Help Dealing with the Emotional Aspect (Anxiety, CPPS)

[ARCUser831]

I am currently entering into the TMS recovery journey, and starting the Structured Educational Program. That said, I do feel like I need to find an effective method of identifying and dealing with my emotions, and then stick to it...

I have been a generally anxious person my entire life, with those symptoms peaking and dissipating throughout the years. My biggest trigger is any situation in which I feel a complete lack of control. One of the most triggering events I have gone through feels pathetic to me. Long story short, in an apartment I lived in, the sump pump below my bed was creating a thud on the wall every 60 seconds due to a faulty valve. My property management was so dismissive and inept that I was forced to put up with the sound day in and day out. I work from home so there truly was no reprieve. I felt utterly trapped... not to mention fragile and weak that such a small thing could defeat me entirely. It snowballed into insomnia and sleep anxiety even after we were able to resolve the problem. At the end of the day, it all traced back to me having no control, first over the noise issue, then over my ability to calm myself and sleep.

It was shortly after that incident that the chronic pelvic pain started. My heightened anxiety has remained, and the lack of control over my symptoms was another daily trigger for me. I have felt my symptoms begin to lessen ever so slightly, or at least finally produce less anxiety within me. But I am now dealing with sound sensitivity when trying to sleep. I need a fan on because of the random noises of the house and street, but my mind can find the slightest variation in fan noises and that small little thing will send me into an anxious state - hot flash, heart beating, sinking stomach. It feels so PATHETIC. I know it is from an overactive nervous system.

I feel I should mention that I have other sources of trauma in my past, all of which I believed to have overcome at this point in my life. A mentally ill and traumatizing sister, an addict stepdad that overdosed and died suddenly in 2018, toxic family dynamics, etc.

I am trying to practice acceptance, to overcome the fear by managing my thoughts to the best of my ability, and to incorporate meditations into my day. And I am trying to be patient and really feel ok even if the anxiety is still there. I often try to look at my pain outside the context of the anxiety and recognize that it isn't so unbearable. It is the way I think about it, or as TMS has taught me, the meaning I give to it, that does me in. It's the anxiety. That is the cause of my TMS and I need for find the source of that.

The one thing I'm struggling to find a way to work through is the emotional aspect. What worked for others? I'm beginning to read some of the TMS books and hoping that will provide guidance as well.

Oh and in case it helps provide context, I see myself as a very neutral, nonreactive, and at times apathetic person. I know these are all indicators that I've gotten all too good at repressing emotions...

 

[Cactusflower]

Hi @ARCUser831

You raise good questions, and be assured that the SEP will take you through the process of what you need to do. TMS books will also help you through this.
Basically, you need to allow yourself to feel the emotions by recognizing that you may not be doing it, or that some states of mind like anxiety or fear cloud your ability to do so. Some people are just numb, others feel only intense anger, some feel depressed, others struggle to feel joy. Allowing yourself to feel all emotions is they key, and we just need to convince our minds to do so is safe.
That can be done in many ways: the SEP will introduce the methods. You try them out and see what works best for you.
You’ll get there, give it some time!

 

[JanAtheCPA]

One of the most triggering events I have gone through feels pathetic to me... I felt utterly trapped... not to mention fragile and weak that such a small thing could defeat me entirely. It snowballed into insomnia and sleep anxiety even after we were able to resolve the problem. At the end of the day, it all traced back to me having no control, first over the noise issue, then over my ability to calm myself and sleep... It feels so PATHETIC.

Dear @ARCUser831, these statements really hit me in the gut. And I do see that you have a lot of self-awareness and determination to overcome your symptoms with your TMS knowledge, but what I'm seeing, or rather feeling, is a huge amount of negative self-judgement combined with self-pressure to just get over it.

Self-judgement and self-pressure are not going to allow you to self-heal. My therapist often reminds me that Judgement leads to Pressure which leads to Symptoms. I also believe that repression fits into that cycle. Our brains are constantly repressing emotions that come up all the time in current situations, because of response patterns that we developed in childhood. If this keeps happening to the point where it's getting in the way of recovery, it means that we have to go back to childhood.

To be specific: What I see and feel is that you are really being hard on yourself about the thudding valve situation, while I was thinking that it sounded like it belonged in a training manual for professional torture, for crying out loud. And yet you called it "such a small thing". Are you kidding me? It sounds absolutely unlivable and unacceptable to me! I can only imagine what my brain would be doing with this sound - I would be on edge waiting for the next time it thumps, hoping that it won't, because it's obviously not a normal sound, it means that something is abnormal with this equipment that is supposed to protect against flooding, and maybe it will finally just break for good, which would solve the thump but what if that happens in the middle of a storm or in the middle of the night is the apartment going to be flooded? what if what if what if.... and then it thumps again, and each time it does that it causes a spike in my stress response while round and round my thoughts go...

To be perhaps a bit melodramatic, this is a recipe for madness, my friend. I get it that you are quite aware that your lack of control in the situation contributed to your distress, but what immediately came to my mind is that it recreated the complete lack of control you had over your childhood situation, living with two abnormal and abusive individuals who were supposed to love and protect you (and where was your mother? co-dependent, enabling, or missing?) and who would exhibit abnormal and abusive behavior on a semi-regular basis while you were literally in no position to avoid it. Your protective brain spent years working overtime to keep you alert to the next incident, hoping each time that it might miraculously be the last time - perhaps even hoping, just like the sump pump, that injury or even death would stop it even though the consequences of that could be really bad and isn't that a thought that your brain would need to repress!

This is heavy stuff, @ARCUser831. Your other posts don't mention therapy, which might be what's called for. Also, there's a therapeutic term for childhood trauma, which is Adverse Childhood Experiences, commonly referred to as ACEs. The correlation between ACEs and mental health and physical health problems in adulthood is very strong. Oddly, I feel like I've been referring to this a lot in the past week: I think we're seeing more people with trauma who are discovering the mindbody connection and our resources here.

I just found a bookmark to a thread I started with the link to an NPR article about ACEs, a PDF version of the "ACEs Quiz" and a good followup discussion with a couple of experienced members, including @Cactusflower (who gave you great advice above).

Recovery is out there for you.

~Jan