Setback

Hello! I’ve been struggling with my symptoms for a while now, and I felt as if I was finally getting some relief the past few weeks. I had been thinking about it less, staying off this website and away from anything to do with my pain and anxiety, which I’ve found is the best thing for me. However my mother recently injured her shoulder and it had become very painful for her, and as shoulder pain is one of the symptoms I’ve experienced it triggered my pain and fear all over again. I’m feeling stressed, and I’ve had a couple days of worsening pain. I also made the mistake of talking to a pharmacist about it who proceeded to recommend me a long list of medications used for fibromyalgia which scared the shit out of me to say the least. I’m not sure what kind of advice I’m looking for here, but I’m feeling lost and worried that something could be wrong with me despite the evidence I have against this. Any encouraging words would be appreciated!

 

@victoriab1301, can you tell us what you've ever actually done by way of a structured program for TMS, since you came across the concept in 2021? If you never did the SEP (I didn't see any indication in your old posts) then you never learned how to use expressive writing techniques to deal with new setbacks.

A disabled mother is the perfect breeding ground for a TMS relapse, and honest and unedited expressive writing is a great tool to get out all of the repressed emotions surrounding that.

When I write, I find it useful to look at the "four core issues" of humanity (per Existential Psychotherapy) and see how a recent stressor ties in with each of them. They are:
Isolation
Meaning
Freedom
Mortality

It's not surprising that your mother's injury causes you stress, but it also touches on a lot more than your fear of similar pain. There are more complex emotions at play, but they are going to be repressed. Her injury may bring up the reality that she is aging, which reminds you that you are too, which of course is all about our inherent fear of Mortality (and we repress it as a culture). Mortality reminds you that you will eventually lose her, which leads to fear of Isolation (and its cousin Abandonment). In the meantime, if she doesn't recover now or after future incidents, she might become disabled to the point where you might lose your Freedom if you are responsible for her care.

Thus three of the four Core Issues are actually affected by this one incident - but none of them are in your awareness, because they all carry negative selfish connotations that our brains must repress. They need to be openly acknowledged, and ultimately accepted as perfectly normal. And that's part of what the SEP teaches. Nicole Sachs, LCSW is all about journaling to address negative repressed emotions, and here's a comprehensive article by David Hanscom, MD about the value of "expressive writing".

Good luck.