I actually should have joined the forum early september...I'm not braced right now.
My story begins January of last year when i decided to fix my smile for aesthetic reasons...i had a high canine that i wanted to make room for, i also have a slight unilateral crossbite (not too noticeable ) that never gave me any problems TMJ wise.
-The first step was an expander that i wore for 4 months...i then discovered that it only tipped the molars that it was attached to because expander doesn't efficiently work on adults. And this was the first move that messed up my bite, as i said before with the crossbite my jaw in the years had found the comfortable position and I had a functional bite even if it wasn't straight aesthetically.
This started my first symptoms that i regret not to have connected to what was happening in my mouth...my molars didn't touch anymore in my left side and with months of treadmill i slowly injured my left knee as I was doing excersices while being unbalanced. Second symptom I had was my left ear clogging randomly.
-My orthodontist then put me other 3 months on elastics because he said he couldn't brace me if my molars weren't rotated right...when he rotated my lower left molar pain in my left ear started, but as I didn't have other problems I brushed it off.
-Early september i have been braced and the nightmare began
at first nothing happened because he activated the braces 50%...later in the first adjustment he put me metal elastics because i smoke and the rubber invisible ones were becoming yellow. My teeth were moving so fast, I would wake up and over night i would find a big gap, but I was happy about it.Then one day I had a terrible episode of vertigo that I still didn't connect to my teeth because my ear was clogging so i thought for sure I had an ear infection so I went to the ENT but nothing was wrong with my ear...i even got an MRI of my ear because I didn't trust that i had nothing, but again it showed that i had nothing.
In addition to the clogged ear and dizzines i noticed my neck becoming super tense on the left side (the muscle was showing under my skin) then submandibular pain started and last symptom my cervical and skull started to hurt.
I couldn't sleep anymore in pain confused and scared by what was happening to me and that's when googling my sympthoms i have been introduced to TMJ and finally understood what i had. In the meantime to get the MRI i had to take the braces off and slowly (in 1 month) my symptoms started to leave me thank God. Now i don't have pain anymore but more a soreness and what I hate the most i have random dizzines and feel unbalanced.
I changed doctor of course and went to talk with an orthognatodontist that finally gave me x-rays (now i understand how unprofessional my first orthodontic was by working just with his eyes
) the x-rays showed that my left condyle is slightly longer than the other so he was pushing it in my ear 
plus i noticed that after all the trouble with expanding my upper palate he braced me upper and lower together making it so that my lower bite expanded a lot faster than my upper that had to make room for tha canine.Now this new orthognatodontist wants to brace me again (first the upper and after a few months the lower) and I'm very scared of a new TMJ inflamation...of course I know that I have to do something because my bite is so uncomfortble and I don't close my teeth anymore.
Wish me good luck i should get braced on the 21st.
Has anyone had a similar experience and can reassure me?
The new one knows how my bones are so he should be planning everything accordingly...let's hope for the best, I'll keep you guys posted.
