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Structured Program

Thing is, when I DO have symptoms, such as right now, it's easy to get discouraged and think "good" days are a fluke. I have a "checkup" with Alan tomorrow, and on the whole it's been a good week. But I wonder how long my "process" will take. I know that's fear poking its nasty head back in but I do wonder. But overall it's been a good week.
 
But I wonder how long my "process" will take.
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I still worry about this sometimes too. I try to remind myself that it will take as long as it takes and I'm doing so much better than if I didn't know about TMS. I also think that the physical sensations we have are not necessarily bad, but are signals for us that something is going on emotionally. Eventually, I hope to have more emotional awareness without the pain but for now it's helping me sometimes.

I want to scream at the bully too but roommate and BF who I live with might not appreciate it ;) My therapist suggested screaming into a pillow. I have a hard time getting that angry with anything right now. Do you feel like the screaming makes you feel better?
 
From Steve O's thread:

"The same is true for the feeling of rage. Maybe I should wait till you get to the anger chapter 26, but you shouldn't be able to feel rage, that's why the symptom is there, because you don't feel the rage. If you felt rage then you wouldn't have the symptom. Most people miss that nexus."

This is what I was talking about several posts ago about the repression. Nice to have it confirmed. I like how we're all different but TMS comes together nicely.
 
Update on me:

Despite bad moments, last week was a good week for me. Managed to tap into righteous inner anger on a number of occasions, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what kept the fear jags from SLAMMING me as they sometimes do (I won't say I don't have baseline fears and anxiety, but no fear jags that hit me out of nowhere last week, and Alan suggests that that's because the power dynamic has changed, and I am EMPOWERMENT WOLF now). It's a nice change; still a work in progress though.

My "mission" this week is to keep an eye "inward" as much as possible with regards to my emotional state. Alan says I haven't been doing this as much as I may have thought I have; it's different than spending 45 minutes every night meditating.

I will keep y'all updated on my progress. Thanks, again, for this community. *Bear waving hi*
 
Update on me:

Fighting my way back from a slip slide of fear and despair the other day. I woke up and journalled yesterday: "So this is what it feels like to have all the fight taken out of you."

But in a weird way, it allowed me the space of an entire night (yes, STILL on third-shift) to tap into not brain/mind/thought, but the "felt-presence" (as PP's Michael Brown would say) of what I would call "having given up", "stopping fighting", "letting be" and just feeling the feelings of submission in my body. All week I've been trying to get the "keeping one eye inward" monitoring of internal state that Alan has been getting me to feel...and not "getting it" until now. I don't pretend to understand it, but as much as EMPOWERMENT-WOLVERINE has been, well, empowering in past weeks; here, this DIS-EMPOWERMENT feeling was equally "valid" and profound, which was interesting.

Will be curious to see how Alan interprets this tomorrow afternoon in-session.
 
Shanshu Vampyr said:
it's different than spending 45 minutes every night meditating.
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All TMSers have a tendency to intellectualize our feelings, and think that all you have to do is a certain technique (journaling, meditating, guided imagery) once a day. But as you noted, it takes a little bit more than this. It really does invovle adjusting how we think throughout the day and "keeping one eye inward." Perhaps this is one of the reasons people have had success with Presense Process.

The important thing is that whatever feeling arises, be it feeling empowered or disempowered, is still valid and something we need to feel. As perfectionists we all want to recover as quick as possible and do everything right. We tell ourselves I should feel empowered and confident in myself. Well, this should attitude only represses our emotions further. This is where the quote, "What you resist, persists" comes in.

There are going to be times when we do feel frustrated or disempowered, and we should feel this emotions. Of course, once we recognize and feel these emotions we can always ask ourselves why we have these feelings and what there root cause is.
 
"I find it very difficult to be around Mom & Dad anymore. I tend to either get my buttons pushed and very quickly get escalated into acting out my anger and have angry outbursts or I am overcome with sadness as to my being an emotional orphan. There, I said it. I am an emotional orphan because I was raised by such brittle, defective PEOPLE. They are so brittle and defective in their own lives; I just feel sorry for them. but they also created me and raised me; and I am only BEGINNING to realize their hurtfulness. How can I raise myself--or potentially children--when I can't love myself with unconditional acceptance? And they are the reason I have such self-revulsion, because they raised me up to feel worthless.

And I feel like if Alan were here he'd have a lot to say. I bet he'd say, "What do you want to DO to these people that make you feel WORTHLESS multiple times a day?" 'Cuz deep down inside I want to please them and mollify them, but even DEEPER down inside I *must* want to strangle them, beat them senseless, *KILL* them...and yet 99.9% of the time I don't "feel" it.

As much as I want to get back to being empowered, I feel like I am not "getting to it", and yesterday I realized that that may be due to feelings of guilt that I have. They ARE making preparations to leave--they told me the 19th--and even though I am going to have more freedom and "me" time in order to get mentally healthy, I am full of guilt these days that it had to come to this. But it HAD to come to this. They were KILLING me, and I can't bear that anymore.

And I also notice that I have been coughing a *hell* of a lot recently without known provocation. (The causology of this as a symptom is not hard to figure out.) There can be no other rational explanation other than you-know-what."
 
Hi gang,

WOW! It's been about, what, three weeks since my last post? WOW! Well, I'm just popping in to provide an update, for those of you who are interested. I'm living alone now. Mom and Dad have respected my space, and moved out last week; though I still get in touch with them via Skype and phone. Still working with Alan Gordon, and I'm somewhere on the road. I don't NOT have bad moments, but I'm more at peace with the idea that this is where I'm at and this is where I'll BE at until I've "worked through" my old issues. And work through them, I am. Refusing to put pressure on myself to that end. Whatever happens, happens.

Working out pretty consistently, too. I want Wolverine muscles!!! :)

Been busy with work stuff, so haven't tried other things like Steve O's book (it's on my bookshelf) and am still reading *slowly* through The Presence Process (without actually attempting it yet).

I'm feeling hopeful. And that, in itself, may be Shanshu.

Oh, and Bear says hi. :)
 
Anyone ever had experience ridding themselves of globus sensation in the throat? I'm feeling a lot of pressure right now (and I made some stupid mistakes in my personal life too that are on my mind).
 
I don't even know what that means, SV! I would suggest, however, that Alan's post on Outcome Independence might be helpful (has he never mentioned this?) Or simply say to yourself "it's just another TMS symptom, I don't need to care about it, it will go away". Works for me.
 
It's feeling like you have something stuck in your throat. When it first started a week ago, it came out of the blue. I initially thought it was a sore throat, but it's not PAINFUL. It's not causing cough. It just feels like there's hair in the back of my throat. I know it's classic anxiety/TMS, to 1000%, but I hate it.
 
Ick. And hard to ignore. But I've been using self-talk and Alan's post together to get rid of quite a number of recent symptoms (I've had a really crappy summer with a lot of stress and losses). I didn't used to believe in self-talk, but it's pretty powerful. If I feel the symptom, I keep repeating, aloud if I can "I don't care if (my arm hurts)(I'm dizzy) because it's just TMS and it will pass". What works is that the self-talk stops the inner obsessing, and pretty soon I'm experiencing more time without the symptom than with it.
 
Is there something right now that is hard to swallow? Are you trying to swallow feelings/not expressing yourself?

I used to just think I had headaches because it was the scariest kind of pain for me...but I now think that I also get them because I am too much in my thoughts all the time and overly analytical about everything.

Hope you feel better soon.
 
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