Dear
@Lookingup
Stress.
That’s what keeps it there.
Understanding that stress isn’t an exterior thing but an interior thing.
It takes changing your mindset, thought patterns and changing reactions to responses. Examining what generates your unconscious stress by observation. I think it can be a variety of things: is it fear? Fear and general anxiety in life? Fear of reoccurrences, of things sticking around.. or is it getting stuck in personality trait cycles? The difficulty to slow down and unload your nervous system -to separate from internal stress for even moments of the day, or is it simply the inability to face the stressors; we often feel like we are but it’s the subconscious -the unconscious things we don’t want to face that Sarno says can lurk.
You have done much, much work, and I feel for you. Your situation must be stressful. Suggestions to try: write a list of all current stressors and examine it in quiet daily. What about that list may you not be willing to fully face? Can you get a step towards what lurks?
Have you fully considered that you have pulled some muscles falling, and with stress tension are simply really uncomfortable and focused on pain because it’s easier to deal with.. but that given a week or two you can heal, reminding yourself you have healed? Pretty much changing your reaction to the pain to responding with some self-compassion and recognizing the truth: that you are the master at healing symptoms!
Meditation - have you tried it to separate yourself from the stress, even for a minute? To help break the constantly firing neural circuits.
“My husband has cancer” is a very plausible reason for neck pain.
Lastly, are you able to consistently employ tms “work” in your life, beyond when you feel you have tms symptoms? Perhaps looking at your long-term, ongoing ability to disconnect to stress, how personality plays into things (especially with your current life situation).
For some folks, it seems like tms work is one and done. For others it seems our mind/body connection just needs to be part of your daily self-care.
Consider all the support you may need to partner with your husband through his healing. Sometimes it’s just time for some extra help. I am personally finding EMDR incredibly helpful. So is doing “tapping” at home on my own with some YouTube videos. They help me to accept and face emotions and choose how I’m going to respond.
