Hi. I also have been having some trouble with early morning anxiety recently. In my minds more perfect world, the morning should be a time of relaxed peace when you wake up calm and do not really want to get out of bed. I walk my dogs in the morning and so for now I am just getting up and starting my day. Fortunately it is summer and not dark early. The anxiety is much better when I get back from my walk. We have an eleven year old, much loved, shepherd and he has been peeing inside the house the last few years. It all started when we got a small Mi-ki puppy(now a four 4 pound dog). We have tried many things to get him to stop and nothing has worked. There is my corner of the bed that he especially likes and this week I found a solution to lessen the stain and I have been extremely diligent about keeping him out of the bedroom all week(sneaky dog). Well, this morning I woke up and found a new stain. I could not believe how angry I was about it. I decided to use it as an opportunity to observe how I process the anger. I am an action oriented person so I wanted to find an immediate solution. What, put my beloved dog down? My husband does not suffer from anxiety and he would have preferred to enjoy a lazy Sunday in bed. But here I was, anxiety ridden, angry lunatic, desperately wanting to get out on a morning walk at 7am. So now my husband is irritated, which is making me feel all the more hopeless and agitated. Of course the pain in my neck and head is starting to ache and it all feels very familiar. My husband wanted me to understand that things are not nearly as bad as I seemed to feel and although I know he meant to be reassuring, it just ignited my internal bully. Why can't I get anything right? So as I was walking, I began reflecting on what I really needed. I needed to be angry, I needed to be heard, and I needed to believe that somewhere in the universe there was a solution to my new bed not being a pissing post without having to kill my dog. I told my husband that I wanted him to let me say how I felt without reacting or trying to fix it. I then explained to him why I was so infuriated. As I was telling him, it suddenly occurred to me that this is also about my parents having 6-10 dogs and moving me and my three brothers all over the place while I was growing up. I could go on about that story but the point is that I was beating myself up over seemingly overreacting and it really did all make sense. And then as I finished my walk, I soaked in how good my neck and head felt.
In reading your post it does appear that you are working really hard. That can create a lot of pressure and being aware of that is good. I was doing really well for the last 3-4 years and have recently had a set back. I have fallen back into some old patterns and its not that I am starting over, but I am having to remind myself how this works. So, here is my advice to you:
Do everything you can to reinforce your confidence and belief that your symptoms are caused by psychological, not physical, structural. Keep an evidence list, anytime you observe something in yourself that supports that it is TMS. Refer to your list often, especially as the list grows.
Become aware of your particular personality traits that contribute to the TMS. If you have a strong inner bully, start noticing when you are beating your self up. If you are a perfectionist, when you expecting yourself to be perfect. If you are a people pleaser... If you are working too hard at something.... When you are trying too hard to be good.... These are very common traits that those of us with TMS have and it is important to recognize them and do what you can to take the pressure off trying too hard to do all of these things. I can see from your post you are already doing this.
And finally, perhaps most importantly, finding ways to inject moments of enjoyment into your life. This can be a real challenge when we are in pain and consumed with the overwhelming task of figuring out how to fix the pain. This is the distraction. It may seem impossible, but find a way! I recommend fake it until you make it. If you do not have things you enjoy right now, make a list of things you know you used to enjoy. Do them. Pretend that you are enjoying them. Perhaps in that make believe, a few moments of joy will sneak in. Build on that. At some point you may realize that you are enjoying a good part of your life even with the pain. This is when the outcome independence is working and you are well on your way.
And with everything I have just said, it is also possible that at some point you just believe and suddenly that pain is gone and you can go about living a wonderful, painfree life. That does and can happen. Its just that a lot of people like myself end up beating themselves up when it doesn't work that way for them. So I prefer to just look at it as the best case scenario.
