Day 13 It got weird

I woke up yesterday with a stuffy nose, then a runny nose later in the day. I thought maybe I was getting a cold since I had a bit of a sore throat. Of course that then triggered the urge to cough, so I dealt with that all day. Still I kept with my plans of the day.

As the day progressed and I felt more tired I felt a little more irritable since my tasks weren't totally done. I ended the day doing something I enjoyed but the cough was at its highest. My right side of my nose was plugged up. When I got home and was ready for bed I could barely breathe. I just figured I needed to relax a bit.

I woke up in the middle of the night with face pain, sinus pain and jaw pain. I couldn't breathe from my right nostril at all. It fit the criteria for a sinus infection. I decided to journal and to some tension release exercises I learned from an SE practitioner. My journal entries revealed my anger, and fears pretty quickly. Hot tears ran down my face. I learned at one point that tears (usually hot ones) when analyzed tend to show that they contain higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Whereas other tears are just water. I knew something needed to come out.

At the end of my tension release and journaling I went back to bed. The pain started to subside. how is this possible? this thing felt like a full blown sinus infection. I laid in bed, gave out a couple of hard sneezes and my right nostril cleared up. I could also feel the right side of my face, kind of inside where my sinus is open up. I looked up how sinuses work, and there are little muscles that either tense and flex to stop flow or relax and shrink to allow drainage. So again the TMS label works. It's like having a little muscle spasm in your face that causes a lot of pain because it backs up.

So this is a big win. When I can think about how my emotions and thoughts affect my body and am able to not think that there is something actually wrong with me, it's a big win. It brings me closer and closer to how I should continually be thinking. My body is responding to the stimuli I provide, the problem is that I am not acknowledging the stimuli enough as being this or that which causes this emotion to arise.

 

Well done! It is hard sussing all this out but SO worth it! I now whenever I get a pain or illness think - 'right, what is triggering me? what might I be stressing about, or dreading, only if I find nothing present do i consider that I might be ill or have damaged something. It is really rare - usually - it is my mind.... I am faced with unwanted stress or having to do something I don't want to do.... !!