Set-backs and winning back your life

“Once this syndrome is going full speed, it is a Juke Ball of Conditioning , triggers, and perceptible REAL new anger generators. This program is a deconvolution. Piece by piece your gonna win back little parts of your life...sometimes there is Huge Normandy invasions, and sometimes you go Island hopping, but it's a ground game...the Ground is your life.” @Baseball65
Call it fate but I just ran into this great quote from @Baseball65. I should write this quote out above and put it on my fridge. (It’s from this thread https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/morning-pain-symptoms.29544/ )

#1: I MISS @Baseball65 !!! I hope he hasn’t gone from the forum. He kept us straight.

#2: it it’s easy to drift from Sarno when you have symptoms for a really long time you start to scramble and look for other alternatives. I can see how I’ve done that over the past year by reading this thread. it all comes down to: Why does it take some people so long to get better? And the answer always is what other choice do you have? if it does, then it does. But I honestly think you can never stop figuring out what’s bothering you, no matter what other modes of healing you follow.

yesterday, I had two incidents that would probably cause any normal person to get really mad. Important people to me were thoughtless with me and mean. True to my lifelong ways, I felt nothing at all while it was happening. it was all stuffed immediately. I felt calm and removed while it was happening. Later intellectually I said to myself, I should’ve been mad. But I didn’t feel a thing and I let it go. Last night getting up to go to the bathroom I could hardly walk I mean at all. it was actually pretty scary. I had the wherewithal to say “something really bothers you right now.” And then I knew it was those two incidents when I went back through my day in my mind.

There are other issues brewing on the surface for me right now and it’s all contributing. my stress level is up. My panic is up. My symptoms are up, my journaling is down. Something to think about! I haven’t meditated in a week. Yesterday, I sat around all day and read a book (drug of choice); didn’t move at all. I’ve neglected all the things that work for me for the last few days and even a week or more. And then I wonder why my symptoms are up. This is exhausting sometimes! Anyway that’s where I am. Back to work.

 

I found it to be really important to pick one thing to do every day without fail. That way you always have something to feel good about yourself for. With me it was my movements/exercises that I do in front of the TV. (Even on the days when I had a disabling flaring of symptoms and couldn't stand, I lay there semi-recumbently on my day bed visualising myself doing those exercises.) With you I proffer that it could be your meditation practise. Remember that dedicating yourself to meditate every day helped you before... and for inspiration you could every day turn your thoughts to how it helped Tamara lose her symptoms and recover.

 

@Diana-M
Through all the things you blame yourself for not doing (and you did it with compassion and impetus not to be harsh or self critical), you actually were doing “the work”. It’s ok to take “a day off” - and it’s good to really recognize habits, patterns, cycles, in a way that you’ll remember how this works for you.
I too don’t always immediately recognize the hurts from others emotionally .. and sometimes I do but choose to respond by not reacting. At first that feels like ignoring, but it’s not. It’s deciding to deal with the hurts later and not let it steamroll over your day.. and to later learn from the situation (I can now put myself into the shoes of the other person and see where the things they do or say come from).
Through all your feeling like you might not be doing the work moment to moment at times, on a grand scale you are making leaps and bounds.

 

God bless you, Cactus ❤️ I really appreciate that. Was feeling sad about it all.

 

Just following up: I did a lot of journaling and I feel better. One thing I did was I first made a list of everything bugging me— and believe it or not there were 39 things. You think that would cause symptoms!? Ha! Yes I live a reality TV show’s worth of drama… so things on my list are not small things. Yet many of them I neglected to process the last week or so. After I made the list, I just started systematically writing about most of the items. I always do it freeform and let my mind flit from one topic to another. If I’m writing about a person, I might first write about what bothers me and then write a small letter to them within my journaling. It’s like barfing on paper… I just keep barfing until I get it all out. I’m not a person who swears, but I definitely plentifully use cuss words to express my anger. I don’t dig too deep on the anger because I found that if I do too much of that, I’ll get stuck in anger mode and I’ll actually feel worse symptoms. Needless to say: I think whenever you’re having a flare it’s really good to step back and see how much stress you’re really going through. Maybe you aren’t giving yourself credit for it. It’s like weathering a storm. Are you going to judge that the ship is rocking and the nails are creaking? Or are you just going to be happy the ship isn’t sinking? Sometimes you have to give yourself a break.

 

I had this self-realization in the last couple of years that I'll share with you, as you might relate. I finally understood that the reason I don't react to being treated badly at first is that I had come to expect it. I was treated badly and carelessly throughout my childhood (as I believe you were) and so I didn't expect to be treated otherwise. I had this pattern of letting it go on for a while, but then suddenly waking up to the realization that I was being treated badly. Then I would usually end the relationship because I was angry about it. Or with family where you can't really end the relationship, I'd just withdraw. I have always avoided confrontation like the plague, because I could never handle the counterattack. And my self-esteem was too low to be able to fight back. There's what feels like an endless amount of stuff to work through when you have Complex PTSD from a very difficult childhood.

I know how hard this journey is. It takes immense bravery to keep at it like you are, like we all are.

 

Thank you, @Ellen. I appreciate your example of healing and your support more than you could know. ❤️