Weekends

[veronica73]

I've been feeling a lot better lately, like I have almost no pain at all and I find I'm feeling less afraid of pain cropping up. I have noticed though that weekends seem to be the toughest time for me. I either end up thinking about pain/emotional stuff more than usual on the weekend or I end up working/being busy on the weekend and feeling more stressed out that I haven't had enough downtime.

Each of the last few weekends has been a bit better than the last and I have a few fun things to look forward to this weekend...still a small part of me is a little afraid again.

Anyone else have this? Insights?

 

[Linnea]

I´m happy to hear your progress, the same goes for me!

I tend to get headaches on Saturdays, never understood before what that was about, but now I of course realize that it´s all about tension during the week that suddenly lets out. The last weekends I´ve made bigger efforts in having a few fun things planned in, instead of just laying at home feeling sorry for myself. My advice is to try and distract yourself by having something fun to do, but also make sure you have som alonetime to just relax and be. The fine balance between you-time and activity-time, hard...

 

[BruceMC]

You should be so lucky as to only have to wrestle with your demons on the weekends! Being alone self-employed/semi-retired in my late parents' haunted house means that I have to face my internal emotional problems and TMS pain in a kind of post-Oedipal laboratory environment on an everyday basis. But if I've made so much progress becoming pain-free in this place, you should be able to handle weekends just fine. But good luck to you and it sounds like you're making real progress in the right direction. Still, you're going to have to face this stuff sooner or later (I sure was able to evade it successfully a long, long time), and it's certainly better to face your problems in a situation where the sharp details and contrasts make them stand out more clearly. I think an amateur psychologist friend of mine once put it this way: If you keep putting garbage out in the alley next to your house, it's only a temporary solution to the problem. Someday it's going to stink so bad, you'll really have to go out in the side yard and get rid of it for good. Funny, but so, so true.

 

[Forest]

It is so great to hear that all three of you are doing better. Whenever you can begin to see the pain fade away and feel this approach working, you really begin to gain confidence in the approach and begin to gain hope that you will fully recover. Veronica, you may still have some symptoms on the weekend, but as you mentioned there really isn't anything to fear about it. Follow MorComm's advice and investigate what aspects of the weekend may be increasing your symptoms. One idea would be to spider write and simply write down words that pop into your head when you think about the Weekend as fast as you can. Spider writing can help you pinpoint some areas that you may still need to address.

I am so excited to see that all three of you are improving and I hope you all keep up the great work.

 

[veronica73]

Thanks everyone...I'll have to try the spider writing too.

 

[BruceMC]

Yes, Veronica, spider writing came as quite a revelation to me: made explicit a lot of repressed irrational emotional content. I found it instructive if after I did a spider write to take the various nodes and try to connect them into sentences. Surprising what they say about the way your unconscious mind "thinks" and "feels". As Dr. Sarno notes, your id is not necessary very nice, but it's also brutally honest about its unmet needs.