So much anger and don't know what to do with it

Hey All,

I'm going through one of those periods where I really feel stuck. I feel stuck because I've been trying to resolve a lot of my TMS for almost 5 years now. A lot of my TMS is manifested through anxiety and numbness and tingling in my feet. The anxiety is the more exhausting TMS symptom for me. I know that a lot of my TMS anxiety is from the fact that I have a lot of suppressed anger. The frustrating part is that I journal so much about my anger and don't seem to feel any better. I feel like I'm not getting better because I have so much suppressed anger that can last me a lifetime. Does that mean I have to spend my entire life journaling about the things that have made me angry? I guess I don't know how else to approach this given that I constantly feel like I don't know what to do with all this anger. If anyone has any advice, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
ikreim2

 

Hi ikreim,

It seems you know quite a bit about your emotional make-up, which includes anger. You have also connected your anxiety to your anger, that it is a distraction so you don't feel anger, or at least you see there is anxiety about the anger. You also see that the anxiety is a more disturbing (better distractor) than the physical symptoms. And you are journaling about the anger, and other feelings. So far so good.

To deepen your experience of anger you might try to feel it more in your body. This was an excellent post that might give you more ideas around experiencing feeling, without acting it out either on yourself or others!

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-do-i-feel-emotions-without-reacting-to-them.8191/

Another comment: how much are you attached to the fact that your anger and your suppression of it are the cause of your symptoms? And that you need to change your inner life in order to be free of symptoms? In other words, maybe it is just OK to have a lot of anger, and do the suppression/repression thing. Dr. Sarno said that we had to simply be aware of how the TMS symptoms are caused. (And you seem to have a very specific understanding of the dynamics.) We can't really stop the processes, and we don't have to. It may be that you've put yourself in a bit of a jam thinking your particular flavor of inner life has to change! If you relax and just use awareness to connect the inner life to the symptoms, this might be a big help. That was the main process I used.

Andy B.