The power of fear

I've been dealing with pain since 2005. I read Sarno (MBC) in 2006 and got ~2 days of slight relief. So I went on to another mind-body approach (JFB-MFR) and had significant pain reduction in 2007. But I'm still unable to shake the remaining pain, even after re-reading MBC four times and seeing a psychologist. My pain is trauma-based (the major one being from a 32-year repressed childhood memory of incest), and therefore, I've also tried various things to address my trauma(s), but I've come back to Sarno, too.

In 2009, I read the Divided Mind and had another significant drop on pain, but it crept back after 6 weeks.

In 2012 (or 2013?) I read SteveO's The Great Pain Deception and all of a sudden could jog without pain during the run or added pain after.

Then just this month, I was able to apply the same technique to bicycle riding (why I waiting so long to do this is a wonder to me). But it worked. However, I still have daily pain.

My pain is far less than it was for the first few years when it was so bad I truly wanted to be dead, but I still want to get rid of the rest of it. And honestly I can deal with the pain. But today I had such an unsettling experience.

With the jogging and the biking, I was able to tell myself I don't need to expect pain, and it worked. But another symptom I acquired in 2011 was losing cognitive function while driving. This time my subconscious really found something I can't just push through and ignore. It's scary and dangerous to be driving and all of a sudden you feel like you don't know how to operate a car.

I've worked with trauma specialists who have helped me realize my traumatized brain wants to shut down when it feels scared, unsafe, confused, trapped, so I try to work with this and it has helped. But today I think I basically had a panic attack when driving over a NYC bridge. I was trying to challenge myself to get out and not be afraid of driving in unfamiliar places or for long distances, knowing that it's just fear that's driving my symptoms. And yesterday I went on a drive much longer than I usually do and longer than what my subconscious has been telling myself I can do, and after I spontaneously started crying about an hour into my drive, the weird, fuzzy brain sensation went away and I felt fine.

But today on the bridge was scary and makes me want to go back and hide and never try that again. I started this extra driving thing yesterday to try to prepare for a drive to bring my car back from Maryland to NY this coming weekend, but now I'm back to being scared.

Sorry if I'm babbling. I just wonder if others deal with some of these types of anxiety/ptsd type symptoms and how do you deal with it when it involves driving, which can be dangerous. I feel like my subconscious finally found something to tie my hands. I can handle the moderate levels of pain I still have and thus I can continue with my limited life. But if I try to challenge this limited life, it throws this dangerous, scary symptom at me.

Just wondering people's thoughts on this. Sorry if I'm making no sense. It's late and the battery on my phone is about to die and I left my charger downstairs

Thanks for listening!

 

Hi. Claire Weekes has written the best book on panic attacks...Hope and Help for Your Nerves. She writes about exposure therapy... putting yourself in the situation that you fear. You're doing that with driving over a NYC bridge. Others do it by driving on an expressway. It can be a slow process but it has helped a lot of people.

You wrote that you are the victim of incest when you were a child. Many others have come to this TMS forum with the same awful experience. I'm not a psychiatrist, but you might find help on that subject from articles and books. It may very well be the main emotion causing your panic. I remember Oprah Winfrey saying some relative sexually abused her when she was a girl. Maybe you could read her biography to learn how she handled that. I'll see if she has a YouTube video about it. I'll post this to you and then look that up.

 

Yes, Oprah and others discuss incest in videos on YouTube.

 

Thank you both! I've read a lot and and worked with therapists on this, but haven't read Oprah's book or seen many YouTube videos. I'll definitely check both out.

It's sometimes hard to confront all this, so I do it in stages. But I think I'm up for Oprah's book now.

For any one else in a similar situation, I found Marilyn van Derbur's book Miss America by Day to be really helpful.

 

Hello, everyone here has the story to share which is weird in some way. Overcoming your fear is the slow but healthy process. Hoping things will change positively for you.