Deep frustration and fear, don´t know where to start

C

Chameleon00

Newcomer
Hi Everyone.
Im a man about mid forties, and from northern Europe. English is only my secondary language.
Since i back in 2019, when I read one of Dr. Sarno´s books, and Steven Orzanik´s book. The great pain deception, i begin to open up the possibilities for recovery.

In 2008, few month after my son got born, i got the first symptoms. I woke up one day, with a enormous fatigue, that scared me. It really never left me. From being in a very good physical shape, till have trouble just walking 500 meters was scary. I went to doctors, hospital and got several test. Everything showed up fine.
For years i looked into physical courses for my symptoms, also got diagnoses CFS/ME, today i don´t care about that diagnoses. It meant that i for years could only work part time. I had a long fight with the local authorities, about subsidize my wage, because i couldn´t live only on my part time wage.
At the same time, I had to help my sick mom, that unfortunately dies last year, take care my son.
It generated a lot of stress.
After i finally won a court case against the local authorities in 2018. I thought now i could build up my life. Suddenly other symptoms begin appearing. I got left side tension in my head, with dizziness and nauseous, few times i woke up in the middle of the night, with sever vertigo attack, it was always like a rubber band broke in my head. Very scary. I also begin sometime having numbness on my left leg and arm. I was referred to a neurologist.
I got MR scanned, it found a little spot, but he said it was not dangerous, but still he want it to rule out MS. So I went for all kind of test, luckily I was cleared.

Now the recent month. I begin to have this numbness in my left side again even more persevering than before.
Even i felt tingling sensation and weakness, i have my full strength. I worry it could be MS or another serious illness, so i decided to go to doctor, just to get everything cleared.
I still believe it is TMS, because i match many of the personal type. perfectionist, people pleaser. Earlier in life, as a little kid and as a young man, I have experience lots of traumas, with the death of my father, my older sister, grandparents, and the death of my mom last year. When my mom died last year, my older sister suddenly pushed me out of her life, together with her adult daughter. Like im getting blamed for all our mom did earlier in life. All these things has taken a toll on my mental health

Today im alone with my son, with no support network except for some few good friends.
I have done lots of therapy, and can see that I have build my life up around fear and control, and always censoring the feelings I considered "bad" it has created lots of repressed anger. It was my way to survive my childhood

Writing this now, I felt very lost. Even I know the body is amazing and can recover. I don`t even know how to do it. Its like fear, anxiety, loneliness, losses and all these physical symptoms has sucked all joy and happiness out of my life. I do therapy with an ISDTP therapist, when I can afford it, but sometimes the road seems so hard. I try to push my body and not letting the symptoms bothering me. I do somatic tracking, meditation, prayer

I know plenty of people, have recovered from all kinds of weird symptoms, and got there life back, but how to do it, and how are you doing it, especially when dealing with it all alone.
I hope what I wrote made sense. I tried to make a longs tory short.

I wish you all a nice day
 
@Chameleon00
This is a very good question to ask your ISDTP therapist: what will help me heal?
You talk specifically of repressed emotions and holding on to them..especially anger.
Anger will keep you stuck if you can not work through it and allow your body to just feel the sensation of it. Just SIT with it. If you have not tried journaling, it is a very good way to help you work through that, and then just sit and experience that emotion. It may be a LOT of anger but what sits with or be with the anger?
I found loneliness is most often comes when we find it difficult to be with those feelings and to just accept ourselves and be ok with who we are. It is a conscious choice to change our mindset and to choose to think differently about ourselves and our outlook on the world. Do you feel joy? Can you see a brightness in life even if you have symptoms?
This change can be slow. Forcing yourself, pushing, this usually creates more anger, but accepting the symptoms “I feel crappy, but I want to see my child have joy so we go to the park to play”.. is a change of mindset for all parts of life.
 
Cactusflower said:
@Chameleon00
This is a very good question to ask your ISDTP therapist: what will help me heal?
You talk specifically of repressed emotions and holding on to them..especially anger.
Anger will keep you stuck if you can not work through it and allow your body to just feel the sensation of it. Just SIT with it. If you have not tried journaling, it is a very good way to help you work through that, and then just sit and experience that emotion. It may be a LOT of anger but what sits with or be with the anger?
I found loneliness is most often comes when we find it difficult to be with those feelings and to just accept ourselves and be ok with who we are. It is a conscious choice to change our mindset and to choose to think differently about ourselves and our outlook on the world. Do you feel joy? Can you see a brightness in life even if you have symptoms?
This change can be slow. Forcing yourself, pushing, this usually creates more anger, but accepting the symptoms “I feel crappy, but I want to see my child have joy so we go to the park to play”.. is a change of mindset for all parts of life.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your reply.
In the new year I will have a new consultation with my ISDTP therapist.

I am journaling sometimes, but I guess I could do it some more. I will continue working with my anger. I know that I probably always has felt anger, that I just put a side. Lots of bulling in school, and unjust when I was a kid.
Thanks for mentioning about about loneliness, it actually makes sense, sometimes it is hard to be with my own feelings. I know I have to change the outlook of the world and my self, but sometimes I don't know how to.

Unfortunately it js very rare I feel joy anymore, somehow I have lost that. Only once a while I feel it for maybe few seconds, before it's disappeared again.

So forcing my self, creating more anger. Actually that really makes sense. When I got the fatigue in 2008, I have to continue forcing my self, it created frustration, and no one understood what I went though, except are very good friend of mine.
I was sooooo angry, I felt like a theft came by during the night time, and stole my vitality.

Still it confuse me, because some people are just pushing though, and even a tms coach on the YouTube channel "painfree you" mention just to start your life again, no matter the symptoms, i understanding the message as pushing through, to get over there tms symptoms, but that haven't worked for me.

I like you said, I feel crappy, but I want to see my child feeling joyful.
Thank you for your reply
 
@Chameleon00
You start your life again but there is the mindset difference.
When you feel joy, even for that split second you saw "WOW! I am making so much progress, I FELT that joy" and allow yourself to feel it within your body. Notice the change in your physical state just for a split second. Maybe the heaviness leaves for a second, maybe the world actually looks brighter in the eyes.
When you go back to living it's not "Oh, now I have to go back to living and NOBODY understands me and how much I am going through, and how I hate to do these chores and how it ALWAYS hurts and nobody understands me" - this is being in the victim mode. It is basically your inner 2 year old having a temper tantrum over and over....but your rational mind says "be responsible, suck it up, just get on with it". Dr. Sarno discusses what he calls The Divided Mind and this is EXACTLY that divide - what you WANT to do vs what you think the world expects you to do. It's why we journal or meditate - journaling helps you just get it out. It helps you to see that these thought processes began as a child when bullied etc and for that repressed part of our mind, hiding and feeling hurt and being afraid of everything is how it tried to protect you from the constant barrage of bullies. Now you write to realize the bullies are not here NOW unless you let the bully in your mind keep bullying you! This takes time and practice - you have to step away from the internal bully, and step out of being a victim to seeing YOU have control over your thoughts, and your reactions to those thoughts. The goal is to respond to the thoughts. Reacting is a jolt, it is a harsh few seconds with such velocity ... it can be that sudden anger and lash out (yet we usually suppress that desire of course), or the urge to run away from everything. Responding is seeing this instant way our brain tries to react and to take a breath and step back inside ourself and see a better way. A way to get out of the mindset, the things we always repeated over and over because of the past, and make a new thought pattern. It can be as simple as saying "I am SO angry right now I want to scream" and internally you might scream, you feel the anger within your body rise and build and then magically slowly dissipate. The same with joy but you learn to let it pass and decide if you want to let the feeling go or hang on to a little piece of it.
Meditating helps you step away from all of these thoughts and learn to create the space between instant reacting, and the conscious choice to find a little peace...just seconds before making a decision to respond differently. And when you do, you congratulate yourself.
And when you make a tiny little bit of progress..not physically so much but MENTALLY and emotionally you give yourself a pat on the back. When you offer yourself a moment of compassion to say "this is very hard work" without criticizing yourself, you give yourself a High Five!
It is so much different that thinking that "getting back to living" is to force your way into life. To push through tight cracks where you don't quite fit...take a gentle step into life and stay there in that manner - keeping there, in that mindset of gentleness, kindness, compassion while building boundaries to the things we don't want: beliefs that we thought were true but now realize they are not, not believing we must only be one way when there are a million ways to be - it's a choice you now know you have. The fun is exploring what choices you want to make. That is joy!
 
Thank you again for your reply :)

Much of it makes sense. For years now, I have pushed though, and it didn't felt good.
I helped my mom for 20 years, after she got a stroke, when I was a young man, before she passed last year.
I take care of my son, and have themost responsibilities, also before me and his broke a part, luckily we have a good friendship now.
My sister cut me out of her life, with no reason, after our mom died. Guess old trauma, because my mom had her issues
Standing with it all this alone, when numbness, dizziness and fatigue is squeezing me, is infuriating.

I have to deal with all the anger.
I often journaling my feelings without filter, I was inspired by Nicole Sachs, but I feel it never really give a real relief from all the anger. I don't know if I journaling the right way.
It makes sense, there is the little 2 year old, that feels like a victim "poor me"
The other part of me, the logical and reasonable part, is the one censoring all the feelings and thoughts, that "I consider bad" And made me survive all these years.
It's challenging to change all these behaviour, when anger and anxiety have been so prevalent for such a long time.
I do meditation, sometimes somatic tracking and sometimes mindfulness.
I have noticed one thing, after I listened to a woman that recovered from her tms.
"feeling safe in the world and her body" was something she needed to recover. At that moment, I notice I probably have never felt safe in my life. It sounds wierd a man my age saying this, but I know I have to find that Safety. To be honest I don't know, how to feel safe in my body and mind.
 
“ At that moment, I notice I probably have never felt safe in my life.”
This is a very key observation. I will tell you this is also my core issue.
One of my parents is an overbearing worrier who is exacting, judgemental and harsh. She expects to be #1 in everyone’s life, and to do what she wants and when… yet she loves the people she expects this from, and punishes them when they do not comply.. so my childhood was subtly chaotic. I realize that men have invaded my space repeatedly making me feel unsafe from my memory since I was 4. Both of my parents needed a lot of physical help all of their lives and that was always my job. My father was diagnosed with an incurable condition when I was 14. My parents would move for several weeks/months at a time and leave me at home as a teenager alone, without money (not being mean, they knew I worked and made money).. l learned a lot of fear, and had to learn to keep it inside so my Dad could enjoy life while he could.
So I understand but I do not dwell on these facts. That is victimizing myself to keep dwelling on these situations. In journaling I wrote about how I felt about it, and then sat with that feeling, sensing where I felt things in my body. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not.
For myself EMDR therapy worked far better than ISDTP. It was far less expensive for me and took only a few months. I may need to go back but I really liked it.. it really depends on how you connect with your therapist and not every therapy works for every person. It did not take away my symptoms, but it helped process the fear and anger and grief.
I have had tms symptoms for 55 years I know of.. takes it takes time. Learn to be ok with this time. Learning to be ok with things is the first step in actively feeling safer in youself, and will begin to help you to stop clinging to the anger. The clinging to anger is simply another defense mechanism to stop you from feeling other emotions.. anger blocks it all out because it is so strong.
You will get through things!
 
Thank you very much. So your core is also about not feeling safe in life. Im sorry to hear what you also have been struggled with.
I can relate to some of your story. I was alone with my mom. My father died when I was around 2 years old. My two older sisters 9 and 10 years older than me, has already moved out when i was around 6, they had there own struggle in life. My mom was often bitter and angry, and early in life, I learnt to behave, according to her. I became the "easy one". unfortunately this habit I brought with me to adult hood. It means i was always in the other parts "ball yard" always trying to soothing others, not to upset them. It became part of me, and I guess that has created lots of emptiness and rage inside me.
You say EMDR helped better than ISTDP? How long was your EMDR sessions. I have tried EMDR, but my sessions is only 30 min at times, because I went to a psychiatrist that is part of the public healthcare, so i don´t pay, but it means he is very busy, because he is one of the few in the public healthcare system that do EMDR treatment, so we haven´t really gotten to the core issue.

So you have struggled with TMS symptoms for 55 years Wow. I guess my first TMS symptoms probably started when i was 15 years, that was when i begin having migraines.
I really appreciate your words. I sometimes feels like a failure because i still haven´t been able to heal my TMS symptoms not alone all the anger and grief inside me. People around me, just saying that I have to let go and move one. It haven´t been that easy
 
My EMDR sessions were 1 hour, by a social worker trained in therapy and EMDR - she uses a variety of techniques. Over all I had only 6 EMDR full sessions but as I do more tms discovery on my own, if I feel stuck, I can go back.
I think the key was I chose this therapist. I took a long time to choose, and we connected strongly. Although the idea of TMS is new to her and she did not believe in all of it, she had done a lot of work with chronic pain people in the past.
Remember that you are already successful because you recognize the mind body connection! Because you see the old patterns of your life and thoughts and recognize they don’t work for you anymore. You are successful because you have come through very hard things emotionally! You stood up for yourself against odds and won! I think you may have pain but in many ways are so much better than you were in the past.
 
Cactusflower said:
My EMDR sessions were 1 hour, by a social worker trained in therapy and EMDR - she uses a variety of techniques. Over all I had only 6 EMDR full sessions but as I do more tms discovery on my own, if I feel stuck, I can go back.
I think the key was I chose this therapist. I took a long time to choose, and we connected strongly. Although the idea of TMS is new to her and she did not believe in all of it, she had done a lot of work with chronic pain people in the past.
Remember that you are already successful because you recognize the mind body connection! Because you see the old patterns of your life and thoughts and recognize they don’t work for you anymore. You are successful because you have come through very hard things emotionally! You stood up for yourself against odds and won! I think you may have pain but in many ways are so much better than you were in the past.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your kind encouraging words. I have seen my self as a failure for a long time, because of my symptoms, and not being the father that my son deserves.
You are right I never saw my self in that light, and at least I now understand the mind body connection.
I wish you and your family a merry Christmas
 
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