How to deal with your combative thoughts

[dillon95]

Hello all,

So I have a lot of combative thoughts throughout the day that are always looking to correct and punish me at every turn. If I criticize someone in my head, even validly, my mind looks to "punish" me by making my symptoms worse and causing more pain. My mind tries to counteract many thoughts that I have with something fear related. Then if I conform to those fear related thoughts, it comes back and says something like "if you think that will get you out of pain and tension, you are mistaken" and it just doubles down and makes things worse.

Having said all of that, how do you guys deal with these types of thoughts? What is the best way to deal with these thoughts and calm them down? I am at a constant war with my mind and this is the toughest part of the TMS for me because it ends up creating tension and pain in my body.

 

[BloodMoon]

If I criticize someone in my head, even validly, my mind looks to "punish" me by making my symptoms worse and causing more pain.

My own experience of this has been that my symptoms got worse because my mental criticism of other people didn't actually go far enough! TMSers tend to be 'goodists' and our conscious minds make us feel guilty for thinking ill of or for criticising other people, especially if we're criticising people we like or love (people we think we shouldn't be criticising). What's working for me is that in my head (and/or in a journal entry that I destroy so no one will see it) I let rip and release the rage. I tell them that they're ****** idiots, that they are getting on my nerves etc... and, if they've really annoyed me (and sometimes even when they have only mildly annoyed me!) I imagine blowing them up or killing them with carrots (see @Michael Coutts's posting regarding the latter https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/blow-them-up-or-kill-them-with-carrots.27833/ (BLOW THEM UP or KILL THEM WITH CARROTS)).

 

[Baseball65]

My own experience of this has been that my symptoms got worse because my mental criticism of other people didn't actually go far enough!

BAM. She just hit it out of the park!

My 'goodist' wants to be Emmet Fox writing 'The Sermon on the Mount"....My TMS healer is more like Sam Kinnison.... with just a touch of Jack Nicholson from 'The Shining'...

But for real.. I believe in God strongly. I felt horrible doing that so I literally ask for pre-forgiveness from God for the horrible thing i Need to think and say (to myself) to get better/stay better.

Jesus actually discusses this in sermon on the mount...if you look at it from a slightly skewed perspective, what he is saying is 'Harboring' that hate puts you 'in danger of the hellfire'...I can't imagine Hellfire being much worse than sciatica or hip pain or knee problems.

So when we are doing our TMS anger therapy , we are actually in the process of getting rid of that.

Just in case anybody is of the bible persuasion . There is actually a lot of TMS in the bible.... the first recorded TMS attack in History is in Genesis 32: 22-32. He even limps away with it....

He was pretending to be Glad to see his Brother...he probably really wanted to never see him again in his life!

Drinking Violence

 

[dillon95]

Thanks for the responses everyone. And yes I agree that TMS's tend to be 'goodists' because good people in general tend to put more pressure on themselves because they have a conscious and morals.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

TMS's tend to be 'goodists' because good people in general tend to put more pressure on themselves because they have a conscious and morals.

I completely disagree. You got the "pressure" part right, but the rest is wrong. You are ignoring the topic of Rage even though it is at the heart of the responses you received. This has NOTHING to do with being a moral or conscientious person.

"Doing the right thing" can certainly be stressful, but it does not create the extreme distress of repressed unconscious rage which Dr Sarno talks about.

You need to be willing to look at the dark side of goodism. The dark side is that goodists, as defined by Dr Sarno, are people who constantly say Yes when they really want to say No. Goodists agree when they really want to disagree, and they give in because they don't want to cause problems by standing up for themselves or their beliefs.

These are the actions which cause the kind of Rage that our brains need to repress. Doing something under self-imposed pressure leads to self judgment, which leads to repression, which is when your physical symptoms are created by your brain to take the place of the rage.

This is what you don't yet understand because you're still paddling around in the shallow end of what you think are emotions. You gotta go a whole lot deeper.

Please remind me - have you read one of Dr Sarno's books yet? A lot of advice on this site will tell you to reread him until you get what he is really teaching us about repressed emotions.

Read the USA Today article that was just added to my thread about NBA player Michael Porter Jr who was interviewed by Nicole Sachs. He is doing the actual emotional work and has recovered. He's willing to dive into the deep end.

 

[Diana-M]

Goodists agree when they really want to disagree, and they give in because they don't want to cause problems by standing up for themselves or their beliefs.

So so true!

 

[dillon95]

I completely disagree. You got the "pressure" part right, but the rest is wrong. You are ignoring the topic of Rage even though it is at the heart of the responses you received. This has NOTHING to do with being a moral or conscientious person.

"Doing the right thing" can certainly be stressful, but it does not create the extreme distress of repressed unconscious rage which Dr Sarno talks about.

You need to be willing to look at the dark side of goodism. The dark side is that goodists, as defined by Dr Sarno, are people who constantly say Yes when they really want to say No. Goodists agree when they really want to disagree, and they give in because they don't want to cause problems by standing up for themselves or their beliefs.

These are the actions which cause the kind of Rage that our brains need to repress. Doing something under self-imposed pressure leads to self judgment, which leads to repression, which is when your physical symptoms are created by your brain to take the place of the rage.

This is what you don't yet understand because you're still paddling around in the shallow end of what you think are emotions. You gotta go a whole lot deeper.

Please remind me - have you read one of Dr Sarno's books yet? A lot of advice on this site will tell you to reread him until you get what he is really teaching us about repressed emotions.

Read the USA Today article that was just added to my thread about NBA player Michael Porter Jr who was interviewed by Nicole Sachs. He is doing the actual emotional work and has recovered. He's willing to dive into the deep end.

The emotional repression of anger or whatever the emotion is is at the center of the issue, I agree. I think the battle I have with my mind when I do something it perceives as immoral is a distraction from the real core issue of repression. I think cause I'm stressed out and anxious because of the tms symptoms and emotions I'm experiencing, I become paranoid and reactive to every thought I have, but at the end of the day these thoughts are just distractions from the real issue at hand.

 

[dillon95]

I completely disagree. You got the "pressure" part right, but the rest is wrong. You are ignoring the topic of Rage even though it is at the heart of the responses you received. This has NOTHING to do with being a moral or conscientious person.

"Doing the right thing" can certainly be stressful, but it does not create the extreme distress of repressed unconscious rage which Dr Sarno talks about.

You need to be willing to look at the dark side of goodism. The dark side is that goodists, as defined by Dr Sarno, are people who constantly say Yes when they really want to say No. Goodists agree when they really want to disagree, and they give in because they don't want to cause problems by standing up for themselves or their beliefs.

These are the actions which cause the kind of Rage that our brains need to repress. Doing something under self-imposed pressure leads to self judgment, which leads to repression, which is when your physical symptoms are created by your brain to take the place of the rage.

This is what you don't yet understand because you're still paddling around in the shallow end of what you think are emotions. You gotta go a whole lot deeper.

Please remind me - have you read one of Dr Sarno's books yet? A lot of advice on this site will tell you to reread him until you get what he is really teaching us about repressed emotions.

Read the USA Today article that was just added to my thread about NBA player Michael Porter Jr who was interviewed by Nicole Sachs. He is doing the actual emotional work and has recovered. He's willing to dive into the deep end.

And yes I'm almost all the way through his "healing back pain" book.