I have played baseball my whole life and never had any arm problems. When I got to college, my whole identity on the team was “the guy who throws hard”

Suddenly, I lost my ability to throw strikes and my throwing velocity dropped significantly. I took a few weeks off and came back, but my arm hurt worse than before. I went to a doctor, he sent me to a PT and I took six weeks off from throwing. I did rehab, but when I resumed throwing my elbow still hurt. The doctor sent me to get a MRI- my elbow was perfectly fine. 

I went to play in a summer league to make up for the time I lost during the regular season with “injuries”. The week before I left for the summer league, I was super anxious, and my elbow had never hurt more. 

When I got to camp, I played terribly. I missed half of the entire camp because my elbow hurt so much. As the camp went on though, I became friends with my teammates and started to have a good time despite not playing. One day, we were losing by a lot, so I volunteered to pitch since we had nothing to lose. I pitched pretty well (it was luck) and all my teammates were cheering for me and congratulated me. It made me feel really good. 

The next day, I woke up and my elbow pain was gone completely. It hasn’t hurt since (4ish months later), despite continuous throwing. I went to so many doctor appointments and tried so many things for my elbow, but the pain was just in my head. 

My best guess is that it was caused by (performance) anxiety. Has anyone else ever experienced chronic physical pain from anxiety?