day 8

Re success at linking emotions to pain. I find this really challenging. I feel like I either have so many different emotions always going or my emotions are so repressed that it’s hard to surface them to make the connections. I spent 10 days out of L.A., been back now for 5 days. - 4 hour flight, some delays, more walking around than usual (big city walking), and I felt better then than I do now. Big city had family, friends and a lot of connectedness. LA not so much. Now I’m wondering if my pain is broader than this or that emotion and more about a total misalignment in my life - wrong place, wrong friends, wrong job etc. If it was just an escape to be away then I’m not sure exactly what I am escaping. Maybe it showed me what community should be and I’m afraid I’ll never have it again. Maybe the emotion is fear… now I’m journaling out loud.

 

This is really good - you may be on to something. Just don't fall into the TMS brain trap of over-thinking and over-analyzing the details. The goal is to feel your feelings.

Isolation and abandonment are really important emotions, which come up for us humans in many different situations, if not most situations, and which are so scary to our sense of well-being that they are excellent candidates for repression by our brains. You might want to free-write about this, really let your deep fears about isolation (which we all have - it's important to our survival, after all) come to the surface, and explore how this affects the deep hidden part of you (and everyone) that just wants to feel safe and connected to others.

Day 8 of the program seems to be a great time for new TMS symptoms to emerge or old ones to increase as our brains fight back against letting this stuff out - so hang in there!

~Jan

 

Thank you!