Relaxing while in pain - Advice

[DavidStrindberg]

Hello Everybody and Greetings from Germany,

I do feel that in my case the journalling really helps to get some feeling-space instead of just being occupied with ongoing 24/7-pain.
Also, so much happened in my last year that it makes a ton of sense to me that eventually my mindbody decided that those feelings were too much. (Meeting big love of my life on a 3-month-meditation-retreat in California in the fall of '22, starting to emigrate to the US, my dad getting cancer, having to stay in Germany, him dying in the ICU three weeks after surgery, my new relationship falling apart after having moved to the US - horrible, horrible stuff. Way too much for me. Before the onset of the physical symptoms, I was really falling apart psychologically.)

So I feel that accepting the psychosomatic nature of my pain and getting to experience some really heavy and difficult and rageful emotions is happening in me. That's good, I guess.

My biggest difficulty really lies in finding some / any relaxation.
Before my dad's sickness, I was pretty good at self-regulating. (I didn't even know the term then...) I just enjoyed my job - but also really enjoyed taking breaks. I would make sure everyday to just spend some time lying around looking at leaves in a tree. Call friends and joke around. Sit zazen everyday. Go to the sauna. Go on hikes and walks. Enjoy reading a book in bed. Lighting a candle. Cooking. Taking a bath. Going to the sauna.
You get the picture.
But I find it veeeeeeeeery difficult to enjoy any of the above things. They actually frustrate me because I still recall how relaxed and grateful and happy I used to feel when I was just lying in my bed after a long hike and with a good book. And without my jaw feeling hot and weird. WTF!!!
I just haven't found out yet, how to enjoy anything and relax into my body, when the most prominent sensation in my body is an uncomfortable tension and pain in my face / jaw / throat / wherever (wanders around from temple to chest...)
Painmeds don't do anything for me, sadly.
I experimented with a heating-pad, TENS-unit and accupressure-mat just to find a way to override the pain-sensations and get some headspace. But it kinda starts feeling too idiotic to have electrodes glued to my face. And all of these make me more homebound because I can't use them outside anyways. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

I do remember that around 10 years ago, after a difficult break-up, I had some time of rather ongoing hip pain with sciatica. (Which I wrongly ascribed to my scoliosis.) But it never really freaked me out a lot, because the rest of my life was interesting and busy. And I never started avoiding walking or hiking or sitting in half-lotus, which I would easily have with the fear-mind that is riding me now most of the time.
Eventually, I had an MRI and since doctors in Germany tend to be much more knowledgeable around mindbody-stuff in general, the doc just told me that there was some abnormality but it wasn't big enough for me to be in pain and that actually I shouldn't be in pain - and that was that. I don't even remember whether the pain stopped exactly then but I never had this hip-pain and sciatica anymore.
This gives me hope.
On the other side, though, I was soooooooooo much more relaxed then. Now I am such a mess. All the time thinking about my pain. At least a good friend just gave me a useful talk the other day and I am very committed to really stopping talking about my symptoms with friends and also googling more TMS-stuff. Will just stay with journalling, my evidence-sheet and starting to exercise again. But the obsession is deep. And the obsession is tied to the inability to relax. And vice versa.

How do you relax in the midst of symptoms? How did you do find some well-being in an achy body? I remember that I must have had many, many walks with my sciatica where I still felt good and happy and not stressed and that's how it eventually faded. But I cannot fathom how to do this at the moment.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

@DavidStrindberg, you're doing a lot of good work, and I'm glad to see that there is some acknowledgement and self-compassion in amongst the inevitable self-blame that we all experience, even after doing this work with a lot of success.

My strong recommendation is to engage in therapeutic bodywork. Find a licensed therapeutic massage practitioner or other skilled bodyworker, preferably someone who does deep-tissue work, or perhaps even myofascial release (like Rolfing or Hellerwork) (many licensed physical therapists practice such specialties). An experienced and communicative bodyworker can teach you to connect your awareness to your various body parts and to the muscles that hold us together, and learn to breath through pain while you learn to relax the muscles. It is a meditative process, to be sure, and surprisingly powerful when you understand that you have much more control than you ever thought possible. It's also hard to maintain, I won't lie!

You can also take up some form of regular meditative structured exercise, such as yoga or tai-chi, to complement the intense bodywork. Such exercise also needs to be in-person and hands-on to begin with, where a qualified instructor will literally walk around in class and lay hands on people to teach them how and where to align their bodies during the exercises and poses. I do not recommend learning either of these disciplines via video, because you will not obtain the full benefit.

In my personal opinion and lifelong experience, physical body awareness is essential to healing through the mindbody connection. Thanks to early exposure to regular exercise and activities in my family, even rudimentary self-calming breath techniques from our parents, I continued to learn and explore in my twenties and thirties, and had the ability to practice self-care and recovery through mind-body awareness for many decades - although without the specific knowledge that Dr. Sarno presented as his TMS theory, which honestly would have been wonderful to have known thirty+ years ago as I hit my forties! In any case, when my lifelong off-and-on TMS eventually built up to a crisis point when I turned 60 in 2011, which is when I stumbled on Dr. Sarno in my desperate search for solutions, I used my bodywork skills to aid in my recovery alongside the many resources dedicated to TMS theory.

 

[DavidStrindberg]

@JanAtheCPA
Thank you very much for your advice!
I appreciate it and it makes a lot of sense to me. I've started working with a biodynamic-massage-bodyworker, so I feel that is a good direction. At the same time, I wanna be careful with this, because in the last 4 months I wasted around 3000 Euro on Osteopaths, Massagetherapists and Accupuncturists (wasted in the sense that it didn't soothe me much and didn't do anything for my pain...)
Any extra-advice on how to find comfort while not receiving bodywork would be awesome!

I really like the advice you are giving in general on this forum. So one more question around journalling:
As you can imagine with my story, there is a ton of complicated and very unacceptable feelings inside of me.
(Mainly mixtures of hatred, love, guilt, fear and shame). I saw somewhere a thread where you reccomened going to the deeper existential levels in journalling. Could you reiterate that for me?

It is interesting what you write about your family and your relationship to movement.
For me, it was quite different. I used to always be very bad at sports in school. It was only in my twenties that I really found some good access to my body with Yoga, cycling, working out and hiking. I think this also makes it really hard for me at the moment, that I feel I actually did my best to take good care of my body and my mind in the last years - and now it feels as though they are both revolting...

 

[Cactusflower]

My take on not being able to relax is that we are unconsciously bracing - including bracing and stressing about the fact we can’t relax.
If your nervous system is still in fight/flight/freeze you are on high alert. This is physical reaction to a mental and emotional feeling of lack of safety.
A few things I do (and frankly, I still can’t relax!): I have created a few spaces in my mind that are places where I feel most at home. Two are real places I feel very at home with being alone. The other is just a fantasy safe space I can relax more in. I go to these spaces in my mind to begin meditating or conscious breathing. For a few minutes I hang out there and work on accepting every fiber of my being. I accept the physical tension, any pain, my current mental state and emotions. I try not to dissect them or analyze. Just sort of float around in this ether of acceptance and then I will (for me, I use guided meditation) begin meditating.

I’m hoping to train my mind into finding meditation itself is a safe space by the association of a safe space in my mind, and at the same time find total acceptance as a safe concept.
Creating feelings of safety might might not be what you need...you may have other personal needs.
On top of this my meditations have points when they focus on safety in the body: body scans or other mind body meditations.
I must say that 90% of the time I don’t sense much relaxation, but I have learned to congratulate my inner self for just showing up. When I can attain some relaxation, it dissipates quickly. I try not to get frustrated and recognize there is subconscious stuff at work that I can’t fix or control and don’t need to.
If you journal perhaps explore what you physically and mentally brace against.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I saw somewhere a thread where you reccomened going to the deeper existential levels in journalling. Could you reiterate that for me?

Hmm, I wonder if what you saw was one of the times I described the premise of a therapeutic practice called Existential Psychotherapy? I will sometimes suggest that someone might use one of the four existential "issues" of EP as topics for journaling. The four existential issues are Abandonment (aka Isolation), Freedom, Meaning, and Mortality. The Big Four.

Abandonment is probably first on the list for many of us, especially going back to childhood experiences. There are many different forms that Abandonment and Isolation can take in childhood, such as the actual loss of a parent due to death or divorce, or the loss of affection and care due to emotional neglect, illness, or abuse, as extreme examples. Isolation within a family can also be subtle and not overtly dangerous, but still have negative effects. Abandonment and Isolation are, of course, big issues as we age, and of course anytime in our lives when we lose a loved one.

Freedom is an issue that can be negatively triggered at any time during one's life, while Meaning and Mortality are more likely to be adult issues.

Many situations which create undue stress can be a combination of these issues. Being trapped in a bad work situation might trigger issues of Freedom and Meaning, while being trapped in a bad relationship might trigger Freedom and Isolation. Taking care of aging parents can trigger all four.

Does this help? Also, if you haven't seen ACEs mentioned, you, and anyone with negative childhood experiences, should read this thread: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/aces-quiz-printable-version.27061/#post-139883 (ACEs "quiz" - printable version)