Day 8 Recognizing emotions....my failure

I believe I am failing horribly at recognizing the emotions that are tied to my symptoms. My symptoms seem to come and go throughout the day at will and it just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me....the only place I am having success is recognizing fear...this seems to be a major factor for me. Fear of the future, fear of not being in control, fear of larger health issues, fear, fear, fear. I cannot catch it at the start of the thought yet, but it is a few moments in. I also feel it in my stomach; it is a pit that hits me in my gut.

 

Keep in mind, that early on in your recovery not every single jolt of pain or wave of nausea is directly related to something going on in the room. There is a causational element, but the longer we have suffered, the more long term conditioning kicks in. I was in pain pretty much all of the time.

I had days where everything was OK in my world and the pain was there anyways. Getting in an argument, stuck in traffic might ratchet it up, but it never fully went away.

Now, as part of recovery I did ask myself "Is there something going on here that I am unaware of that is bugging me?" The little things were part of it, but the true 'core' was whole conceptual things... Like "I need to be a good husband and father"..."I need to be the best worker "... Not so much "That guy cut me off in traffic" even though I might have more 'perceived anger' at that guy, those angering impossible thoughts of 'how I need to be' cloaked in good intentions were actually way more at fault in the pain business.

Make a habit of genuinely asking that. Don't get hung up on whether there is a concrete answer. If you are diligent about it you will start to see the forest through the trees....and the symptoms will abate as you make the distinction.