I'm with sky...

I've often noticed in hindsight, but can't get it too well in the moment, that if I wasn't doing well emotionally (i.e. high anxiety) for a period of time, I would get sick more often. Also, if I was sick for more than a couple of days, I would begin to get depressed, anxious, pain increases, etc.

Another thing I've noticed in dealing with my TN is that it's worse if I'm anxious/tense, and that if I begin to have a bad episode and don't get control of the panic it can cause (due to the pain) I can go from 7-10 really fast!

I used this same technique with my daughter when she was having severe pain with herniated discs that involved sciatic nerve pain. She'd been to the hosp four times in two weeks...the last time the pain was so excruciating that she was still in major pain after three shots of morphine and a huge shot of steroids. It was awful for her to have to sit and lie there. So the next couple of times (before the steroids kicked in), I literally stood over her, rubbing her hair, cooing to her, telling her in a very calm voice to "bring it down" and "you can do this". I just wanted her to calm down while we were getting ready to get her to the ER...just normal mom stuff. Guess what? We didn't even have to make the trip to the ER... When she was able to bring the panic down (I'd guess due to her expecting the worse and fearing it tremendously), she was able to get control over her pain better than meds.

I so agree that one can influence the other. I don't necessarily know that they do all the time, but my past shows that there's a definite connection there...

I wish there were more specialists that would work with GP's in not only the patient's understanding, but in the GP's. I think it could help so much all the way around.

Thanks!

KD