Day 8 Thinking psychologically and the symptom imperative

Happy New Year all!

A little update on my progress as per day 8...my back pain has gotten much better! I've been doing the SEP (missing a few days here and there) and watching videos/reading lots of success stories, also currently reading The Divided Mind, which I find enlightening. I've started noticing if I do feel some pain upon waking up or part of the day that I need to ask myself "what is bothering me?" rather than focus on the pain itself. It's been very helpful though intense at times as I discover some issues I had repressed or not focused on.

I have also been experiencing some of what Sarno calls the symptom imperative. As my back pain has lessened i've gotten a few other things intermittently like headaches and nausea. Rather than worry something is wrong with me i've been trying to journal, take it easy and meditate and think psychological to figure out the issue.

I find that sometimes it is easy to figure out what emotions have caused my pain, but other times the pain or symptom persists for a while. Once I figure out what the emotion is, I feel relieved and make sure I either journal about it or talk with someone if possible. I have gotten frustrated if the symptom is persisting but have tried to distract myself with another activity and come back to thinking about it later.

Has anyone else been experiencing a decline in their original pain but gotten other symptoms as they go through the recovery program? I'd love to hear other's experience with this.

 

Just about everyone, MBPT! To this day, I will get some weird little twinge or other symptom that I've never had before, but it just makes me laugh.

 

good to know! I guess this stuff never really goes away but once you know how to deal with it it's not such a big deal

 

Exactly! We can't forget that the TMS mechanism is a survival technique of our primitive brains, so we have to train our brains to overcome it.

I don't think it was ever a very good technique, but it did the job back when we didn't have to survive very long. It really doesn't serve us at all well in the (mostly) safe modern world, with life spans that far exceed the 25-or-so years we were originally designed to live!

The way I've been putting it for the last five years, is that a few of my symptoms still show up from time to time, but my relationship with them is completely different now, and they no longer control my life or prevent me from doing everything I want to do.