Day 8, First Post

Watching Forest's video on Day 7 was extremely helpful to me. His use of the word "activated" was perfect, perfect, perfect. I can use that now and feel when I am being activated as opposed to calmly allowing. That's huge. Otherwise, progress has been slow but good. My RSI symptoms are on and off but now mostly off, or mild. Occasionally I feel stressed or put-upon, activated, at work and they start up again, so the pathways are clear. My hand and foot pain, same thing. My knee pain is ever-so-slightly improved. Lots of insights with the journaling. Thank you to everyone who worked to create this program.

 

That's great that you are getting the benefits and seeing how it all works. Sometimes the process is slow and other times quick. I think we all have our own 'tempo' that leads us to heal as we need to.

 

Thank you, hecate105. More from my Day 8 homework:

What emotions are connected to my pain?

I am able to find the emotions connected to my carpal tunnel. Anxiety, feeling internally or externally pressured—feeling that I have something I have to accomplish and I'm terrified that something is going to interfere with my ability to do so. Any kind of resentment or overwhelm. And even just too much attention to my hands and arms, can bring on the symptoms.

I am not having as much luck yet in relation to my knees, although last night I had a dream that was knee-related. A dream about deciding to not accept a position "at the top" and to give it to a competitor, knowing that the position would be hellish for me because of (among other things) my knee pain. Can it be that my knees are my excuse for giving up that imperative to strive to be the best? Was I so sick of that imperative that I had to create pain to save myself? I'm going to just let that question live for a while.

 

I'm no expert on dreams, but wouldn't attribute too much to your knee pain dream. I think knee pain was
just on your mind and that made it crop up in your dream. The less you think about knee or any pain, the better,
so says Steve Ozanich, and he knows.

 

Thanks for the reply, Walt, but this dream opened up a huge amount of insight for me today with regards to the onset of my knee pain and the circumstances surrounding it. So it was helpful.

 

I did just receive my copy of Steve's book in the mail however and am eager to start it, so I may wind up agreeing with you, Walt. But right now I'm still at the stage of trying to convince myself that this is TMS and not physically caused.