TMJ Temporo Mandibular Dysfunction Advice Please ? ?!

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I have TMJ. It is awful! What worked for me was to wear mouth guards at night and to learn to manage stress and anxiety during the day. I do a lot of breathing exercises during the day and yoga in the morning and at night. Once I learned to relax, Most of my symptoms subsided. Good luck. i know what you are going through

Gabapentin can have terrible side effects in some people and there are some alternative drugs available. Within a pain clinic environment they use various medication combinations in many different ways so you could request a referral into pain management at your local hospital.

You have recognised the link and the vicious circle of pain and anxiety and within pain management they offer access to psychotherapy (and other alternatives) to help you come to terms and learn to cope with the condition. The anxiety and stress of TMJ is all inter linked.

Sadly as you can still walk they will not recognise pain as a disability and you will find if you pursue it you fall in between and not in the different criteria. All the disability payments are linked to what you can do rather than what you cannot do.

I have been in pain management for a long while not for TMJ but for neuropathic pain caused by surgical error and can easily link my pain with yours. Not much support and sympathy as 'look' okay and pain is seen by many outsiders as a personal perception. It is lonely and isolating as well.

Now have a look at some of the American sites and support groups on neuropathic pain (it is a similar pain) they offer some interesting thoughts on being in control of your pain and there is an interesting ten points plan available as well. You have to be in control to cope. Try to remember that.

The next thing I am going to say is initially going to make think what a load of rubbush -- BUt .......remember that the pain is there whether you mope around and are miserable and feel sorry for yourself and this is the important thing to remember as well.....if you make yourself get up and get on with it (and ride the side effects of the medication) the pain is still there.

So you either can curl up in a ball and let the medication and the pain win or you get up and try to gt something out of life and learn to live with the pain and cope with the pain. It is still there whether you do or dont.

Turn it into a challenge/r. Do not let the pain win.

I have severe pain, functional loss and know what debilitating pain does in the long term and have taught myself my own coping strategy and used psychotherapy to work throught the anger that was there as well within a pain clinic environment,