Hi there
@ReadingJunkie and welcome!
Let me tell you, retirement and aging combine to create the perfect breeding ground for TMS. When I discovered this work in 2011, I realized that I'd had anxiety and TMS symptoms off and on since I was very young, in spite of having a stable and nurturing childhood - not even the trauma of moving frequently! My lifelong TMS symptoms were very erratic, and not as seriously disruptive as migraines - not for many decades, anyway. But things came to a crisis in 2011 when I found myself single, and suddenly facing 60. I was happy to be single, but I'm pretty sure that the dysfunction of my marriage provided a distraction during the last five years as I approached the end of middle age and faced becoming a "senior". I was seriously on the path of becoming housebound with multiple different TMS symptoms when I stumbled across
The Divided Mind almost exactly twelve years ago. One of authors who shared the book with Dr. Sarno wrote about the rage of aging - and a big ol' lightbulb went on in my head. I found this forum, worked the Structured Educational Program, listened to Alan Gordon, did the writing exercises, discovered other resources like Claire Weekes and Gabor Mate and Nicole Sachs, and got my life back.
HOWEVER! Since then, we've had the pandemic, which was a huge emotional setback for almost everyone around the globe, and even with the shutdown essentially over, it appears that many aspects of life and of living in this society and on this planet have become many times more dysfunctional than my marriage ever was. So I urge you not to discount the effect of stresses that are outside of your control - they are there, and they must be acknowledged.
On top of all that, I finally fully retired, and even though I had found significant relief and recovery from my childhood anxieties and the many debilitating symptoms I had twelve years prior, I nonetheless find myself struggling again, partly due to existential world stresses, but also with questions about meaning and purpose - never mind mortality - as I deal with physical aging issues (which might have their basis in lifelong stress, but which have reached a point where I can't simply dismiss them as TMS and not do anything about them).
There is a field of therapy called Existential Psychotherapy which is super-easy to understand, and which I have found incredibly useful to get into the deeper emotions underlying surface stresses. It's based on four key issues for humans:
Isolation (and/or Abandonment)
Freedom
Meaning
Mortality
That's it. You start with the current stress of any situation, and see where it might fit into those four issues, more deeply contemplating them as sources of the kind of rage that our brains need to repress. You can write down some quick thoughts for each one, then go back and do your JournalSpeak (or expressive writing as Dr. Hanscom calls it) in more detail.
Not all situations will hit all four of the key issues (for example, when I lost two different important people within months of each other in 2012, Freedom was not in the mix. Isolation and Abandonment, Meaning, and Mortality were the issues).
Currently, I have come up with the following sources of fear and rage:
Isolation/Abandonment: inevitably being abandoned by my loved ones if I don't die first; becoming isolated if I live independently longer than I should;
Freedom: inevitably losing freedom through physical and/or mental disability if I live long enough;
Meaning: wondering if my generation are allowing ourselves to be kept alive longer than was intended by nature? existentially, what's the point of all this anyway?
Mortality: inevitable. duh.
Well, there's a reason it's called Existential Psychotherapy. These are the BIG existential issues. And the questions they raise against the prospect of aging and death are pretty enraging.
All this might seem like a huge downer, but as you know since you follow Nicole's teachings, you gotta be willing to get down and dirty with the emotional shit, be willing to embrace it, and love yourself for having the bravery to do so.
Good luck,
~Jan
