Day 8 SEP

Hello, today's assignment is making a post on my TMS treatment up until this point. So here we go.

I first learned about TMS in March of this year. I read Dr Sarno's books first then found Steve Ozanich's The Great Pain Deception, which ended up being my favourite! All of that led me to eventually stumble across Nicole Sachs' The Cure for Chronic Pain podcast and her Facebook group Journal Speak. So I've been journalling since July of this year. I do that almost daily. I feel that at the beginning when I first started to journal it was helping my pain more then what it seems to be now. I kind of feel like I'm just repeating myself in my journal entries and in a way saying the same things over and over again. I'm kind of left feeling is this even helping anymore? But I'm not going to stop journalling.
I've also began to practice meditation occasionally since the beginning of this year. I don't do it every day but I am going to start to dedicate myself more to it and do a 10 to 15-minute meditation following every journal entry until it becomes just another part of my daily routine. I'm a very negative thinker so I've been trying to practice replacing each negative thought that pops into my head with a positive one in hopes that with practice thinking positive will become my new default setting in my head. This is a big big challenge for me!
I'm thankful I recently found this Structured Education Program. I enjoy having a guided course to follow instead of being left feeling alone and not knowing if I'm doing things properly. And having this forum where I'm able to chat with other people who understand what I'm going through is therapeutic in itself. Because as we all know having TMS can feel extremely lonely and like the majority of people don't get it. So this is a nice place to come to feel heard and understood.
Especially because there are no TMS specialists in my city. I live in Toronto Ontario Canada and it seems like all of the TMS Specialists are in the States. So when I first found out about TMS, and that I have it I felt stuck and was left wondering what to do now? So I'm grateful that this site exists and am hopeful that with time, and following the program I'll slowly improve even more than I already have.