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The Importance of Conditioning

I agree that conditioning certainly plays a part. I think awareness is the most powerful tool we bring to TMS healing, so your awareness that your pain in a certain situation is a conditioned response will most likely lessen it over time.

Still, I can't help but wonder how the pain started in that particular situation in the first place. For me those routine household chores (like grocery shopping) seem to set off some emotional issues that I still need to work on.

I hate grocery shopping! I remembered this this week when I went shopping. Hate it! But for many months I kept that feeling buried. I just gritted my way through it. I basically had to do it in order to survive, and I could do it (though it caused pain) so I did. But I'd really forgotten how much I hated doing it till this week.
 
Grocery shopping is not one of my favorite things, either.

I wait until Sunday morning when the two grocery stories I go to open at 8 am
and they're in the same mall close to my house. No crowded lines at check-out.

I make a list and try to remember to look at it! I usually forget to do that and
come home wondering where is what I thought I bought.

If I could afford it, I'd grocery shop with peapod. I did it once and loved it...
they brought what I wanted right to my house and onto my kitchen counter.
 
I really know what everyone here is talking about. I think that conditioning is my major problem and the trouble is I've conditioned myself to expect/experience pain in so many different activities and situations. On the plus side, I have managed to overcome a number of conditioned responses since spring this year and with the help of hypnotherapy, I'm hoping to overcome a few more. I just wish I'd known about TMS so much sooner so I wouldn't have let these expectations become so ingrained.I've read it before but I'm going to go away and read the 'outcome independence' article again so thanks for that reminder.
 
The outcome independence article really is good. It helps us with our perspective on when to expect to heal.

Maybe pretend your mind is a computer and delete those long-standing conditioned responses.
They're erased. They're gone. You're in a new mental today.
 
Love that idea Walt!Wouldn't it be fantastic and so much easier if we could just press the delete button on all those conditioned responses and they were gone for ever in a flash.
 
Grocery shopping is not one of my favorite things, either.

I wait until Sunday morning when the two grocery stories I go to open at 8 am
and they're in the same mall close to my house. No crowded lines at check-out.

I make a list and try to remember to look at it! I usually forget to do that and
come home wondering where is what I thought I bought.

If I could afford it, I'd grocery shop with peapod. I did it once and loved it...
they brought what I wanted right to my house and onto my kitchen counter.

Oh I love Peapod! I wish I could afford it, too.
 
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