Discomfort is way better than pain! When my neuropathy is misbehaving, my feet, especially toes, burn. It feels like they are submerged in ice water. Freezing combined with burning. Fortunately I rarely experience that anymore on Tegretol, but it’s really hard to sit and relax, or sleep, when your toes are burning! Glad to hear yours is just normal foot aches.
The bunched up sock feeling is familiar with length dependent small fiber neuropathy. My family is used to my stopping and removing a shoe to rearrange a sock (that is not bunched up), or shake out a tiny rock or grain of sand. I wear sandals in the yard, and no grass or leaves can be between my feet and the shoe! Lots of stopping and rearranging!