Day 11 Sadness, it is deep sadness

For two days I have felt this heavy sensation in my chest, or more like inside the chest at the spine (on my back between my shoulder). It feels like sadness. When I recognize the physical sensation I feel sad and heavy. When I ignore it I feel some pain in all my problem areas (but still down a lot). Days 1-7 my sadness have been much more crying and softness in eyes etc also.

The sensation is there constantly if I pay attention.

I can't really put my finger on if its from many things or not.

One thing that pops up is failure. That my expectation from working as hard as I have done for basically 15 years would have summed up to more "success". The reward for not prioritizing myself and my feelings, and instead just keep pushing, have been so low. Like I could have accomplished the same or better with much less suffering. Or even with great joy instead. That feels sad. Very sad. It feels unnecessary. It feels like a big mistake to treat yourself so relentlessly. And why? Why do you do this to yourself? My intellect is angry, my body is sad.

 

Your description of your emotions is a response to the inner bully that is constantly judging and criticizing. Never giving you any credit for who you are or what you have accomplished. The feeling of never being good enough. Your inner self is furious at that bully....after all we all want to be loved for who we are period. You will need to ask yourself, when and from who did you not feel "enough"? As a child? Now... in your work or relationships? The programming from your past lives on in your present. Present hurts trigger old ones. The feeling of never being enough is exhausting and often manifests as fatigue or pain in the body. It's telling that you wrote "my body is sad". Your body is an extension of you. Rather than having your body do the feeling, you need to allow yourself to feel the feelings. When you communicate the message to your brain that emotions are safe and you can handle them, without judgement, the TMS ceases to have a purpose.

 

Hi Hedger,

(I wrote this earlier and forgot to hit post. I'm not disagreeing with miffybunny here. I am responding from how I am impacted.)

I really am touched by your post. There is so much I could respond about sadness, but the thing that comes to me now is that sadness is close to my heart, it is an opening to intimacy and tenderness, a closeness with my experience. Thank you.

In its unstructured form, without needing to know the "reasons," I think sadness offers amazing qualities. You describe softness. Like so many other feelings, it is interesting for me to feel the basic feeling without needing to feel the content, the thoughts about it. Yet, how beautiful that the connection of sadness to your life reveals regret for the way you have treated yourself. What a revelation! When we really understand how we've treated ourselves, the inner relations shift, become more compassionate. Maybe this sadness has something to do with compassion?

I could say that sadness, perhaps like joy, is one of the most basic, unconditioned experiences down deep. Not something to fix, or "see through."

Wonderful that you're seeing the connection to symptoms, the oscillations between the feeling and the symptoms. I think the work you're doing is profound right now. Good luck in this.

Andy

 

I agree, good comment. I am exploring this and I believe it will take time. Thank you for the support

 

I wrote my post without thinking. Usually I think before, intellectualize, and re-read things I write (and even say, e.g. at work).

It moves me deeply that something I just wrote from my heart had an impact on you. As I´m realizing that it can actually be like this instead, I feel both sad and a calm, with satisfying hope that things will improve so much. Thank you.

I appreciate everything you wrote

 

Truly gorgeous comment Andy. It embraces much of what I have experienced and subsequently learned from my personal trysts with TMS. Sometimes I believe sadness has been a much greater player in my life than anger, and as you point out there is much hidden beauty in sadness. Vulnerability, softness, compassion and kindness all have roots in this emotion. I remember speaking to Dr. Schubiner some years ago and he said he believed in my case it was more likely that sadness lay at the heart of my TMS, rather than anger although inevitably that is in the mix too. It’s easy to forget that anger isn’t the only primal emotion.

Thanks for such a thought-provoking post.

I have a great resonance with this. Although my most tenacious TMS symptom is trigeminal neuralgia, I endured many years of pain and weird sensations in my left mid back (T4). The neuralgia feels angry whereas the back pain held sadness. I practice yin yoga and I oftentimes experience sensations in this place which is followed by crying and an intense emotional release. The wisdom of the body is sublime.

This is one of the gifts of TMS. It takes us out of our minds and invites us to live more intimately from our heart. Healing changes us for the good. There’s a poignancy to sadness laced with calm which in time settles into wisdom. Deep sadness takes us into ourselves alone. We grieve our recklessness, the brutality with which we have treated ourselves, the lack of real connection with others yet we are blessed with the chance to redeem all these. When the mind can ask “what would love do?” and act from this place, we are home.

plum x

 

Beautiful, thank you.