Day 20 Is it ever going to go away?

[DontStopBelieving]

I stopped doing the SEP programme for a week because I had a business trip with 3 days of holiday. What a mistake. Not the business trip, the extra days holiday because I stayed with a friend and thought I will relax but all the time I was trying to be on my best behaviour, not to feel any pain and funny enough the pain started the day I started staying with my friend. It was a sort of the feeling you get on the first few days of a cold, the developing days when you feel no energy and just want to sleep. It continued after I came back and now it evolved into the well-known pressure in my head with nausea and tiredness, weak neck and dizziness. I tried fighting it but no luck. On top of that, my husband is going on a 2 months trip tomorrow and I'm scared of how am I going to manage all that time alone with no support even though I know it was me who overcame all the episodes, suddenly I'm overwhelmed with anxiety, desperation and fear. It has been 5 months since all of this started, when is it going to stop? When will I finally learn to deal with stress?

 

[Ellen]

Keep doing the SEP. We learn to deal with stress by changing how we react to it. One place to start is to look at your thinking. You seem to be spending a lot of time ruminating about the past and the future, and focusing on your symptoms. This feeds TMS. Try to quiet the noise in your mind and enjoy the present. Be patient and be kind to yourself. Sometimes recovery takes awhile.

 

[Cat Lady 13]

I totally get how you are feeling. I have had chronic pain in my back for 4 years. Now I also have neck pain and headaches. It seems that we TMSers are worriers and find ways to worry about everything. We had a friend visiting over this weekend and my stress level didn't go down until he left. I also had a major TMS back attack while I was visiting my friend on vacation. Amd another one last Wednesday.

I understand the fear too. I am trying to remind myself to focus on the moment as much as possible and I have been practicing meditation and doing lots of reading on TMS.

Maybe you could take the next two months to really focus on yourself and read more books on the subject. I am reading Scott Brady's book Pain Free for Life. There is also a great issue on mindfulness in Time magazine.

 

[DontStopBelieving]

Dear Ellen and Cat Lady 13, thanks for your words. I do find myself thinking too much about the future and the past, letting the present to slip by unnoticed and I never learned how to live in the moment. I have been focusing on myself but because of a quite hectic job with a lot of travelling, it is not always easy. The next 2 month should be quieter so hopefully it will be easier to work on mindfulness and read the books. I also booked a 2 weeks holiday in a writer's retreat just for myself after a life of never being on a holiday, can you imagine? Putting myself first is something new to me.