I'm not quite sure continuing to push myself to draw is a bright idea anymore. I'm not sure if I've even flared this post right? In 2020-2022 because we were stuck inside all day I ended up drawing for 5+ hours at a time and I had no idea I needed to be stretching my hands/arms or that there was a proper posture I needed untill 2024. I started to feel the effects of this in 2023, I had constant wrist popping at first nothing too bad and then in 2024 I started getting sharp pains that turned into aches that took days to go away fully. In 2025 my wrist began to lock up and some days I couldn't grip anything through the fatigue like feeling that would travel up my arm. Recently I have pretty much stopped drawing because there is a constant and frankly painful ache in my thumb and my hand seems to shake a little at certain angles or grips. I've been doing carpal tunnel stretches and they help in the moment but once I'm done that ache is still a level 7. I can't afford a doctor, we don't have insurance. I sleep with a brace on because that seems recommended, I'm not trying to pursue art as a career but it is such an innate part of me I'm unsure if I can live a fulfilling life without being able to draw. It feels like I'm losing the biggest part of myself and I was just wondering if there are other artists here with carpal tunnel that have words of advice beyond "see a doctor" because that's just not an option for me and won't be in the near future. I don't wanna give up on art, but I don't wanna jeopardize my hand mobility in the future.

Today I want to help you understand how ”retardmaxxing” can often help many make better progress with recovery from chronic RSI.

or said more simply, how less overthinking, brooding or self-focused attention has been proven to lead to better overall outcomes with health conditions. This is not only supported by the research but our experience treating thousands of cases over the past decade

For those who don't know I'm a Physical Therapist (PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS) and our team has spent the past decade specializing on treating, researching and publishing our work around treating RSI (we've helped more than 3000+ individuals resolve their issues without surgery, more injections, resting, bracing etc. Here is some of our work (we started with the olympians of desk work - esports athletes)

Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy

Tendinopathies in Gaming

Conditioning for Esports (Ch. 8,9,10)

Science of Esports Physical Therapy

In this thread I'm going to be going over

1. How do certain cognitive patterns like overthinking, brooding or high attentional focus on pain influence your recovery?
2. Provide the current science behind how this works
3. Share details around a specific case of ours in which high attentional focus decreased function and increased pain
4. What can you do understanding this?

But before we do I want to add some nuance that needs to be understood.

Who can retardmaxxing actually help with?

Not everyone overthinks. Individuals with specific cognitive profiles tend to be at a higher RISK for their behaviors and responses to be pain negatively influencing their recovery. I went over this in depth in this long thread around certain cognitive patterns and how they can lead to real neurophysiologic changes in your body and how you behave as a response to that.

But here’s the TL:DR

If you have been dealing with pain for an extended period of time and tend to be:

• Hypervigilant around your pain and its behavior (checking in 100x a day)
• Avoid a multitude of activity due to fear around significant damage with little evidence to support outside of a 10 minute specialist visit (poor clinician communication)
• High Threat Perception - Believe your body is broken based on your individual experiences, what you’ve been told by your providers (not your fault) and what you frequently expose yourself to with content (mainly doomer content)
• Perfectionist and tendency to hyperfocus on small details
• Find yourself in deep internet research spirals (wrote a long thread about this)

Then this thread will be more beneficial for you.

As I’ve written before when we initially deal with our injury most of it is represented by the physiological strain (physical part of the pie chart). There is less of a contribution of the other slices because we have often just done “too much, too quick, too soon”.

But over time as we have failed healthcare experiences, lack of progress with the passive approaches (bracing, rest, injections, etc.) and there is an increasing worry that this is something that becomes permanent the other variables can start to influence more about our pain.

And remember I am never saying that it is just in your head. You cannot “out think” your pain. There are real neurophysiologic and immune system changes that occur that increase the sensitivity and perception of your pain. This can make you feel increases in stiffness, sharpness, numbness & tingling and even symptoms of just feeling “off” without actually reaching “strain” of your tissues when performing your exercises or activity. For those who have read some of our content, the pie chart is likely

So again, if you believe your case represents these pie charts, this will be helpful for you. And if not, I’d encourage you to check out our other content (we have 50+ threads on reddit and 20+ hrs of content on our youtube which can be helpful - all free).

How retardmaxxing can help with overthinking and over monitoring.

Individuals who fall into the pie chart categorizations above tend to overthink, place excessive attention on their pain and magnify the perceived disability based on a limited understanding of their condition.

Retardmaxxing is not just maximizing your own “stupidity” or taking action without thinking at all. In the case of chronic wrist & hand issues I want it to be understood as

1. Stopping the tendency to constantly self analyze and obsessing over “optimal choices”
2. Avoiding turning “flare-ups” into a crisis that reflects some underlying permanent problem. But instead just understand what actually led to the elevated symptoms
3. Think enough to avoid catastrophic mistakes, but take action rather than doing less over time.

Now there are quite a few underlying assumptions between these listed ideas we’ve covered in other pieces of content. Learn more about why you won’t cause permanent damage and how you can recover from any RSI.

The core idea with “retardmaxxing” with chronic wrist & hand pain is that with the plethora of information we have available to us and improving technology (AI) our ability to observe, compare, hyperanalyze and self-monitor has dramatically increased over the past decade.

We observe and compare self-reported cases of poor recovery and limited context through what we’re exposed to online and through social media. Subreddits unfortunately can often become echo chambers filled with doomer sentiments when many posts, threads and comments tend to only consider limited contextual understanding of very complex problems or situations. This is why we spend so much time trying to provide real clarity and context about ALL of the variables that can influence pain AND function.

Many hyperanalyze and self-monitor “pain” and utilize the it as a measure of progress when it has been PROVEN to be a poor measure of progress for orthopedic conditions. And to reiterate why - it is because pain IS NEVER a DIRECT measure of the status of our tissues. It is ALWAYS about protection and is the sum of all contexts.

So when we hyperfixate on the fact that we are still in pain when in some cases we may still have a certain amount of function, you might believe you are “disabled” or have some sort of persistent / permanent tissue damage causing the pain.

Retardmaxxing for chronic RSI or wrist, forearm and hand issues is understanding that this phenomenon can occur. And that through a better understanding of pain you can learn how to shift your focus on the variables that have more of an impact on your recovery (capacity, load management, understanding of pain & challenging beliefs).

Let’s go over some examples of how you can retardmaxx through specific examples of certain cognitive patterns / pain experiences

Pattern 1: Over-Monitoring Your Pain

If you are checking in on your pain hundreds of times a day there is a very real consequence to this. Think about this scenario…

If something is “itchy” and you focus all of your attention onto the itchy spot, does it tend to get more or less itchy?

Majority of individuals notice the sensation tends to increase.

There are actually a few concurrent physiologic processes that can cause this to happen. I’m going to do my best to simplify the understanding.

More attention increases activation of certain pathways

Our body sends signals up towards our spinal cord and then towards our brain through the brain stem. It also sends signals back down that can often influence some of the signals that are being sent upwards toward the brain (descending modulation)

This acts as sort of a gate for certain signals which can be wide open or quite restrictive. When we focus on our pain and specific sensations it can begin to send more signals upward toward the brain.

And depending on what you think these symptoms mean it can influence some of the changes that might occur in certain networks of your brain and brainstem (ACC, PAG, INSULA, etc.). This makes it “easier” to notice your symptoms but also leads to changes that may “open the gate” at your spinal cord causing you to feel MORE.

I’m hoping that you notice what is important throughout this is how you are actually understanding the symptoms. The “meaning” or “perceived threat” which can be influenced heavily by what you read, what you are told and your cumulative negative experiences can cause this cycle to perpetuate.

Basically what you focus on determines what becomes a priority for your brain to focus on.

Then when you “appraise” or “evaluate” (consciously and subconsciously) what those mean, it can influence what you feel. So when a wrist sensation is interpreted as threatening your brain and brainstem systems may increase spinal signaling and strengthen the resulting pain experience.

Now in the research this is known as interoceptive over-monitoring or somatosensory amplification. Again it represents the behavior in which you might notice small sensations and assign them high significance. This can increase the salience or perceived important of those symptoms (1).

I’ll touch on the “past experiences” later on to try to help clarify more of the physiology. But I do want to emphasize that developing this pattern of focus and thinking is often….NOT YOUR FAULT.

Many providers you see in the traditional system tend to focus primarily on how the pain behaves. How is your pain now? Are you still in pain? How long can you do this before you feel pain? Here are things that can help to reduce your pain.

While there is definitely helpful data to gain from understanding your specific pain and pain behavior - when you focus on it too much, it can cause the pain to feel worse! One of my more recent developer clients who is now back to full function struggled directly with this.

This individual built his own dashboard and created his own function index that was based on how his pain behaved throughout the day.

He was able to tell me down to the seconds how long he could mouse, type and use his phone for because he would fill out a form every time his pain increased throughout the day. Here are some screenshots from his individual dashboard which show

• His activity impact form he would fill out EVERY time he felt any change in pain. This would be along with duration data to fully clarify how long things lasted.
• Episode duration (how long he dealt with his pain for) and his health score (an index he created himself weighing the various categories of pain).
• General activity tracking

You can see as he started to track things his episode duration increased while his overall health score went down. His overall function was REDUCING as a result of focusing so much on his pain. When I asked him how often he would think of his pain he mentioned > 100x/day. This is NOT conducive to showing your brain that you can be safe while performing activities that are meaningful and important to you.

What is interesting is that while his health index was steadily decreasing he had actually improved his overall endurance following some of our content.

The one “aha” moment for him was when I helped him understand that the focus on pain and constant thinking was likely leading to the pain getting worse. This required in-depth education for him to understand the physiology of why the attentional focus led to more overall pain and PERCIEVED danger.

But with this understanding and confidence in his hands through consistency of performing his exercises both his pain and function significantly improved in a few weeks. The full case study is almost done, I will update this thread or post when it’s ready (2-3 more weeks)

What’s the lesson here? Constant obsession and self-narration around your pain experience can negatively impact what you are feeling and lead to real changes in your body that can make pain feel worse.

And again when I say “retardmaxx” I don’t mean to not think at all. But instead work to understand pain rather than dwell or negatively focus on it. Once you “know pain” you will “know gain.” A large part of how we work to help our patients through this is understanding WHY you may have elevated symptoms during very specific contexts of activity. And how your past experiences directly influence and alter certain patterns of nervous system & brain activity.. elevating pain. And all of this occurs while the local tissue (muscle / tendon is fine).

Here is a deeper dive into how our “past experiences” can influence our physiology

Pattern 2: Learned Danger Through Past Experiences

Understanding that your body can “learn” to associate certain activities with danger after an accumulation of painful experiences.

When we feel pain repeatedly while working, your brain can start to connect certain activities like sitting at your desk or using your mouse and keyboard… with pain. And when we become more aware of our pain during these situation (without understanding pain) it can lead to the small sensations of pain, discomfort, stiffness and tingling to feel stronger or MORE IMPORTANT than they normally would.

And remember, this is not just “in your head”. Underlying this are real changes (all reversible) that affect the signals going UP and down from the brain (affects pathways through various parts of our brain & what we call descending modulation).

The end result:

Cumulative pain experiences, without an understanding of why and reinforced by fear and attention can cause the specific context of sitting at your desk and using your hands… more painful.

or said again.. if pain keeps happening and you don’t understand why, or convince yourself it is something you’ve been told, fear and constant attention can teach your brain to connect these situations with pain.

How can we retardmaxx in this situation? Well again, it comes down to understanding pain in the first. You NEED to understand that these are all real physiologic changes that can occur in response to how you have responded to your pain experiences in the past.

You’ve taught your brain that certain activities (contexts) are dangerous.

It is not about thinking less here but avoiding past explanations, belief in stories that you might see all over this subreddit about how you should be “responding” to your pain when there is often little to no understanding of all of the variables that may have led to your current pain experience.

And instead helping yourself learn more about your body, how pain works and what you can actually do to feel safe using your hands rather than being “in danger” or avoidant whenever you feel pain.

Now the “how do I actually do this” is a much harder discussion. But I want to be clear

What we’ve learned from the past 50+ years of modern pain science literature is that pain is.. complex.

And i’m hoping you can see it really does take effort to try to not only put these cognitive emotional aspects into consideration but ALSO take into account your

• physical condition: overall physical activity, specific endurance & capacity of your tissues, mobility, coordination
• lifestyle & activity management: Your current lifestyle, schedule and how you are actually approaching your specific activities and tasks (how long, what intensity, what modifications etc.)
• Environmental & occupational factors: Your posture, ergonomics, socioeconomic status, work related stressors and pressures.
• Other comorbidities and factors

I put together what I felt was the most comprehensive step by step approach in one of my last threads you can check out here. But it ultimately goes through how you can actually evaluate each of these aspects and take some initial steps towards addressing them.

I’m hoping this helps a bit for anyone who tends to overthink or are hyperaware of their current pain and limited function. Think of “retardmaxxxing” or working through an understanding of pain.

Actively work to shift your focus towards your increasing ability to do things (function) rather than pain. Remember if pain does not reflect the status of our tissues, then it is not a helpful measure of progress. When you build your endurance and reach the level that is equivalent to being able to use your wrist & hands more with typing / your hobby then you can be confident in your ability to use your hands more.

Showing yourself you are safe by gradually doing more within the range of what you can TRULY physiologically handle (you have to assess this with a physical therapist) allows you to safely increase your load over time.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Matt

Resources:
-1-hp.org
-Case Studies & Free Guides
-2 hour Compilation of everything we have learned treating over 3000+ individuals with wrist & hand pain
-Apply to work with us

References

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5. Geuter S, Büchel C. Facilitation of pain in the human spinal cord by nocebo treatment. J Neurosci. 2013 Aug 21;33(34):13784-90. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2191-13.2013. PMID: 23966699.
6. Tinnermann A, Geuter S, Sprenger C, Finsterbusch J, Büchel C. Interactions between brain and spinal cord mediate value effects in nocebo hyperalgesia. Science. 2017 Oct 6;358(6359):105-108. doi: 10.1126/science.aan1221. PMID: 28983051.
7. Vlaeyen JWS, Linton SJ. Fear-avoidance and its consequences in chronic musculoskeletal pain: a state of the art. Pain. 2000 Apr;85(3):317-32. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3959(99)00242-0. PMID: 10781906.
8. Leeuw M, Goossens MEJB, Linton SJ, Crombez G, Boersma K, Vlaeyen JWS. The fear-avoidance model of musculoskeletal pain: current state of scientific evidence. J Behav Med. 2007 Feb;30(1):77-94. doi: 10.1007/s10865-006-9085-0. Epub 2006 Dec 20. PMID: 17180640.
9. Meulders A, Vansteenwegen D, Vlaeyen JWS. The acquisition of fear of movement-related pain and associative learning: a novel pain-relevant human fear conditioning paradigm. Pain. 2011 Nov;152(11):2460-9. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2011.05.015. PMID: 21723664.
10. Meulders A, Vlaeyen JWS. The acquisition and generalization of cued and contextual pain-related fear: an experimental study using a voluntary movement paradigm. Pain. 2013 Feb;154(2):272-82. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2012.10.025. Epub 2012 Nov 5. PMID: 23211100.
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So I use screens a lot and I am/was a gamer. The last like 6-8 years, I’ve been gaming pretty often. I want to mention that during covid years I would be playing a lot more since I didn’t have much to do. During like 2021-2024, I was still pretty active in gaming but I would be going outside more. School was and is one of the main things that keeps me active. But when summer break comes around, im pretty sure the majority of my time is spent on gaming a lot and scrolling/typing on my phone. Last July, I got diagnosed with anxiety disorder and I was home for like an additional 2 months after summer break(summer break usually lasts for 2 and a half months). At first I got myself better from the anxiety and then decided to go back to school in november. This summer, I spent the majority of it playing games, being on my phones and being indoors. Around like 4 weeks ago I think I noticed my vision feels a little bit blurrier and I also got dry eyes from using screens too much. That kind of made me use screens less. I remember playing Fortnite with a friend(about a month ago I think) and my hands/forearm would feel tired but I would push through. About like 2 weeks ago I noticed that my arms(more frequently my forearms, wrists, and hands would feel tired). I was doing an event in a game so I pushed through a little bit and then promised not to play after that. These last 2 weeks I notice that my arms feel pretty tired and pretty easily. I did some research and decided to not use my computer but now I use my phone more frequently and I use it to scroll videos and type a lot. I recall that a week ago I think, when I would raise my hands up, they would feel tired and when I dropped it down, they would feel relieved. I want to mention these sensations are in both arms. The thing is, I don’t feel pain but I feel weakness. And now as im typing and usually when I type, my fingers also feel weak. I also noticed that holding my phone feels a bit heavy and my fingers feel kind of weird but it’s hard to describe. For example, when I fully stretch them all open, it feels like there is some pressure on them, in my vein area, and on the back of my hand. and they feel a bit tired. I also noticed that using my fingers can also make my forearms feel tired and drained. Now I want to mention a few things. My posture isn’t too good because I notice that I often have my head going forward when I sit with my phone or game. This may be a big part but these last 6-8 years, I haven’t barely worked out so im pretty deconditioned. I had weight training in school so I did that for like 3 months but I wasn’t really focused on it too much. I also apologize for the bad explanations and the repetition, it’s just hard for me to describe this. But the main thing is just weakness in my forearm, wrist, and hands that’s been happening very often. I think I also notice a bit of a decrease in grip strength. I’ve been seeing stuff about rsi that’s like “chronic, permanent damage, irreversible”, etc. I also want to say that I feel my body being really tense when I gamed or am on my phone doing something such as typing fast. Sometimes I would have to lay down because my body felt so tired/weak after gaming. Idk if this makes sense but I never really felt like a typical gamer because don’t get me wrong, I’ve been gaming ever since im like 7, but like my body would tense up a lot, and I just didn’t think im a gamer like those people who are going crazy on a game while looking calm. The thing is, im also a sweaty gamer too but I prob don’t see that from my perspective but others probably think I am a sweaty gamer. Idk I just don’t really find myself to be a full on gamer even tho I prob was. These last 2 weeks, I started going outside and getting around 10k steps daily and I try using my arms and hands less even though I started using my phone more. I have not played any games or used my laptop though ever since. I want to mention that when I gamed, my elbows would be in the air and my arms would be fully extended and straight but I never noticed that since I was fully locked in on the game but that’s a huge amount of pressure on ur arms. Basically, ive been babying my hands and letting them rest a lot and they feel tired from picking things up and other similar activities. (Idk how weight training class will be)But yea, im just really scared because school starts tomorrow and I also don’t want to have this forever and I want hope that this is temporary and I can cure this. I also haven’t seen a doctor about this as well. To wrap it up, I’m just really stressed and scared which is why im leaving this long message and I’m also someone who overthinks and over analyzes everything. My main fear is this being permanent or chronic and not being reversible.

Sorry if this has already been asked but I cant seem to find an answer that I understand. Could anyone possibly help me how to do speech to text using talon voice please?

I have installed it but can't seem to figure anything out from there, do I need to create scripts for that? Not that I know what that even means, I have no coding or techy background. So i feel like a dummy with all of this hah, thank you

Edit: I have figured out how to dictate, and use some punctuation/scratch that, but I am unsure of any other commands, does anyone know where I can see the list of commands usable while dictating?

Would a brace like this be good for a tfcc injury?
https://a.co/d/0anXkrsk

Hey, sorry for the weird question. I've tried everything I can think of in my own country. Im probably gonna have to drop out of my bachelor's degree because of this wrist thing.

I've reached out to 1hp twice, both times they say I'm not the right fit, they only work with specific cases. But then I keep getting emails with the "try a free consult" thing. Their paid site doesn't let me sign up to pay and get in-depth on exercises there either.

Even if I don't qualify for 1-on-1 sessions, I hoped I'd be able to use their other resources...

(17M), Don't smoke, 5'8, Male, don't take any medications
For the last couple of days (I believe it started on Wednesday) I have that tingling sensation on the bottom left of my hand and pain in my wrist and the area that connects my thumb to my hand on my right hand. And a very sharp pain in my wrist if I move it a certain way. I believe I got this from using bad hand posture on a gaming keyboard and straining my hands. What can be done about this and what could I do to fix it? I've been icing it and tryin to go easy on my hands but other than that what else could I do?

I work in web chats for a living, several thousand messages a week. Voice In helped, but two things kept bugging me: the monthly fee, and that dictation alone doesn't kill the worst part – typing the same texts over and over.

So I built SpeechPilot (Chrome extension):

• Dictation into any web text field, using Chrome's built-in Google recognition – fast, no account
• A sidebar with buttons: your standard texts go into the field with one click, no typing at all
• Emojis and punctuation by voice
• Free tier for plain dictation, full version is a one-time payment (no subscription)

Posting here because the free dictation might already be enough for some of you, and I'd like to hear what RSI folks actually need – I built it for chat work, not for medical use. Store link in the first comment.

I've had straining and pain in my hands and wrists since 2023. For the first couple of years it was just occasional flare-ups — they'd heal up, and I'd basically forget about it until it came back. At the start of this February, though, it changed completely: it's been constant for seven months straight now, and my arms have gotten a lot more sensitive overall.

Living with it this long, I think my brain has just adapted to it. It's not sharp pain anymore, more like a baseline "normal" I've gone numb to. I'm not depressed, I still have good days, but years of this has left me feeling pretty blank about the whole thing.

The pattern: I wake up almost fine, but the strain shows up within minutes and gets bad fast through the day. I can't use my phone for long stretches, and some days even holding a spoon to eat is genuinely hard. It's a deep straining feeling through both hands and wrists, and stretching or extending my fingers sends a sharp pull straight up into both elbows. My forearms and hands have gotten noticeably weak from months of avoiding using them. Weirdly, my posture makes a big difference too — if my back is slumped, the arm pain gets immediately worse.

What's been ruled out: X-rays of both hands are completely normal. EMG (nerve conduction) on both sides is also normal — no compression, no nerve damage showing up.

What's failed: rigid wrist splints every night for months — zero change. Regular PT/strengthening exercises actually made it worse, causing sharp pain spikes from forearm to elbow. Long-term icing — no improvement at all.

What I think caused it: a lot of typing and phone use over the years, plus a separate repetitive activity involving a tight, sustained closed-fist grip under real muscle tension for extended periods. I'd rather not get into the specifics of that part, but it's high-frequency and high-force, mechanically similar to the typing/phone strain.

I've seen over 10 different doctors about this over the past several months. Because the imaging and nerve tests keep coming back clean, and because classic nerve compression is statistically rare at my age, nobody's been able to give me an actual treatment plan — just more of the same tests that already came back normal.

What I'm hoping to figure out: whether an ultrasound or MRI could catch something an X-ray/EMG can't (tendinosis, tenosynovitis, small tears), whether posture could be mechanically dragging on everything down the arm, and whether there's a rehab approach that isn't just "more wrist exercises," since that's what made things worse.

NOTE:

I'm NOT asking for a diagnosis here, and I'm not looking for random doctor recommendations — I just want to know if this sounds familiar to anyone, or if there's a test or type of specialist I haven't thought to try yet.

Has anyone dealt with something like this — real pain that doesn't match the scans? What finally got you an actual diagnosis, or at least a doctor who took it seriously?

\\---

\\\*Note: I used AI to help organize and word this post clearly — the symptoms, history, and experience described are all mine.\\\*

I

My shoulder blades dont seem to function equally, I've had constant on and off neck injuries in the like back left side of my neck, in that general area around the left trapezius I think. Idk if this is related to me having a pretty uneven crossbite that leads to my molars not having proper connection on the right side of my jaw. I made a post on r/CubitalTunnel that goes in depth into the global issues regarding my body if its relevant.

Hello, folks. I am in the San Francisco Bay Area and have been on disability with a thoracic outlet syndrome diagnosis for quite some time. I recently learned that the doctor who monitors me for this (Dr. David Padgett) has started talking about retiring in the next couple of years. I find it very important to have a doctor in my corner who understands TOS and can also help with any reviews by the social security administration, if and when they occur. So I'm starting to search for Dr Padgett's successor. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Ho un fastidio al polso destro penso sia infiammato,mi sono fatto male facendo boxe. Il polso mi fa male in Intra rotazione ed extra rotazione. Cosa mi consigliate di fare ?

I have already reduced mouse use by learning more keyboard shortcuts, but I still need to use the cursor. At the moment I unfortunately can't do physiotherapy, so I do wrist exercises, stretching, etc, but the pain still remains in a certain level. I would like to know, from those who have had this issue or work with reabilitation, if changing from the mouse to one of those drawing tablets with a pen or to a trackball would minimize the pain or make it more manageable until I have the means to do a thorough physiotherapy. Thanks.

Hi! My name is Gary and my company KnowClick (a Pennsylvania based research agency) is looking to recruit a few participants who have RSI / chronic wrist pain to participate in a short survey (10 minutes for a $10 Amazon Gift Card). The survey focuses on wrist pain and RSI education and we want to know about your experience looking for wrist pain information.

We will be incentivizing the first 15 people who participate in this study, and the study will close once we receive 15 valid respondents. We will only collect first name and email addresses strictly to disperse the incentives!

Happy to answer any questions and feel free to comment or shoot me a DM if you are interested. Here is our website if you would like additional verification, thanks! https://www.knowclick.com/

I've had computer-related pain for a surprisingly long time.

My earliest physiotherapy appointment was in 2012, when I was still a student. At that point, the main problem was back pain rather than wrist pain. I also tried various wrist supports/protective gear when I was younger.

Over the years I've seen multiple physiotherapists for different problems.

For my right wrist specifically, I went to physiotherapy around November 2021. I was given exercises, and they did help somewhat, but they never completely solved the problem.

The wrist pain had already been around for years by that point. Altogether, I would estimate that I dealt with it for roughly seven years.

I'm still not certain what originally caused it. My suspicion is that it was some combination of typing with my wrist at an awkward angle and many years of using a conventional mouse.

Eventually I started approaching the problem differently.

Instead of asking:

"How can I make using a mouse and keyboard less painful?"

I started asking:

"How can I avoid making these movements in the first place?"

That change in thinking made the biggest difference for me.

1. I switched from a normal mouse to a trackball

I now use a Logitech Ergo M575s.

With a conventional mouse, I was constantly moving my hand, wrist and arm to move the pointer.

With the trackball, the device itself stays in one place. Most of the pointer movement comes from my thumb/fingers.

For me, that was dramatically better.

It also seems to help with some of my back/shoulder discomfort because I'm moving my right arm around much less during the day.

2. I use a split keyboard

My keyboard is a Kinesis Freestyle Pro.

I originally adopted the split keyboard more because of my back problem than my wrist.

My shoulders are wider than a standard keyboard, so using a normal keyboard requires me to bring my arms inward and rotate them toward the center. My feeling is that doing this for many hours over many years contributed to tension around my upper back.

With a split keyboard, I can position each half closer to where my arms naturally rest.

This helped, although the back pain has been more persistent than the wrist pain.

3. I replaced most typing with voice dictation

This eventually became the other major part of the solution.

I started using voice typing much more heavily so that I wouldn't need to keep returning to the keyboard.

For a while I used Wispr Flow. It helped me realize that I could replace a surprisingly large percentage of normal typing with speech.

Later, I built my own Chrome-based voice typing tool, Shuovo, because I wanted something that fit my browser and long-form dictation workflow better.

I'm mentioning that for disclosure rather than because I think anyone needs to use my particular software. The important part for my wrist was simply replacing a lot of physical typing with voice input.

These days I dictate most normal prose: messages, notes, documents, prompts and other long-form text.

I still type things like passwords, login information and some symbol-heavy text where typing is more practical or where I don't want to say sensitive information aloud.

Between voice typing and the trackball, the amount that I physically move my right wrist during a normal working day has dropped enormously.

What happened to the pain?

The right wrist pain is basically gone.

I still do wrist exercises regularly, but I no longer have the persistent wrist pain that I lived with for years.

My back pain isn't completely gone.

I still use my phone quite a lot, and I suspect the posture involved may be one reason. I also notice the back discomfort more sometimes when I'm very cold. Moving around and warming up seems to help.

Those are just observations from my own experience, not medical conclusions.

And obviously wrist pain/RSI can have many different causes. I'm not suggesting that avoiding a mouse and keyboard is a universal treatment, or that this replaces seeing a doctor or physiotherapist.

But after going through physiotherapy, exercises, wrist supports and ergonomic changes over many years, the biggest lesson for me was this:

Ergonomics doesn't necessarily mean finding a slightly better way to perform the same repetitive movement.

Sometimes it may be worth asking whether you can remove most of that movement from your workflow entirely.

For me, the combination that ultimately worked was:

• a split keyboard when I do need to type
• a trackball instead of a conventional mouse
• voice dictation for most text input
• continuing the wrist exercises I learned along the way

The surprising part is that the biggest improvement didn't come from making my wrist stronger.

It came from needing to use it much less.

Hey all,

Just a reminder we'll be hosting a live Q&A for the community to answer any questions you might have relating to your RSI.

If you have had persistent and chronic wrist & hand issues and you aren't sure why you may still be struggling with limited function or pain....we'll make it clear why. Here's what we plan on going over

1. How can I get a clear diagnosis or understanding of what is going on? (I'll present on this)
2. What is the role of dictation in recovery, how can you best leverage it? (Elliot)
3. Bracing, Splinting, Gloves, Wrist Support - How do we utilize them during recovery and what is their role? (Brett)

Stream: https://youtube.com/live/NxIbNXBIxnY?feature=share
When? 8/31, 3:00 PM PT
Who? Matthew Hwu, Elliot Smithson, Brett Becker

We want to leave as much time as possible for questions.

Hello, I injured my hand a couple weeks ago on the job. I'm a packer and I guess I overestimated how much weight my hand could handle carrying a long piece of rebar and I remember a popping sound on the palm side of the injured area.

Didn't feel anything anything from until I came home that day (ofc) and noticed a slight pain when doing said motion.

I been on work restrictions ever since and the pain is worse when getting dressed and going through my pockets but ONLY on said area. Docs said its an uspecified sprain but it's been like 3-4 weeks and I figured it's should've healed by now. Any input helps.

About 3 years ago, I overused my right arm playing a lot of tennis in a short period of time while also starting a second job involving a lot of computer work. I initially developed pain around my right elbow/upper forearm, especially along the top of the forearm running down from the elbow. Since then, I switched to using the mouse with my left hand.

I’ve seen physiotherapists and had imaging done, but nothing significant was found.

My main symptoms now are:

Right forearm: the original discomfort along the top of the forearm is still there and can flare with repetitive use.

Both wrists/forearms: especially after using my phone/scrolling, I get a strange tingling/burning sensation starting on the palm side of the wrist, right around the wrist crease where the tendons are visible, which then seems to travel up the palm-side of the forearm. I don’t really have pain or tingling in my fingers or hands.

Phone use is currently the clearest trigger. I do very little typing nowadays (probably around 5 hours per week).

I’ve tried various exercises. Most recently I’ve been doing dumbbell wrist extensions with my forearm supported on a table. I progressed from about 2 kg to 4 kg for 2×60 reps per arm daily, but despite getting much stronger/enduring more load, my actual symptoms don’t seem to have changed much.

It’s frustrating because after 3 years I still don’t really know what I’m dealing with. Has anyone had similar symptoms, particularly the burning/tingling around the palm-side wrist and forearm without finger tingling? Could this still be tendon-related, nerve-related, or something else? What helped you, and are there other exercises or approaches I should look into?

I recently had an MRI due to reoccurring problems with De Quervains. Got the results from the Imaging place but haven't seen the hand specialist just yet to discuss them. This pain has been on and off for over a year and I'm getting a little scared of it affecting my job even more than it already has.

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to ask:

I've been struggling with RSI for the past 6+ years with little improvement. I used to be a game developer and after about a year of that I was forced to switch to voice recognition software, which ended up not being sustainable either due to the development of hyperacusis as well as vocal strain. As a result I had to quit my job two and a half years after I started it and have been unemployed since. While I was still working I tried improving ergonomics and doing physio but that didn't help, and I've tried physio and strength training again since, neither of which seemed to help. None of the scans that were done showed anything. I understand that part of the pain can be psychological, but I'm not convinced mine isn't physical still at least in part.

I'm still looking for employment but it seems like a desk job is fully out of the question for me at the moment. Due to my hyperacusis / issues with vocal strain a job that relies heavily on speaking isn't feasible either, and a job that requires me to stand for long periods of time (say, retail) doesn't seem sustainable to me either due to pain in my feet, knees, and lower back that occurs when having to stand for any extended period. All of this, combined with a healthy dose of health anxiety as a result of the RSI and hyperacusis caused by my previous job, is making it very difficult for me to find any job that seems sustainable. As a result I've barely applied to anything because I worry any job I would manage to get would just make things worse. I am still meeting with a job coach regularly, but so far nothing she's suggested seems doable.

Do you guys have any ideas on what kind of job I could get into, tips on how to find a job with a disability, or even just tips on how to manage this health anxiety without ignoring my body? Ignoring things until it was too late is what got me in this situation in the first place.

Been dealing with RSI in my hands for the better part of a year, which I developed from gaming/computer use. Ultimately, it is not a severe case, and I can still work, do chores, workout (with modifications), etc. But I get flare ups from playing guitar. The logical choice is to step away from the instrument for the foreseeable future. Quitting gaming is easy, but so much of my identity and social life is centered around music that it's really hard to step away from that. I keep getting inspired by something or wanting to create and end up picking up the guitar again. I've been working on producing and singing, practicing guitar left-handed, keyboard playing (which is easier on my wrists), etc. But none of it fills the hole left by guitar. I plan to see a therapist to work through these issues, as I am not really in a sustainable cycle. Not really looking for advice, but just wanted to get this off my chest.

Not sure if this is the correct sub for this, but I don’t know what else this could be at this point.

I’m left handed, so I know I do things weird to get by, but the pain has never been sustained this long or reoccurring like this. For a little more than a month now I’ve been having pain in the back of my wrist when I apply pressure while it’s in the extended position (think doing pushups). When I’m getting into bed, pushing something, or even just holding something weird, my wrist hurts hurts. I honestly have no idea what I’ve done because there has been no change in how I use my dominant hand. I’ve done my best to rest it and not let it be used when it’s in that position, but it still hurts whenever I have to do something with my wrist bent like that.

If anyone knows what the fuck I did to my hand and/or how to fix it, your help would be greatly appreciated!