Regular everyday things causing TMS

[dabatross]

Lately I've been realizing more and more how stressed out my reactions are to things that are part of everyday life. Things like finances and social anxiety, deadlines at work are the biggest stress factors in my life. When I know a social thing is happening like a birthday party coming up in a week I notice that my pain will increase as time goes on and after the event it usually dies back down again because it's over now and my anxiety can lower. Other things are financial worries even though I don't have huge financial problems right now thank god I still worry like hell about money all the time. I'm afraid to spend it I still do but there is a lot of anxiety that goes along with it. For the last 4 months I've had this obsession of buying and selling guitars I've probably bought and sold 6-7 guitars in this time to the point where the salesman know who I am now.

I think these things are affecting me MUCH more on a subconscious level than on a conscious level because a lot of the time I'm not sitting here thinking about it but I know it's playing a role in my pain increase. For instance:

1. I recently got screwed by a contractor and now I have to sue him for a large sum of money I had to pay out to a subcontractor to get my money back. I'm pissed off about this but I don't think about it everyday.. however I think it grinds away at me because I should have never had to pay this money in the first place.

2. My son is going to be born soon and I don't know how I'm going to react to being a dad.

3. I sold a guitar on ebay and I kind of got ripped off on it by all the fees and stuff so that irritated me. This seems like a small thing but I think it had a large impact on my pain levels over the past week.

Smaller stuff that I usually don't associate with my pain increasing I'm starting to realize.. hey maybe this is having an effect on me. These constant worries about money and social anxiety I believe play a major role on me especially subconsciously. How are you to treat the subconscious to prevent this from happening?

 

[cherrybomb]

hey thats great you are recognising those things !

i'm not sure im the best to advise though.
Have you read the book 'facing the fire, experiencing and releasing anger appropriately' by John Lee? Could be of help , im just starting with it

 

[yb44]

Like cherrybomb says it is great that you are making links. The stuff around money sounds like your inner bully working overtime. "You should have been more careful and if you had been you wouldn't have gotten ripped off." That sort of thing. Your bully and mine could be siblings. I am quite hard on myself when these things happen. I recall a time when my father gave me a dollar to go buy something from the ice cream man. I came back with less change than I was meant to have. I had been ripped off by the nasty ice cream man. My father was furious (he was a real live bully). I figure that every time I am or feel 'short-changed' my brain recalls this incident. The inner bully in the form of my father comes back to haunt me.

As for Number 2, this is huge. Interesting how it's tucked in between Number 1 and 3. It warrants its own thread, dabatross!

The social anxiety thing I can definitely relate to. It's the anticipation of an event that ends up being far worse than the actual event. I am trying to train myself to look forward to rather than dread. Of course if we focus totally on the present (mindfulness), we wouldn't be so fixated on events that have yet to take place.