Thank you,
@diletant, that's very helpful!
The reason I recommend the ACEs quiz is because it actually gives you more focus for "doing the work". I had a better-than-decent upbringing with nurturing and progressive parents, and thank goodness no religious BS. But you may have heard Nicole say, as she often does, that "no one escapes childhood unscathed". I already knew that I was born with anxiety due to the circumstances of my mother's first pregnancy - so I was starting with that awareness, along with a realization from doing the Structured Educational Program back in 2011, that I experienced isolation during my childhood, somewhere around age 5 and so. I really put all of this together when I did the ACEs questions. Even though I couldn't even manage a full score of 1 from the list of adverse childhood experiences, the question about isolation triggered a realization that I actually undoubtedly WAS isolated for several years - a bit emotionally neglected, in fact - due to having been the anxiously-desired and possibly over-nurtured first child (after three years and a miscarriage) for almost two years, who was suddenly and rudely subjected to three younger siblings who came along every couple of years after me! LOL. No doubt my dear parents were quite overwhelmed (they only wanted two, as it turns out - but this was the fifties. My father had a vasectomy after the fourth - did I mention progressive?!) Anyway, realizing all of this explained a LOT, including why my mother would take me out of school every once in a while when I was about nine or ten, for a movie and lunch at the drive-in. I think she was making it up to me when she finally got the others into some form of daytime care (I would have been 9 when the youngest got into nursery school).
Long story short, in the realm of adverse childhood experiences (the ACEs) none of this was earth-shattering or remotely traumatic by any stretch of the imagination - and yet the combinatnion of anxiety and brief isolation affected me and informed my emotional responses for the rest of my life. And indeed, I spent a lifetime with minor TMS symptoms that would go away as soon as a medical professional pronounced me to be perfectly fit and healthy, other than an obvious tendency towards anxiety. About which I did nothing, until I hit age 60 and my mind caused my body to react fairly radically to the inevitable existential crisis brought on by impending aging and mortality. Enter Dr. Sarno (and Claire Weekes and Gabor Mate) to save my life. That's the short story. Then there's my RA diagnosis as a result of multiple extreme stresses in the spring of 2020 (the pandemic was only one) and I have a bunch of opinions and successes around that. I'm trying to maintain my equilibrium in spite of the trash heap that was 2024 and is obviously not getting better any time soon. I struggle with disappointment that the world is in dire shape as I contemplate (at age 73) that it might not turn around in what remains of my life. This is all big-time shit that is much healthier to acknowledge than to repress - which of course is what basic TMS theory is all about. I'm still in better shape at 73 than I was at 60, thanks to this work.
Answer the questions. Just do it, and be sure to be honest with yourself, which I think is part of your struggle. Just a Yes or a No. If you do the online one at the NPR link, you'll get a whole-number score. Technically my score is 1, but I feel like it's really more like a 0.2-something since I only experienced mild emotional neglect for 4 or 5 years out of 18, with 18 being the arbitrary age cutoff.
worked a bit with the Curable app & podcast. Worked on many of the exercises like somatic tracking & meditation, but avoided the journaling, as in the past whenever I’ve tried to journal it turns into negative spiraling, mostly I guess because of the depression.
I know that you know that you can't just "work a bit" and you definitely can't avoid, but my dear, you also can't beat yourself up for avoiding and resisting. This is not YOU, this is your brain on TMS. And your brain, for whatever reason, is really resistant! It is doing whatever it can to get you to avoid emotional vulnerability, because emotional vulnerability is terrifying. It is also required for recovery.
Since Nicole was recently interviewed on Curable’s podcast, I’ve checked out her website, YouTube, & podcast, and thought maybe I should give the journaling another try. Have tried the JournalSpeak, but it very quickly spirals down with no revelations about what I’m angry about except myself.
Look, Nicole is a terrific resource (spoiler: she interviewed me on one of her podcasts, and I'm a super fan) and wouldn't you just love to be able to see her as your therapist? Sadly she doesn't do that anymore, although she does have at least two self-directed programs you can do if you are willing to make the difficult commitment to keep doing them even when your brain is trying to get you to quit.
As Nicole says all the time, you gotta do the work. "Believe, Do the work, and Practice kindness and patience for yourself" is her mantra. But first you need to learn to love yourself, because if you can't love yourself enough to know that you deserve to heal, you will not recover. It's that simple.
If you go
to the podcast page on her newly-reorganized website and put self compassion into the search box, you will get a list of episodes where self-compassion is addressed. Here's one from 2020 and the title may resonate. I need to copy this over to another thread that's currently going on...
#85 S1 Ep85: Episode 85 - When The Person You Hate Is Yourself
Oh, and she also has a 2-hour recorded mini-retreat specifically on self-compassion:
Recorded Mini Retreats | BreakAwake by Nicole Sachs
For the record, in my experience, somatic tracking ain't gonna do it (it works temporarily, and is particularly useful for someone who has recovered and has honest and vulnerable self-reflection skills for temporary flares).
Random and inconsistent meditation ain't gonna do it (I believe that it can bring significant relief if you're willing to devote yourself to achieving a lengthy and deep practice every single day)(personally, I'd rather journal!)
That's a lot - sorry! Too much to absorb at once. Take it one step at a time, as we we say around here.
~Jan
) - I picked up that recommendation somewhere along with the way, and since I typically resist the meditation 
it's a decent way to wrap up.
