Chapter 6

Chapter 6 - TMJ and Knees

Written 8-12-2023

Fast forward to 2023. It’s August, and I’ve just transitioned to part time work at my job. It’s been a stressful year. December of 2022 I began with another knee pain flare. My right knee has flared up on and off for twenty years, never reaching a pain level of zero during that time, but often close at a 1-2 out of 10, as long as I don’t push myself too hard.

By January of this year, my pain level was a 6-7/10 and surgery seemed imminent. Even my left knee was starting to hurt from compensation for its weaker counterpart; I was limping every day. Ever since my conversion disorder episode in 2018, I’ve paid special attention to my mental state whenever aches and pains arise, now that I understand the power of the mind-body connection. I also am aware that I’m more susceptible to the blues during the Fall and Winter (days with less sunlight and cooler weather), and also during my monthly cycles. Blues and pain go hand in hand for me. But this flare still took me by surprise; its intensity and duration was unexpected. After months of dealing with the pain, and the forced necessity of reflection, it started to become clear.

I mentally replayed a conversation I had five years ago, which occurred a few months after my conversion disorder diagnosis. The pastor of the church we were attending reached out to me for advice on how to counsel one of the church members. There was a woman with similar symptoms to what I’d experienced, and without medical explanation, except she wasn’t getting better. In fact, her symptoms had progressed to the point that she was in a wheelchair. I sent him a digital copy of my testimony after my hospital stay and offered for him to share it with her. I also added, “If I may be so bold, have her ask herself the following questions:

‘What truth am I unwilling to accept?’

and

‘What changes am I unwilling to make?’

I had my own answers to those questions when I originally formed them (2018). They were as follows. First, I had been unwilling to accept that my dad and stepmom were not the kind of people I thought they were. They chose lies and pride over a relationship with their daughter. I recalled at a bible study, that the woman now in the wheelchair had experienced a great grievance with a former friend, which she still found very painful. Second, I had been unwilling to break contact with my dad and stepmom who raised me, despite the toxic impact of their relationship on my wellbeing, and David’s! I do believe forgiveness is necessary for healing, but depending on physical or emotional safety, reconciliation is not. 

This year, 2023, I had ignored my own advice, once again because it was inconvenient…until I became desperate.

I had been unwilling to accept that I was in a state of professional burnout; one I’d tried to “push through” since before the 2020 Covid pandemic. My burnout took a brief reprieve in 2021 upon starting a new, lower stress job, but it came back. And I had been unwilling to make an adjustment to remedy the burnout. 

This time, my moment of desperation came not while lying in a hospital bed losing my ability to walk. This time I was laying in a dentist chair, unable to stop crying for five minutes after the dentist told me I had a cracked tooth. 

I wasn’t really crying about the tooth. I was crying because the tooth cracked from me clenching/grinding my teeth during the day, as I fought to hide my burnout by “pushing through”. I fought to hide my true feelings and need for a change. (And I know the crack happened during the day because my TMJ issues had gotten so bad that I wore a mouth guard every night.) That tooth had now developed a cavity in the crack, which would require drilling and filling. It was also my sign that I wasn’t fooling anyone. My husband had been right for months, as he told me I was unhappy at my job and that I was becoming depressed. I had to accept that my burnout not only damaged my tooth, it also contributed to how long my knee flare was lasting (because stress and pain go hand in hand). I’ve found that even pain with a physically identifiable cause can be magnified by stress. 

I now believe conversion disorder, in its various forms, is a dissonance between what we need to accept or do, and what we’re currently willing to accept or do. Or put simply, it’s an internal conflict you may not be conscious of.

Let me expound on that with a story from my past, which will help explain the present (2023).

I was a very young child when I took what I believe were the first steps to developing conversion disorder. I was probably five or six years old, and I was at an orange grove. My dad had taken a side job at the grove to make some extra money. I don’t remember exactly what he did there, but he spent some time on a tractor. At this point my mom and dad had already divorced, and my stepmom had married my dad about six months later. This was sometime after the marriage but before my dad and stepmom had primary custody of me. So I think my stepmom had driven me to the grove to say goodbye before bringing me back to my mom’s house.

As we were about to leave, my stepmom told me to tell my dad I loved him. I hesitated. I think I was really confused. Divorce is hard on everyone involved, but especially young kids that don’t really understand what’s going on, and they feel sort of stuck between two sides. My stepmom got angry that I wouldn’t tell my dad I loved him, after she repeatedly told me to do so. Why won’t you tell your dad you love him? Tell your dad you love him! She then grabbed my chin, hard enough that it hurt in her hand. She gritted her teeth, stared me in the eyes, and told me once more to tell my dad that I loved him. She was hurting me, and my dad stood by and watched, acting sheepish. I obliged and muttered that I loved him.

It was a time I remember having to make a choice, to choose a side. It was a survival coping mechanism of sorts. No, I wasn’t in any real physical danger, but if I didn’t choose to do what she wanted, life would be much harder. (I would find out years later that my stepmom had read a book on parenting strong-willed children, and had used it to exert her dominance over me.) So I chose my dad and stepmom, and my mom was relegated to the sidelines. After that, I couldn’t acknowledge my mom’s point of view. It would disrupt my “survival”.

A couple of years later, when I was probably 7-8 years old, I think my mind still struggled with whether I had chosen the right side. Because even though the world isn’t black and white, you don’t understand that as a kid, so you jump headfirst and fully to one side, to cope. A few times I clearly heard my name being called, but no one was around. I think my mind almost fractured over the stress of entertaining the idea that the side I chose wasn’t the side of truth and “right”. I heard my stepmom call my name a few times, and I maybe heard my stepdad-at-the-time call my name once. But when this happened neither of them were close by. It was in my mind. I had identified my stressor(s), but again, I had to choose, especially at this age when my dad and stepmom were in a legal battle to obtain primary custody of me. And at that time, many untrue and hurtful things were being said of my mom, in order for them to win the case. I chose my dad and stepmom.

It was a confusing time. Gaslighting is a real thing! Around that age, my dad and stepmom got a brand new couch. It was the early 1990s and pastels were all the rage. They bought a large corner sofa, light beige with a pattern of pink and blue pastel lines on it. One day they called a family meeting. I got in trouble for coloring lines on the couch in crayon that matched the pattern. They said I was acting out. I told them I didn’t remember drawing that, but they insisted, and I was the kid and they were the adults, so they were right. Years later, I still recalled thinking “I don’t remember drawing on the couch.” I admit that as a coping mechanism, I do have a lot of gaps in my memories of my younger years. Yet, to this day, I doubt that I colored on the couch. I wonder if my stepmom actually did it and set me up. I think it was a control thing, a power play.

I tell myself that I should have seen what was happening. How could I have latched on to my stepmom, making her my “best friend” (because that’s really healthy!), allowing her to isolate me from the rest of my family, and believing her words above all else? But I was just a kid, trying to cope. I still recall standing in the kitchen in early elementary school. A neighborhood kid came over to play who was nervous around my stepmom. I reassured her, saying, “It’s okay. I used to think she was a witch, but now I really like her”. 

I had chosen my side, and to keep my sanity, I’d have to stay on it, even if the opportunity arose to believe otherwise. This continued with friends through college. I was firmly allegiant to my “side” until I could no longer deny the truth staring me in the face. In 2018, I finally accepted the truth, at age thirty four, and it set me free. God healed me of 90% of the physical pain of the conversion disorder, right there in the hospital room. For the remainder, I’m still working on it, and flare-ups occur. Counseling, community, my medical team, and self-help books have played a huge part in my journey since then. 

Conversion disorder makes it really difficult to distinguish true emotional pain from physical ailments in which they are masquerading. And sometimes there’s a bit of both, emotional and physical, coexisting and feeding off of one another in a vicious cycle…until you identify a problem and begin working on it. Accepting there’s a problem truly is the first step.