I Can Knit

I can knit again. It feels great. I been through ups and downs (mostly downs) the past 4 months. I bought a house, moved out of my parents' house for the first time in my life, moved in with my boyfriend, and got engaged! Wonderful, right? Well, it should've been.

About the time I started seriously looking for a house, I began having pain in my pinkie fingers while I knit. I was in the process of a Find Your Fade shawl and an Umaro blanket. Switching to the thick, bulky blanket from the tiny delicate shawl helped relieve the pain temporarily. I went on about my house hunting, regular job, and my knitting. I knit through the pain. Other than that the pain did not bother me.

Come June 11th, a month after my offer was accepted on my house and a month before we would actually close. I woke up with a pain in my neck at the base of my skull and a migraine. I have had migraines in the past. Very infrequently. My father and sister both get them regularly. I had just had one a few weeks prior that made me have to leave work early. So, I'm pretty sure the cause was stress. I am easily stressed out when I'm not in my comfort zone and buying a house was WAAY out of my comfort zone.

So anyways, it was around this time that I also started having debilitating hand, wrist and arm pain at work. Now this was a real problem. It's one thing to have pain while I'm knitting, but now this is affecting my livelihood! So I was in a panic, I was stressed, scared, and in pain! The pain stuck with me all day and night. I swore off knitting temporarily in order to heal. I figured I must have carpal tunnel, then I found it was probably cubital tunnel because mostly my pinkie and ring finger hurt and were occasionally tingly. I went to a few doctors. They both dismissed it as over use from knitting and told me to rest, maybe wear a brace, try some vitamins and see how it feels in a month.

So I did so and waited. I moved. I got engaged. I started living independently from my parents. This was stressful and scary. I was overthinking everything. Cleaning, cooking, buying (SO MUCH BUYING), keeping the house maintained, unpacking, organizing, etc, etc,etc. And what do I normally do to unwind, relax, and decompress? Knit. What's the one thing I couldn't do? Knit. As soon as my hands would feel a little better one day, I would give it a go, only to be completely crushed when the pain would flare up even worse and for even longer. Would I ever be able to knit? I became even more stressed and fearful that the one thing I've found in life that I love to do, without a doubt, I might never be able to do again?

I read so many articles online of people never fully recovering from cubital tunnel or tendonitis (or whatever I actually had) that I was in such fear and depression.

How could this happen to me? I finally have my own little dream house where I've made the 2nd bedroom into a craft room, filled with all my yarn, and now I can't enjoy it.

There were many tearful nights of panic attacks, depression, moping around. I picked up cross-stitch to feed my need for creating. I do enjoy cross-stitch but it's not like what I feel for knitting.

Slowly my pain symptoms cleared up enough at work that I was no longer dreading each day. I could use a mouse and keyboard with mostly no pain.

I also saw a massage therapist for my neck and back pain and also maybe to fix my hands. I've gone twice and it has helped my neck pain (it's not gone yet), but I can't say it did anything for my hands. It gave me some stress relief, though. Massages are great.

Finally I did some more research on something that I found about 2 months ago while researching RSI treatments.

It's called Tension Myositis Syndrome, or Mindbody Syndrome. I won't go into the details but essentially it attributes RSI symptoms to repressed rage/anger/stress/fear. It can be something from childhood or even recent events. This covers more than just RSI. Any sort of chronic or unexplained pain might be due to TMS.

Anyways, I looked into the disorder about 5 days ago. I started reading the book "The Mindbody Prescription." I spent some time looking inward and admitting to myself everything that I'm scared of, everything that is stressing me out, and just talking to myself about what's going on and why I feel how I do.

I've started journaling about my feelings, or just anything I can think of. I tried weightlifting and found it caused me no pain.

I've been willing myself to accept that there is nothing real about my pain and that it is caused purely by emotions. I have seen marked improvement. I can generally go about my day with little to no pain. If I catch myself thinking about my hands, the pain will return. I feel little pinches and occasional burning but it comes and goes. I'm sure there is still some inner turmoil that I have yet to address.

But the biggest most amazing result is that I can knit again. Before, just thinking about knitting or picking up a knitting needle would cause my fingers to burn and my wrists to ache. That was the fear. Now I tell myself that there is nothing wrong. I won't have to quit knitting forever, and I knitting is enjoyable. Now I can knit.

I can't believe it, almost. It makes me so happy. I was in such a depressed state that I hadn't organized my crafting room at all. It hurt me to look at the yarn. It pained me to see it and know I can't knit. I stopped watching knitting podcasts, I avoided looking at projects on ravelry, tumblr and instagram. It made me so sad  to see them.

But now I'm back. I'm loving my yarn, I'm looking at projects, I'm planning new garments to knit and I'm not focusing on the pain.

When I didn't have knitting in my life, there was only the pain to think about. I'm not 100% cured and I'm trying not to overdo it on the knitting but I am feeling positive and strong. I am feeling whole again.