Day 34 Frustrating thing about TMS

It takes time, that's the only thing that drives me crazy sometimes. And it needs so much effort, especially when you don't realise it is TMS at first and got through the doctor's visits and reinforcements so once you figure out it is another TMS equivalent it takes time to feel the first improvements. Other than that, I don't have anything else to ad. I'm an impatient person so that makes it worse for me. Obviously it is very annoying, painful and scary as a syndrome or however you call it.

 

I agree with you. I still am unable to make my symptoms stop even when I am aware of my emotions. This is what I don't understand. I do not feel like I am always repressing emotions yet I still feel pain. But it is less than before so I guess that's something.

For example right now I am stressed at work because I am on vacation next week so lots to finish up. I know I am stressed so what emotion am I suppressing? Fear? That I won't get it all done? I am having some shooting pains in my leg which is a sure sign of stress for me.

 

Hey CatLady 13, it might be for a lot of reasons, it could be because you don't want to leave anything unfinished or because you have high expectations from this vacation, everything needs to be perfect both at work and vacation so you can relax... that's what usually happens to me. Today for instance I got so angry at an email because it made me feel like I did something wrong and the person it was directly connected to choose not to tell me directly but go around and have a third person send an unclear email. I understand it has to go through bosses etc but we are friends and could just have talked about it over a coffee. Now I have all this thoughts in my mind of all the consequences this might have on the friendship, me as a person (I feel like I give in too much to please the other person and not stand my ground, I'm bad at confrontations even though I initiate them in this kind of situations), my low self esteem kicks in, insecurities, all at once and the next thing I know, I feel my heart in my head, dizzy and want to shout. There is a difference though after having been through TMS, somewhere in my soul I know this is not as important as it sounds, I don't have to get along with everyone and if a friendship isn't working, that's ok. Maybe the way I react to stress is changing and the amount of pressure I put on myself is getting smaller. Sorry I ended up talking too much about myslef.. anyhow if you saw even a small improvement, ie feeling less pain, that's already a sign your efforts are working. That's how it happened with me, I saw small steps first and everything improved gradually.

 

It seems to me that TMSers have lots of insecurities and maybe don't like dealing with confrontation. I sure don't like confrontation and tend to feel threatened. I try to avoid confrontation and as you say I will back down most of the time when confronted because I'm too afraid too deal with the consequences.

 

I never learned how to deal with confrontations because my parents always swept the problems under the rug. We didn't know how to have a fight. Sad really.

 

I was too scared to rock the boat because my mother was suicidal.

 

I hope you don't mind if I interject with a thought. When you wrote, "I'm unable to MAKE my symptoms stop..." This is really helpful to read, because I realized that those of us going through TMS are most-often people who have to "Make" something happen to feel like we are "good" or to avoid confrontation, etc. One thing Steve Ozanich wrote in his book was to stop TRYING so hard to feel better and learn self-love and to tell yourself that it's psychological and truly don't judge where you're at in the process. It makes sense.

I'm sorry to read about your mother. That is a hideous thing for any child to have to go through...worrying if your parent will kill themselves. Be gentle with yourself.

I send you both some healing light. Peace.

 

Thank you Marcia for sharing that TMSers like to "MAKE" something happen to feel good.
My family was the opposite, my parents or the family adults always confronted one another, so this could be an adverse childhood experience for me, trying to "MAKE" peace to ensure there is "no confrontation".

 

Hi all, and thanks for the responses. Cat Lady I'm sorry to hear about your mother. That must have been really traumatic and scary. Npoise, I agree every extreme during childhood is not good, it should be a balanced growing up but that is a rare thing. MWsunin12 I never thought about always having the need to MAKE something stop or happen, I do know that I have to make peace when I'm in an argument with somebody because leaving things in the air really causes a lot of anxiety for me and anger. So I'm trying to find a way to let go off things that I can't resolve.

 

Wow, that is spot on, @MWsunin12!

 

Wow! So true. We TMSers are control freaks for sure. We get frustrated when we know it's TMS and that we have the ability to get better and we aren't able to make it stop.

It is absolutely a process and I am starting to see improvements every day as I begin to understand myself and my inner child who was so mistreated and traumatized. I would never put my son through some of the things I had to endure. I am forgiving my parents now because they were and are messed up themselves.

 

It's great that you were able to stop the cycle of trauma and abuse, @Cat Lady 13!

I didn't have anything like what you experienced, but I did retain a lot of anger from my childhood (hello, TMS!) and when I was finally able to realize that my parents did the best they could it helped to dissipate the negative feelings I was holding.