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Alex B. Should I treat different symptoms differently?
Answer
Hi, and thanks for the question, I think you're touching on a very important point here, one that comes up very often with the people that I work with and that has the potential to create a lot of concern.

It can be very frustrating when one symptom returns or gets worse while others seem to fading away. More than almost anything else, this phenomenon has the capacity to make you question yourself and your progress as well as your ability to overcome the symptoms. What I tell people going through this is that they have to strive for "outcome independence". Alan Gordon has written a good article on that which you can find here. Basically, it's the idea that the important work is not being done directly to address specific pains or symptoms, but that it is process directed at you as a complete person. The pain is simply one result of the way that you are relating to and treating yourself. That is what needs to be addressed.

Remember, the pain is serving a purpose. It's "goal" is to keep you preoccupied, questioning, doubting yourself. By creating a wide variety of symptoms it can accomplish that goal, as you are seeing. It has you asking things like "well I understand this symptom, but not that one". The problem here is just what you are finding, that you feel the answer is in the details and so you try to figure out the little key to everything, monitoring yourself and obsessing over all your actions. All the symptoms have the same root cause. It is their success at keeping you scared and preoccupied that provides the fuel to keep generating them.


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