Ruminate. Meditate. Contemplate... they all mean different things to all of us.
When I was new I used one particular resentment as my 'therapy'. Any time I noticed the symptom getting my attention, I would consciously and forcefully shift my attention to that guy... I would run fantasies in my head of harming him. I would think of the injustice of the situation and flesh out ways I could destroy the man, his reputation, his vehicle.... anything to re-condition my brain and let it know that its strategy of avoidance was losing.
I too struggled with that "I don't want to be negative... I only want to do positive affirmations and have puppies and lilacs"
There are weeds in your garden. If you don't kill them, they are going to F-up your garden. This is Weed Killer. It IS poison... that's why we're using it sparingly and in the place it is needed. If just thinking about negative things gave us TMS I would have recovered long before I met Sarno and co..
In fact, nowadays I am enjoying one of the happiest, peacefulest, most positive vibe times in my life, but not because of exteriors.. because I have the confidence I developed by first getting rid of the weeds, and second, getting really good at spotting NEW weeds before they sprout.
In fact, I just recently had one of the most tumultuous exterior months of my life... I lost my Job and my partner in one weekend. Both had psychotic episodes and are out of my life. I went inside, wrote a lot, killed the WEEDS and am just peachy happy dandy.
Sometimes i read about people recommending positive affirmations. When someone is new to this process or hasn't had success yet, that can be very sticky.... putting happy bricks over a F'd up foundation means your building might fall over.
I think the carpenter said something about that in the gospel. People have tried to sanitize his teachings, but in their authentic form they aren't warm and fuzzy.
kill the weeds. It doesn't even matter if they are the right ones. It sends a message to your unconscious that you know what is going on...and the noise will stop....and then you can be Pollyanna to your hearts content. I am.
Baseball65 I am so thankful for you!!!! Your words are like a wonderful elixir to my soul!
They have indeed sanitized His teachings to an unrecognizable point in the church. Yeah, you’re right about being positive and the lie of it.
Growing up, my father was an alcoholic and my mother was not as present as I would have liked, and as that happened, a I grew up feeling emotionally abandoned, only having grades as my saving grace (which when I picked an unstable career path, triggered and has been triggering me)
I used to cry about everything for the first 10 years of my life before my father died. Everything. You took my pencil? I cried. You didn’t like me? I cried. I got a 98% instead of an 100%? I cried. And the one message I got from everyone was ‘stop crying’. Everyone called me a baby cryer and they all wanted me to repress it.
Then when my father died, my mother banned us from remembering ‘the negative things’. She wanted us to focus on the positive. Lo and behold. My sister developed a food disorder, was diagnosed with some neurological disease, and a mental illness, me, I had tonsillitis (which I now say is because I could not express myself! In an epiphanic moment of ‘where did my constant tonsilitis go???) I had stomach issues- had irritable bowel syndrome.. later on in the U.S developed neck pain, back pain, foot pain. And my mother continues her ‘no negative thing parade’
Until a few years ago I realize that all my mother talks about are negative things. That’s it. I don’t know how she didn’t develop pain in her body, to be honest but I think it might be because she never repressed. She shouted at my father constantly while he was alive, she shouts at us when she is upset, she shouts at anyone who upsets her. But us? We had to be positive.
When a I tell her things that upset me she would send me ‘be happy articles’ and one time in the height of me realizing her codependency, she said ‘You need to be happy. Because when you are happy, i am happy.’
I was FURIOUS. I cannot be responsible for another person’s emotions?? And I’m not over the rage I have for being emotionally abandoned for her as a child and her current emotional demands on me as an adult. But that’s how she’s always been- we have to be positive. And as she takes her thyroid medication, depression medication, and blood pressure medication, we see where all her positivity has taken her, and taken all of us.
The other day, after journaling and doing a letter to her, I had SO much rage towards her. It was 6:30 am and it Felt uncontrollable. I remember the last time I did TMS work, before the back pain went away and I quit at Day 18, I would get so mad at her as I processed. So it’s been happening again. I was so angry I called her and yelled her. Told her I couldn’t listen to her constant complaining and negativity. Told her I could not be responsible for being her emotional punching bag. Told her she would need to find new ways of releasing pent up negativity. But it would not be me.
She got so angry with me, she called me sick. She said I was sick.
And I said no mum, you’re sick. We’re all sick. My sister has this disorder, you take this medication, I have had pain in my body- we are all sick! And she hung up the phone.
Then the guilt came in. What if she had a heart attack because of my honesty? I would blame myself! What if she represses her emotions and because I am no longer available for her she manifests some kind of sickness?
And I had to pray to God and say, God, I can’t be God over my mother. It’s too much responsibility. Please, be her God. Take care of her. I don’t want her to manifest sickness because of repressed rage, but I can’t be the person she releases her rage on. I’m going back home in a few weeks, and I have been afraid of living with her again for the next 8 months it might be.
And God told me to stay 1 month, 2 months tops, head to our family home that my late grandmother and father have in a different town, and spend time with my baby cousins, who in their own way, need to be groomed into the truth of God’s love to them, before they get destroyed by this world’s ways of thinking.
I also recognize I need to get back into adult children of alcoholics (ACA), so I’m starting that this Tuesday. I’ve signed up for the program. I thought my inner child work was done. I thought I was over the trauma. But I’m not. And the only thing they only ever told me was ‘stop crying.’ It was only at DBT therapy, a few years ago, that the instructor said that negative emotions were good- and okay, that made me feel okay for the first time since Inwas born to accept negative emotions.
I brought this new knowledge to my sister and mother. Last summer when Inwas sad my mother would say, don’t be sad. You shouldn’t be sad and I would say ‘sadness is normal. It’s okay to be sad.’ And she was surprised. The knowledge also took root in my sister, who spends a lot of time nowadays crying, and it gives her a lot of joy, to cry. She keeps saying ‘you know you’re the one who told me it was okay to cry.’ She’s 30 and she told me that i was the first one in her life, who had told her, ‘its okay. Cry.’
As for me, I don’t always even notice when I am telling myself ‘stop crying’. I can tell that i’m Sad, or stressed, but it isn’t until it manifests in my body that I realize my mind is crying. But American culture is so repressive. I hate how repressive American culture is. But in all fairness, I had different symptoms in my home country since my family culture was repressive. So I’m not yet at a point when I can recognize triggers- since I had the phase 2 TMS- an injury that TMS decided to take advantage of. But even then, i would not have noticed that my mind was in as much grief and fear as I thought. But how was I manage that level of pain in my mind and somehow meet the demands of what was in front of me? I couldn’t. So I had to choose. And I wonder what life looks like where I can. Where the cup does not need to overflow for me to realize that I need support, and whereby I can actually be helped by the support I receive. I started seeing a therapist before the body was manifesting symptoms. That didn’t stop the symptoms from manifesting. But then again, she has not accepted the mind-body truth to have been able to help me realize that we were uncovering things and my brain wanted to put my mind into hiding and that’s the only thing that was happening.
