Questions about Journaling/Emotional Work (No pain to pain :( )

Last night I tried to think of something that had recently bothered me to "feel the feeling" as I read in many TMS books.

I went from having no pain, to quickly having pain in lots of areas of my body.

Questions:
1. Are you supposed to do the emotional work if you are not having pain IN THAT MOMENT?
2. Why would I go from no pain to pain.... this seems like it's doing the OPPOSITE of what its supposed to. Is this normal???

 

1.There is no need to do this, except as a daily reflection if you're having chronic symptoms, even if they aren't there in the moment. It does not generally make your situation worse to do this.
2.Obviously the pain starts as "deeper material" comes more into consciousness. This is good proof that the pain is related to repression and inner tension. This often happens as you explore your life. Over time this lessens, in my experience, and you get positive results.

 

Answers:

1. I don't think there is any need to 'go looking for trouble'. When you are pain free you are better served by celebrating the feeling by focusing on how good it feels thereby enabling those beautiful moments to sink deep into the strata of your being.

2. What you focus on you get more of. If you conjure depressing memories or traumatic experience you rouse sleeping dogs. There comes a point where you realise how cute they look when they're asleep and you bounce out and far away into your life now.

The gentle combing through of past events is taken to the point of overkill by too many people. Once you've gone through them and milked the wisdom from them you ought put them down and let them be.

Instead of stirring the pot of emotional woes from the past, why not call to mind the happy memories and feel the good emotions from those times?

Life will naturally deliver endless emotional experiences to you, day in and day out. Learn to be present to these as they are happening. Embrace the practices of somatic tracking and cognitive soothing to forge a better, healthier relationship between mind and body. With gentle persistence that is enough and all you need do.

 

@plum this is very relevant for me right now.

I think when I journal I go looking for trouble. The events I've referenced in my posts that I know you've read, I feel like I did 'deal with' at the time in the sense that I did my crying and went into my black hole of depression until it was time to get on with life.

I think for me it's more about recurrent themes that run through my life - low-self esteem, feeling abandoned, feeling unimportant, being too hard on myself - rather than singular experiences which only bring me down if I delve too far in. The desire to 'do something' about them to make them go away is too intense. Whereas, viewing them as sleeping memories that I am aware of (and all the associated emotions) is a much better way to view things. I will use this imagery from now on I think!

 

Yes, and remember that it is the day-to-day ways that our personalities deal with things, rather than past events or current stress which was found to be the greatest contributing factor to TMS, by Dr. Sarno's work reviewing patients' cases. Described this way in The Divided Mind.

This is a nice way to spend time, even if it is just contemplating and enjoying a moment of relaxation or simple joy during our day!