Pressures of the Christmas season

Hi, it's been a while but it feels good to be posting something again. How are you guys doing?

Christmas season was super different for me this year. It came with a surprise gift of the strongest TMS back pain symptoms in a long long time, left me on the bed for a couple of days.

The funny thing was before the pain hit me like a truck I thought I was completely in control.
I'm also transitioning from one psychotherapy session a week to no more therapy, plus I was also not journaling because I was lazy and I thought I didn't need it.

Had my last psychotherapy session just after this bout and we stumbled on the fact that I was rationalizing my feelings and understanding where they were coming from, rather than just feeling the emotions.
This left me a little confused because I guess I was under the impression that knowing the source of my TMS symptoms was enough to keep them at bay or get rid off them. Turns out that I'm obviously not quite there yet or my processing is still dependent on feeling these emotions and having an outlet for the rage.

Was quite a new experience for me because it was this build up of pressure and emotions of the holiday season that probably tipped over the top and hit me. But once it happened I wasn't too confused about why it had happened, all the reasons were quite obvious to me but the way I looked at the reasons changed.

Before the pain hit me I was more rational - ah I feel some anxiety and tightness in my muscles, it's because I had an argument with my mum or there's just too much happening that particular day and I'm trying to be in too many places at once.
After the pain bout I looked at all the stressors a little differently. Almost with a kind of sympathetic surprise like - oh sorry body and brain my bad didn't realize that those pressures pissed you off so much and caused you so much pain, I was not letting you get things out and just brushing them away.

Still it's been a weird one. I feel like the pain, pressure and symptoms from the season are still having some kind of effect or hold on me even till today, even though it's been a while. Been frustrating in that sense, because I'm waking up expecting symptoms and scanning excessively, which has not happened for quite a while. The realization for me personally would probably be that the intention is key, the way you're viewing or approaching anything is key. What is the mindset, why are you actually doing something, how much care or kindness are you approaching the situation with. This is more important in my view, rather than am I actually getting to the right cause of the symptom or do I know why I am in pain right now.

Sentence that helped me was - observe don't engage

also I've been shouting back at my brain a lot more recently because I'm quite furious at the fact that I have to be dealing with symptoms. Piss off, let me be.

 

Now that I think about it, if I view this from the pov that my unconscious mind is literally a child.
Why would an approach of being logical, rational or analytical work with it?
Imagine giving all the logic and reasoning to a child, where you are completely in the right and it makes total sense to do it the way that you have explained it.
The child could still start bawling and crying it's lungs out because it wants to. Doesn't matter whether you are wrong or right. The kid wanted to do it his way.
Then it makes sense that your conscious mind is a parent that uses a mix of kindness and firmness to deal with the child, often 'tricking' the child into doing what he doesn't want to do just by wrapping the information well enough.

My hope is eventually as you being to reprogram your brain, these processes get easier (the child grows up?) and the child realizes that there are certain patterns that he's got to follow and there is no chance for him to throw a tantrum or fight back, maybe he even begins to enjoy the new pathway. Seems possible.

Anyways this process of reprogramming my brain is a long and tiring one and life always seems to get in the way.

Another realization is, I'm in the process of shifting how I live my life - working on getting a remote job so I can start travelling while I work.

I always catch myself saying oh man once I get that job and once I'm out of the house I will be so much better, much freer and hence no symptoms.
So I've probably trained my brain in the short term to expect that I will be sad or angry or have symptoms as long as this change doesn't happen. This has probably made this transition period that much harder and that much more full of symptoms because I'm not allowing myself to be happy in this moment.

I definitely believe that environment is key, and it just makes life a lot easier to navigate because you can then choose the places and people to be around to further desired habits and identity.
Highest level of zen would be, being able to be this person wherever I am regardless of how the outside factors are. Seems like a matter of time and continued work and reprogramming of those pathways. Or maybe it's better to assume different identities in different worlds just to save the energy required to be constantly explaining yourself. Something to think about, what would infuriate me more hmmm

 

I feel better already

 

Hi @invincible
I don’t think that’s true for everybody. It’s not for me. I think there’s no real guarantee that TMS stays away after you kick its butt one time. it can come back. you have to just keep working it out. if journaling was working for you and then you stopped, that probably wasn’t a good idea. And don’t forget Christmas is a really stressful time of year. Maybe you just got overloaded don’t give up hope just get back to work!