Just rambling: Inner turmoil and restlessness

Hello all,

I’m back with another post today and hope to gain a bit more perspective by writing everything down.

An old friend of a symptom has decided to grace me with a visit again: restlessness. I had a similar bout of this when I started the SEP last year (just wayyyyy worse than what I’m experiencing now).

I cannot, for the life of me, be alone with my thoughts right now. They are racing all of the time (and not even consciously, the conscious thoughts are actually quite nice, just a lot). The biggest thing though, is that I’m constantly stressed, even though I don’t have any reason to be.

I just got out of a pretty stressful time and, frankly speaking, did not take any time for myself afterwards. And now I can’t because my brain decided I have to be a busy bee, otherwise I start to slip into negative patterns again (One of the biggest banes of my existence is my executive dysfunction, because if I’m not keeping busy, I will just lie in my room without doing anything for hours, all the while screaming at myself to get up and JUST DO SOMETHING).

And I can see how this is negatively impacting my symptoms. My leg pain, for example, showed up again and I’m pretty sure it’s because I have the feeling that I need to be everywhere on time. Suddenly all my appointments are categorized as super important, can’t be late, even if it’s just catching up to friends in the library (who’ve been there for hours and really don’t care when I join them).

I can’t even enjoy anything because I’m always stressing about the next thing, even if that thing is literally just going home. Even just this text that I’ve written so far had to be proofread 4 times, because I just can’t concentrate my thoughts. But whenever I think about taking a break or actually plan it I just can’t. And I know what all this is: the perfect TMS-cocktail of perfectionism, overthinking, people-pleasing and all my other bad habits (like being way too harsh with myself, reading too much self-help again and comparing myself to other people). But I just don’t want to do the work right now. It’s so frustrating and there are so many things I could journal about, which doesn’t even matter because the most important thing is doing this work.

I literally journaled about not wanting to do the work yesterday and threw a total temper tantrum about it but I guess that was not enough. I guess I just want to see the results immediately.

…I think I just realized that a bit of doubt crept in again. Well, there is my perspective I wished for. I really can’t stop laughing right now, it’s just so obvious when I write it down like this. Brains on TMS are really funny sometimes.

 

God I love ur avatar... This chubby little guy certainly knows that it is OKAY to do nothing!!
I do get what you're saying though. Sometimes when I am criticizing myself, I walk to the mirror, look at myself and say aloud 'I love you' ten times. Sometimes it really quiets my brain down.

 

Hi Gigalos!
I agree, sometimes i just come here to look at my avatar and remind myself of this perspective. Just tanning in the sun and relaxing... that's a life well lived!
I had a lot of these moments the last few days. Yesterday I decided to go on an impromtu skiing trip with a friend, fell asleep to anxious thoughts about not being able to keep up or injuring my knee any further (had a skiing accident 2 months ago and went to the doctor yesterday and it still hasn't healed) and literally woke up in the middle of the night to very intense knee pain.
It's really frustrating to do everything "right" and only seeming to get worse, but i guess that means i have to practice my outcome independence again.

 

Oh no, you misunderstood! It was absolutely hilarious and i literally told everyone today how obvious my brain is making it (after not falling for it, i woke again later with complete body pain). I just meant it's really frustrating knowing what the brain is doing, doing the work and still not getting results. Because I didn't react to the symptoms or thought much about it but it still does not help, since the symptoms are still here today.
Maybe an aspect of trying to control and not being able to surrender to the symptoms.