Day 3 Day 3 & 4 - This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life

[MusicMan11]

Man, I am tired and this truly feels debilitating. I am pushing through as much as I can, but this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Between the cycle of chronic tension headaches, anxiety, poor sleep and post-nasal drip/phlegm/mucus I hack up everyday, it's draining me.

Day 3 - I started off feeling groggy again with another night of poor sleep. It's interesting. I checked my Fitbit in the morning and thought I barely slept, and it said 6.5 hours with 58 min of REM sleep, and 38 min of deep sleep and the rest either "light sleep" (which I consider laying in bed) or awake.

I got to work and was fine then out the blue this crippling anxiety hit me for no reason and took over the majority of the day. It's so weird, I'm noticing when anxiety comes out of nowhere and hits me like a ton of bricks, my daily tension headache goes away. When my headache comes back, I don't have anxiety. I keep asking myself, what in my unconscious mind is causing this?!

I went to go run on the treadmill again and a friend texted me out of the blue to come hangout by the fire, eat drink wine and chill. It felt good seeing that text (she is someone who just got divorced from an emotionally abusive marriage with severe lyme disease, fibro and other autoimmune stuff and is slowly also trying to heal herself with other methods non-TMS related. Another person I went to high school with also came and all of us just started chatting about life and our deep emotions. I actually discovered that I used to be proud of "never crying" during awful incidents such as when my brother was in a coma for 2 months in 2013 (he is fine now), when my favorite person in the world (grandfather passed away) and when my grandmother on the other side passed away. Completely forgot I repressed those feelings at the time to be "strong" for everyone else.

I did something that I haven't done since Thanksgiving (before my chronic headaches started) - I DRANK WINE AND NOTHING HAPPENED. No migraine, no intense pain or worry. It felt amazing and I came home feeling so energized. However, when leaving and going to home to go to bed, the pain/pressure came back, which is another observation I noted.

Day 4 - Slept the exact same as Day 3 despite being having an amazing night last night.

I don't know if this goes against the thoughts of TMS, but today I finally got the courage to leave a message to make an appointment with a therapist to start to try and find my blind spots with this random unconscious fear and worry.

I woke up again with slight anxiety that worsened throughout the beginning of the morning and got worse as today was one of the most stressful days of work I've had in a while (work is usually not super stressful). Same pattern again with the anxiety and tension headaches. When one leaves, the other comes back,

I went to a boxing class with a friend and before class had another heart to heart and she was so understanding and good (just pouring my emotions out every night this week). I had a tension headache walking into the class but it's funny, the second the class started it went away. I punched the bags hard to get out rage and some other random pent up emotions started going through my head that I acknowledged.

The second the class was over, the pain/pressure came back. Another patter I think connected to having to leave/going home to be alone (something I used to cherish and enjoy).

I currently just journaled, writing this post and now I am going to practice meditating.

Fears:

- Being alone with own thoughts on the weekend when I have no work or no distractions
- Never being "enough"
- Fear of putting off finding a partner/getting in a relationship until I recover and that never happens
- That I am going through the TMS process despite having confirmation from MRIs/CTs/blood tests that I have nothing wrong and a secret autoimmune disease is being "missed." (I started randomly googling adrenal fatigue, and high/low cortisol levels uncontrollably at the end of the day and then stopped myself
- Questioning my sexuality and what that means for my social life

 

[Velvet_Hidden]

I can relate to a lot of your story based on what I've read. I too i'm currently dealing with horrible post nasal drip since last year I know is TMS related. I've done the structured program for 42 day last year and read the literature to grasp TMS philosophy. It helped me overcome my back pain symptoms but I soon began having bad postnasal drip to replace it.... I too feel the death of my grandmother and grandfather are some of the biggest reasons for my pent up tension as well.... I felt I got to release al ot of it recently after I gathered with family I hadn't seen since their passing... I really broke down after everything just hit me.... It's great to read you're attempting to not allow distractions to take your mind away from your thoughts... I'm really attempting the same too.... I wish you the best man moving forward!

 

[beccaboo]

if I may say, you guys sound like me in the sense, that you try to make sense of everything, you may analize it all and need a reason for
why something is happening or changing, which is a typical TMS thing to do, what is key is to really stop caring about it all! my pain moves a lot, and ive realised my pmt is tms now too, so again I just tell I don't care and that I don't need it. My issues are fear about the world more than repressing emotions but I don't think about it, I reassure my brain
the powerful tool that im safe, I can do what I want when I want. Easier said than doen I know! especially when symptoms change to other symptoms but by noticing this, this
is proof that you need. I have a constant nasal drip since I was a kid, I don't let it annoy me anymore, if I need to hack it up I do, I know it will go oneday.
I think trying hard to find those emotional triggers or traumas that may have happened again are trying to hard. Just accept this is just rght now and it will go. Steve Orzanich said o me don't do anything, I was like huh!! he said you don't need to journal or cry or get a therapist you just need to live, distract the mind and get you life.
again bloody hard to do! but I believe thinking less and doing life more is key, no matter how hard, the hard wont stay forever.
I have used other therapies to get well along with this, but I truly believe in telling my brain I am safe and facing fear and allowing it, as it passes like all emotions do.
all the best xx

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I have used other therapies to get well along with this, but I truly believe in telling my brain I am safe and facing fear and allowing it, as it passes like all emotions do.

I couldn't have put it better. Having done the majority of the emotional work some years (!) ago, and getting in the habit of thinking psychologically instead of physically, my #1 coping mechanism is exactly this: to change the fear messages produced by my fearful primitive brain, into affirmations that I am perfectly safe and I can do whatever I need or want to do, with pleasure and accomplishment.