Day 8 emotions, recognize and feel them?

This is my day 8 and I have been doing a very good job at journaling and remembering past occasions were I felt hurt, resentful or just mad. What I don't feel always is the real feeling I had at that time. I do try to remember everything, so that I can go through all of them and find out what is still in my unconscious. I slowly discover new occasions and new triggers. Reading about others has helped me a lot too. I do have the tendency to criticize myself for not doing enough. I used to meditate a lot and I use it now. While I meditate I go through my life, pain and talk to my unconscious and conscious brain. But I always have the impression I don't do it enough...

 

As difficult as it will likely be at first, put your efforts into focusing on what you do "do". The self-criticizism is very likely the result of perfectionist traits - the "all or nothing" mentality that unless we've done "everything" perfectly and achieved the desired results "instantly" then everything that we actually have done was a waste. That's not the case with TMS. Much of the healing actually occurs during the "resting and relaxing" rather than the work.

The feelings will come. When I first started journaling my journal entries of past events read like news reports - tons of details but precious little emotion. It was very frustrating for me. I'm sure, like me, you've had years and years of practice at repressing and hiding your feelings. We do actually get so skilled that we not only hide our feelings from others, we hide them from ourselves. Your sub-conscious is trying to protect you. It's been trained that "feeling" those feelings would be a life-ending event. It's going to take some time to convince it otherwise and get it to start weakening its protective force. It will come, slowly but surely - my first big emotional breakthrough just happened this past week and I've been at this for months.

 

... It's going to take some time to convince it otherwise and get it to start weakening its protective force. It will come, slowly but surely - my first big emotional breakthrough just happened this past week and I've been at this for months.[/quote]

Hi Leslie, it is comforting to know that I am on the right track. I have done so many therapies and failed that my brain has the tendency to get discouraged. I am hanging in there...

 

You're definitely on the right track, I think the trouble many of us perfectionists have with this particular track is that we are used to the "bullet train" that runs 80mph. This trains optimum speed is about 30mph, which is beyond frustrating at first. We spend so much time thinking, "willing" it to go faster that we fail to even recognize the wonderful journey it's taking us on as it travels at it's perfect speed. When I started the SEP I thought that doing multiple days at a time would heal me quicker, that somehow the end of the pain was on day 37, like it was a course of antibiotics or something. I did that for a couple days and it made everything worse (of course). Then I got to the first schedule - take a break and be nice to yourself day - and I couldn't believe what I was reading - take a break? what exactly does that mean?, be NICE to myself? is that a foreign language? where are the instructions for that? So, I let my perfectionist keep running the show a little longer. I skipped that day - breaks, rest, kindness - those are things other people need/deserve, not me. Boy was I wrong. It took me a while to learn to actually listen to my body. It had been trying to get me to take a break for well over a year.

You will get there, I'm certain of that. When you find yourself thinking "I'm not doing enough", think of that as a fill in the blank sentence. "I'm not doing enough ______" and then make sure you fill it in with "fun", "relaxing", "resting", "to be kind to myself". I would be willing to bet that those are most likely the things that you're not doing enough of!