Day 8 question

On day 8, here's to hoping I stick with it all the way and have results. I am not having many issues recognizing my emotions, just questioning if they are the right emotions to be recognizing. Whether it's past issues, present, or personality traits, I think they're equally important, but for me the current issues might be my biggest problem. I really haven't had anything noticeably traumatic happen in my past, maybe 1 or 2 instances have happened that I've thought about a lot growing up, but again nothing crazy. My issue now is worrying about the damn pain so much, and I know I know don't think about it, but that's almost near impossible 90 percent of the time because it's a constant cycle of pain and thoughts. How could I not be thinking about the pain or why it's happening to ME when it's so bad that I can't sit and enjoy my tv or video games for a few hours? It's crazy.

 

Hello...sorry to hear the pain is still so distracting. Indeed it is very hard to ignore the pain until you feel like you've gotten some sort of upper hand on it. My best advice when you can't ignore it is to force yourself to think "TMS thoughts." When you catch yourself worrying about the pain, do your best to replace "Why does this hurt so much?" and "When will this go away" with thoughts about how you know the pain is caused by your brain, how you know its related to stress/emotions, how that stress is not dangerous and okay, etc.

On really bad days where the symptoms just kept coming, TMS thoughts can get tiring. On those days, I eventually just started saying "it's stress" every time I caught myself thinking about a symptom. Keep up the good work with the program as it will help make these positive behaviors a habit. The more you do it, the more you will convince yourself and your brain that the symptoms serve no purpose anymore, and they will start to lessen.

 

I appreciate the post, been feeling good lately and I use the methods you noted, thanks again.