Grad School Pressure & Parents?

Hey Guys,

Since I started having all these TMS symptoms earlier in the year, I decided to take a lighter load of classes in Grad school for this Fall semster. I think it was very important for me, even though if I asked people around me they probably would have toldd me not to.

I am trying to make a decision right now whether to go back to the normal load for the upcoming semester or stay at the lighter load. If I'm at a lighter load then it will push me back a semester on graduation.

This is a stressful decision for me as I always hear my dad ask me maybe every 6 weeks or so when do I finish graduation. I can't tell if he is honestly just forgetting (he is getting older..) whenever I tell him or what, but it does make me feel more pressured to finish sooner. This of course links into other thoughts about career and life path (I went into computer science in undergrad but didn't become a programmer after graduation, and now at 30 y/o feel a bit bad about not achieving much more). I feel like this (career) is one of my major 2 or 3 stressors.

What I'm wondering is If I'll end up feeling worse by choosing a lighter load because I'll feel guilty, or will I feel worse by doing the regular load because I'll still feel stressed...

 

Ahhh, can you see that it's not what decision you make, but your state of mind that is the issue? You have already decided that you will feel bad no matter what you decide. It is our mind that causes TMS, and it is our mind that must be healed to recover from TMS. Focus your healing efforts on the mind, as changing external circumstances rarely effects our TMS, except temporarily. If we manage to remove one source of stress, it will quickly be supplanted by another. That is life. It is the way we think and how we respond to life that is the problem.

 

Hi, Freedom. I agree with Ellen that either choice you make will give you some emotional stress, and it doesn't help that your father bugs you about when you will graduate. If I were you, I would ease up on myself and not take a real heavy load of courses. Don't pressure yourself about the future... a career. Try to live more in the present.

I also think that you can learn a lot from reading, keeping up with technology, which seems to evolve each day. If you take a lighter load of classes, it could give you more spare time to devote to reading about new developments in your career choice.

 

An associated dillema I am trying to figure out is whether or not I should quit DJing. I have a regular gig for every Saturday. On Saturdays I always feel like I should take it easy with my body and not try too much movement in case something starts to hurt really bad and then I lose that job (ironic how that is the same outcome I am thinking about doing by quitting). I wonder if I quit if I would feel more ok with the step of "taking physical actions as if you had no pain" that Dr Sarno says is important to do.

 

Certainly ironic, and also, I think, a very sneaky brain twister. Is this your primitive TMS brain giving you another distraction, another reason to not believe in TMS, and perhaps a reason to beat up on yourself afterwards? Do you want it to succeed? Or do you want to take charge?

 

The decisions don't matter. They really don't. You'll be okay either way. It's that limbo state that we live in that is the fuel for tms:

"Should I do this or should I do that?"

This limbo-living injects us into a state of fight or flight, and this fight or flight is what fuels the symptoms.

Learning to pull yourself out of these limbo states ("It's going to be okay either way") is the most important component of freeing yourself from pain.

This is an article we wrote on this very topic. I hope it helps:

http://www.painpsychologycenter.com/tofearornottofear.pdf

Alan