Day 8 My Story

I am going to give a brief, my-life-up-until-the-pain recap by saying: I grew up raised by a pastor and a public school music teacher. I also grew up with undiagnosed ADHD - diagnosed at age 38. I’m finding that, while this is not the only root of my TMS symptoms, it’s one of the biggest contributors. This all resulted in: goodism, people pleasing, taking care of others to the detriment of taking care of myself, perfectionism, the list goes on…


My mom always said I “got sick a lot” as a child. I started having back pain when I was a teenager, but it was never seen as bad enough to evaluate further. I’ve had dizzy and fainting spells since I was 10. In 2007, when I was 23, I started having crippling, debilitating cervical and migraine headaches. They became more frequent as the years went by, along with gastrointestinal issues, occipital neuralgia, anxiety, depression, joint pain. I started to investigate and got nowhere, and did my best treating with over the counter meds and missing out on life events and such on days when I felt too bad. My TMS journey (where I was beginning to acknowledge that that’s what was going on) actually started in 2018, and I shared the rest of my story in a comment on Nicole Sach’s Facebook group. I’m going to share those words here:


I think journaling is when reframing takes a backseat. The feelings are repressed because the body feels they are “dangerous” or “bad” or “wrong”, when they aren’t. Journaling allows the feelings and thoughts to all flow free, absent of judgement.


Many of my symptoms started or increased in severity when I worked remotely as an executive assistant to a motivational speaker/paleo food guide/CEO-expert person. This was in 2017 before “toxic positivity” was seen for what it is - toxic. A lot of “don’t let your brain hear you say no” or “take out the negativity and negative language and stigmas out of your thoughts and speech, that’s what’s holding you back from success” etc. He taught people those mindsets, worked with other people who promoted those mindsets, and I helped him develop courses and websites and books about remaining positive and not allowing negativity in because it’s “such a big block to personal growth and progress”. Sure I have repressed emotions from when I was a child, but HOLY COW the amount I buried and repressed and labeled as “bad” and “wrong” and “unnecessary” and “not useful” during that year - it’s staggering. I also internalized a lot of that and carried those views with me after I left that work (which is a story all its own). I tried TMS work in 2018 but I wasn’t ready to accept it, because I’d just spent a year burying emotions and thought processes and editing my words and feelings before expressing them, and helping teach others to do the same.


When I came back to TMS and journaling this year, I was finally ready to accept and admit that the reframing and self-editing my words, my thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings, my emotions, my mindset is what fed my body’s need to protect me with physical pain and symptoms. Having a safe space to accept all of my feelings and thoughts and beliefs, unfiltered and unedited, is when I started to see significant symptom relief. I read Sarno’s Mindbody Prescription, Healing Back Pain, Nicole Sach’s The Meaning of Truth, and I’ll be reading Alan Gordon’s book next.