I've got to second that it's probably worthwhile for the author to check out and consider the wikipedia article. I pretty much gave up programming for six years

I've got to second that it's probably worthwhile for the author to check out and consider the wikipedia article. I pretty much gave up programming for six years, utterly convinced that I had a physical disorder causing me constant pain in wrists, hands, elbows, shoulders, etc. I tried all kinds of physical approaches during that time, many of which would appear to impact it in one way or another, but none that really helped (instead it was that my worrying more or less impacted my essentially mental disorder that manifested somatically). A key aspect to it is that there is no distinguishing the symptoms from actual physical sensations. I could have started making progress with my own issues years earlier when someone brought up this possibility to me, except that I felt like what I was experiencing was 'too real' to be mental, or something. Medical practitioners outside of mental health seem relatively unaware of these disorders, but if you speak with a psychiatrist, you may receive some useful info. It's worth a shot. Here are a couple sources for further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder This is a good book on going about recovery. You'll have to forgive the title; the reason it's there is the physical site for these disorders tends to follow trends in society, and at the time of writing back and neck pain were the most common occurrences (it's consistent with the theory behind these disorders that such trends would exist), AND a very large proportion of chronic back/neck pain turn out to be psychosomatic. http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Recovery-Back-Neck-Pain-ebook/dp/B0056VBF4I/ http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Recovery-Back-Neck-Pain-ebook/dp... It's also interesting to see the page for the Seattle Repetitive Injury Support Team, which (after a majority of their members solved their problems) now feels convinced that the most troublesome, persistent repetitive strain injuries are psychosomatic. http://www.satori.org/rist/ http://www.satori.org/rist/ You can also see the extents that I went to to avoid physical activation of my symptoms, here: http://tiledtext.com http://tiledtext.com That's how convinced I was that they were physical, though now I have no doubt about their mental origin—and I can use computers almost completely freely now :D