Day 8 Progress along with more pain

The journaling has brought out some anger that was hiding behind sadness even during years of therapy. Why now, I think the permission to feel anger that is part of the recovery program is significant here. Working through early life traumas seems essential to my healing. But the daily stresses generated by my personal relationships and self abuse seem to be strongly in play right now. The increase in my "sciatic" pain of late feels related to that, hope it's also an extinction burst.

 

Your brain is certainly capable of trying to distract you with current stressors, at the same time that you are working on exposing old repressed emotions. There's no black and white answer or method of dealing with this, because TMS recovery is not linear, and it's certainly not going to be the same for each person. That's kind of the bad news, but it's also good news because it's easier to accept that you're on the right track. Keep it up!

 

Thanks for the observation of the nonlinear nature of the process, I tend to want to think that this step leads to the next, but maybe every step leads us there.

Day 8 took a week as those current stressors included a lot of deferring my time to other's agendas. This just points to my need to make myself the priority here.

 

Not an uncommon experience! Interestingly, for others, Day 8 is a common stumbling block as a time when the Symptom Imperative rears its head to create doubt. Common, but not universal! So for you, as for others, it manifests as a day that takes a week.

Vive la difference!