Fear of exercising

Hello! I know that outside this forum it can sound weird, but I'm scared of exercising. And not only, I'm scared of everything that can change my heart race. Everything. First, physical movement, but also for example discussion or conflicts. My therapist told me that also this is part of the symptoms. if you have been there, you knwo how much frustrated and stuck and fearful you can feel...
So i'd love to knwo something about you, and , hopefully, some success story. Thank you!

 

One of my biggest symptoms is fear of exercising. Graded exposure helps: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/day-11-pain-reprocessing.16616/ (New Program - Day 11: Pain Reprocessing)

 

What can help is looking at the root of the experience. You say you are fearful of exercise, of movement ect. Let's just stop at fear. There is a resistance to the experience of fear. There is fear in your mind, and it is expressing itself in all these ways in your life. Who knows how it got there, but it is there. So what do you do? You go straight to the root, little by little and with support. You go into the fear, with your body, and you feel through the illusions you have created in your mind. Then you see the fear was mostly shadows you were making into forms. Like when you are a kid and you see scary shadows and interpret them as monsters. Fear only pursues you when you run. So, if you stop and get curious about the fear, it will take care of the root of all those other problems you listed, because fear is at the core of it.

www.thetaowithin.com

 

"fear" is a word that i use in a lot of fields, maybe I suppress it, but it's there and it's unheard and it becomes more and more rooted. Yes, totally agree. Thank u!

 

yes, step by step...thank you!

 

I had this happen and I ended up gaining like 12lbs because I didnt want to exercise. I took small measures, like walking first, then light hopping and sometimes I would stop if I got scared but I would always get back to it. It was a process. When I felt really afraid I would keep exercises but I would sometimes have my mind on an image of seeing myself as very strong and healthy. I would do this before exercising or before bed over and over. Eventually there were days where I would forget that I was scared and I would walk farther. Over time that hopping turned into light jump rope, and then my walks turned into hikes. Certainly there were times when I still found myself overly focussed interally and I would just orient myself to something like peoples faces or movements around me or if I was outside I would orient myself to nature. this helped bring me out of my internal focus a lot. Over time my nervous system would sort of do it automatically. Being overly afraid can put one into a freeze response and we feel unable to move or think or concentrate.

 

thank you, reading this is very helpful for me!