I'm writing all my homeworks here!

I'm using this forum to do my daily homeworks here, so I stay accountable and on track. This is for myself but if anyone likes to comment, it's very welcome!

So here's Day 1: What a life without TMS would mean to me.

• I could exercise the way I want. I have always been really active and enjoyed movement so much, it's such a big part of my life.
• When I get to exercise the way I want, my mood is amazing and I have a sense of power.
• When my mood is amazing and I have a sense of power, my work goes much much better. A large part of my work is creating health related content, coming up with new ideas etc. If I'm feeling down I'm not able to do that well.
• If I'm not able to do my work well, my finances suffer because I'm mostly self-employed.
• Financial stress is one major causes of my pain, so without pain, I'd have more wealth,
• With more wealth, I can travel more and be truly free.
• When I'm truly free, anything is possible. My dreams will be true.
• Another big thing about not having TMS is that I noticed that those few weeks when my TMS was low and my back so much better, I SLEPT so much better as well. Sleep has been a struggle for me for over a decade. Now, first time in how many years, I was able to sleep better... And I was freakin bubbling with energy. I want that back. I want that SO BAD. I want to sleep well, be pain-free, be able to move my body the way I want, and make my business work the way I want.

This is what life without TMS would mean to me.

 

Day 2:
Three things that make me feel angry are:

I have to say this one is hard! I don't get angry a lot. I'm a lot more more sad and depressed, constantly in the grey mood. But let's see...

• Bad night's sleep
• When people are trying to put their words into my mouth.
• When my brother-in-law treats his family like shit. Sorry for cussing. I don't see it too often because I live so far, but when I am there, it really gets my blood boiling to see how he treats my sister, their kids and my mom. Especially my mom.

Three things that make me feel sad are:

• Failing to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish in a day, week, year.
• Wasting my day away being too distracted by my phone. Not getting enough work done. Which, now that I think, maybe caused by the fact that maybe I don't feel like my work is valuable so I distract myself because on a deep level I feel that what I'm doing is not enough and is unhelpful. I think I believe that my services are not helping people as much as I want. Well, then I can make them better, right? Food for thought. Felt good to write it out.
• When I don't sleep well.
• Feeling pity for myself. It becomes a domino effect - I feel more and more pity and more and more sad. I hate my pity parties; I want to crawl out but sometimes they can last for days.
• Realizig how many fears I have and being afraid that I won't be able to overcome them.
• Trying very hard but not seeing success in my business. I've started labeling myself as "the never successful one".
• Seeing how others achieve success in their businesses and I don't. I am actually very happy for them, so my sadness has nothing to do with them, it has everything to do with my lack of success.

 

Day 5:
TMS Lists
Past Traumatic Events and Experiences

When I was 3 years old, my parents divorced. I don't remember much of that time, but I do have some scenes that I remember. I know my father was abusive and I think I remember him hitting my mom once in her face and I think I remember something happen to her teeth and I remember seeing blood. We were in the bathroom. That's all I remember, I know that decades later at one dentist appointment the dentist asked my mom if there had ever been any physical trauma done to her teeth. I feel very close to my my mom and I hate that she had to go through this. I hate that my father did it to her. I hate that he cheated on her. I hate that he treated her like crap. I've actually made peace with my father and so has my mom, but it's still hard. I hate anyone hurting my mom. I hate when my brother in law is a total jerk to her. I hate when he yells at my sister or my mom but especially my mom. My mom has suffered a lot yet she has no victim mindset. I love my mom a lot. I don't know why I am sometimes a jerk to her. I feel like so many people have taken advantage of her and all she has done is worked hard all her life and been an amazing person. She even helps me now. I'd do anything for her.

When I was 9 years old we got a cat. I wanted her so badly. Comes out, she was pretty mean. Sometimes she would attack us randomly, hissing and scratching until our hands or legs were bleeding. At the same time I really loved this cat. It was a weird situation. Every time we had people over, I had to follow the cat everywhere making sure she doesn't attack anyone. And several times she did, and we had to lock her up in my mom's bedroom and make sure no one goes in there because we didn't want anyone to get hurt. It actually was traumatizing experience but at the same time I somehow really deeply loved this cat.

When I was 9, my grandfather died. He just fell over in front of my aunt's house. I remember getting a phone call from my aunt, she was panicking. My mom borrowed a car from a friend, and we drove over. He was there, lying on the ground, his bike next to him, he was dead. It was really hard because we had been good buddies. He had taught me to ride a bike, swim, sing, play chess, etc. I have a feeling that I may have been his favorite grandchild. The funeral was hard and everything was hard. I remember at his funeral last thing before the closed the coffin I would go to him and kiss his forehead. I don't think other kids did that.

Between years 12-17 I did track and field. I loved it and I had big dreams but I was never too talented in it. I wanted to be, I was working harder than anyone else yet getting half the results. There was another girl in our group who was extremely talented but was not interested in putting in nearly as much work as I did. Yet every time we raced, she'd win. From our school races to our county to all the way up to the national level, she was incredibly successful. I was second at school level, quite decent at county level, but on the national level, failed miserably. I remember my first coaches never paying me as much attention as I craved. The other girl, and other kids in our group, got much more attention. I worked out even on weekends when no one else did. Yet I never got really good. I remember feeling like other kids didn't like me. They may have made fun of me. I was sad. I wanted to be good and popular but I wasn't. I felt like I was left out. Yet I kept trying. I would imagine myself winning olympic gold. Getting up on a pedestal and getting my medal. None of this ever came true.

Later we had couple of different coaches. I never got the attention I was craving and felt I deserved. My results were decent at best, but on the national level, they were always poor. I don't know why I stuck with the sport for so long if it clearly didn't bring me the success that I wanted. I was so stubborn. I had read every Olympics books under the sun. Biographies of great athletes when I was really young. Damn I loved to read. I would get lost in all that. I had my idols. I wanted to be like them. My heart was hurting if they didn't succeed, and my heart was bursting from joy when they did. I would spend all my little money to go see championships, every time a famous athlete would come to my country I'd find a way to go and see them. Sometimes it meant sitting in a bus for 4 hours in a freezing winter morning to get to another city to see these guys compete. I was so obsessed with track and field. I wanted to be successful.

Even our best coach, though he treated us all well and was a great person, even he didn't sometimes give me the attention I needed. I remember him going out of his way to check this other girl's performance in long jump - how accurately she hit the board etc. When it was my time to jump, he'd sometimes disappear or be too busy with other kids. I was never the winner. I think I brought this with me for many years. I wanted to be the best, yet I never was. And I probably have this underlying idea that I can never be the best, until today.

I've always struggled with this - wanting to be excellent but never really getting there. I learned to believe that someone is always better than me.

Other traumatic events... Well not too much incidents but ongoing feelings of being less than and always being sad about it.

I remember always feeling that I wasn't popular or liked. I wasn't the pretty girl, I think. I remember going to school parties and not having a boyfriend, waiting for someone to ask me for a dance. Most of the time no one did. I thought all this was because I was a teacher's daughter and they didn't trust me. Or that I wasn't as pretty either.

In my early 20s came the obsessive training and food restriction. I think I had to still make up for everything that I wanted to achieve but never had. Maybe that's what it was. I had never received the attention I wanted so now I went after my body and went totally extreme with it. I lost more and more weight and was finally something, someone to admire. Look at that willpower! And it was empowering, but also I messed up my body is this process.

What else do I remember...
There has been a lot of sad moments, depression etc, but they weren't necessarily traumatic events.

My 4-year relationship was very wrong for me and sent me to long depression. It also happened because I didn't know what I want form life. Who do I want to be, what do I want to do so I just did the linguistics stuff without ever having any true passion for it. I went up the academic career, not feeling very excited about it, but trusting my supervisor (who meant 100% good -- not blaming him at all) and because I had no idea what it was that I actually wanted to do. I spent so many years studying what bored me out, letting myself believe that I just have to do more of it and I'll start liking it. The same with this relationship that I was in. I thought: He wants me, he approves me, I have to be with him! With my PhD too: Look, I can do it, I don't like it but I'm somewhat okay at it, I keep doing it. It was safety. With both of these things, I was finally approved, finally wanted, so I didn't ask myself what I wanted. Maybe I had gained experience from my track and field "career" that the things that I wanted weren't worth chasing because I wouldn't get them anyways, maybe I had taken it as an evidence of my ideas being wrong, and I should do whatever just to get approval of others? I mean, I had wanted approval all my life, and not been getting it for all my life. And so I've been doing things to get others approval for a very long time.

I want to dig this need for approval out of me. I want to approve myself. I don't want to feel sad and feel like I'm unable to achieve success. Right now I'm often feeling like I need to succeed but I can't. I think about it all the time and at the same time, compare to others and think that I can't probably achieve that. But why not? Why am I letting these old traumas hold me back?

I want to be free from this heaviness and feel light. I don't know if I've ever felt truly light but I want to have it now. Even my back pain, it feels heavy. Tight hand heavy. Pretty much how I'd sum up most of the experiences that I've written here today.

 

Day 6
Things that cause me fear:

Something happening to my mom, my mom getting sick or dying
Something happening to my husband, dying
That I will not be able to make my business work and I will never have enough money
That I will have this inner "loser" chip on my back forever
That I won't be able to fully break through and be successful