What about repressed *positive* emotions?

I find myself wondering throughout this protocol: what about repressed positive emotions? At first glance, it may seem ridiculous. Who would repress a positive emotion? It's almost universal, in fact. And particularly prevalent for those of us who suffered abuse in childhood/had a narcissistic parent who may have been threatened by our success or happiness.

"Better not mention this in case someone is jealous." "What if s/he doesn't love me back? Better not risk potential rejection or even trust this infatuation." "Can't get too excited about the A on this exam -- what if I fail the next?" "Don't get too excited, you might jinx it." "Who the hell do you think you are, believing you might get that job -- find requited love?" " How can you be happy when we are in an environmental catastrophe?" "Why are you telling us about your new job when your cousin just suffered a miscarriage?"

And on and on and on and on -- I'm quite sure I have repressed exponentially more positive emotions than negative ones! We are often as stymied from expressing positive expression as the inverse!

 

Welcome @carola! Indeed, it's true that a significant hurdle for almost everyone as they start this work is not realizing how hard we are on ourselves. It seems to be a characteristic of the human condition. It's clearly much deeper and far more entrenched in anyone who has had adverse childhood experiences.

Neuroscientifically, this negative bias is apparently part of our primitive survival mechanism - the same mechanism that causes harmless physical sensations (ie TMS symptoms) for the purpose of distracting us from "dangerous" emotions. In other words, we're wired to be negative and always worried about the next bad thing to come along.

We're basically just one of many biological entities, evolved primarily for survival and propagation - except that somehow, the genus homo ended up rather unfortunately cursed with awareness, and went on to evolve these over-thinking sapiens brains.

Yikes. I think I better go to bed. It's been a long day

 

Thank you so much for this response. Yes; I do believe that we are wired for a negative bias -- which is the reason I am stopping the program. I am on the seventh day and really surprised at the focus on anger, pain, sadness, and writing for 15-20 minutes about every painful and traumatic experience we have ever endured. This is the way therapy was run in the 1980's and has been shown to be ineffective at best, damaging and retraumatising at worst.

I believe in John Sarno's message and I believe that our brain is causing much of our pain and disease processes. However, I do not believe that this comes from repression. Rather, I believe that the pain is signaling to us that something is wrong. We can work with our body and mind rather than fearing some deeply-embedded subconscious process: we can be allies in this search and help ourselves find a happier place rather than overly focus on the pain, sadness, and abuse of our childhoods. Again, modern neurology has shown that this only keeps us depressed and anxious. That we need to teach ourselves how to rewire the circuitry in our brains to a higher and happier place by learning to experience these emotions. Pain and sadness may be all too familiar: it is happiness, love, and creativity that we are in need of learning how to feel. Neurons that fire together wire together.

I love John Sarno's work. I believe our fractured psyches are responsible for disease processes. But overly focusing on negativity is not the way. Especially for women.

Men who have been trained to ignore emotions might benefit from a program that introduces them to their emotional palette. For women who feel all too well and intensively, this program's focus on painful emotions is unhelpful. Were Dr. Sarno alive, today, and able to study modern neuroscience and cognition, I think he would agree.

Namaste.

 

Gosh, from an outside perspective, reading your post sounds like your subconscious is doing a heck of a job saying to itself, "I'm not going to let you dare look at those negative emotions! No way. No entry. No coming in!" which it supplies to you in the form of, "It's been proven not helpful. Looking at it will just make you feel worse. It's ineffective. It's damaging. DON'T GO THERE."

It's not a gender thing. We women tuck things down there as well. If you think you "feel all too well and all too intensively," that is still the stuff on the surface.

If you love John Sarno's work, then you should also love his solution which is, literally, focusing on the hidden painful emotion of rage/anger.
Otherwise there is nothing to look at in John Sarno's work.

I hope you will come back. You don't have to "do the program" but you can still work on things from a Sarno/TMS perspective.
But it sounds like your subconscious has done an effective job from its perspective of NO ENTRY into the area you need to enter.

 

Thank you. I spent two decades in talk therapy, diving into painful emotions. And I recognize the necessity of this. But painful emotions alone will keep us trapped. All studies on neuroplasticity over the past two decades have demonstrated this.

We need both: to study our full complement. Painful and positive emotions. Both can be repressed and both can wreak havoc. If you continually repress positive emotions, you will not dare switch jobs; enter a relationship; or allow yourself to feel pride in your work or self. These are in need of excavation as well.

What I am saying is that both are necessary: the full complement. Repression is the key factor in both cases. And we must begin to chisel out our full psyche with its manifold spectrum of potential to feel.

Namaste.

 

Sure, all is good.
The anger/rage is the one that will stop physical symptoms, at least according to TMS theory as described by Dr. Sarno.

I personally don't think talk therapy with a therapist is the same as writing and letting yourself get deep into your subconscious.
If I was talking to a therapist, I would never say, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I hate you. You Fucking Asshole!" - especially when talking about someone I like or love!
But I do that on paper.
I would never speak to a therapist in the voice of my childhood self.
But on paper I do.
Or have a conversation with myself as a teenager.
But on paper I do.
There is so much I do on paper that I would never do with a therapist.
And when I do, my nagging pains and other symptoms dissolve.

 

Just throwing out another thought, which is that Dr Sarno himself never thought that his program was going to be effective for individuals with what today we call ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences. He rejected quite a lot of applicants out of hand because he did not feel they would benefit, and he said that in many cases psychotherapy was more likely to be needed.

My sense is that his program participants suffered from pretty ordinary "run of the mill" mid-life crisis TMS with pretty ordinary childhoods. This is a gross generalization, of course. There will always be exceptions to every such generalization!

In any case, it really doesn't surprise me at all that someone with a background of extensive therapy would not find value on this work. One size does NOT fit all. And that's fine - there's a ton of value for many others, as we see every day.

 

Great point!

 

Loved this. I have often said, when I am getting better, I probably sound like someone with Tourettes. But Unlike the person with Tourettes, I am actually doing it with intent and focus....and I am benefiting from my non-stop stream of hate and profanity because it is aimed somewhere...at The TMS like it is a possessing entity, or at some person I was previously unaware of how angry they made me.

One of my friends has an horrible case of untreated TMS, yet he streams profanity all day long.... He is obviously 'in touch' with his emotional nature.....But Missing John Sarno's well developed education program and focusing that anger, it's just sort of 'there'...I had to let him go from work because he could NOT stop it in listening distance of clients...people don't dig that in their home.

..and that is why only the people who do this work really understand each other.

I was in therapy on and off for years , but with no direction other than my current obvious 'problem' (GF, drugs, crime, etc) it was 'meh' helpful...than after learning about TMS? I went to a Therapist about my anger and he said I was the most motivated patient he had ever had...I had limited funds, but more importantly, I was Afraid of TMS..nothing like some good old PAIN to motivate us for change, huh?

This very popular meme is a good mantra for my TMS:
"Fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Keep fucking off until you get to a gate with a sign saying "you can’t fuck off past here" climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off........ forever."

love that...pain free!

 

Hah! Good one

 

Holy moly, I just listened to Nicole's May 3rd episode with 25-year old Michael Porter Jr - an NBA player with the Denver Nuggets who had three back surgeries by the time he was 23. It sounds like he never had psychotherapy, and although he read Healing Back Pain a couple(?) years ago, he was still experiencing crippling flares - until he found Nicole's work last summer (2023) and got to meet with her (lucky guy because she doesn't have a private practice anymore!). He was subsequently able to play a full season without being sidelined with back problems - for the first time in a long time. They talk about the power of JournalSpeak and so many other good things. I'll be posting about it separately with show links, but y'all engaging in this discussion know where to find her podcast.

 

In my experience, I struggle with allowing and accepting negative as well as positive emotions. And now that I have worked on the anger and rage, I find I have a long way to go to feel good about myself. Self compassion helps. I think Carola makes a good point.