, I’m still working because I am forcing myself to be able to continue working. I cannot take time off like that again. I switched to using my left hand for the mouse, which seemed to hold up well enough. I could at least work, nothing else was to be done with my hands so I could at least work. As well, the physical and occupational therapies also seem to be making my right arm worse. The exercises seemed to cause both of my forearms to burn, with the right being worse.

Three months after the surgery (late October of 2022). The start of possibly being 100%, except I felt no better off than I did shortly after surgery. A couple more months pass by, with no changes. I decide that I have to make things work and that I cannot use just my left hand. I force the use of my right hand, ignoring the pain. The pain doesn’t get worse at first, but it feels like I will wake up one day and just won’t be able to use my hand. I was beginning to get hobbies back in my life at this point and was afraid of losing them. I had taken up one-handed Kaizo Ironmon streaming in November of 2022, which was low intensity and remappable on a keyboard. I felt comfortable enough with it that my left hand would not get worse.

At the end of six months, late January of 2023, I went back to the ortho and explained how I’m still in pain. I get told it can sometimes take up to a year to fully heal, something I was prepared for given my research. By this point, my right pointer had gotten worse. He suggested that I get a steroid shot to help the finger, saying it at least would not make things worse. It made things worse.

In the middle of February, 2023, the shot seems to wear off one night and I notice my right pointer finger aches more than it did before, getting worse with use. So many times, I got to the point of “supposed to be better” and was not better. Each time, I fell further in my mood and it was harder to get out of the slump and return to being hopeful. I had seen so many people, had so many tests. Blood drawn repeatedly, no diabetes, low inflammation. On top of what I saw before, I saw a rheumatologist, had more massages, and had a neurologist appointment a couple months out. I bought various other compression tools on top of all this. I had to keep an open mind at this point, so I turned to dieting.

In March of 2023, I planned on trying a diet that would drastically change what I ate. In preparation for this, I began trying to implement the meals I would be eating to help my body switch over. I prepared the first new meal I would be bringing into my diet. Me, my wife, and my cousin all ate this dish the night we prepared it. Both of them were fine, however, I woke up the next day with chest and left arm pain again, like I had at the start of 2022. I abandoned this diet and began to play with my diet in a less drastic way, thinking some part of what I ate was the source of everything.
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The Mindbody Realization:

March 22, 2023, I was sent a video from Simply, called "How I Cured My Tendonitis From Gaming | The Mindbody Prescription". The speedrunner, Simply, told his story about his hand and arm pain. I was skeptical, even annoyed, by being sent this video, but I watched. If you haven’t watched the video, here is a summary. He talks about his inconsistent pains, talks about how much he did to try to get better, to no avail, and then talks about a book, The Mindbody Prescription. Outside of his pain specifics, his mention of inconsistencies and numerous attempts sounded like me. He became left handed to take notes like I became left handed to use a mouse. I had heart pain move to my ribs, then my back, then my hands and shoulders. The book itself teaches how chronic pain disorders can be caused due to an inability to recognize unconscious emotions and about how we learn to have pain. The author, a doctor of rehabilitative medicine, coined the term Tension Mysositis Syndrome (TMS) to describe this issue. Simply said he read the book, applied what it said, and was cured of his pains in a week, gaming all he wants without stretching or otherwise tending to anything. My reaction to this video? Beyond terrified.

I ordered the book the night I watched the video. I read the short preface the day I got it, but set it down for a couple of days. I was terrified of having hope again, only to end up no different. Eventually, I picked the book up and could not put it down. I began to try to apply what it said. For the first time in my life, I began to reflect on different situations in my life. Very difficult situations where I thought I may have repressed emotions, emotions I taught myself to lock up and never feel. I began spending about 30 minutes a night reflecting on my life, with many nights seeing more time than this.
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Emotions and Pain:

The book helps to illustrate that what happens with people is that their emotions cause a physical reaction. This is universal in all of us. It is important to understand that people who have gone through therapy and expressed unconscious emotions can still have pain. That is because knowledge of the brain’s process is how you get rid of the pain. If you do not know the emotions are causing pain, despite expressing them, then they will remain as you have legitimized them as physical.

A common example is, if you are embarrassed, you blush, meaning your face turns red. As well, you are nervous, so you have bowel issues. A pain-specific example would be: Imagine being at a restaurant with coworkers. You have a professional relationship you need to maintain. If you are younger, imagine being at a restaurant with your family. You are also a nice person and avoid conflict. There is a baby in the restaurant that is crying like crazy. It will not stop crying and the parents are hardly doing anything to make it easier to listen to for people like you. You don’t like the noise, but you avoid conflict and hope it goes away. You get a headache. This is a physical reaction to an unconscious emotion.

There are feelings, likely negative ones, that you have about this baby that you do not believe fit your ideal self. Likely something related to wanting to scream (or worse) at the parents or baby. These emotions are NOT allowed to be expressed, so you unconsciously repress them. It is more socially acceptable to have a headache than to have these feelings. You lock them up like a prisoner in your unconscious mind. But like a prisoner, these emotions seek to escape. To combat this, your mind creates a physical problem to distract you. If you are distracted, you won’t be thinking about these emotions, so there’s no chance of them coming to your conscious mind. Then, the pain can create fear in you, an even better distractor. This fear can create more fear, to the point that pain is no longer even necessary as a distraction. Fear is at the core of all of this. Keep in mind, this is our brain working as intended. We are fantastic learners, to a fault. There is a perception that, if you say you are emotionally overloaded, that you will be looked down on. But, it is more acceptable to say you have pain or some physical symptom.
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Bridge:

I found a ton of success in bringing these repressed emotions out. I had so much to unpack, a lot of which revolved around my mom’s death. A few weeks passed and I was still finding these emotions. Not everyday had a big breakthrough, but even those days without a huge emotional outpouring, I had learned or discovered something about myself. And what happened to my pain? It stuck around, but I was beginning to have a better quality of life, despite its existence.

The book talks about how people like me, who have exhausted specialists, physical therapy, unorthodox treatments, and more, can have a large success rate with reading the book and applying its teachings. Those that don’t are referred to therapy as their brains have very strongly repressed emotions with defense mechanisms up so high that a professional is needed to identify and take down these defenses. In my searching, I found a resource center called the TMS Wiki, which had a forum and guides for healthy ways of thinking and topics to explore through journaling. A lot of my summaries of processes are pulled from the TMS Wiki, a free resource, using what I can for examples. For all the good the book is, I did not have a book cure like Simply did and it does not do the best job of offering a structured way of exploring your unconscious mind should you not have a book cure. The resources I found helped with that. And that is where I began to truly learn about myself. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as I had to revisit the hardest parts about my life. When I learned something new about myself, I would revisit the difficult moments and see what feeling I could understand, see what emotion I could find in my stomach knot.

Pain is your body trying to tell you how to take care of yourself. I feel a twinge of a headache come on, I take a step back and look inward for rage in my jaw. The pain goes away and the headache is prevented. If I have a bad headache, I take some extra time to really think about what happened when it started. I can reverse bad headaches. Given how headache prone I am, this is more effective for me than taking painkillers and a skill I can sharpen in the long run.

It is important to get yourself checked to rule out major diseases, just like I did. I exhausted my medical options. Know that these complex, but human, emotions are normal and can cause pain. Know that the pain is real and is not “all in your head”, despite its origins. In knowing yourself, you can alleviate more issues than you realize. You are stronger than you realize and knowing this is half the battle. This does not mean that if you have some chronic pain issue, that you can continue doing whatever activity flares up the pain because it “is just in your head”. The idea is that you can do the emotional work, figure things out about yourself, and can find relief from the pain and begin to bring that activity back into your life. I personally got in the way of my recovery after surgery and it wasn’t until I developed healthier thinking that I actually got my right hand back. No stretches or exercising was done, no more resting. Just a lot of thinking.
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Unconscious Realizations:

They are called feelings because emotions start in the body. They are felt. When I am angry, I have a warmth or burning in my neck and jaw, which is fitting as I want to scream and shout and swear. When I am sad, I have warmth in the back of my neck, a literal weight around my neck. I have had poor posture all my life. Take that how you will. In identifying this, I revisit those difficult moments and watch how my body responds. Our body reacts to situations in our head like we are there. Ever think about a heated argument and find yourself with an elevated heart rate or sweaty palms or something similar? This is the idea. Figure out what those emotions are, explore your past. Learn about yourself. It is one of the most rewarding things you can do.
The most important thing I learned is that we are more than just the conscious emotions we express. Truly, to be human is to have all of these feelings. For every aspect of our character we identify with, an opposing quality lives within our unconscious. One thing to know about the unconscious is that it is often irrational, which goes against our very rational-thinking mind. You can bring rationalization to the irrational unconscious to understand yourself. Here are some personal examples.

I mentioned I know why I stayed away from Twitch for years, why I disappeared cold turkey. When I watched speedruns, watched my friends, I would get a knot in my stomach. This is important. This knot, something felt in all of us, is a knot of emotions we are unable to identify. When I learn something new about myself, I revisit memories and look for this knot, hoping to unravel a new strand with my understanding. For Twitch, I was happy my friends got to speedrun, happy they PBed. Remember though, an opposing quality exists. I was also jealous and angry, even hated them for it. It wasn’t fair that they get to do this thing that I loved and I couldn’t because of my hands. Where is their hand pain? Why am I alone in these issues? Rationally, they are my friends and I want the best for them but that does not matter because these emotions are generated in the irrational unconscious. Hatred and jealousy were emotions I NEVER identified with. I was always friendly, always trying to be friends with everyone, to people please, to not offend, to avoid conflict. But these emotions still existed. I taught myself these were dangerous to my identity and my brain learned how to bury them. But these emotions don’t define me and they don’t change anything about me, which is extremely important. It doesn’t mean I am an angry and jealous person. I was still always acting as myself. I have learned to acknowledge and accept these emotions and found peace in doing so.

Another example is something I learned only recently and involves my mom. It is normal to hate someone close to you when they die. I had a great relationship with my mom and I watched her suffer through the end of her life. The idea that I could hate her for dying was absurd to me. SHE loved me, SHE suffered, SHE is the one no longer here, how fucking dare I HATE her! It’s normal. Truly. We have a lot of unconscious desires. One of them is a desire to be taken care of, which does not change no matter how independent you are. My mom always comforted me growing up. I thought she was great at it. One of the things I hated her for was that she couldn’t comfort me anymore. As I watched her on her deathbed, I wanted her to comfort me about it. Rationally, she is the one suffering and dying, she would be the one needing the most comfort. That is so selfish of me to even THINK about. But it’s all normal. I acknowledge these feelings. I accept them. I have found peace in it. My left hand issues became a thing due to my mom’s death and my failure to recognize the emotions behind them. Keep in mind how close the death and the start of my issues were as well as my constant negative test results for my left hand.

So, as of the time of writing this, it has been a bit over three months since starting the book. I have learned a lot of things about my pain, a lot more inconsistencies. I can play video games, heavily, without hand pain. As it stands now, walking causes my left hand to flare up. Walking, of all things. As does sleeping, regardless of splinting. I have an idea of why, but the issues still existing means I have more work to do. For instance, I think a lot on walks and I think a lot at night. With the back pain I got when I started my disability leave, I would wake up in the morning, lay in bed, and think about how I was a leech on society and how my wife had to take care of everything. Feelings of worthlessness were buried as I tried to stay “blindly” positive, so I developed back pain. Sadness, regret, and guilt live largely in the past. Fear and doubt live largely in the future. I think a lot, so of course walking and being in bed would be hotspots for me to think about emotionally heavy situations. I also have a fear of forgetting, to the point of not stopping thoughts in my head since I don’t want to forget them. Since our bodies respond to situations in our head like they are actually occurring, I keep myself in regret or fear when I don’t have to. Keeping myself present is a valuable skill and one I am looking to get better at doing.

I have also learned how important it is to be your best friend and be kind to yourself. In the program, there was a clip of a man talking to a therapist. The man had kindness for all others beside himself. He had shoulder or back pain and had surgery in the summer. He said he felt guilty about it because he couldn’t do things with his children as he was bedridden. That was like me. When I had my surgery, and was injured in general, I felt guilty about having my wife take care of everything. I would never want anyone in a position similar to mine to have to worry about things like that. I would only want them to rest and get better. So why did I not want that for myself? This extends to so many other situations and I know a lot of others have this line of thinking.

Additional examples of this include compliments and achievements. I had trouble taking compliments, feeling weird about getting them. I will often time immediately downplay the compliment. “Oh, anyone can do it.” “I got lucky.” So on. Same with achievements. “So and so can beat my time or anyone else can do this.” If you PB and someone says “It’s only a matter of time before so and so beats this," you think they’re a bit of an asshole, right? So, if you say that about your own achievements, doesn’t that make you an asshole to yourself? Why is this ok? It isn’t.

Other things include decisions. Decisions were something I struggled with. I was very indecisive and took a lot of time to make decisions, often taking weeks to figure out if I actually wanted to buy something. I taught myself that decisions were dangerous and often ended up with a knot in my stomach when presented with one. I have unlearned this.

One last thing was how outcome-oriented we are. We are happy when we succeed and sad when we fail. I struggled with failure myself, to the point of not doing things out of fear of failure. That’s not needed. Change what is considered a success, and things get better. Become action oriented in your thinking. Be happy to have done something, regardless of the outcome. Failure is a normal, constant part of life.
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Symptom Substitution:

One thing that is brought up in this process is how new pain can begin to show up when you confront your feelings. Simply (the speedrunner) mentioned having this happen. I myself experience it. In confronting the hidden emotions, the reason for the pain existing, which is to protect you from the emotions, is no longer needed. But I, like many others that have experienced this, fall back on things I have learned. It is comforting to be around things you know, even if it is pain. As pain begins to fade, the mind becomes afraid as it still believes it needs to protect itself from the unconscious feelings. So, like a cornered animal, it will lash out and put pain wherever it possibly can. You acknowledge this, ride it out, and come out fine on the other side. I have had my left hand issues disappear. What happens then? The same issues appear on the right hand, pinky and ring finger. I watch and laugh as this pain bounces back and forth throughout the day. Sometimes, I enter the shower with left hand issues, but come out with right hand issues. The pain is a reminder that I still have more to learn about myself. The inconsistencies help build your case and grow your confidence.

In my story, I had chest pain that was found to not be my heart. I was no longer laying in bed at night, wondering if my heart was going to give out. I was no longer distracted by this, so my mind needed a new distraction. The pain then moved into my ribs and back, as well as my right hand.

Separately, in having success banishing some of my pain, I began to have anxiety issues pop up. I had dealt with anxiety issues years ago, but had not dealt with proper anxiety for a while. It was a sign of things working for me. I had so much comfort in my pain that, when it wasn’t there or wasn’t there as much, my body had no idea what to do. This is a theme in this entire concept of TMS as this is not limited to just manifestations of hand/back/chronic pain syndromes. Gastrointestinal issues and anxiety were also things I dealt with in my life that can be connected to my lack of emotional intelligence.
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Extinction Bursts:

One last thing I will cover is something in learning called an extinction burst. Imagine a rat in a lab that one day finds a lever and pulls it. A machine dispenses food for it. The rat has learned that pulling the lever will bring food. We love things we have learned. We love familiarity. Imagine that rat pulling the lever one day, but the machine does not dispense food. The learned process is now extinct. What happens? Like we all would, we flip the lever on and off repeatedly. This is a burst. Eventually, the rat stops and moves on, as would we all. The same happens with pain. Often, someone will have success in treating TMS, with weeks or months of no issue, only to have symptoms come back even worse. Our brains have learned pain and have comfort in it, so we experience an extinction burst. You ride the pain out and come out on the other side. It is important you don’t feed fear.
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Neural Pathway Pain:

Another name for TMS, which has had many names floated for it, is Neural Pathway Pain (NPP). I like this name because it helps demonstrate how the pain works. It is a pain memory that my body has learned all too well. The neural pathways for specific pains have lit up in-brain and formed a strong connection. It is the same thing as phantom pain for people who have lost limbs. They do not have the limb to feel pain, yet they feel pain. For me, any sort of injury was long gone, but my fear kept the pain around. Our bodies have an innate “danger sense”, which kept our ancestors alive. We don’t have the same primal dangers, like a bear attack, but the brain processes remain. Mine have incorrectly activated on things that are not a danger. But because of bad ways of thinking, my body believes it is in danger, that it is in pain. Again, this can manifest as physical or emotional pain, even both.
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The Takeaways:

So why am I back speedrunning? This is the part where Bart says the line, right? Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I am here to have fun, always have been. More than that though, I want to show people that we are stronger than we know. We are extremely capable of great things, more than we are told. I thought I would never speedrun again, but here I am and here I will continue to be. It does not matter your story, you can come back greater than you think. Also, Sprashfecta.

Why Spyro 3 117%? You have other games to improve in with more timesave, right? Lotta reasons. Hype, interest, new strats/routes, so on. The game I left is not the game I came back to. It also has the most history and achievement for me. To come back and pb in it would be to show myself and others my growth. In a sense, I am picking back up from 2018, where I wanted to improve all of the games I ran and cap it off with Sprashfecta, rinse and repeat. My goal now is to pb and I will stay on the game until I do not feel like running it anymore, where I will attempt maybe one more pb. It’s the same method I had before. I am speedrunning again earlier than I would in normal situations. I would have liked more time practicing offline and sharpening my skills, but the important thing is to speedrun. Good times will come. Action-oriented, remember?

What about Kaizo? I enjoy the decision-making aspect of Kaizo. I don’t enjoy content farming for seeds in traditional Kaizo fashion all the time. As Kaizo is right now, it doesn't play to my strengths. It's like a Just Chatting stream with a game in the background, whereas, my strength was always my gameplay in speedrunning. I have enjoyed my time doing Kaizo, what I have learned about myself, and the people I met. I still plan on supporting the friends I've made in the community and there is a chance I still dabble in it from time to time.

I have become an open book through all of this. I was not truly aware of what it meant to be human. Emotions were not taught to me like this and I seek to demonstrate how powerful this can be through my story. I welcome any questions through Discord private messages or Twitch whispers. I am not a therapist and cannot fix anyone, but I can relate more of my story and answer questions. People learn a lot from one another and you can learn a lot from pain. Knowing yourself is something that is very important and trying this out cannot hurt you, but still make sure to get your physical issues checked. Situations I brought up or pain as I had might not resonate at all with you. The most important takeaways are that I am doing better than ever and shadow emotions exist in all of us and accepting these can lead to peace in ways you don't expect.

Resources: A therapist is always a great person to see. I cannot stress enough that I never saw the need to see a therapist prior, as I thought I dealt with everything very well and was living a happy and fulfilling life, even despite the pain. In a sense, this is a letter to myself to tell myself that there are other types of clues related to your emotions and an attempt at breaking down biases I previously held. At this current time, I have not seen a therapist, however, I have picked one out to see. My plan was to run through the book and the resources I could find online and, if I hit a wall and seemed to not be making progress anymore, I would go and see her. I found her on the TMS Wiki's list of resources. She also dealt with TMS, overcame it, and works to help others. I have made many strides forward and, while I have days where I feel I do not learn anything about myself, I firmly believe I am still moving forward. My pains have all lessened and have been dissociated from activities that I thought caused the pain. I have effectively achieved my original goal of being able to speedrun, however, I have enjoyed the work I have done. It has been the hardest thing I have ever done as I have had to revisit the hardest parts of my life, but it has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done.

A list of resources related to everything here can be found on my profile, under the "Resources" entry as I had issues getting links to work in this bin.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I hope you can learn something from my story as I have learned so much that has changed my life.
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