Need Inspiration

I have been working for a very long time on this. Somedays are good, but I never go more than a week before the cycle begins again. I read, meditate, pray, journal, listen to audio tapes. I do everything. But I am so tired of just trying to be pain free. It is literally a full time job. I am proud of myself on good days, but I have more bad days. I am just tired. So tired . Any advice...recommendations..I will gladly take them all. Thank You.

 

TMS is very tricky and if eliminating it becomes your main goal, recovery will elude you. Was it Carl Jung who said "what you resist persists"?

I think it's best to spend about an hour a day working on TMS, whether it's reading books or Success Stories, journaling, meditating, listening to audio programs, doing a structured program, etc. But use that hour to be completely honest with yourself and challenge your thinking and emotional patterns. The rest of the time just go about living your life, trying to relax, and finding joy where you can. Keep at it and recovery will come. You can get there.

 

I sympathise and I empathise with you Satori. It's been an awfully long time for me too. Most of my life and I'm 71. I am glad that I found this programme, and I am learning a lot working through it. Ellen's advice and encoragement strikes me as wise. It's a viscious circle if the route to wellness beomes another pressure.

 

Hello Satori . . . recovery can definitely become a "chore" so to speak. It can even become another stressor to add to the pile that started the symptoms in the first place. To fight against that, I would advise taking as many breaks as you need to - days off as needed, etc. A part of the SEP that really resonated with me was toward the end, about "outcome independence." Essentially, it meant that you have to stop caring about your symptoms. As long as you are measuring recovery based on how well you feel physically, the symptoms are still distracting you. Ideally, if you can get to the point where you live your life regardless of what your symptoms are doing, you will have broken their hold on you. It can be a long struggle. The only real concrete advice I can give to accomplish that is to make sure when you are doing TMS work to keep reminding yourself that the pain is caused by your brain, not scary, not permanent, etc. Those frequent reassurances helped me. Good luck!