Anxiety

S

Sarah89

Peer Supporter
It's becoming harder to do this work. I've still got all the pain but I have crazy anxiety on top too. I can't concentrate because the anxiety is out of hand.
Why so much anxiety if the emotions are supposed to be repressed?
 
Sarah89 said:
Why so much anxiety if the emotions are supposed to be repressed?
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@JanAtheCPA wrote the following about anxiety to someone on another recent thread, which answers your question:

"Anxiety is not an emotion! This is essential for you to understand. Anxiety is a symptom, just like pain or other TMS equivalents.

Anxiety is a symptom of unconscious emotional conflict combined with fear. The emotional conflict is due to negative repressed emotions. This is Sarno 101.

Stick with the SEP. Don't rush through it, and do the exercises with integrity - meaning with mindfulness and extreme self-honesty. The answers will come."

and I wrote the following to you about anxiety in another thread that you started - which I don't know if you've seen as you haven't acknowledge my response to you:

"Anxiety is common in TMS, and needs to be addressed directly as part of the recovery process. Many have found resources by Dr. Claire Weekes to be very effective in dealing with their anxiety. You can find more here: https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Overcome_Anxiety_with_Dr._Claire_Weekes (Overcome Anxiety with Dr. Claire Weekes) or you can read her book "Hope & Help For Your Nerves" which is also readily available in various formats."

With regard to the SEP that @JanAtheCPA refers to, I previously mentioned about it to you as follows:

"As you need to start somewhere on your 'journey' to losing your symptoms, a good place for that is to do the Structured Educational Program (SEP) on this TMS Wiki, which has helped many recover. The program is free and does not require any kind of registration: https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Structured_Educational_Program (Structured Educational Program)."
 
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Your mind and body are reacting to you doing the work. Challenging the distractions your mind created to mask the real source of your pain and suffering. It reacts by doing what it thinks is best strategy by handing you more.
Sometimes there are some other reasons, but this is the main one. You are ok. This is the time that “messages of safety” can really be a game changer. Keep telling yourself this is a common reaction and shows you are on the right path.
“This is temporary”
“I’m fine” and lean into those sensations of anxiety. Let those feelings and physical sensations engulf you, but recognize they are only anxiety. We often refuse to feel anxiety, so when it comes, it can feel strange and uncomfortable, but otherwise, you are just fine.
Try to keep up with your days as smoothly as you can and offer yourself some kindness and compassion along the way. This work is hard! Rest, try to do some enjoyable things.

Keep up the good work!
 
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I've had anxiety before without pain so how do I know this is because of TMS?
Or am I having pain with anxiety now because I haven't been listening
 
Anger, fear, sadness, grief, guilt, shame, joy… are some emotions.

Anxiety is more like a “state” of being.

Emotions flow through the body as physical sensations and dissipate in moments.

Anxiety isn’t quite like that. It usually doesn’t dissipate quite so fast because it’s part of the bodies primitive response to danger. It will highly influence your nervous system and in TMS is another distraction just like hyper-fixation on symptoms is.

TMS is a form of anxiety. A loud form.
 
Claire Weekes will explain it all. Hope & Help For Your Nerves is the second book that saved my life after Dr Sarno. It has saved thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people all over the world since it was published in 1969.

Claire Weekes is no longer with us but her work lives on.

Stop overthinking and questioning. That's your TMS brain keeping you from taking any positive steps towards changing your current state of distress. It wants you to stay stuck and anxious.

Go find Claire Weekes, in whatever format you prefer. You should be able to download the book from your library, and as indicated above, there are audio readings everywhere, even some old videos of her being interviewed. Just do it. Then start doing the SEP.
 
Sarah89 said:
I don't know how you let go of the pain. That seems impossible
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It really does, doesn’t it? Some of the people I admire on here most say it’s possible to live and not care about the pain anymore. I think what I meant is surrender to the process. Let go of trying to fix this. When you finally let go of all the fear and control the healing can come.
 
I kinda feel like people think I'm not trying. Where as that isn't true.
I am now just sitting without my tens machine regardless of sensations
I am lifting things and bending and doing normal activities because I know there's no structural problem
I have started going back out once a week to the pub quiz I used to attend and I just sit regardless of the sensations
These are all things I was avoiding. So I feel like I am trying.
My problem is I think I have become scared of my brain not my body.
I feel like most people see they have TMS and a relieved. Where as I'm like oh no my brain is doing this!
 
Sarah89 said:
I am now just sitting without my tens machine regardless of sensations
I am lifting things and bending and doing normal activities because I know there's no structural problem
I have started going back out once a week to the pub quiz I used to attend and I just sit regardless of the sensations
These are all things I was avoiding.
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So, that's great. Keep on with what you're doing. Rome wasn't built in a day and nor is the majority of people's recovery from TMS.
Sarah89 said:
I feel like most people see they have TMS and a relieved.
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Some people are relieved, but I believe that most people aren't. I certainly wasn't! I surmise that you're getting that impression because people on here tell you and others that it's a positive that it's TMS because you can do something about it... rather than it being something that needs major surgery which may or may not work or is a disease for which there is no known cure, or a condition for which you have to take drugs to control that can give nasty side effects that you have to live with for the rest of your life. Whereas, actually, those people that tell you this have probably taken quite a long to come around to that way of thinking. We would all rather go to, say, a chiropractor or physiotherapist and with a couple of 'adjustments' or exercises or whatever, be symptom and pain free again.
Sarah89 said:
Where as I'm like oh no my brain is doing this!
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You are fearing your own brain. Doing TMS work is all about tackling fear. @miffybunny has a blog and she wrote this about recovery -- she was diagnosed as having CRPS and recovered by doing TMS/mind/body work https://defeatcrps.com/blogs/ritas-blog/#what-dorothy-learned (Rita’s Blog) (The underlining and emboldening is of my doing and I recommend going to her blog and reading the whole article) :

"What Dorothy Learned the Hard Way, So You Don’t Have To

If anyone had asked me how I perceived the road ahead of me when I was bedridden with CRPS, I would not have envisioned it as a yellow, brick one….Dante’s journey through the 9 circles of Hell may have been a more plausible description at the time. While I can relate to the guide Virgil, now that I work as a coach, the story of “The Wizard of Oz” could easily serve as a TMS allegory for anyone embarking on the yellow brick road, out of chronic pain and back to “Kansas” ( aka your life).

“Was I scared? You’re talking to a man who laughed at death, sneered at danger, and chuckled at catastrophe. I was terrified!” The Wizard.

After contending with lions, tigers, and bears (“Oh my!), nodding off in a poppy field, being locked in a witch’s castle and chased by winged monkeys, Dorothy and the gang are confronted with the bombastic floating head of “The Almighty and Powerful Oz” on a screen. Terrified but exasperated, Dorothy calls him out for being nothing more than a bully. It is in that moment that Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal a diminutive man behind a microphone. Upon seeing “Oz” for who he really is…. just a nervous little fellow, he lost his power over them. Pull the curtain back and see what your brain is doing. What is behind the curtain? Real danger or just you….scared? See what your brain is up to and how persistent and desperate it is in wanting you to focus on this thought, or that fear. Know that it’s goal is to alert you or preoccupy you in some way. Make the conscious choice to not buy into these thoughts. Take their power away. Disable the TMS strategy.

While we are on the subject of lessons from “The Wizard of Oz”, start allowing yourself to dream. Before taking action steps, we have to imagine them first. Dorothy didn’t sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow…skies are blue” solely to showcase Judy Garland’s voice. The song had meaning and it’s up to you to “dare to dream” and make them come true!"
 
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