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I'm confused

Pietro Carloni

Pietro Carloni

Peer Supporter
Hello to all,
I'm working hard on the program(I'm day ten) and I'm slowly trying to get back to my daily activities, including exercise.
I'm also working hard on emotions and there are days like this that I'm living in when fear returns to be my worst enemy.

Tonight after several nightmares I woke up in the middle of the night, I was very sleepy, but despite this I could not sleep and I was hit by a big backache (back pain was never a problem I always suffered of sciatica and buttocks pain without lumbar pain).
Automatically I immediately thought that the pain was due to running yesterday (I started running 5/10 minutes every two days from a couple of weeks) and the fact of having started picking up my three month old son weighing 8 Kg .
Soon after I tried to bring back my pain due to the trip of today (I'm going to find my parents two hours drive from where I live) and the anxiety of seeing my parents, the trip by car with two small children, pickup baggages and I have to recognize that it's all very stressful, especially after having slept little and badly.

Right now I am very stressed, I know the cause is TMS, but there is a part of me that tries to counter this belief. I have read that these relapses are frequent, but how to lower the level of anxiety and try to be lucid? In days like this I realize how difficult it is not to believe what my body is communicating to me and I keep asking myself if I'm doing the right thing or if I'm doing something wrong. I am confused and today I would like to have a pill that can make me feel better.

How do you behave when you think you are taking a step forward and two back?
 
Oh how I know how you were feeling right now. With my 5+ years journey of TMS work, working on 20 years of chronic pain, I’ve had many setbacks. But, I have also had many accomplishments. It’s much easier for me to have a bad day when it’s warm and sunny outside as opposed to a bad day when it’s cold and snowy outside. I am a sun child, born in the summer, and I am happy when it is sunny. Just the last couple weeks I’ve had some setbacks that have really thrown me for a loop, and there are days where I am just like you. I want a pill and I want it now. I think that is normal, and to be expected. On those days, I have found distracting myself is the only way to get out of my head. So, for instance, I am learning how to draw, and I am painting ceramics. I quit my job a couple months ago because I didn’t enjoy it, so I am in limbo at this point. My TMS therapist said that just because I have bad days doesn’t mean that I’m relapsing. It just means that my body and brain are not communicating with each other very well for number of reasons, most likely some kind of trigger that occurred.

Your brain is reacting to the stress by sending danger signals to the body. How you react to that stress is the key to calming down the sympathetic stress response.

Don’t give up. We will make it!! ;)
 
Great advice and support from Jules, Pietro.

To which I will add this: your brain is trying to take control, and it's trying to drag you down into fear and negativity - because it believes that life is dangerous and you need to be fearful in order to survive!

Your goal is to figure out how to counter that negativity with a more positive and constructive outlook. This is what affirmations do for us. The one I use is "Hey, brain, this (pain or discomfort or whatever) is NOT NECESSARY! There is nothing physically wrong with me, so I'm going to take a few deep breaths, and I'm going to calm down, and I'm telling you that you can make this go away, because I'm perfectly safe as well as healthy".

And you know what? If I'm having a really bad day, I'll go ahead and take just one ibuprofen, or Tylenol, and call it good. Neuroscientists have discovered that a mild pain reliever can relieve emotional pain just as well as it can relieve physical pain. I figure I'm giving myself a tool to help my brain to visualize the pain going away - which I believe makes it much more effective than we normally think such pain relievers can be.
 
Dear all, thank you for the words of comfort and encouragement in these days of great difficulty and profound uncertainties.
In moments like this I realize that facing this journey requires extraordinary courage and being surrounded by courageous people helps me to glimpse a hope that everything will be fine. I only have to look fears in the face and do not let be dragged into their negative spirals. Fear generates the doubt it does so very convincingly. perhaps I imagined that the path was simpler, but only today I realize that this process requires a constancy that I have never been able to find in my daily activities. constancy in caring for oneself without neglecting love for others. Constance in repeating that we are healthy people, when for too long I felt like an invalid. ours is a subtle evil, which continually changes form and renews itself in different parts of the body. an evil that disorients us.
but I'm still here and today I realized that the road is long in front of me. but it is a game that must be played.
maybe I exaggerated too much with the resumption of physical activity, after nine months of blockage it would have been wiser to start walking fast instead of running ... but a step has been made and for nothing in the world I would go back. thanks again you have been very helpful and your words have come to the heart. love Peter
 
I'm reading healing back pain the second time and I read mindbody prescription. I resumed physical activity but now I have a backache. my body keeps sending me messages and makes me understand that the road ahead is still long. I realized that perfectionism, the failure to listen to myself, are the great questions that must be addressed. even the sense of guilt is very rooted. and I am living a very difficult step of life after the arrival of my second child.

how di you feel today?

we have to do it, I want to take my life back!
 
I read the mind body prescription too.
Please see this video
I love Dr. Shubiner!
He explains clearly how chronic pain develops, I bought his ebook and it helped me to understand many things, but I'm still working.
A member in this site suggested Claire Weeks and I bought "hope and help for your nerves" .This book concerns anxiety but I think it's also excellent for the pain when she speaks about facing, accepting, floating and letting time pass.
Read a lot about mbs and rebuild your puzzle.
 
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