Day 8 Underlying emotions

I'm now on week 2. I think I skipped a day in there somewhere when a big storm was supposed to come through the Pacific Northwest where I live. Luckily, the storm turned out to be much less worse than anticipated and I didn't lose power, although a tornado did hit not too far from where I live.

So anyway, today's question to ponder was whether I'm recognizing the underlying emotions connected to my pain. I think I might be. I'd mentioned on my last post that I realized I was holding a lot of anger in. Today, my journaling addressed my personality trait of being self-conscious and wanting to please others.

I realized with today's journaling how tied in it all is. My anger is tied to my need to please others and my perfectionism, my need to follow my set of values strictly without any compromise, and my inability to do perfect work due to factors beyond my control. I realized how I've been torn in ten different directions the past five or so years of my life, and I let the pressure and frustration all fall on myself.

I still feel like I might be too early to say whether that's connected to my pain or not, but today, my pain has been fairly low, and it did ramp up during journaling, so perhaps it's a sign I'm onto something.

On another note, I've gotten a sharp pain my foot after really not doing much at all to trigger it. Told myself it was TMS and walked a good half-mile yesterday, and I had no pain by the end. It keeps coming back though! So I've got another challenge on my hands it appears, but one I'm confident I can work through.

 

What a wonderful realization. Profound. All of Dr. Sarno's work points to this kind of summary of inner tension being the root of TMS. Great post!

 

Hi, Dan. Perfectionism is hard on yourself and everyone else. I work for a book publisher and he is the most demanding person I know, yet he is far from perfect himself. I hope you can work on modifying your perfectionism. I bet it will help a lot to heal your pains.

The person you really just need to please is yourself. I bet nobody tries to please you as much as you want to please them.

It's great that you are walking so well and without much or any pain. Try to keep that up.