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Day 8 recognizing the emotions connected to your pain?

Discussion in 'Structured Educational Program' started by SB, Feb 9, 2013.

  1. SB

    SB Peer Supporter

    Question To Ponder: Are you having success at recognizing the emotions connected to your pain? If you have, how do these emotions make you feel? If not, what do you think is preventing you from doing this?

    I'm certainly more aware of my emotions after reading Sarno than I was before. However, I might still only reach the "surface" level. E.g. I remember reading this example: if your boss scolds you, you're definitely aware of the scolding and how it upsets you, but it's harder to be aware of the subconscious/unconscious emotions underneath, such as "Maybe I am worthless and deserve to be scolded" and/or "Look at how pathetic I am; I can't even receive criticism without feeling riled up".

    It's definitely more challenging for me to try to speculate at what those deeper-level emotions might be. In my own life, whenever I stop and try to think about stressors and negative emotions, mine just don't seem to be as bad as other people's. My job is a dream job compared to most people's, my childhood was great, I have loving friends and family, I don't have cancer, etc.

    I know I've read that our unconscious is like a spoiled brat, and that everything seems like an imposition to rage about. But wow... mine must be really spoiled. So I guess that concept hasn't fully resonated with me yet--that my unconscious is probably the most spoiled of all the spoiled brat unconsciouses out there, and it's just arbitrarily raging wildly ... about minor inconveniences that most other people's unconsciouses wouldn't care about.

    In other words... it seems to me that there are 2 possibilities: either I've strongly repressed some super heavy serious negative emotions that I have no clue about, or my unconscious's rage-to-provocation ratio is extremely high.

    I think journaling and continuing this program is supposed to explore the first possibility, but I'm not sure what to do about the second.
     

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