I’m pleased to say yesterday went great! Well, great for me, not so great for the USMNT, but I’m thrilled with how things went with my back. I was on my feet for the better part of 12 hours, spent around 3 hours total driving, and clocked just over 20,000 steps, with little to no pain. I had some minor flares, even some hip pain mixed in, but I wasn’t thinking about my back for the most part. I only started having pain when I became aware I wasn’t in pain. One exciting play in a match, singing during the march to the stadium, or trying to understand what the drunk dude next to me was saying, quickly took my mind off things and I was back to enjoying the moment. I’ve had a slow morning today, watching World Cup matches at home and with nothing more to do, the pain came on again. I’m not worried though, as I know this is a classic pattern of TMS. I’m gonna do a long bike ride again today, and I look forward to telling my unconscious to screw off again!
Looking at the personality traits section for the activity, I can say with all the confidence in the world that I am the most anxious stoic you’ll ever meet. As I’ve already talked about a great deal, I don’t know how to deal with my emotions, so I just store them up inside and hope they’ll just go away, all the while trying to keep a nonchalant and stoic attitude about it all. I know now this is unhealthy. I’ve always been a very anxious person. I constantly worry about my family, like they’re all going to die in a fiery plane crash somehow. Even a work email notification gives me a jolt of anxiety, which is definitely something Alan Gordon would point out I need to straighten out. In the past two years at work we’ve had a lot of drama, including the tragic death of a coworker in a freak accident off-shift. I kid you not, when I get a work email my mind goes to two places. Either a coworker died or I’m getting in big trouble for something I screwed up on. In reality the mail is probably a reminder about our annual BBQ, but my mind unfortunately has learned to expect the worst. My mother is also an exceptionally anxious person, so I think it’s a little bit of inherited stress and learned behavior from seeing how she dealt with life. I distinctly remember as a kid at practice, constantly looking at the door because I was worried my parents forgot about me and I won’t be able to get home (this never happened, so I don’t know why/how I became worried about that). I also remember waiting by the door at home, checking the windows for headlights, waiting for my mom to get home from a weekly meeting at church. I was terrified she wouldn’t come home one night. Well, she always did and I clearly spent a lot of my childhood staring at doors.
I really am learning a lot about the state of my emotional being. It’s evident I have a lot more issues than I once thought. I have work tomorrow, and I do worry about the essentially instant pain I’ll get just from being there, because my mind has decided that work = pain. But I also see it as an opportunity, just like the game yesterday. It’s an opportunity to get some minor wins, do some somatic tracking, and just be gentle with myself and not get mad if I feel pain. This is a process, and work is my biggest hurdle, so I have to take things slowly and with grace for myself.
Looking at the personality traits section for the activity, I can say with all the confidence in the world that I am the most anxious stoic you’ll ever meet. As I’ve already talked about a great deal, I don’t know how to deal with my emotions, so I just store them up inside and hope they’ll just go away, all the while trying to keep a nonchalant and stoic attitude about it all. I know now this is unhealthy. I’ve always been a very anxious person. I constantly worry about my family, like they’re all going to die in a fiery plane crash somehow. Even a work email notification gives me a jolt of anxiety, which is definitely something Alan Gordon would point out I need to straighten out. In the past two years at work we’ve had a lot of drama, including the tragic death of a coworker in a freak accident off-shift. I kid you not, when I get a work email my mind goes to two places. Either a coworker died or I’m getting in big trouble for something I screwed up on. In reality the mail is probably a reminder about our annual BBQ, but my mind unfortunately has learned to expect the worst. My mother is also an exceptionally anxious person, so I think it’s a little bit of inherited stress and learned behavior from seeing how she dealt with life. I distinctly remember as a kid at practice, constantly looking at the door because I was worried my parents forgot about me and I won’t be able to get home (this never happened, so I don’t know why/how I became worried about that). I also remember waiting by the door at home, checking the windows for headlights, waiting for my mom to get home from a weekly meeting at church. I was terrified she wouldn’t come home one night. Well, she always did and I clearly spent a lot of my childhood staring at doors.
I really am learning a lot about the state of my emotional being. It’s evident I have a lot more issues than I once thought. I have work tomorrow, and I do worry about the essentially instant pain I’ll get just from being there, because my mind has decided that work = pain. But I also see it as an opportunity, just like the game yesterday. It’s an opportunity to get some minor wins, do some somatic tracking, and just be gentle with myself and not get mad if I feel pain. This is a process, and work is my biggest hurdle, so I have to take things slowly and with grace for myself.
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