Day 3 - Just started and not sure how to feel

Hi @SleepyPigeon0608 and welcome.

Below, I'm copying my standard advice for doing the SEP so that you don't allow your fearful TMS brain trick you into avoiding the real work!

I also highly recommend Nicole Sachs, LCSW. Go to my profile page, choose Postings, and at the bottom of the first page, choose "Threads started by" to see recommendations I've posted lately. Look for ones that mention podcast episodes by Nicole Sachs. She really knows how to address the repressed emotional shit.

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The most important advice I can give you about doing the SEP is to take it slowly, and do not let your brain urge you to race through it. One or maybe two sessions per day, along with some time to read posts here on the forum (especially in the Success Stories subforum) is enough. Trying to get through the SEP quickly will NOT result in faster healing. Take it seriously and let the information have time to sink in. Above all, when you get to the writing exercises, do them with a commitment to be 100% honest with yourself. Your fearful TMS brain will try to convince you that you can ignore things that come up - do not let it do that, and write them down anyway, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you. You'll need to keep your "lists" for a short while so that you can write about the topics, but you don't need to keep any of your writing. They call it "journaling" but it's not actually "keeping a journal". By throwing away what you write, you can give yourself the freedom to write whatever comes up from your unconscious repressed emotions and memories, without editing it.

It is very common to experience worse symptoms as you continue to do the work. People report worse symptoms, new symptoms, old symptoms returning, increased anxiety, and sometimes even depression. This can be tough to face, but the good news is that it is proof that a brain mechanism is at work, not any actual physical pathology. Give yourself extra compassion during this time, maybe take a short break from the lessons and do some research on therapeutic breathing and mindfulness techniques, and start practicing those.

As I personally experienced when doing the SEP, it's important that you do not skip over something as "not important", because even small things from our childhoods have significance for various reasons. Finding those things and relating them to your role in the adult world, especially your current stress, is the goal. My own experience of doing the writing exercises in the SEP is that I did not uncover anything shocking or horrifying from my childhood, but I did figure out how my lifelong anxiety developed, and I was able to identify times when I felt isolated due to the way my childish protective brain interpreted childhood experiences and family dynamics.

Isolation and abandonment are big issues when we were small, and they still are to the small child that still exists inside of us. Even if we weren't at all neglected as children, we experience that fear under the most benign circumstances, because that's how we are wired as humans.