What you are ignoring could kill you

Diana-M

Diana-M

Beloved Grand Eagle
I’m a seasoned TMS warrior. I’ve been through years of therapy. I thought I knew everything … until….
I came to this forum and I was directed to “look in plain sight” for sources to my TMS.

What does that mean? It means: something is making you so mad that you have TMS to keep you from realizing you are mad. This person or situation is something you think you can’t live without. Or it’s a person or situation that would be incredibly painful to get out of your life. Or it might even seem IMPOSSIBLE to get this out of your life. The pain, embarrassment, guilt, or whatever is too much. Your TMS brain is saying, “No way. Let’s just keep you distracted.” Keep the status quo.

Family relationships and marriages; jobs you think you can’t or shouldn’t replace; obligations you think you can’t get out of or find relief from; these are all suspect areas. They are “hiding” in plain sight because YOU are hiding them!

It’s not easy to come out of denial. I figured out what was hiding for me by looking at my life when my current symptoms began. What was I doing? What was happening in my life that seemed good? Where was the LIE?

I found 2 big lies so far. One is my sister. She’s a narcissist. I knew nothing about narcissists. I discovered what it’s about by googling her traits. The awareness dawned slowly. I started putting the pieces together. I’m so good at stuffing all feelings and all disappointments and even at overlooking abuse. It was all right there. She was abusing me. And my body was angry FOR me. I was just acting like it didn’t hurt.

My symptoms are extremely disabling. As I fight off this scenario, they are flaring. My sister is not letting go without a fight. And it’s a dirty fight. She’s getting more desperate to not lose her little pawn. The whole thing sucks.

But I’m heading toward the light.

I owe a lot to the support I’ve received from this group!
 
@Diana-M
Have you watched this guy? I think this video may help. If you are now stuck thinking and worrying about next steps and the what if’s of dealing with your sister (another distractive obsessive thinking thing.) this may help:

Sure you deal with her and your x but from experience, you need to keep redirecting your mind to doing stuff for your peace of mind: hobbies, fun etc. It helps so much!
 
@This is a feeling process, not a thinking process.” We have to feel the grief. Stop avoiding the grief. I’m using thinking to avoid the grief. I can see it. I am stuck. This will help.

It’s just really hard to “break up” with a sister. And have the family (my grown kids) question why you’re doing it. There’s a little part of me that just wishes this would all stop. She would stop hurting me enough that I could keep her. She’s the last person I have left in my nuclear family. So I’m also grieving all of it: my family. How bad it was. The lies I believed. The amount of pain is horrendous. I’ve been through so much pain already. I guess my TMS brain doesn’t want to do any more of it. But I’m in it now. I can barely walk. I’m in pain every day. I’m drinking the poison one way or another At least, if I grieve, there will be an end to it. I can move on and heal.
 
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Diana-M said:
There’s a little part of me that just wishes this would all stop. She would stop hurting me enough that I could keep her.
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Bingo! There's your internal conflict. You want your sister and you don't want your sister. You want to control her behavior so it won't hurt anymore. But you can only control your behavior, dear Diana. Write about this until you can't write anymore.
 
Ellen said:
Bingo! There's your internal conflict. You want your sister and you don't want your sister. You want to control her behavior so it won't hurt anymore. But you can only control your behavior, dear Diana. Write about this until you can't write anymore.
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Thank you so much! I will start writing about this! I really appreciate all your help!
 
Ellen said:
Bingo! There's your internal conflict. You want your sister and you don't want your sister. You want to control her behavior so it won't hurt anymore. But you can only control your behavior, dear Diana. Write about this until you can't write anymore.
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Boy oh boy did I get some good stuff last night from journaling!!! It’s all coming together. Though it’s exhausting ( especially for you dear patient souls listening to me go on and on about this) it dawned on me this morning, that when I GET this. Totally get it. And grieve it. I’ll be DONE with this forever. Cuz I sure won’t have anything to do with another narcissist! You guys are amazing! I honestly love you.
 
Cactusflower said:
@Diana-M
Have you watched this guy? I think this video may help. If you are now stuck thinking and worrying about next steps and the what if’s of dealing with your sister (another distractive obsessive thinking thing.) this may help:

Sure you deal with her and your x but from experience, you need to keep redirecting your mind to doing stuff for your peace of mind: hobbies, fun etc. It helps so much!
Click to expand...
I bought this guy’s book (it’s free on Kindle unlimited) and signed up for his free class. It’s all about becoming authentic. I really love how he describes things. Great info, @Cactusflower ! Useful for all TMS healing of any kind. I’ll report back. Thanks again!
 
Diana-M said:
She would stop hurting me enough that I could keep her.
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Diana-M said:
it dawned on me this morning, that when I GET this. Totally get it. And grieve it. I’ll be DONE with this forever.
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As you know, my husband had to cut his parents out of his life as they were narcissists. Back in 2019 he found out about something that they had done that was extraordinary hurtful (something that they had deliberately kept secret from him for many years and had intended to continue to keep secret from him) and, I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was so monumental that even he couldn't ignore it (not like he had ignored the narcissistic abuse that they metered out to him throughout his life).

Anyway, recently, over 5 years from when he stopped having anything to do with them, my husband suddenly said to me that they had been in his thoughts and he was sad and regretful as "they weren't all bad" and he also said, "I wonder if things would have been better if I had done everything they wanted me to do for them?" (e.g. they wanted him to climb on their house's roof to fit some replacement windows, when my husband doesn't like heights, is not a roofer or a window fitter and only has basic DIY/handyman skills, and they had the funds to pay for a professional to do the job for them!)... No, they weren't "all bad" - they didn't murder anyone - but for his whole life they had tried and usually succeeded in manipulating my husband, unduly criticised him, played with his feelings and tried to make him feel bad for not doing their bidding (and used his refusal to do the unreasonable things that they asked him to do as an excuse to favour his 'golden child' brother).

Intellectually my husband knows that his parents didn't love him because narcissists don't love anyone other than themselves and they get their kicks from playing with other people's lives and feelings, and he can see how they played and toyed with him, but emotionally, he still wants things to be different. He wants them to be the pair of caring and loving parents that, very sadly, he never had... and because he doesn't express his feelings very much, it became apparent to me that he hadn't fully processed and finished the grieving process. So, I just wanted to tell you this and to say that you're on the right track in realising that you need to grieve (and fully allow yourself to go through it all as hard as it will be... don't be like my husband and bottle any of it up). And I think that a part of that is to keep reminding yourself that you couldn't change your narcissist sister's behaviour... narcissists may alter their behaviour for a while, but they never stop hurting people... give them an inch and they take more than a yard.
 
@BloodMoon and @Ellen
Thank you so much for the kind words and the support. I’m so sorry to hear about the pain your husband has suffered, Bloodmoon. One of the new things that has arisen from my current journey down this discovery is that my father was also a narcissist, along with my sister. My mother favored my sister and abused me. So yes, the loss is terrific. I had no one, really.

And we lie to ourselves to feel loved. Because a child wouldn’t be able to survive that knowledge of what’s really happening. But I’m strong now, and I can survive it. And I can get past this and heal.

I was even thinking today that I would go through this TMS all over again, and all the pain and confusion and even fear— to get to this growth and knowledge. It all was true whether I accepted it or not. It was always true. Acknowledging it is the beginning of healing. And my TMS forced me to see.

Love to you both.
 
I'm so far behind in so many great discussions...
Diana-M said:
@This is a feeling process, not a thinking process.” We have to feel the grief. Stop avoiding the grief. I’m using thinking to avoid the grief. I can see it. I am stuck. This will help.
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Whew, this is pretty profound! Is the quote from the video @Cactusflower posted? The lightbulb moment sounds like pure Diana ;) Using thinking to avoid grief - that's it in a nutshell. @Ellen brought up the importance of allowing sadness and grief in another thread that I saw today, in another profound statement. And I also saw where I missed a question from you (@Diana-M) about HOW to experience vulnerability. This is it. It's about allowing the scary emotions that you reeeealy want to avoid.

So many amazing discussions lately, I'm kind of overwhelmed by the largesse!
 
I haven’t visited this forum for a while. I have noticed that so many in the “TMS Medical Community”, Schubiner and others, have now taken up the mantle of “neuroplastic pain”. I read “The Way Out” by Alan Gordon, so I get the transition for so many. It appears to me to be based on the “Boulder Back Study” and offers a much more simplistic “way out of pain”. In my mind the whole neuroplastic pain way of thinking deviates a great deal from what most of these people initially learned from Sarno. There is no mention of inner rage. It’s all about a brain griped with fear. Get rid of the fear, the pain goes away. I was glad to come back to this forum and see that there are still others who believe, as Dr. Sarno taught, that our subconscious minds can wreak havoc on us and that it manifests in distinctly physical ways. I have been dealing for 8 years with “sciatica” and “piriformis syndrome”. It comes and goes so I know it isn’t structural. I picked up Parkinson’s Disease along the way. But more recently I have even come to question that diagnosis. I will spend more time here and I am also re-reading The Divided Mind. Thanks for giving me a place to vent. Jim
 
I wonder what defines narcissistic behavior. My partner and I have been struggling. We express our love to each other, but things always tense up in recent years, especially when we try to express our negative feelings about things towards each other. The anxiety of hearing others' negative emotions produces physical symptoms almost immediately. We seem to feel that the listener has to provide some type of solutions for the "complainer" to feel better, "solve the issue so the complainer won't feel bad again", overtime, that burdens us because a lot of times we don't feel we could provide the solutions, so we feel anxious, helpless, hopeless, incompetent, overwhelmed, urge to escape for peace, etc. It is not exactly a complaint, but the person who feels vulnerable and wants to express the fear, anxiety, etc. and wants the other just to listen and give love. Would the reactions we have towards the other's vulnerability considered as narcissistic?
 
louaci said:
I wonder what defines narcissistic behavior. My partner and I have been struggling. We express our love to each other, but things always tense up in recent years, especially when we try to express our negative feelings about things towards each other. The anxiety of hearing others' negative emotions produces physical symptoms almost immediately. We seem to feel that the listener has to provide some type of solutions for the "complainer" to feel better, "solve the issue so the complainer won't feel bad again", overtime, that burdens us because a lot of times we don't feel we could provide the solutions, so we feel anxious, helpless, hopeless, incompetent, overwhelmed, urge to escape for peace, etc. It is not exactly a complaint, but the person who feels vulnerable and wants to express the fear, anxiety, etc. and wants the other just to listen and give love. Would the reactions we have towards the other's vulnerability considered as narcissistic?
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I’m really not an expert on narcissism—although I’ve learned a bit recently. Your situation doesn’t sound like narcissism in my opinion. But it sounds like you could probably use some techniques to help you relate better. Maybe a counselor?
 
I agree with @Diana-M.

I would add that there might possibly be some selfish behaviour going on, e.g. expecting the 'listener' to provide solutions for the 'complainer' to feel better, but that in itself isn't narcissism.

These are six common symptoms of narcissism that can help you identify a narcissist/narcissistic behaviour:
  1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
  2. Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur.
  3. Needs constant praise and admiration.
  4. Sense of entitlement.
  5. Exploits others without guilt or shame.
  6. Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others.
 
louaci said:
I wonder what defines narcissistic behavior. My partner and I have been struggling. We express our love to each other, but things always tense up in recent years, especially when we try to express our negative feelings about things towards each other. The anxiety of hearing others' negative emotions produces physical symptoms almost immediately. We seem to feel that the listener has to provide some type of solutions for the "complainer" to feel better, "solve the issue so the complainer won't feel bad again", overtime, that burdens us because a lot of times we don't feel we could provide the solutions, so we feel anxious, helpless, hopeless, incompetent, overwhelmed, urge to escape for peace, etc. It is not exactly a complaint, but the person who feels vulnerable and wants to express the fear, anxiety, etc. and wants the other just to listen and give love. Would the reactions we have towards the other's vulnerability considered as narcissistic?
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That's co-dependancy. My husband and I do that. You simply begin to give over too much to the other person and end up feeling (or thinking you feel) their emotions and perhaps thoughts. I have worked hard on this. If my husband feels angry or annoyed, so be it. I don't provide any kind of solutions unless he specifically asks, I just let him wallow - it's his right to simply feel his feelings, isn't it. I don't have to own them, or solve them or anything at all. If it irks me that he's in a fowl mood - well that's my own right to feel fowl. It is really hard for my husband to deal with this. When he wants to control my mood he will stumble around with solutions and solving the situation so I just remind him there is nothing to solve and remove myself gently and kindly from the area fairly quickly.
 
Cactusflower said:
I have worked hard on this. If my husband feels angry or annoyed, so be it. I don't provide any kind of solutions unless he specifically asks, I just let him wallow - it's his right to simply feel his feelings, isn't it.
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My therapist is always trying to get me to realize that I have boundaries. And my husband has boundaries. We aren’t the same person and we don’t have to feel each others’ feelings. His feelings belong to him. (And boy, he has a lot of them!) it’s hard for me to detach sometimes.
 
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