can trying new things, and improving stir up my TMS Brain?

I am wondering if trying new things can cause a tumult in my brain, because after being able to go back to sleep after a bad night, for the first time for years, and also noticing that my right foot and ankle (which have been chronically swollen for the last 15 years, was looking normal this morning, also for the first time, my mind seems to be having a fight. my perfectionist part and my inner bully are fighting with me...I hope that makes sense because I can't think straight enough to describe it any better.

I have been meditating and trying to think more positively for the last few days which resulted in a meltdown yesterday when I felt suicidal.

 

Absolutely.

The fact that you recognise this is a great step forward because it shows you are distancing yourself from your story (as mentioned in the other post) and the neurological habits associated with it.

Remember that your brain is trying to keep you safe. New thoughts, practices and behaviours can seem threatening within this context. Cue TMS with its bag of tricks to badger and bully you back onto it’s perception of safe ground.

Add to this the psychological phenomenon known as Resistance which manifests in many ways but usually as self-sabotage and procrastination. Again, it’s a mechanism intended to keep you safe.

This is where the whole process of making yourself feel safe comes in. Given your past it’s quite likely that feeling safe is alien to you or at least rare. Therefore it’s not something to trust, not yet. All the techniques we share on the forum are nothing more than ways to create and maintain this sense of being safe.

I think even just knowing what is going on is helpful. The explanation helped me a lot at first because I realised that it was just a survival mechanism created when I was little. I’m not little anymore so I get to change the way I react and respond to things. This process is variously tedious, frightening, unsettling and frustrating long before the boons start to show up. In this respect it’s exactly the same as getting fit or losing weight only we are working our spirit, training it to guide the mind so that the mind can listen to the heart, and the heart guide the body. The body reciprocates in kind and harmony is born.

The best way forward is to relax or surrender the fight. In time you will find peace. You’re on the path there right now my darling.

 

Thank you again, dear Plum. You are right, I never feel safe and cannot even envisage it... yet...

 

But you will. I remember the moment I had this epiphany and it made me feel desperately sad. I knew I lived my life ‘with running shoes on’, always geared up to flee or people-please or whatever it took to placate someone else and somehow make the situation safer but I never, ever did anything to create that safety for myself. It didn’t occur to me.

I won’t lie and say it’s been easy because it really hasn’t but the process has been dotted with moments of ease and then groundedness and eventually it gained momentum.

The biggest circuit-breakers for me were sleep (which I know is an issue for you and as a former insomniac I have immense empathy for), swimming and yin yoga.

Last year I added tapping/EFT and meditation to these and they all work really well. Every one has to find their touchstone though and my best advice is to lean into something that you enjoy, even just a bit. And don’t worry about trying and finding out that some things don’t suit you. Kick them into the long grass and continue exploring. Play and curiosity do well.