Day 1 After a long preperation period I am off the mark

Suffering with back and stomach problems. Accepting that it is me who is doing it to myself has been a long process, but I am both happy and disappointed not that I finally have a theory that matches my empirics, hower stupid it makes me feel. My yearlong insistence that this was a mechanical problem that a medical professional should ba able to fix only multiplies my feeling of stupidity. However, realizing that none of that matters now, I am looking forwards to, and comitting to, going through this program and hopefully the arrows will start pointing upwards.

 

Hi Danny, I can definitely understand feeling ridiculous and self critical about this. I am a psychologist and I already go to therapy every week, so I see myself as emotionally "aware" and it was a very humbling shock for me to realize that my "medical problem" could be caused by repressed emotions. The progress I've made since reading Sarno's book is undeniable, but I still do struggle with completely accepting the diagnosis. I find myself often thinking it's a combination of physical and mental, but I don't know if that's a realistic perspective, or just me not wanting to believe it's truly all emotional in nature. From my experience working on it so far, being self critical about the diagnosis (or the pace of recovery) actually gets in the way by feeding my anger, which feeds the pain, so I'm trying to be more self compassionate - which is not easy when you're a perfectionist, competitive, driven, etc. Anyways, I hope the program is helpful to you and that you (and I) can become less self critical through the process.

 

How are you getting on Danny?