Think Psychologicly

[okaoka]

I was reading an old post by Monte Hueftle

http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8610 (TMSHelp Forum - TMS Update - Message from Monte Hueftle)

I am a bit confused about the part of sitting with your emotion (think psychologicly).
I am trying to sit with my emotions and feel them, but my emotions are mainly the fear and frustration of the psychical symptoms, should i just continue to feel the frustration and the fear or should I try to feel other things? I feel that if I try to feel other things its just like cheating myself because the true emotions that are being felt is the fear and frustration.
in addition, somatic tracking is teaching us to feel the symptoms and another approach is talking about allowing and surrender.
so i am confused what should we do exactly.

this is the quote:
Sitting with Emotions Practice - page 54 of The Master Practice - This is the most effective and efficient way to spontaneously reverse TMS. Dr. Sarno told us to 'Think Psychological'. Thinking psychological will break the strategy of TMS. You no longer focus on the body/symptoms and instead you go psychological. Sitting with Emotions is how you go psychological for emotional work, however the less you think the better. When you sit with your emotions and shut-off the mind you allow yourself to experience repressed emotional energy. This practice will dissipate the repressed tension energy and it dissipates the compulsion to go back into one of your chronic thinking patterns! This practice is how you EXPERIENCE emotions and it is how you STOP or interrupt your repression pattern. If you will make this practice a genuine part of your life and not a Fix or Treatment for TMS you will begin to understand how the lifestyle approach works!

 

[HealingMe]

Hi okaoka.

Yes — this is it. Allow whatever is there. You’ll see that it will pass quickly when you allow it. Don’t try to change it or avoid it. I like to switch to an observer and see where I feel it in my body while it does its thing. You’ll see when you stay present and let it run its course, it passes quickly.

 

[okaoka]

Thank you, Its not so quick at my case but i will try to continue with the allowing. thank you again.

 

[Diana-M]

@0kaoka

allow yourself to experience repressed emotional energy.

I like that you’re bringing up REPRESSED EMOTIONAL ENERGY. This is huge. Repressed means your TMS brain doesn’t want you to feel it. It thinks the feelings are too dangerous for you to have. These feelings are hiding. You have to lure them out and welcome them. This is tricky because your whole life you haven’t done this. You’ve done the opposite.

my emotions are mainly the fear and frustration of the psychical symptoms,

This is what your TMS brain wants you to think. It doesn’t want you to feel the other feelings— repressed feelings. Usually the repressed feelings are anger, but they can also be sadness. They can be about things you don’t want to remember or even that your brain has made you forget. That’s why the free program here on the wiki, the structured educational program helps people remember things that they have forgotten, and the feelings they should’ve had when the event happened.

I’ve had a lot of therapy to explore my past— and I feel that I’ve experienced a lot of emotions. But I still have TMS. The one thing I have NOT experienced in my body is anger: It’s like I can’t feel it and I don’t want to. One of the things they recommend for feeling anger is to visualize doing something physical with your anger. Visualize punishing the person who hurt you, or visualize doing something (or actually do!) something very physical like pounding something or breaking something . This is what helps a lot of people. Because you are finally experiencing the emotion. When it happened, you didn’t feel it. You stuffed it away.

Just recently someone showed me a post here on the forum about using vegetables to get angry. https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/blow-them-up-or-kill-them-with-carrots.27833/

It sounds kind of funny, but for some reason, I like the idea, and I’ve been punishing people in my mind and letting the emotions of anger flow through my body. It has been working, and I feel the anger for once in my life.

This is the kind of work you have to do in TMS healing. This is what that passage is about that you put up there. (Great passage, by the way, I’m going to bookmark it! )

 

[Cap'n Spanky]

What you're experiencing is pretty common. It's very natural to be fearful, frustrated and angry about our symptoms. Fear and frustration (which is considered a substitute for fear) are generally believed to be the fuel behind TMS pain.

So fear reduction is one of our goals. How do we achieve that goal? It's a process and it doesn't happen over night. A few things that go into it include:

• Education - Educating ourselves about mind-body disorders.
• Acceptance - that our pain and symptoms are not structural and therefore, are not dangerous. Somatic tracking can be a good way calm our fear around symptoms.
• Emotional discovery - making that cognitive connection between our emotional world and our pain and symptoms. JournalSpeak is a great tool for this. Thinking psychologically is too. (In your case, I'd suggest that you observe your emotions, like fear and frustration non-judgmentally.... be an impartial observer, as @HealingMe said. Also, try to find emotion behind your fear of symptoms. For example, "I'll never be the spouse, parent, employee I want to be" Focus on those and not the pain).
• Getting active again and living life.

It's a comprehensive approach that overtime, reduces and even eliminates the fear and frustration related to our symptoms.