Day 8 QtP: recognising emotions

[evlar]

Are you having success at recognizing the emotions connected to your pain? If you have, how do these emotions make you feel? If not, what do you think is preventing you from doing this?

I am having some success at recognising emotions connected to my symptoms (brain fog/fatigue). For example, I was jourballing free writing on a past stressor (getting dumped when I was 12) and I realised a theme of my young life was losing people: individuals and groups.

I knew there must be repressed sadness and grief, and repressed panic/confusion. I stayed with the feeling and gave it half an hour of time with just somatic tracking it. Something was stirring in my body: it mostly came out as fatigue and heavyness. What has me questioning, is:

'was I feeling sadness/confusion if I wasn't crying/welling up and/or having racing thoughts/fast heartbeat?' (my typical sadness/confusion response).

The thing is, I'm not 100% convinced these were actual emotions... Or if they were just what my body was naturally going through at the time anyway.


What might be stopping me?

Well ive done somatic tracking for s few months before this, and been doing deep work with therapists/coaches for a couple of years prior to finding TMS. I have gone over some of this stuff already, with them... Perhaps that means some of this is dealt with already.

I really want to feel the emotions. Perhaps that desire to feel them is also blocking them.

 

[Andy Bayliss]

Hi evlar,

I get what you're saying and I congratulate you on hanging with the difficult feelings for a long time, like a half an hour. To me this takes great steadfastness, commitment and patience.

To me, this action in itself is the key, rather than any particular goal. You've developed quite a practice at this, and each time, when you allow what is there, it may feel quite different. In my experience patience, and maybe a few supporting words for yourself while you're "in there" is the best you can do. "You're feeling heavy and tired." Just the gentle support for you being right where you can be powerful and settling, so that you don't need to go anywhere else for awhile. If more is revealed so be it. In any case, you're teaching deeper parts of yourself to trust where they are.

Perhaps that means some of this is dealt with already.

I think this can also be really true. I think here you can just "think psychologically" to connect what you know is up for you to symptoms. It does not always have to be "deep work" in order to effectively untangle the connections and help TMS unwind.

Good luck in your work.

Andy

 

[evlar]

Andy, thank you.

Your words have given me encouragement to go on and, more usefully I think, a renewed sense of patience. It's all too easy to feel like there is a rush to get to the finish (because the finish means loads of energy!) And the truth is that this rushing holds the finish back.

Elliot

 

[Andy Bayliss]

And the truth is that this rushing holds the finish back.

Well put Elliot. As I read this, it occurs to me (as someone who tends to rush) that in my self-pushing, impatience, my attempt to to "get to the other side" of an uncomfortable situation, that this in itself is a familiar state of distraction. It is a strategy to "not feel." Or a way of evoking a familiar sense of self, which is that I am behind, that I need something to change. Isn't that interesting?! So I get lost in the sense of urgency, and this masks anything else I might be aware of. A familiar veil of what might be more true in the moment.

Thank you.

 

[evlar]

Exactly that! It's my addiction/distraction of choice for hiding whatever it is the unconscious wants obscured, too.

Most insidious, given that if I'm feeling fatigue/fog symptoms, that rush of nervous energy (in the form of pressure) is a welcome relief from having no energy at all.

It's like a game of chess between the two parts of my mind. And I believe currently that I can't win. I can just stop playing.