Day 2 - anxiety

Hi Archie, and welcome to the TMSwiki forum! This totally makes sense to me - and I suspect to plenty of others. I think it's a combination of anxiety and procrastination - and the procrastination is all about fear. Fear of failure, or fear of going down the wrong path and wasting time, or perhaps fear of doing it wrong and missing the boat - take your pick?

The beauty of the SEP is that it's structured, and it's just one day at a time. Or more than one day, if you need more time to absorb it. There's no wrong way to do the SEP - as long as you're DOING the SEP. It's a lot of new information, so give yourself room and time to breathe and take it in.

Also, consider the fact that your brain might be trying to sabotage you. Seriously - I saw my brain do that when I was doing the SEP (back in 2011). I discovered that it was trying to keep me from writing down some old thoughts and past incidents that popped into my head during the writing exercises. It literally tried to convince me they were stupid and unimportant, and indeed - they didn't seem very important. Yet I realized that they were things I didn't really want to remember, so I ignored the messages in my brain, forced myself to write them down anyway - and it turned out they were very revealing about my personality and relationships.

So my advice is fight back against your unconscious brain which does NOT want you to examine things that make you uncomfortable. Be completely honest with yourself, and force yourself to look at everything that comes up. Your unconscious fearful brain will realize that doing so is NOT going to kill you, and in the end you'll be relieved and glad that you did it.

Good luck, and keep us posted!

~Jan