Day 8 Recognize the emotions connected to your pain...

Are you having success at recognizing the emotions connected to your pain? If you have, how do these emotions make you feel?
Today's work is summarized in the questions that I'm placing more and more often and the answer is that I can very rarely perceive emotions related to my pain.
I'm always focused on symptoms and this concentration generates insecurity that generates in turn other symptoms. I believe that all this pain is generated by negative emotions like anger and resentment, criticism and guilt and I know that they have become so confidential that it seems to me that they are now part of me. but I'm getting convinced they are a consequence of what I am constantly repressing. the emotions that I can not access and feel that make me feel good are covered by fear, it's like I'm afraid of being well. and this is the leitmotif of my psychotherapy sessions, during these sessions there are moments in which I feel intense emotions that give me strength and hope and those moments when I understand I'm experiencing a sense of positive well-being and an almost total absence of pain.
In this regard I find much comfort in the reassuring words of Luoise Hay and Lucia Capacchione's writing experiments that put me in touch with very evocative and emotionally stimulating memories.
Greetings to all and thank you for existing

 

Hi Pietro- I have had some success but it is hard.

I am on Day 9 and have been working the program. One thing I have found is t0 help is writing a letter to myself - or to someone else. I type pretty fast and I just go for it - stream of consciousness, uncensored writing.

I have come to this forum after a major medical issue happened two years ago. It started the pain but I believe it continues due to TMS.

One of the emotions I have not yet been is angry. These things happen, right? Medical issues aren't necessarily someone's fault. It's hard to know where to put anger and I have not really had any. I have been incredibly sad and grieving (I have been basically disabled by this).

Through identifying stressors and fast typing, I have noticed my writing tends to morph from sadness to anger, something I have not yet felt. And as I let myself say the things I would never dare say aloud. I type hard and fast, and allow myself to say anything I want - fair or not fair to others. It's the equivalent of a child's temper tantrum... something someone like me would NEVER do. I pride myself in being logical, fair and always giving others the benefit of the doubt.

I delete what I have written as soon as I have written it and let it go. I believe anger is the emotion that I have not successfully recognized that is causing my pain. It is buried deep below grief. When I recognize that anger now, I feel better actually (very surprisingly as anger isn't a prized emotion). Prior to this, I would not have perceived it. I should note I was writing with a pencil too - for some reason, the typing has been better for me.

Your feelings are very confidential and maybe you too are a very fair person. Maybe your resentments and guilt feel unfair to you - like you don't have permission to feel that way - because there are other circumstances. But there are always circumstances and as Sarno suggests, I believe that type of red tape just infuriates the inner child who doesn't care. Try giving yourself the permission to start typing a letter to your brain, or to a person - or to your trigger itself. I am working through it myself but this has worked for me.

 

dear Celestialstar,
I understand perfectly what you say, even for me the pain started to appear after a surgical operation from which I could not recover 100%. but it was the trigger that started the pain due to the tms.

You reminded me when a few months ago I went to my psychotherapist with a panic crisis in progress. He made me lie down on the couch and made me talk for a long time about what I felt and the malaise I was going through and I felt really bad (tachycardia, vertigo, excessive sweating, hyperventilation). after I had spoken long enough, he opened the windows and doors and told me to keep talking, but this time I would have to walk around the room, and so I did and the emotions changed, even the words changed and what I was lying it was resignation, as I walked it turned into anger.
At that point he told me that anger, even if negative, is still a reaction of our mind to a state that we do not like (like depression) and sometimes it can be a very valid way out. I do not really like being angry, but I believe that the rediscovery of emotions must be crossed in all its phases and with all the types of emotions we experience, perhaps starting from those that we least like.

Thanks for the good advice I'm trying in every way to understand myself, to listen to myself and accept myself for what I am because I believe that only through an appreciation of ourselves can we change this way of thinking and doing us harm.

Best wishes Peter

 

...perhaps starting with those we like the least. Hmmm. I had not considered that. That makes perfect sense, actually.

I have typically looked down upon anger. What does it really solve? Unleashing it equates to a bunch of wreckage in the end. Essentially, expressing anger just creates a mess for us which we then feel we owe an apology for... and the loop begins again. Connecting with something that bites back has been a challenge for me.

Throw your windows open, go for a walkabout and see what bubbles up. Say the thing you would dare not. Then say it again. That's been my strategy and, while I can't be sure, I think I am on to something with this. Good luck

 

Great discussion on emotions! Really gets me feeling them. Thanks!