Having trouble feeling my feelings

I don’t think I am having much progress connecting my pain to my emotions. I make a story about it. This happened at this time and this is the pain that happened during this time. That is not really what I need to be concentrating on. I need to connect to the emotions. I need to fully feel those emotions in the body.
I am so scared of feeling emotions right now. I have had a difficult time recently. I have depression and anxiety. And apparently they are all wrapped up together in this awful manic state. Up until recently I had meltdowns everyday, multiple times a day sometimes. Through some coping mechanisms and some changes to my medication I am doing better now. But I still have the occasional meltdowns.
It is so hard just to try and get to the root of all of this because I worked so hard just to get stable. My defense mechanisms are working overtime to prevent me from feeling these feelings. I am very scared of falling apart again. How can I fully feel these scary emotions and still remain stable?

 

The thing you need to understand is that emotions are safe and normal. We all have them and we are meant to experience the whole range in order to be healthy and live life fully. If you can look at some of the emotions that your brain deems as scary or unacceptable (like anger or guilt or sadness) without any judgment , you will find it quite freeing. Just because we have "negative" emotions does not make us "bad' people . It simply makes us human and the more we can acknowledge those emotions, allow ourselves to feel them and then let them go...the more fear and anxiety goes down. You basically let yourself out of the mental prison you have created. Sometimes we feel guilty for having horrible thoughts or feelings about people we love, for example. So we believe we need to be "punished" for that and we beat ourselves up and create all this inner pressure and tension and criticism. All of that unconscious guilt gets expressed through the body and manifests as pain or tightness or spasms or burning or whatever other sensations. Embrace your emotions because without them you would not be truly living. Stop judging them, feel them and let go. Believe you are a good person and you deserve to be happy because you are and you do!

 

Thanks for the encouragement!!

 

It seems you feel you're in a bind here. I am not sure you really are. While I support what miffybunny said, I also have another thought.

You might work, with very good effect, with just this knowledge, in the framework of TMS. You might start with just the fact that you know you have difficult emotions, difficult-to-feel emotions, emotions which scare you. From there, use this known repression, and the fact you know you fear certain feelings, as the explanation for symptoms. You have direct experience of the emotions in the past, and your present fear of them. Use this understanding in combination with your understanding of TMS theory to "explain" your symptoms. Remember that they are harmless in themselves. And remember that the foundation of TMS work is to understand the true cause of symptoms. I think you largely already do.

This might be a way to start your TMS work very gently. A lot of work can be done without feeling more, but with simple understanding. You probably feel and know enough to "think psychologically" quite effectively. Perhaps just that: every time you notice a symptom, you connect it verbally or in writing to what you imagine is going on down deep. Dr. Sarno said this --"use your imagination."

For example, just this knowledge can help.

I can say that for me, one of the big turning points was realizing that what Dr. Sarno was saying to me was that my foot pain was happening because I did not want to be in direct contact with my own inner hell realms. When I thought of the great suffering I had down deep ---my direct experience in the past of terror, self-hate, grief, shame, superego activity, it made absolute sense that something in me would rather be in pain than have direct, full-time awareness of these hell realms. This understanding of how his theory applied directly to me landed like a bomb shell in my thinking.

Andy

 

Thanks! That really helped me understand my situation better. That really helps!

 

I use this video to help me find some feelings. He is asking how having symptoms makes you feel, but I just focus on whatever my feelings are in general. Sometimes I don't know what to label a feeling, but it is getting easier. My therapist says not to worry about that because pressure doesn't help, and it will improve. Just feel the feeling.






All the best, Lizzy

 

That makes me feel so much better! Thanks for responding!