OK, new symptom all of a sudden...

Hey all. Like many of you, I'm working through my issues, and it seems I've had several crop up lately... especially as old ones resolve. System Imperative.

First it was roving aches and pains in arms, shoulders, hands. Then it became nerve pain for 5 years in hands and feet. As that began to resolve, I started getting blurry vision (pseudomyopia) from computer strain and stress/anxiety. Once that began to diminish, I had a big "pre grief" moment from a family member in Oct 2021, and floaters started to pop into my vision. I'd had the floaters before, just almost never 'saw' them; now the stress was tripping my eye out to the point that they decided to continually assert themselves. The floaters actually led me to this forum, and it has been very helpful working through my issues, going through Alan Gordon's program, etc. Right around the time I began researching TMS I began getting hypersalivation and some weird swelling in the palate, tongue, and mouth near the teeth, which seems to have regressed significantly once I told myself it was TMS. Some problems seem to respond quicker than others.

So I've been gearing up for a lifestyle change -- quitting caffeine entirely. I love the taste of green tea and coffee, but it doesn't give me a buzz anymore and makes me very tired afterward, requiring more consumption... and more. Several attempts earlier this summer gave moderate relief, so I decided to bite the bullet... and the day before, I develop a a low ringing in my left ear (two days ago). Tinnitus! my mind screams, scrambling for 'label' and 'cause.' But there doesn't seem to be much 'cause', other than my general mental and physical strain from years of TMS. And the fact that the floaters are no longer generating feelings of stress like they did months before, as they are becoming less frequent and even when visible are less bothersome, due to deconditioning over the course of this summer.

The thing is, I've had this low ringing there for a long time... just didn't pay attention to it, except on the random and rare times it would get louder for a few seconds, before tapering off. My ears have been sensitive for many years, crackling at loud noises (like my kids screaming) and right now feeling sort of stuffed up (I'm on the last swing of a week-long cold). It feels as if my hyperstimulated/sensitive brain is seeking some new gremlin to focus on, now that the floaters are not doing the trick. I'm trying to do the training protocols (mostly self-talk and breathing when it becomes bothersome), and yesterday when I got up and said "this must be TMS," it reduced to almost nothing before coming back in. (This has happened more than once with the floaters, as well).

I should note that I did have a big project that I was working on, designing a music project that of course relies on the ears, and was almost finished when this issue just sort of abruptly emerged...

I guess my question is this -- in your personal experience, readers, is it common for new symptoms to emerge as you are resolving old symptoms? Like, your brain is flat out resisting the work you are doing, even though it is causing relief? I seem to remember reading this elsewhere on the forum as something to watch out for. I can control my nerves in my hands and feet rather well, the blurry vision is in the past, floaters are not as severe or anxiety-inducing... so it's time for something more?? My brain has even been dreading, "OK, when I decondition this, what the heck is going to happen next?"

 

This is the definition of the symptom imperative.

Your fearful primitive brain does not want you to find relief - it wants you to stay fearful, always on the alert for danger, so that you don't die. It does not understand that in today's modern world, most of us are fortunate enough to live in physical safety, and are exposed to very few tangible dangers. The TMS mechanism was meant to save us from a few very tangible threats in the primitive world. Today's world is a constant barrage of an infinite number of intangible threats. The thing is, your primitive brain and nervous system literally do not know the difference between a sabre-tooth tiger and your boss yelling at you. One will kill you, the other will not, but nervous system responds the same way to both. And the list of modern threats never ends - from personal worries to world threats to cosmic and existential crises.

It's up to you to start having a conversation with this part of your brain, and learn to recognize and calm the automatic fight-or-flight response to everything that the modern world throws at us.

 

When I read that post, it all feels predictable -- like it was waiting to pounce right as I was about to finish a sound-related project, right as I was accepting and/or overcoming other problems. And how I'd anticipated something worse coming down the pike. My whole TMS journey has been like this.

Right now I'm working on the ACE1 protocol: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/key-to-healing.3577/ (Key to healing) It made me realize I have a huge amount of mental strain and it feels like my brain is screaming at me to slow down, sleep, take it easy.

 

... and perhaps also treat yourself with the same compassion and care you would want to give to a loved one under the same stress. Loving yourself first is vital to doing this work

 

Thanks Jan for the kind words. Self-care is so important, and I think some part of me is sabotaging that because I'm used to discomfort, after six years of burning nerves and feeling like it would never get better, there is a huge obstacle in my path re: believing it's just my mind--even though I've now 90% healed that nerve pain in the last year. I do have a lot of internalized self-loathing that I've only kind of broached, I probably need to incorporate that daily into my mediations.

 

"probably" is the doubt. Change that to "I will" and then just do it