question about doubts

[okaoka]

i am well aware of stress making my symptoms worst and i am well aware of my OCD.
the thoughts make me afraid and then obsess more with the symptoms.
its just that its so confusing sometimes, yea, i know the mind playing tricks.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

@okaoka, I am going to suggest that you go back to all of your posts in this thread, and count the number of times you say "Yes" or "I understand" or "I know" and similar things --- followed somewhere in the same sentence or the same post, by "but" or "however" or "it's just that" or "I'm just" and many similar phrases.

It's a LOT.

This is what I call "Yes, But... Syndrome". YBS for short.

YBS is a symptom of TMS, especially amongst individuals who identify themselves as ill or damaged, and who are attached to being victims of their suffering. I'm sorry to say that individuals with OCD often exhibit extreme YBS, and they are also addicted to talking about the details of their symptoms.

Here's the hard truth: your apologies are a waste of your time and our time if you continue responding with "Yes, But..." This is because you can not recover if "Yes, But..." is your answer to everything, even when you are answering your own thoughts. It's like your rational brain says "I totally understand ABC" and your irrational OCD/TMS brain immediately says "But I can't possibly accept that ABC is true, because of XYZ".

Every time you do this, we see your struggle against these addictive behaviors, and believe me, we feel the struggle, because addiction is very hard to break. We all have addictions, and everyone here who has found some kind of recovery has managed to get rid of the primary addiction to being a victim of physical symptoms, and we did that by facing our emotional conflicts and repressed rage.

"Yes, But..." Syndrome indicates an obsessively negative state of mind, where the negativity is always directed back to the individual who is suffering. It is most likely the result of childhood experiences which include some kind of obsessive or controlling or even possibly abusive behavior from the family or significant childhood influences (Dr. Mate touches on OCD in his new book). The path to some kind of recovery may be psychotherapy, perhaps with the help of medications.

You are welcome to stick around if you can talk about doing the SEP, about your experiences journaling, about your childhood, about your repressed rage, or about any other emotional topic. I strongly advise you to get out of the habit of posting anything which contains "Yes, But..." language, and of course you have GOT to stop posting about your symptoms, because talking about symptoms is part of the addiction!

 

[okaoka]

i understand and you are right.
as a child my older brother was jealous when i were born because he didn't get the attention he needed. it resulted in him bulling me and trying to control me in some way.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I'm about to log off for the night, but this is an interesting topic.

it resulted in him bulling me and trying to control me in some way.

And here's my very serious question: where were your parents when this started and presumably continued?

Dr. Mate says that we have to be careful about placing blame on parents, but he's also quite clear that our suffering as adults always goes back to childhood and usually family dynamics (unless the family is missing due to some outside trauma but that's a whole different thing). Is this a topic you have ever examined in therapy or journaling? What is your reaction to examining family dysfunction and possibly negative parenting?

 

[okaoka]

I'm about to log off for the night, but this is an interesting topic.

And here's my very serious question: where were your parents when this started and presumably continued?

Dr. Mate says that we have to be careful about placing blame on parents, but he's also quite clear that our suffering as adults always goes back to childhood and usually family dynamics (unless the family is missing due to some outside trauma but that's a whole different thing). Is this a topic you have ever examined in therapy or journaling? What is your reaction to examining family dysfunction and possibly negative parenting?

its a good question to think about, i think i talked in therapy about my relationship with my brother but didn't go very deep if i remember. my parents was basically angry when we were having a fight and i think put the blame more on my brother. i don't remember that as abuse or something like that but in a child eyes it might be. i think the controlling part was a bit more. actually my father was also controlling in some way. i remember he was very sensitive to certain voices or acts. for example if someone making sounds when eating or something like that. the reaction from him was never abusive but we knew that there are some things that make him angry and we should try not doing...

 

[JanAtheCPA]

actually my father was also controlling in some way.

the reaction from him was never abusive

There you go. When children are overly-controlled by parents who use anger and emotional coldness to maintain control, it is ultimately damaging to children, even when there is no outright physical or obvious emotional abuse. Your brother could not possibly learn to accept you if his natural jealousy was treated as unacceptable. He was forced to repress his jealousy and resentment and treated like a bad child, until he was old enough to start taking it out on you with bullying. Your parents did not do this consciously, of course. Controlling you and your brother was probably the only way they knew how to cope with the uncertainty and chaos and fear of being parents, and it's likely that they did not have good role models when they were children. And so the cycle repeats itself from generation to generation.

I'm only guessing, of course, but there's probably something that makes sense when you start looking at your family dynamics with open eyes and a different perspective.

It might make you very uncomfortable, but that's because your primitive brain believes that examining the things that hurt you emotionally as a child are a threat to your physical safety, and it will keep trying to distract you from doing it. You have to literally remind it, over and over again, that you are physically safe, and it's okay to slowly and carefully examine the history of your childhood and to realize that as an adult it might be emotionally painful, but it can't physically harm you. I wish you luck!

 

[okaoka]

There you go. When children are overly-controlled by parents who use anger and emotional coldness to maintain control, it is ultimately damaging to children, even when there is no outright physical or obvious emotional abuse. Your brother could not possibly learn to accept you if his natural jealousy was treated as unacceptable. He was forced to repress his jealousy and resentment and treated like a bad child, until he was old enough to start taking it out on you with bullying. Your parents did not do this consciously, of course. Controlling you and your brother was probably the only way they knew how to cope with the uncertainty and chaos and fear of being parents, and it's likely that they did not have good role models when they were children. And so the cycle repeats itself from generation to generation.

I'm only guessing, of course, but there's probably something that makes sense when you start looking at your family dynamics with open eyes and a different perspective.

It might make you very uncomfortable, but that's because your primitive brain believes that examining the things that hurt you emotionally as a child are a threat to your physical safety, and it will keep trying to distract you from doing it. You have to literally remind it, over and over again, that you are physically safe, and it's okay to slowly and carefully examine the history of your childhood and to realize that as an adult it might be emotionally painful, but it can't physically harm you. I wish you luck!

yes, actually i were discussing those issues with my psychologist before. my father also have some kind of health anxiety and i remember that my grandmother had somekind of OCD so its obvious that its either genetic or passing through education...
actually even as a child i had TMS i guess. my father told me that once i used to have burn when i peed. my father toke me to the doctor and the doctor said the kid is just nervous...
when i think about my childhood i do feel safe, so i am not sure how to dig in more into that, but i will think about it and try to journal about it.
also, i was growing up in israel, when i was a kid and teenager often you heard on the news or tv about terror attacks, that was also something that made me feel fearful i think.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Yikes, Israel was a time and place where you were living close to physical danger, which certainly did not help you feel safe. That can't have been easy, on top of the lack of safety you already experienced when you were even younger, due to the bullying by your brother and lack of support from your parents.

when i think about my childhood i do feel safe, so i am not sure how to dig in more into that

What you experienced as a young child, before Israel, was actually a form of abandonment, which is a serious source of emotional damage. Your rational adult brain is remembering only the facts of your physical life which was safe and comfortable and probably very nice. But the young child doesn't know these things. The young child only knows about safety by being nurtured and cared for. What is being repressed by your TMS brain is the truth that your older brother rejected you from the time you were born, and that your parents did not adequately protect you from the pain of being rejected by him in all the ways he expressed his resentment.

Of course your brother was also suffering (he probably still suffers) but the young child has no concept of the suffering of others!

Do not get distracted by your time in Israel. It's important, but I believe that a nurturing and supportive family can survive a shared traumatic experience with better mental health than a dysfunctional family which lives in fear and anxiety.

Unfortunately, you need to get in touch with the isolation and abandonment of your childhood. That means going deeper into the relationship with your brother, which sounds very painful. And that relationship of course was influenced by your parents and their inadequacies, which also sounds painful. You described how they blamed your brother more for the fighting, which would only make him resent you even more, because as a child, he didn't understand his emotions, and he was being forced to simply repress them.

You were too young to understand any of this, and your brain protected you by developing your own controlling (OCD) behaviors in addition to physical symptoms, to distract you from the powerful and unsafe emotions that a small child naturally has.

I'm really sad for you and for your family that this was your experience. Human beings are having a hard time in the modern world.