clarinetpath
Peer Supporter
Dear Forum, I would like to tell you about overcoming some aspects of TMS, and also ask for your help with what I have left. My spouse is loaci.
I'm a 40-year-old man, a physician. A pathologist. I lost my career. It's a long story about how I lost it and the details aren't important except that I didn't fight as hard as I could have fought to get it back because I didn't like it anyway. What I really wanted to do, about 22 years ago, is play the clarinet professionally. However, I was afraid. Afraid that I wouldn't be successful and afraid of being poor and all the difficulties in the world that can come with that. So I did what a bunch of other people told me to do and became a physician.
I have suffered from TMS or equivalents all my life in the form of allergies, asthma, headaches, nausea and vomiting - so called gastroenteritis, frequent colds, on and on. In recent years I had severe and at times disabling back and neck pain erroneously attributed to herniated discs. Last year I came across Dr. Sarno's books, referred to me by a friend of my wife. I read them over about a week and in several days, while alone in my house and admitting that I was not much of a family man, and had lived my life according to other people, the pain disappeared completely. I went from being in bed most of the day, disabled, back to doing all vigorous exercise I thought I would never do again. Prior to that my wife's parents had lived with us for several years, and around that time left us permanently. I became aware that they had been running our lives for years.
I still have a variety of minor and transient physical complaints of no significance. Now my problem is anxiety, mostly situational. I experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, such as pounding heart, sweating, shallow breathing, particularly strongly when I'm in the presence of a misbehaving child. It can be any child randomly in public, or our own 7-year-old. Less seriously, I notice some anxiety whenever I am in the presence of conflict involving other people. The other situation where I have anxiety is whenever I play the clarinet in a group of other people. Even low stress practice that never used to bother me before. When it was clear that I had lost my career in medicine and thought I may as well start a new one in music, every family member I talked to, especially my mother and my wife, told me how awful I was, how irresponsible, what a terrible man, father and husband I was. In a word, how selfish I was. It was the same thing I'd been hearing all my life (except from my grandparents, now dead), so I cut them all off, except for my wife. We've been reconciled in some ways but things aren't the same as before.
I have read Claire Weekes' books and watched Michael Norman's panic videos. They make a lot of sense to me, but when some situation is very intense, it all goes out the window. For example, when my wife occasionally screams and spanks our son and he cries out in horror, just as I used to at the hands of the discipline of my own parents, I feel fear that quickly boils to a rage and a sense of being trapped. I used to yell and pound on a couch like an animal, but now I simply leave the house immediately. I have essentially abrogated any role in the discipline of my son because I cannot stand it, especially in my wife's presence, without crippling anxiety that quickly moves to rage. In other major ways my wife is quite supportive at present, but basically I'm afraid of her at a visceral level. I was reluctant to have any children, but my wife really wanted one and I loved her at the time.
The situation has gotten to where I would like to abandon our dysfunctional family much of the time, yet I also have good memories of my wife, and I know that I would miss my son. I still feel a tender affection for him when his behavior is within my window of tolerance. But when it is hostile/provocative behavior, my reaction is that I would like to put him up for adoption and leave, never to return. The court would assign a dollar figure for x number of years to pay for my son and that figure would wash my hands of it all. Of some significance is that we did well financially. In reality, I was not irresponsible. I could do some completely different minimal-money-making work, like music, and not work for a number of years without financial difficulty. I've seen three different psychotherapists in the past 2 years, including CBT and psychodynamic with a certified provider of coherence therapy. None of it was any lasting help.
My questions are these:
1. What is my anxious and rageful reaction to a misbehaving child? Is it an equivalent of TMS? Or is it the normal reaction of any person to the circumstances I described? Is the reaction telling me to leave this situation, to leave my family?
2. Why do I have anxiety when I play the clarinet with other people, and how can I put a stop to it? Is that anxious reaction also an equivalent of TMS?
3. Has anyone besides me felt this way, at least in part? Especially a man?
Thank you for your advice. I've tried to meditate for 8 years, without success. I also know about Dr Hanscom and I am starting to do his expressive writing exercise daily.
I'm a 40-year-old man, a physician. A pathologist. I lost my career. It's a long story about how I lost it and the details aren't important except that I didn't fight as hard as I could have fought to get it back because I didn't like it anyway. What I really wanted to do, about 22 years ago, is play the clarinet professionally. However, I was afraid. Afraid that I wouldn't be successful and afraid of being poor and all the difficulties in the world that can come with that. So I did what a bunch of other people told me to do and became a physician.
I have suffered from TMS or equivalents all my life in the form of allergies, asthma, headaches, nausea and vomiting - so called gastroenteritis, frequent colds, on and on. In recent years I had severe and at times disabling back and neck pain erroneously attributed to herniated discs. Last year I came across Dr. Sarno's books, referred to me by a friend of my wife. I read them over about a week and in several days, while alone in my house and admitting that I was not much of a family man, and had lived my life according to other people, the pain disappeared completely. I went from being in bed most of the day, disabled, back to doing all vigorous exercise I thought I would never do again. Prior to that my wife's parents had lived with us for several years, and around that time left us permanently. I became aware that they had been running our lives for years.
I still have a variety of minor and transient physical complaints of no significance. Now my problem is anxiety, mostly situational. I experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, such as pounding heart, sweating, shallow breathing, particularly strongly when I'm in the presence of a misbehaving child. It can be any child randomly in public, or our own 7-year-old. Less seriously, I notice some anxiety whenever I am in the presence of conflict involving other people. The other situation where I have anxiety is whenever I play the clarinet in a group of other people. Even low stress practice that never used to bother me before. When it was clear that I had lost my career in medicine and thought I may as well start a new one in music, every family member I talked to, especially my mother and my wife, told me how awful I was, how irresponsible, what a terrible man, father and husband I was. In a word, how selfish I was. It was the same thing I'd been hearing all my life (except from my grandparents, now dead), so I cut them all off, except for my wife. We've been reconciled in some ways but things aren't the same as before.
I have read Claire Weekes' books and watched Michael Norman's panic videos. They make a lot of sense to me, but when some situation is very intense, it all goes out the window. For example, when my wife occasionally screams and spanks our son and he cries out in horror, just as I used to at the hands of the discipline of my own parents, I feel fear that quickly boils to a rage and a sense of being trapped. I used to yell and pound on a couch like an animal, but now I simply leave the house immediately. I have essentially abrogated any role in the discipline of my son because I cannot stand it, especially in my wife's presence, without crippling anxiety that quickly moves to rage. In other major ways my wife is quite supportive at present, but basically I'm afraid of her at a visceral level. I was reluctant to have any children, but my wife really wanted one and I loved her at the time.
The situation has gotten to where I would like to abandon our dysfunctional family much of the time, yet I also have good memories of my wife, and I know that I would miss my son. I still feel a tender affection for him when his behavior is within my window of tolerance. But when it is hostile/provocative behavior, my reaction is that I would like to put him up for adoption and leave, never to return. The court would assign a dollar figure for x number of years to pay for my son and that figure would wash my hands of it all. Of some significance is that we did well financially. In reality, I was not irresponsible. I could do some completely different minimal-money-making work, like music, and not work for a number of years without financial difficulty. I've seen three different psychotherapists in the past 2 years, including CBT and psychodynamic with a certified provider of coherence therapy. None of it was any lasting help.
My questions are these:
1. What is my anxious and rageful reaction to a misbehaving child? Is it an equivalent of TMS? Or is it the normal reaction of any person to the circumstances I described? Is the reaction telling me to leave this situation, to leave my family?
2. Why do I have anxiety when I play the clarinet with other people, and how can I put a stop to it? Is that anxious reaction also an equivalent of TMS?
3. Has anyone besides me felt this way, at least in part? Especially a man?
Thank you for your advice. I've tried to meditate for 8 years, without success. I also know about Dr Hanscom and I am starting to do his expressive writing exercise daily.
