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I notice there aren't a rush of posts on this subject! I really like what you had to say Ellen. Thank you for your honesty.

Quite a while back at this point, I saw a therapist as I was going through a divorce, and over a period of time she encouraged me to feel my feelings, particularly sadness and anger. I wasn't great at processing feelings in our sessions. She suggested renting a sad movie, watching it alone and allowing myself to cry. I did this and it really opened up a flood of emotions that took months to process, but it was very freeing and helpful. We did a lot of "family of origin" work.

When I found the SEP here I thought as far as childhood emotions go, I had processed most of that through the therapy I just described. I've been realizing recently there is a much deeper level of feelings I hadn't gotten to which I think contributed to problems with anxiety, addictive behaviors, and my TMS. I think in my case much of this is pre-verbal. My mom was a rage-aholic and I also had an older brother who was a merciless bully. My dad was also an alcoholic. I'm not saying any of this generate self pity etc. but it is an accurate description of my childhood.

As part of my TMS journey I discovered a guided meditation by Emmett Miller for the inner child. As I invited my inner child as a 3 year old to speak, the response I got was that he was very sad and very scared. I invited that part of me to just feel what he feels and it's opened up waves of deep grief that I didn't know were there. I feels crazy at age 61 to just let myself cry without censoring, but that's what I've been doing. There's been a big improvement with TMS symptoms as I've done this. Maybe what's really crazy is to keep all those feelings in, or not even know they are there!

I did meet with a TMS therapist online, but unfortunately it wasn't a good fit for me. I still think processing this with a therapist would be helpful and am open to doing that.

I'm still not the best at knowing what I'm feeling but I'm hopeful that I'll get better at that by having compassion for my inner child and just allowing that part of me to express whatever emotions come up.

As we say in the recovery community, "progress not perfection"