Increasing Pain / Current Issues / Anger Awareness?

Hi Guys,

I am posting as I have had an increase in pain in the past few days.
Symptoms: I am having a lot more frequent nerve pain (literally everywhere, on my head, ear, arms, hip, legs, etc). Also, the low back pain is quite bad. I can't seem to stand for very long. Usually I can go an hour until I start experiencing pain and then I sit down for a bit and it subsides for a little while. Now it seems like I go 10 minutes and I am in pain.

Physically, I have had to sit for some longer periods for grad school, and even if this is not bad, I know I have an anchor for sitting for long periods and my lower back hurting.

Mentally, I've had 2 situations bothering me recently.
I will list them here, however my Question is, isn't awareness of the anger supposed to help dissipate the pain?

Issues:

• 1. Had to cancel on going on a weekend trip with a friend as I have too much going on with my schedule with school, not wanting to take trips because of this pain, work. I thought both of my friends would be mad, but I talked to one and they were ok. I am going to talk to the other. Briefly over text they seemed fine but I was worried.
• 2. For grad school, I'm now realizing I will sort of need to go back to my regular class load next semester. I had an easier class load this semester as all of this pain started around May this year and I knew I would not be able to do a regular load while trying to deal with all of this pain. My parents(dad) semi-regularly (maybe once a month) asks me how long the program is going to take, even though I've answered many times "probably about a year or so left." This gives me a lot of pressure as I kind of know I won't finish in the time they keep thinking I will. To be honest I don't want to go back to a regular class load next semester as my pain has not improved and I feel I need to do more work to get this handled, so this is stressing me out.
• Of course, there is the compounded worry that when I have this pain it will make it unable to do things I need to do, which stresses me out further (e.g. school, or DJ gigs where I have to stand for a long time)

Thoughts?

 

I'm guessing that you are still dealing with shallow emotions, not the deep rage. I've been getting a clear picture that your parents are very controlling, and knowing their type (on behalf of friends who've had controlling parents, thank God mine were clearly normal) this behavior probably goes way way back. Have you even come close to looking at that? I'm suggesting that in most people, the behavior of controlling parents would be expected to induce a huge amount of repressed rage.

 

I have a couple questions here:

1. My understanding from heal your back pain is that simple awareness was supposed to make the pain go away but maybe I'm misunderstanding the message?

2. How deep would one need to dig into an issue? I feel like I'm pretty aware of it, are there examples of this somewhere?

 

I'm not talking about the fact that you're aware that they are controlling. I'm talking about what should be very legitimate but deeply repressed RAGE towards your parents for treating you this way.

In doing the SEP, did you ever write an unsent letter to your parents about their controlling behavior?

I also wonder if you have repressed rage against yourself because you don't stand up to them. That's a wild guess, I really have no idea about that one. But it wouldn't be unusual, because we TMSers do beat ourselves up, all the time.

The thing is, it just feels to me like you are wandering around the edges of this, and that you are being very intellectual about stuff that should be deeply emotional and rage-inducing.

Here's another thing: in the practice of Existential Psychotherapy, freedom is one of the four core human issues. Having controlling parents mean that one of your core human needs has been selfishly withheld from you. It ain't good.

So isn't it interesting that you chose the username Freedom!?!