Day 8 Treatment so far...

[Guseman]

My TMS treatment so far I think has been going well overall. Especially the first fews days. I feel like I was able to identify a few moments where I was clearly getting a symptom in response to stressful/painful thoughts. What is particularly hard though is getting through the persistent dizziness. The last couple of days I had a few minor panic attacks. I do think I'm dealing with them better - taking a moment to sit down, center myself, and remind myself that this is TMS, not a life threatening event. They still happen though, and it can be pretty discouraging. When I look back to when my anxiety started, however, everything is MUCH milder. Its so hard to keep that perspective in the moment of pain/panic though.
And I do think I uncovered a really key link in my journaling. When I was 14, my family moved to Spain for the year (my Mom got a teacher exchange position). Going at that age was tough, but what I think I had really blocked out was just how painful coming back to the States was. I made really good friends in Spain that I never knew when I'd see again, and no one was all that excited or anticipating my return back home. And in the midst of a fairly deep depression I fell into, several friends broke off their friendships with me, so there was a lot of having to start over and figure out who I was. I think this experience is a major link to my extreme anxiety/panic disorder that I developed when we recently moved across the country to take a new job. The similarities are numerous. So its been really interesting to uncover that, and encouraging.
So, overall I'm improving I think, but this may very well be a slow recovery. I'm grateful that I'm not the only one doing it!

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Hi, Guseman. You are definitely alone in your situation. You quite naturally feel the effects of all the moving around in your life.

I take it that your parents divorced sometime before you moved to Spain. Divorce also can create anxiety.

I am the youngest of three siblings... Our parents moved almost every year because they were evicted from apartments
for not paying the rent. Those were the 1930s Great Depression years. They divorced when I was 7 and that left me with a lot of
insecurity. I remember almost every year waving goodbye to my friends, then having to make new ones in a new part of Chicago.

Since you know that you have feelings of the effects of all the moving in your life, you "just" have to make peace with it.
Somehow decide that it was all for the best and get on with your life. You've been living a lot in the past. It's better to live in
the present moment, not the past or future.You will find many posts about living in the present (called mindfulness) and
there are books and web sites and Yotube videos about it.

Hope this helps some.

For anxiety and panic feelings, do some deep breathing. It's profoundly calming.

 

[Guseman]

Thanks for your reply! It is so true, moving is such an intense process and I don't think I really took the time to appreciate that before.
Its interesting, my parents are actually not divorced, and are still married today. And my relationship with them has always been pretty good - in fact the Spain trip with them made our bond stronger I think. So something I struggled with in approaching this TMS phenomenon was thinking "my childhood was nuturing, so maybe that doesn't fit me". But I've recently started going through some of my old journals I kept as a girl, and realized just how deeply the move affected me. It was such dark time while trying to figure out who I was as a person - and I had definitely blocked it out! There are a few other experiences that I'm starting to remember through this process that I have glazed over in my memory. This is turning into an interesting journey for sure.