Day 9 Day 9 & 10 - A bit of relapsing

Looking at where you're at in the SEP, I think it was pretty close to the same time that I really started exploring my past emotions as a very young child, and learned how to nurture that young child, the way we all want our mothers to continue nurturing us.

During the writing exercises, I would find myself listening to my brain trying to convince me to NOT write certain things down that popped into my head - typically because they were too embarrassing/shameful/guilty - but I could "hear" my internal dialogue, saying "oh, that's not really important, don't bother writing it down". It was hard, but I forced myself to write them down anyway, as much as I didn't want to.

Of course, I knew I had to explore those in the followup phase of the exercises, which again, I really did not want to do. But it was very freeing to finally do so. I didn't uncover anything earth-shattering. There were no big revelations, but I did explore some of my childhood fears and anxieties, which allowed me to go back further, and that's where I finally experienced myself as a very young child - maybe four or five years old. I was very surprised to discover just how awkward and isolated I felt at that age, and putting together the bits and pieces of our family history, I was able to figure out that I got a lot of very anxious attention from my 30-year-old first-time mom (who'd had a miscarriage), for the first year and a half, until my brother was born, followed by two more kids - which of course totally changed the family dynamics, and left me kind of on my own, since I was, of course, a "good" girl. Not only did I have to grow up, like we all do (and Freud is probably not wrong when he theorizes that this alone is a cause of lifetime rage) but I also quickly lost at least 75% of my parents' attention very early on - a completely normal occurrence - but how can it not affect the oldest children in a large family?

So here I am - I had a pretty good, quite normal and functional childhood, with two parents who loved and cared for us. We didn't have any big traumas or family deaths - not even of the three grandparents that I knew. And yet I've spent a lifetime dealing with chronic anxiety, and, looking back of course, TMS symptoms off and on all my life, until they became overwhelming and debilitating the year I turned 60 (in 2011).

I believe that in my case, my mother's excessive anxiety (married late (for that time), miscarriage at 28, an only child with no experience of small children and a first-time mom at 30), was the cause of my excessive anxiety. My father was a classic perfectionist, and I can see now also suffered from anxiety, and in his case, a not particularly functional childhood (I suspect his unsuccessful father may have suffered from fetal alcohol brain damage, and his mother was a cranky old bitch - and not a very good grandmother).

Anyway - long story short, this is an illustration of how far back you can (and probably should) go to experience your youngest possible self, and the emotions, fears, insecurities, and rage felt by that youngest self. I found it really useful, and eventually very freeing. This also illustrates how someone who has not experienced trauma, neglect, or abuse, can still end up with debilitating symptoms of TMS.

And let's be clear: anyone who HAS experienced any of those dysfunctions in childhood - or even something as non-life-threatening as a judgmental or controlling parent, is going to have a harder time with TMS than those of us with loving parents.

Also, this s*** can go back for generations, so it can't hurt to examine the upbringings of your own parents.