Day 15 painfully waiting

My neck and shoulder are killing me. The pain is worse than it has been is a couple months. I am sure most of it is emotional. I'm away from home helping out some people I care about through a difficult situation. While trying to help out yesterday afternoon I developed some flu symptoms, the worst of which was a severe ache from my lower back to just below my knees. The ache caused me to get very little sleep because I was tossing and turning on a couch all night trying to get comfortable. When I got up today the lower body ache was gone but I could hardly turn my head my neck was so stiff. I have more mobility in my neck now, but the pain between my neck and shoulder (my regular TMS pain location) was so severe I broke down and took some pain medication. I'm sure some of the pain is from the TMS but I'm pretty convinced I aggravated something in that area last night too. This pain "feels" different from the "regular" pain. The "regular" pain is more of an ache, this one is much sharper. If I was home and this happened I probably would have seen my chiropractor today, so I guess it's a blessing in disguise that I'm not able to do that. Hopefully all it needs is time but I'm having a really hard time trying deep breathing and meditating though the pain.

 

Journaling is so important to understanding your emotions that drive your pain. Are you journaling while helping your friends? Are you into the people pleasing mode with them? Did you volunteer because you felt like you had to inorder to be a perfect friend? Are you furious with yoursef for being in this situation? What is going on in your mind that is driving the pain?

 

You're so right Sandy. I was journaling and doing the education program each day while I was helping. In fact, although I was there to help, I was receiving help as well because these wonderful people were NOT letting me shirk my responsibility to myself and were reminding and instructing me to do each day's instructions. I journaled quite a bit about the situation and my anger never took me to the people I was helping. I actually found myself being angry at the other responsibilities in my life that were prohibiting me from being able to help more. Maybe I have more work to do, possibly I wasn't as honest with myself as I thought I was. Several of the journaling exercises have caused me to cry a lot while writing, maybe sub-consciously I was holding back some because I didn't want them to hear me? Do you think it would be wise to go back and repeat those days? I'm already about 75% certain I'm going to need to start this program over when I reach the end of it to get the full benefit. In my defense, I should mention that part of the need for my help was several people with a stomach virus, so those symptoms were very real!

 

Only you can make those decisions. I know I will need to do work all my life.

 

I agree, I will be doing the work my whole life. It's a choice for me, I was so unconscious and now I would rather do this work and live a good life
* hugs