Sexual dysfunction issue

[trustmyself]

Hi, I'm new to posting on this forum but I have known a little bit about Sarno and mind body for about five years. I have also read through stuff on this website at different points when dealing with symptoms before.

I would say I'm quite sensitive, I have a history of anxiety and more recently I've been dealing with OCD for the last 4-5 years which has involved obsessing over a past event. I could have repressed sadness over the fact that I feel unfairly accused in this event because me and this individual disagree and I feel very hurt by that whole situation. My childhood involved a lot of tension, drama and loss and I have gone through some intense emotional stuff in the last 10 years too (now in my mid to late 20s)

In the past, I have had some TMS type symptoms which subsided, I've had depersonalisation which subsided and I learned to stop my panic attacks by stopping fearing them.

This week however, after about a month long period of stopping porn, I noticed that my semen was watery, and that the sensation felt strange. I am now panicking about infertility, retrograde ejaculation and all related issues. As usual I am fearing the worst yet again.

Any guidance and support would help greatly. Is being aware of the emotional repressed issue enough? For the last month I have cut down my rumination massively which is the advice in OCD so I don't really want to dig back in to this again if possible?

 

[miffybunny]

Another bout of ocd and flavor of health anxiety would indicate that awareness is not enough. Things need to be reckoned with, and possibly grieved on a deeper level because inner conflicts are still brewing in your present. Now that you are aware, the question is: what are you going to about them? Your symptoms (the ocd and the physical) reveal that action is needed. My guess is it will start by improving your relationship with yourself. Then you will need to address the things in your life that may not be working for you. The goal is not only to alleviate and eliminate symptoms, but to live your life well.

 

[trustmyself]

Another bout of ocd and flavor of health anxiety would indicate that awareness is not enough. Things need to be reckoned with, and possibly grieved on a deeper level because inner conflicts are still brewing in your present. Now that you are aware, the question is: what are you going to about them? Your symptoms (the ocd and the physical) reveal that action is needed. My guess is it will start by improving your relationship with yourself. Then you will need to address the things in your life that may not be working for you. The goal is not only to alleviate and eliminate symptoms, but to live your life well.

I thought the Sarno approach was to simply be aware that it's an emotional problem? Thanks for your reply. I think the issue for me is that 'solving' my issues can often mean rumination, which is what got me so sick. I have done some therapy before, EMDR about this situation.. I guess I can work on the fact that I feel upset about the situation, but I can't really reach out to the person because we see things differently and I have tried that before unsuccessfully. What would a TMS approach to therapy usually consist of?

 

[miffybunny]

For some, making the connection between the emotions and symptoms (seeing the link) is enough, because it disables the distraction strategy. For many (myself included), symptoms were also a communication revealing inner conflicts that needed to be resolved (mostly within myself). As Sarno said "you have more work to do". We can both know things about ourselves unconsciously and not know them consciously. Symptoms are you, telling you, about yourself. They serve as both a distraction AND a communication. There are things that need to be understood and resolved about your life and for many people, until that communication is fully received and honored, symptoms will hang around or tms equivalents will continue to knock on your door (like the ocd and the health anxiety). In terms of how that will look in your life I don't know because it's so individual, but I can give some examples: We can't always repair a relationship with someone who hurt us, we can't always express our feelings to that person (they may be incapable, they may be long dead etc etc) but we can sit with the emotions, relate to those emotions, have compassion for those emotions and come to terms with it on a deeper level in order to let go. Sometimes practical changes may be needed in our lives (this was the case for me as well). In general it's about improving your relationship with yourself, being true to yourself, figuring out what you want, taking actions to become powerful (whether that's setting boundaries, becoming more assertive, pursuing your dreams, cultivating relationships, finding community, helping others etc etc etc).

 

[Cactusflower]

First step to @miffybunny 's excellent discussion is to actually read a book by Dr. Sarno like The Divided Mind and actually learn first hand about his theories "I thought the Sarno approach was to simply be aware that it's an emotional problem?" is a major distillation of what his mind-body theories are. The books explain exactly what you need to do to relieve your symtoms (for which Miffybunny has given an excellent, long explanation of some).

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I guess I can work on the fact that I feel upset about the situation,

Here's my opinion, and it's not necessarily encouraging, and it probably won't be popular, but damn it, I hate seeing certain people spinning their wheels, thinking that self-help knowledge is all they need to heal themselves, when my experience and my gut tell me it is not.

Based on the little bit of background information you provided, and given how young you clearly were when you first experienced various symptoms, I feel pretty confident in saying that your "current situation" is not the source of your emotional issues - it's a shallow symptom of something much deeper.

As @Cactusflower said, a little bit of knowledge about TMS/MBS isn't nearly enough to even get started, and @miffybunny has described at length the kind of emotional work and self-awareness that is required in order to recover. I don't even see how EMDR could possibly effective at all without a much more advanced level of self-awareness than you currently appear to have.

In my experience, this is pretty common in young people, especially males, and particularly in those who self-report early trauma, early onset of symptoms, and especially various types and intensities of OCD.

I have to be honest: this is a pretty intense load of mental health dysfunctionality for anyone to handle without professional support. In order to get a handle on this as soon as possible, you're going to have to be completely willing to take some serious emotional risks, go a lot deeper than you have a clue about right now, and learn how to be emotionally vulnerable.

Bottom line: you have to accomplish this just to achieve the self-awareness that is required to successfully do this work.

I'm essentially repeating a lot of what @miffybunny said, I'm just coming at it from a different direction.

IMHO, serious professional psychotherapy is called for. And I'll warn you, having seen it many times, that psychotherapy is something which you might hate and fear and resist with all of the force that your terrified TMS brain can bring to this fight. If you're willing to hang in there and stick with it, even as your fearful TMS brain insists that it's a waste of time, you can eventually prevail. I suspect it won't be easy, but it will be totally worth it.

I've heard good things about IFS - Internal Family Systems therapy. A new member recently recommended a specific IFS therapy, I'll see if I can find that reference and post it.