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@karinabrown, healing really is about recognising how your personality and your reactions to people and events is the core of the problem. Sometimes it is a lifelong way of being, sometimes it is more culmulative and based around stressful events, and sometimes a combination of both. Either way TMS is the result of veering into certain emotional and physiological states repeatedly because we have not yet learned how to self-care and self-soothe.

It really is that simple. Healing is a creative commitment to living in the moment, moment-by-moment and responding to what is happening mindfully, compassionately and authentically.

This is why changing your situation leads to temporary relief and not recovery. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who introduced mindfulness to the West, wrote books with great titles. One is 'Wherever You Go, There You Are' which clearly explains how running away from situations is pointless. Another one is called 'Full Catastrophe Living' which teaches us that Life will happen but it is how we deal with it that counts.

I used to think that if our elderly parents miraculously became well and my partner miraculously recovered, that my stressful tms-inducing life would fade away and I would achieve the 100% cure I wanted. This is just another twist of perfectionism. In the perfect world no one ages, no one ails, no one dies.

No one has that life because life is not like that. It has its stages and seasons. Most of the people here are at the time of life where we are assuming the role of Elder. Where the care of our elderly rests upon our shoulders. I know of people who like to pretend this kind of stuff isn't happening. I know of people who have left their partners because their partner become devastatingly ill or disabled, and I know people who assiduously avoid spending time with elderly parents because they cannot handle the decline. These people are immature and their signature avoidance affords them little protection in the long run. Ultimately they have to face themselves and their fears, the exact same fears and TMS issues we are facing now.

So if we cannot control life and we cannot control the stressful events life brings our way, what can we do?

Become emotionally strong. TMS recovery is not the absence of stress, worry, anxiety, pain and fear but rather the ability and the skills to not be demolished by them every time life ebbs and flows. We learn to move with it. We learn to sleep and rest rather than ruminate. We learn to move our bodies and calm our minds. We learn to open our hearts again and again and again. And we see the fruitlessness of trying to keep life on the straight and narrow. Life is Nature and there are no straight lines in Nature. Nature is not perfect. Life is not perfect. Healing is not perfection.

So yes, the TMS veterans here will tell you that Life still roughs them up sometimes but you learn to stop taking it so personally because this makes your mind rampantly negative, and you learn to treat every single thing with care and with kindness, and in so doing you cease veering between extremes, you soften and stress diminishes. Life becomes more peaceful. Then, when tragedy or trauma strike you are better able to cope. You are resilient. You become someone strong enough to hold the fort but also strong enough to ask for help.

As @Caulfield says you stop trying to heal because there is nothing wrong with you. Instead you begin to allow your emotions their integrity and their full expression. That really is all it is.

Plum x