Frustration

[Bowen]

Same. Lots of therapy (10 yrs); adverse childhood. Lots of journaling. I know all of this has helped. And I think it was needed. But I don’t think for people like us there is always a direct correlation between something you thought of that day or that moment and why you’re in pain. It’s deeper than that. Maybe we haven’t released enough rage. It’s hard to do. But also, I think anxiety plays in. I really like The Mindful Gardener. Check him out on YouTube. His name is Helmut. He uses a tactic that is helping me move forward a few inches. Challenge your symptoms and reduce your adrenaline. You have to watch a bunch of his videos to get the gist of it. He kind of rambles. He has a partner, Sam Miller, who teaches all sorts of other stuff. But I’d look at his videos first. It’s all about fear. Your body is stuck in protective mode.

This is a good Helmut video. https://www.youtube.com/live/nlVNyd1XNMw?si=55PbquKLHEd-z5SM

Hi Diana,

you sent me a link to one of his other videos and I watched it and it was really good so I have been following him since. I will check this out as well thanks.

 

[Bowen]

"Obvious" may be giving my thoughts and perceptions way too much credit! I'm just a retired tax accountant, after all. But look - the basic premise of this work is actually simple, and it can be obvious to some extent. However, I'll be the first to assure anyone that the subtleties of individual resistance are neither obvious nor easy to tease out into the open.

@Diana-M is one of the people with a background of adversity and abuse who is willing to put in the intense work it takes to make tiny incremental improvements, so I really advise you to look to her and follow her journey, because her story does seem very similar. Maybe she can speak to you better than I can about emotional vulnerability.

My sense in your description of "I've already done it all" is that you might not have tried exploring your abusive childhood by going back to how you really experienced it at the time - literally opening yourself up to revert to the child you were then. You can intellectually "revisit" the past all you like and express plenty of anger towards your abusers for specific acts of harm, but you're right that on its own this only gets you so far. The real rage exists where the vulnerable child only knows at a very primitive survival level that he might die from abandonment and isolation, and that he's being betrayed by the people whose job is to protect and nurture him. Survival meant stuffing your emotions and "sucking it up" and behaving a certain way to try to remain safe - behaviors which unconsciously carry into adulthood where emotional vulnerability continues to be repressed.

If you can't face, acknowledge, and actually FEEL the heartbreaking truth about this reality that you lived through, you could remain emotionally stuck.

I highly recommend this recent success story. It's all about letting the true rage come up from the deepest darkest depths, and then letting it manifest in mindful consciousness without editing or controlling one's thoughts - whether expressed in visualization or on paper - and no matter how horrifying they might get.
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/thirty-years-of-severe-back-pain-gone-using-mock-violence.30052/ (Thirty years of severe back pain gone, using mock violence)

Here's another success story that is a bit daunting in its length, but if nothing else can impress upon you the uncertainty about what it can take to recover, and particularly the complete lack of clear rules, timeline, specific activities, or a straight path, this is the story that might convince you to keep trying, and to take real RISKS:
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/pain-free-from-hypermobile-ctd-fibro-dx-20-years-of-pain.29325/ (Pain free from hypermobile CTD/fibro dx, 20 years of pain)

Another good SS:
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/success-story-cfs-hip-pain-mri-labral-tear-fai-ibs-insomnia-eczema-tooth-pain-many-others.28260/ (Success story: CFS, Hip pain, MRI labral tear, FAI, IBS, Insomnia, eczema, tooth pain & many others)

I will also recommend this post written by Derek Sapico in the old "Ask a Therapist" program (and thank you to @HealingMe for posting it today) because I feel like he describes exactly what you've been doing - and why it doesn't work to relieve symptoms.
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-do-i-overcome-the-desire-to-get-rid-of-my-pain.8603/#post-47221 (Derek S. - How do I overcome the desire to get rid of my pain?)
If you really just can't figure out how to do the deeper vulnerable emotional work, perhaps you can still "get by" with a rigorous commitment to not letting your symptoms have so much damn power over you, following Derek's advice.

One more thing, @Bowen:

It's ironic that you've written this in all seriousness just days after I posted a Guardian article about pain perception, which essentially calls out the extreme subjectivity of the so-called pain scale. Or, to put it another way, the complete lack of meaning of the pain scale. You need to stop with the pain scale. That's your brain on TMS, wasting more time and psychic energy on a meaningless metric.

Last week another community member made a vow in front of many others here to stop checking in on and measuring her pain, and she reported that she was sticking to that vow (I hope she still is!)

In 2009, before and after a fairly simple hip stabilizing surgery (bike crash at age 58), I got bored by the nurses obsessing over my pain level (because I wouldn't take opioids) so I took to saying "I've had cramps worse than this, just let me have some ibuprofen and I'll be fine". In 2009 I was "Before Sarno" but even then I didn't believe in the pain scale, because I'd figured out early on that pain is entirely subjective AND heavily influenced by anxiety.

So start with this one very defined and simple-to-understand action: stop checking in with your pain and give up the damn pain scale.

thank you I will check these out and I agree with you about the pain scale.

It is difficult as there seems to be many different theories and ways of getting better. I was speaking with Dr David Hanscom the other day and he was saying not to keep going back and re-visiting the past is that just keeps me stuck in a cycle. He said to just recognise when I am in victim mode and by that he means whenever I am angry or experiencing other unpleasant emotions in the moment and process them and then move on living life to the best of my ability.

 

[Bowen]

"Obvious" may be giving my thoughts and perceptions way too much credit! I'm just a retired tax accountant, after all. But look - the basic premise of this work is actually simple, and it can be obvious to some extent. However, I'll be the first to assure anyone that the subtleties of individual resistance are neither obvious nor easy to tease out into the open.

@Diana-M is one of the people with a background of adversity and abuse who is willing to put in the intense work it takes to make tiny incremental improvements, so I really advise you to look to her and follow her journey, because her story does seem very similar. Maybe she can speak to you better than I can about emotional vulnerability.

My sense in your description of "I've already done it all" is that you might not have tried exploring your abusive childhood by going back to how you really experienced it at the time - literally opening yourself up to revert to the child you were then. You can intellectually "revisit" the past all you like and express plenty of anger towards your abusers for specific acts of harm, but you're right that on its own this only gets you so far. The real rage exists where the vulnerable child only knows at a very primitive survival level that he might die from abandonment and isolation, and that he's being betrayed by the people whose job is to protect and nurture him. Survival meant stuffing your emotions and "sucking it up" and behaving a certain way to try to remain safe - behaviors which unconsciously carry into adulthood where emotional vulnerability continues to be repressed.

If you can't face, acknowledge, and actually FEEL the heartbreaking truth about this reality that you lived through, you could remain emotionally stuck.

I highly recommend this recent success story. It's all about letting the true rage come up from the deepest darkest depths, and then letting it manifest in mindful consciousness without editing or controlling one's thoughts - whether expressed in visualization or on paper - and no matter how horrifying they might get.
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/thirty-years-of-severe-back-pain-gone-using-mock-violence.30052/ (Thirty years of severe back pain gone, using mock violence)

Here's another success story that is a bit daunting in its length, but if nothing else can impress upon you the uncertainty about what it can take to recover, and particularly the complete lack of clear rules, timeline, specific activities, or a straight path, this is the story that might convince you to keep trying, and to take real RISKS:
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/pain-free-from-hypermobile-ctd-fibro-dx-20-years-of-pain.29325/ (Pain free from hypermobile CTD/fibro dx, 20 years of pain)

Another good SS:
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/success-story-cfs-hip-pain-mri-labral-tear-fai-ibs-insomnia-eczema-tooth-pain-many-others.28260/ (Success story: CFS, Hip pain, MRI labral tear, FAI, IBS, Insomnia, eczema, tooth pain & many others)

I will also recommend this post written by Derek Sapico in the old "Ask a Therapist" program (and thank you to @HealingMe for posting it today) because I feel like he describes exactly what you've been doing - and why it doesn't work to relieve symptoms.
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-do-i-overcome-the-desire-to-get-rid-of-my-pain.8603/#post-47221 (Derek S. - How do I overcome the desire to get rid of my pain?)
If you really just can't figure out how to do the deeper vulnerable emotional work, perhaps you can still "get by" with a rigorous commitment to not letting your symptoms have so much damn power over you, following Derek's advice.

One more thing, @Bowen:

It's ironic that you've written this in all seriousness just days after I posted a Guardian article about pain perception, which essentially calls out the extreme subjectivity of the so-called pain scale. Or, to put it another way, the complete lack of meaning of the pain scale. You need to stop with the pain scale. That's your brain on TMS, wasting more time and psychic energy on a meaningless metric.

Last week another community member made a vow in front of many others here to stop checking in on and measuring her pain, and she reported that she was sticking to that vow (I hope she still is!)

In 2009, before and after a fairly simple hip stabilizing surgery (bike crash at age 58), I got bored by the nurses obsessing over my pain level (because I wouldn't take opioids) so I took to saying "I've had cramps worse than this, just let me have some ibuprofen and I'll be fine". In 2009 I was "Before Sarno" but even then I didn't believe in the pain scale, because I'd figured out early on that pain is entirely subjective AND heavily influenced by anxiety.

So start with this one very defined and simple-to-understand action: stop checking in with your pain and give up the damn pain scale.

I have gone back and experienced events of my childhood as it was then in a somatic experiencing therapy way however I am not saying more could not be done there.

 

[Bowen]

The details of the swimming are completely irrelevant. I was attempting to say that, when I pointed out that your TMS brain was "... running the show, and very effectively distracting you with highly organized controlled expectations."

You say you're almost done with the SEP, which should have provided multiple opportunities to examine old emotions and sources of stress and distress from your family and other childhood relationships and past experiences, so it's sad to see that you are figuratively still paddling around in the shallow end of the pool by obsessing about how to exercise and focusing so much on symptom intensity at different moments. It's interesting how you are careful to avoid describing your symptom details, presumably because you want to follow "the rules" like a good TMSer/perfectionist /goodist. Instead, you've substituted them with exercise details - and to be brutally honest, my eyes skimmed over them the same way I always skim over tedious symptom descriptions.

In other words, you're still thinking physically instead of psychologically. Cactusflower has tried to get you to associate your physical responses to your repressed and frightening negative emotions, but I'm afraid that I see a lot of resistance. Can you describe any benefit that you experienced from doing the SEP? And forgive me if I can't remember the details, but did you have an adverse childhood? And/or did you ever answer the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire? I ask these questions whenever I see significant resistance and long-standing severe symptoms in spite of TMS awareness and acceptance.

I hope you can find some one-on-one professional help and I hope it's with someone with the guts to get past the ever-so-logical and subtle wall of your resistance. I'm beginning to notice that your unconscious resistance is pretty skilled at offering polite, but ultimately negative, comebacks for everything being offered by folks here. I suspect that we may not have the professional credentials to help you figure this out. We'll be here for you anyway.

When I spoke to Dr David Hanscom the other day I brought up the conversation about the flareups that I get when doing graded exercise. He does know my story well and he did not share the same opinion as you that all flareups are due to repressed emotions. He said that my central nervous system is so sensitised it is not surprising that this is occurring. I am sure that you have heard of the smoke alarm analogy in reference to chronic pain. When building up my exercise whether I am calm or not the smoke alarm at an unconscious level perceives danger and gets louder as a result of it. There is nothing that I can do about this happening the only thing that is in my control is how I respond to it. And the only thing that I can do is be self compassionate and reassure myself that this is alright and create a sense of safety. This is what I am doing and will continue to do.

Also in Sarnos work he says that repressed emotions are unconscious so that we are not aware of them it is only the suppressed emotions that we are aware of and can work with.

 

[Diana-M]

@Bowen
I’m glad you bring this up because I actually have the same problem. It’s comforting that Dr. Hanscom supports you.

Exercise has really made my hypersensitive nervous system get scared and cause pain. Each time I try something new, the pain will come and last for a long time. Then I get afraid and I put off exercising which only makes things worse. Last winter, I started a yoga program that was graduated. I began with the bed exercises and after months and months, my body got used to it. Then a month or so ago, I switched to the next level which is chair yoga. Ever since then, I have been struggling with pain. At the same time, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional work— So I thought it was that, causing my pain.

Then this week I started trying to do some squats, because I basically have no glutes. The next day, and all this week, I could hardly go up and down the steps. This scares me because I need to be able to go up the steps. So I went back to square one. I’m thinking I might go back to the bed yoga.

I have a friend on this forum, @BloodMoon. She has bravely recovered from being bedridden with TMS. And she swears by baby steps. Especially when it comes to physical things. She’s always trying to get me to lower my goals and go slower. Why? For the exact same reason I just explained. If you go too fast, your brain gets scared and gives you a lot of pain. In essence, you go backwards. At first, I didn’t believe her, but I certainly do now! I think you are learning the exact same thing.

The good news is, she has made a lot of progress! Great progress in fact: But very, very slowly. This gives me hope because she did it solely on graduated exposure. She didn’t necessarily focus much on the emotional issues. That was more intermittent, as I understand. She claims if I stick with it, I will make it— simply by ever so gently, making physical progress.

It’s hard, because so many people recover different ways. And they all want to help. I have tried so hard to follow the advice of different people. I tried working with the anger. I tried journaling. I still try those things. I never know —maybe one of these days it’ll work. Who knows, maybe I’m just perpetually aggravating my nervous system.

After a week of doing a bunch of scary emotional work— getting a bunch of symptoms and pain— not being able to exercise because of it— I think I’m just going to go back to being a snail and doing tiny little physical things.

Thanks for sharing your story! I was very interested in the swimming because I would love to swim again someday. I was a swimmer in high school and have swam a lot on and off my whole life. It has given me a lot of joy.

Keep up the fight, brother! We’ll find a way out of this.

I will follow your advice here: “the only thing that I can do is be self compassionate and reassure myself that this is alright and create a sense of safety. This is what I am doing and will continue to do.”

 

[Cactusflower]

“The next day, and all this week, I could hardly go up and down the steps. This scares me because I need to be able to go up the steps.”

This is a normal physical reaction to working out.
Try bed yoga and One squat. Baby steps.
Keep going and adding a squat or switch and add an arm move.
You are training your brain there is no fire at the same time you are retraining your body from ground 0. It’s going to hurt. You will feel pain because you are human and reconditioning the body from ground 0 and not wanting to feel any sensations at all… feels.
The pain after squat isn’t TMS it’s a normal physical reaction. Hyperfocus and worry about it is TMS.

 

[Diana-M]

Thanks, cactus! Great advice.

 

[BloodMoon]

She claims if I stick with it, I will make it— simply by ever so gently, making physical progress.

It’s hard, because so many people recover different ways. And they all want to help. I have tried so hard to follow the advice of different people. I tried working with the anger. I tried journaling. I still try those things.

I think I’m just going to go back to being a snail and doing tiny little physical things.

I really don't think one can go wrong with taking 'baby steps'. As far as I see it, although there may be more, there are a couple of commonalities between all the approaches for recovery, and they are 1) believing that one's symptoms are caused by the brain and are not caused by a structural defect, and 2) the advice to get on with the normal activities of life as best one can, despite the symptoms. And 'baby steps', of course, fits in with the latter. Dr Sarno wrote in 'Healing Back Pain':" I now believe that the physical restrictions imposed by TMS are much more important than the symptoms, thus making it imperative that the patient gradually overcome them."

And he also wrote (this time in 'The Mindbody Prescription'): "The path to resumption of full physical activity, without fear, may be slow and uneven...

You must bide your time, try and try again, and stay secure in the knowledge that you will prevail in the end. This has proven to be the case for thousands of patients."