A somewhat different approach to journaling

I've just watched last year's Doc Tovah's episode with Jeremy Whitacre, liked it a lot, and found his blog, mindfulcures.com

This entry spoke a lot to me, and I hope you all enjoy it as well:
www.mindfulcures.com/locked-up-with-tms-chronic-pain-how-to-journal-to-cure-it-quickly

 

Nice find, @feduccini! I am going to read all of his blogs. Thank you for posting!

 

Thanks, @feduccini! I like this quote in the blog.
“I must consciously and continually work on cultivating an extreme sense of empowered invincibility derived from the knowledge I have about the innate power of my own mind over my body.”

 

This is almost eerie because I'm listening to his episode with Eddy Lindenstein right now.

 

Great article! My favorite quote was this: "I don’t know why emotional repression comes out in the form of severe physical pain in my body and I don’t care."

 

Paraphrasing what Jeremy Whitacre says, my favourite 'take home' so far is...

"EXPECT to heal/recover." He strongly advocates for moving from mere hope or doubt to a firm expectation that healing will happen, emphasising that permanent recovery is possible through this psychological shift. He describes this as a form of empowered belief—actively choosing to hold the expectation of healing as a present reality, not something in the distant future or only for others. He advises repeating and embodying this expectation in daily life—reminding yourself regularly that permanent recovery is possible, and consistently choosing to trust in this outcome. He encourages conscious acknowledgment several times a day, especially when symptoms or fear arise, to shift focus back to the expectation of healing.

I like this guy!

 

I've been thinking about this one, how it's so easy to embrace for the worst, and really hard to expect to wake up better the next day. For me there's a shame component. I got used to victimizing, expecting the universe to throw shit on me just because...
And then, when I have a happy/hopeful/calm thought there's this part of my mind that tries to shame me saying I'm forcing myself to believe in something unreal.

It's a very harsh self-deprecating part of my mind, full of cynicism and hate that still requires a lot of work.
Anyway, telling yourself when you go to bed that tomorrow will be a good day, and believing it, is not easy, but I think it's in the heart of TMS recovery.

 

His success story was actually one I landed on last week or the week before on here, which led to his page and reading his full story. He is another who seemed to pursue activity despite symptoms so he really resonated with me. I love that he started a blog.

 

You can work towards freedom of feeling victimized and less than. I had this mindset too, it was generationally passed down and had grown like a snowball until it hit me. Weed it out, it is so freeing when you do! I believe this is all part of the work for ongoing wellness.

 

Victimhood is a major issue for me. The other night I was in a rant with my fiance, going on and on about how it wasn't fair to feel like crap every day and why did other runners get to keep doing what we do without the same symptoms as me. I'm targeting that now.

 

which one is it? I thought I was caught up but I'll keep a look out for it if it's really new or really old

 

Yep - no whining and no feeling sorry for ourselves is a basic foundational tenet. Also an easy one to forget!

 

It's old! I had started back from the beginning and stopped for a while, so I jumped back in. I think it was episode 39.

 

Something that I kind of 'got' from what Jeremy Whitacre was saying is it's about when it's a crap day you're having, to include a lot of pain and/or other symptoms and you anticipated that the next day is going to be filled with crap stuff too - awkward stuff and/or people that you don't want to be dealing with or whatever (which may or many not include pain and/or other symptoms) you nevertheless still have an underlying belief -- and therefore an expectation -- that you will lose symptoms come what may. The 'book cure' people get and believe what's going on and their symptoms go immediately in response or thereabouts, but you can still get and believe what's going on while still experiencing symptoms, and because you get and believe it, you keep an unshakable expectation of recovery; you don't doubt it. You expect to heal/recover because you have an unflinching knowing that there is actually absolutely nothing wrong with you.

 

I read through all his blog posts and I think he strikes a slightly different path than modern TMS theory. He does employ some techniques, journaling if he goes into a flare and regular mindfulness meditation, but he doesn't look for the "why", just accepts that there is repressed emotion without looking for the cause. He actually recommends doing that digging after you have already eliminated the TMS symptoms for just overall emotional health, and specifically says NOT to do it while you're having symptoms. He also doesn't put much stock in belief in TMS and more in knowledge about it.

It was an interesting set of reads. He's a little different from what you normally see.

 

Not only is that kind of behavior bad for our own mindset, it's not exactly good for your relationship either.

Sure, we want to be there for our partners and support them etc but people can get tired of hearing that crap.

 

This is fascinating because I almost always get bogged down in the detective work trying to identify the "what" that's in subconscious and bothering me when what he is saying is that I simply need to grasp that it's a why instead. As in, it's why I'm dealing with pain, anxiety, distraction, etc.

The problem is I have that part pretty well down - I KNOW my TMS brain causes issues, but yet sometimes the issues persist for seemingly other reasons.