Meltdown over back pain

[Hopefulmi]

Hi

I seemed to be getting better, where all my symptoms were getting back to normal except the back pain.

Anyway, now I have started waking up feeling sick again, which could be anxiety I guess but my back is constantly in pain. The pain is situated round my sides under my arms across the ribs and mostly the right side of my back on the shoulder black and a couple of tender spots on the ribs.

I had an ultrasound that showed a clear gallbladder and I have had hot baths and massages etc but it doesn't seem to be getting better. My neck and shoulders were tight too but not as bad.

I want to believe it is muscular but I just can't. I'm so frightened. My back has been like this for 3 weeks now

[Libra]

I seem to carry all my tension in shoulders,neck and sciatic nerve area.This damp weather doesn't help either.

[Adam81]

Howdy, I might be over simplifying this, but have you tried getting a massage and see if that clears it up? Tension can cause a lot of pain.

[Hopefulmi]

I did have 2 massages last week but no joy. If I try stretching in a certain way it does feel like it is pulling but I would have thought it would have got better after 4 weeks? The shoulders and neck I can deal with, its the lower right rib cage and under the arms that stresses me out

[Henrik]

I'm on a similar number and with a flu virus that won't quit, but what I will say, to maybe answer your question 'why isn't it getting better?', is that, time doesn't heal on its own, you need to relax about your syptoms or else you're essentially maintaining your physical symptoms with worry leading to more tension and so forth. I'm not able to do that properly myself, so this isn't me being annoyingly obvious, just to put your mind at ease. Now I'm off to try and do the same for myself (easier said than done ;-))
But that's the damned thing about health anxiety in particular, that our specific worries and bodily area focus ends up amplifying exactly the symptoms we worry about. What a rotten deal :(

[Mindknot]

If you lie flat on the floor with you knees up and relax there for 5-10 minutes - does it still hurt when you are doing so? It sounds muscular, you can get really tight intercostal muscles (the ones between your ribs) from not breathing properly - I had it a lot with anxiety, and especially if you have bad posture - you may not even realise you are straining your body in weird ways... Just try lying flat on the floor for a bit like I say, it might just help a bit to start easing some of the tightness.

Massages don't work much for me when I'm wound up either, so I get where you're coming from there, I went up one notch and saw an osteopath, it's a whole new level of tension relief!