parents of little ones?!?!??!!!!!!!!

Made me laugh out loud. Welcome DaleP, and I love your expressions here about children. I used to teach grade school, including special programs for homeschoolers. I learned to love those homeschool families...

 

I relate to the relentless winter weather and just being cooped up at home with everyone. Getting that break is tremendously helpful! What a wonderful shift in daily life. I used to teach middle school, and it is indeed very difficult at times, even more so if it is your own child and you don't get that chunk of time alone. (When I was teaching I wasn't a parent yet, so I could at least go home at 4 and relax!) Our toddler is starting a little "pre" pre school class this week I love that you and the other dad were able to open up and be honest about the difficulty. I really think that is one of the most important things in a healthy well-rounded life. It's not complaining - it's telling the truth and empathizing with another. I'm fascinated by how my family and my in-laws both subscribe to the mentality of being tough and never showing emotions, especially not vulnerable ones. it made me feel crazy when I first married him and saw that no one was expressing anything besides sarcasm and politeness. (You should meet his mother. LOL.)

I too struggled with large mom groups and came away feeling worse after interacting. I find it is just my nature to feel safer and have more clarity interacting one on one, especially when discussing something as complex and emotional for me as parenthood. Really nice to hear your experience, Jimmy.

 

Thank you for understanding! they are indeed crazy people! My husband and I sometimes watch our 2.5 year old and just laugh and say, "he is just a teeny tiny little person trying to figure it out." He is just raw emotion. He wants what he wants! I am amazed you home school all of them! Wow! It's really nice to chat with others on here who understand and empathize.

 

Absolutely Miffy Bunny. lol about Hellllarria - How nice to have 6 nannies! It's nice to hear from you that things get easier, especially after what you expressed about your son. I can imagine acceptance and reframing is a huge part of all of it. I was saying a little prayer last night before bed and said, God what do I need to learn about this pain and these symptoms? And I heard. Acceptance. let go of results. Gah! It's all I can really do about, but I want to do so much more. I often get it mixed up, where I think, if I just didn't have these symptoms I would be so happy, but I am finding the more I feel the feelings and heal and get happy first, the symptoms subside. And of course, even when I feel physically pretty good, I can still be miserable about a whole lot of others things. So it really is an inside job. I still have doubts - need surgery? Nerve damage? Old injury didn't heal right? Those voices Etc. - but just by coming here and expressing my recent emotional pain about motherhood has been a really helpful experience.

 

I think this is a profound way to do your TMS work. I always recommend, to the degree a person is able:
1) Do the emotional work as primary ---as you point out, happiness tends to be more accessible at this level, by knowing peace, self-empathy, less self-pressure, defending against the Inner Critic. More accessible for most than trying to eliminate symptoms as primary objective.
2) Which puts less monitoring/pressure to rid symptoms
3) Which means less symptoms
4) And all this while gently connecting the symptoms with the emotional ---Dr. Sarno said think psychologically, and use your imagination about what the inner child might be feeling when you notice symptoms.
5) The more you do this, the more you might notice correlations between symptoms and emotions.
6) The more you notice the correlations, the less effective the 'strategy' of giving us symptoms works (less distraction, less fear, more "matter of fact"), so they subside.

In my personal experience, emotional suffering is more painful than symptoms, so with your approach Stevie, you're taking your work to where the suffering is deepest, and where the healing wants to occur.