Matt,
i hope that you never, ever experience what you call "a classic case of tmj, never any intense pain." i've no doubt that you never want to know what that feels like.
The second dentist that you mentioned seemed to have hit the mark, at least in regard to my own experience with tmj, when he said, "it was hogwash that my bite was causing this and the tension was just a gradual buildup of stress that had finally gotten out of control."
as you found out in your own life, the prescribing of drugs for tmj -- or for conditions that could be described as "pre-tmj" -- may at first appear to do a great deal to relax the jaw muscles. But just as a prescription for anti-anxiety medication may seem at the start to work wonders in taking the uncomfortable symptoms away, the root cause of the symptoms of anxiety -- just as those behind tmj -- do not go away; they remain unaddressed, buried away.
And this is the really insidious part: unaddressed by being made not noticeable (i.E., unconscious) by the medication, the root cause -- the real reason -- for the tension in the jaw and/or stomach just stays below the threshold of consciousness for a period of time. When it arises again -- and it certainly will, if it hasn't been "gotten over" like any expiated neurosis, and when it makes its appearance again, it could be in a truly unexpectedly-ugly and painful way.
If there is anything that you can do to avoid the most horrible pain of tmj, then perhaps you're already doing it, either intuitively or on the advice of healthcare professionals. By that, I refer to your statement "lately, I have been using calming breathing patterns and lots of stretching which seem to help a lot."
of course, anything that takes the edge off tension and/or pain can be good, as long as it doesn't create problems of its own, like heavy-duty use of prescribed narcotic medications. I am sure, though, that no matter how effective a pain-relieving medication or a treatment, like a hot-pack, can be, it should never be considered as the medicine. Anything that does not both expose and treat the root cause for tmj is not that which will cure it in a final way.
It's not an accident of heredity or environmental conditions why I have tmj. How I feel about myself, how I feel about other people and how they seem to feel about me (and how I feel about that), how much I like my job and how well I can deal with the conditions my job imposes upon me -- I can see now in a nebulous way how all that has contributed to my tmj condition. I know that i've got much more to grasp about tmj and, of course, about myself.
It's an ongoing study -- understanding ourselves and understanding the ultimate responsibility we have for everything we feel. In my opinion, we did not react to this increasingly-chaotic world in the way we have by accident. In other words, we would not have a "pre-tmj" condition or "full-blown" tmj if we were imbeciles or if we were semi-comatose. Our own reaction to the outer world and our own reaction the the inner world has everything to do with why our jaws ache.
There's no need to respond to this post, matt. I like to write, and I know i'll be doing more of the same in this forum, especially re: tmj. I hope that anyone who has any kind of tmj symptom will write in this forum. All of us, i'm sure, can learn much more about this most horrible disease if anyone who has anything to say about it will actually say it in a post here.
