Not Safe Enough

I have been working through the 'fixes' foir the chronic pain of TMS for a little over three years. I believe it developed in childhood as I was too scared to do and say a lot of how I was feeling. My parents always seemed to be so agressive towards me, for one reason or another.

I have been writing about my anger and the pain only seems to be getting worse.

I now believe my mind isn't willing to release the emotion (and thereofore the pain) as it doesn't feel safe to do so.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should try? I have just started EFT/Tapping, and am investigating going to London to have a 1-2-1 session of FasterEFT.

 

Hi NIClubber,

I think this is an important insight. It seems you are having clarity and empathy for yourself in this. This is a great place to start. Can you feel your fear, and be with yourself, hold yourself in this fear? Learning over time to observe, feel, and allow fear is a good path, in my experience. This means it will have less power to block the feelings from awareness.

Andy B

 

It's a long slow process.... accepting it and keeping very simple has helped me in the process. I use different parenting styles for my inner kid/TMS/traumatized self. Sometimes gentle attachment parenting and sometimes I put the whiny complainer in her room, for time out, but always held safely by my higher self.
Seeking is enough here... we don't need to find too much. I can complicate my recovery into operatic proportions.

All best wishes, tap away! It helps. I would just tap on what you wrote above about your parents. There is likely a logjam of shame and rage in your body around being unacceptable. I love EFT... have written articles about it. Meditate daily. Do the mindfulness and guided meditations available on this site. I think half of us are doctors and therapists of one kind or another. I have found such kind wisdom here over the years.
Keep writing to us!
Writing and venting is so therapeutic!

Bg

 

I have to find something that will take away the fear of something happening if I do release any of the emotions. I have another EFT session on Saturday, and hopefully that will help, but I will work on Tapping until then.

Thanks in advance for any other suggestions.

 

I can relate to "not feeling safe enough." It's something that came up for me through EMDR and somatic experiencing (SE), and maybe when I did EFT (tapping), too.

I've been addressing my pain-triggering emotional baggage for over 9 years now. By recognizing my anger, fear, and shame, I brought down my pain significantly back in 2007/8. The safety stuff took longer to surface.

Tapping helped me have less intense reactions when talking about disturbing things, but didn't bring down my pain any further. But that doesn't mean it won't for you or that it still wasn't an important step in my overall process of addressing emotions and then letting them go.

But either way, if you are in a safe place with a therapist or with yourself, hopefully you can allow yourself to let the feelings come up. I think that's what made it possible for me. In fact I think you just made me realize why maybe I'm better able to acknowledge and release scary emotions with therapists rather than by myself: I don't know that I feel safe enough by myself. I'm not saying everyone needs a therapist to do this work, but maybe some of us need that safety net that we haven't been able to provide for ourselves yet. But maybe just that realization for me today might help me and allow me to do more work by myself at home! (Thanks!)

I've done a lot of writing about what has come up when I've worked with therapists (through bodywork or with psychologically based therapists), but I've been very hesitant to do the kind of journaling as Nicole Sachs' details in her book (based on Sarno's suggested approach) on my own. I think I feel scared to go to some places (in my mind) all by myself.

For a little more on my experiences with addressing feeling safe, I found a therapist who does both EMDR and SE (per Peter Levine) and that helped me discover that feeling safe was important to my continued healing. I do think this type of work (EFT, EMDR, SE) can help, but to date, I've found it to be less dramatic in relieving my physical pain than mindbody myofasial release bodywork, although I did have a couple sessions of EMDR and SE that did bring down large spikes in my pain. However, maybe these methods of addressing emotions that are stuck in my body were less dramatic to me because I'd already made significant progress (got much of the low-hanging fruit via reading Sarno and going through intensive myofasial release mindbody work).

Shame and feeling a lack of safety seem to be very deep-seated in me and I feel they are hard for my body to let go of. Sometimes the process is slow.

When I realized not feeling safe was deeply rooted in my subconscious, I started employing mantras about being safe when my symptoms are bad. I probably should do this more frequently than I do since I still have daily pain, but since my symptoms are so much more tolerable and manageable, I sometimes only remember to think about safety (or other deep emotions) when my symptoms flare up.

I don't know if all this is of any help, but I thought I'd at least share my experience since it feels similar to what you described.

(If you're interested, I've written about my experiences with all the different things I've tried, including EFT, EMDR, SE, MFR, etc, throughout my healing journey. See the "treatments" tab on my website: www.healingfromchronicpain.com. My site is just about my personal experience, but I like to share if it can possibly help even one person.)

Best of luck to you!

 

Can't get onto that Website at the moment, but I will try again later.

I'm just scaresd that nothing will clear the pain, just like none of my behaviours in childhood ever got my parents attention for more than a few minutes at a time.

My mum has recently told me that because of 'The Troubles' (we live in Belfast, Northern Ireland), and her and my dad were originally from England and were considered 'outsiders' from everyone around us ... and that's why they did what they did. They cut me off from all of my friends from down the road - ones that I would have spent playing with, and had a real connection with. She is only now starting to see how horrible she made my childhood. I was always too scared of them to say anything about how I was feeling. They would get angry at the smallest thing that I or anyone else would do.

 

Another great insight. So important to see where/how your mind gets caught...