Stopped repressing, symptoms mostly gone, but now I'm overwhelmed with all this emotion

I'm grateful and happy about the progress I've made: through the programs and advice from helpful people on these forums, I've reconnected to my emotions and mostly gotten rid of my symptoms. Because I've stopped repressing, however, I'm now racked with so much emotion during a day that most days I feel exhausted and spent by the evening. Normal daily events like receiving a message from someone or a work meeting often end up with me crying or screaming into my pillow.

I see this as progress, and it's clear to me that the next step in my journey is to develop healthy ways of handling these newfound emotions. After all, I've been repressing emotion most of my life, so my ability to handle emotion is literally that of a toddler. Do people have specific advice on programs, articles, practices, or books that can help with this? I would greatly appreciate any advice.

 

Hi TT
You are doing great if you got your pain to move to the other side of the equation , emotion. Yes, Distraction syndrome = Emotions. Choosing to move from the distraction side to the emotion side is a massive move and there is what to be proud and thankful about. You are on to the answer with your emotions. You are like a toddler, maybe even an infant and how does a mother deal with her crying infant that is frightened. She hold the child close, no words, just comfort, love and unconditional acceptance. Don't go to your cognitive side and try to soothe with explanations, just hold those feeling like a parent. Parent love their children even when they are crying. Emotions dissipate when we accept them. Be gentle with yourself. I will add that we can sometimes overload on emotions, so create an environment that's not out of your emotional league , cut back temporally on extra emotional stressors like social media and media in general. Your positive attitude will guide you.

 

Thank you for the encouragement. I have cut down on emotional stressors: I'm only working 3 days a week, I haven't been using media and social media at all, and I've become mindful about which friends I meet and how often. I've also developed the habit of holding these emotions as a parent, and happily I now do that most of the time when I'm in distress, and the emotions do dissipate.

However I am overwhelmed by the frequency and the intensity of these episodes, and was wondering whether people had resources that would help me not get triggered so quickly and so intensely, and help me let go more easily when I do get triggered. Going back to the analogy of the child: children somehow learn to regulate their emotions better as they grow up. Some develop unhealthy mechanisms for that (like dissociation or repression), but others learn healthy ways. I'm looking for resources to learn healthy emotional regulation myself, if that makes sense.

 

That makes a lot of sense. I can suggest a few possibilites. They are bit off the track of standard TMS ways.
1. EGALA Equine experience - being exsposed and interacting with horses is a very powerful way for us to get a nonjudgemental read on ourselves and how we re- act to our emotions. I have guided others with the power of horses to a place within themselves rarely reached with human counseling where we throw up shields of protection.
2. Total awarness meditation- this is very soothing for the hypervigalant. Most meditation is an attempt to focuse our attention on one thing. Total awareness meditation makes us unconditionally aware of all sensory input. By a practice of not focusing on lets say one sound but rather listening to the totallity of sounds around us we lower our hypersensitivity. This help change reactiveness and allows us to be calmer when dealing with our emotions.

 

Just so you know your normal...
I had a very fast resolution of my years of pain and 18 months of complete uselessness. However, like you, I got overwhelmed by my anger... I was on the verge of starting altercations at work and losing my job, because I realized I had completely invented a 'nice guy' who I really wasn't (thus the TMS)

I did not need therapy to get over the pain. I just followed Sarno's simple instructions. I DID need a few months of counseling to learn what to do with the huge reservoir of anger that pooled up in absence of the pain as a distraction. I went and saw a shrink specifically for that anger...and he said I was the most motivated patient he ever had (LOL).. I explained about TMS and then he understood my conundrum...our conundrum.

I think I went for about 4-6 months. Not a lifetime. Just long enough to learn some new strategies I never had when I was younger

 

Your analysis is spot on. You are going in the right direction. My advice: meditation, mindfulness, book by Kristin Neff.

 

There is a form of somatic tracking that focuses on emotions rather than pain. Sit with the emotion and look at it with non-judgmental curiosity instead of reacting to it as "bad". As you sit with it describe how it feels in the body--where do you feel it, is it sharp or dull, does it have boundaries, does it pulsate, what color is it, etc. This practice allows us to get used to these feelings as part of being alive, rather than something to dread and try to get rid of.

I often view my emotions as weather that passes through me. Some days are cloudy or stormy, some clear and bright. Weather always changes and is always with us, and we learn to adapt and adjust to it and go about our lives.

Congratulations on all your progress.

 

Thank you so much for your encouragement and suggestions, it feels good to get confirmation that this is normal and part of the process.

I had a daily meditation practice for years, but stopped it once I started working on my TMS because I realized that my attitude towards meditation was one of pressure and perfectionism. I feels it's now time to come back to mindfulness and meditation with a new awareness.

 

In my experience you don't always have to fully express the emotion as long as you truly feel it. Yelling into a pillow and crying are certainly exhausting. On the Eddy Lindenstein TMS podcast "Mind & Body Fitness" he said something recently that stuck with me. Just like the opposite of love isn't hate (it's apathy), the opposite of repression isn't necessarily EXpression but simply experiencing.

 

That is really insightful. Sometimes the therapies we make up like yelling, breaking stuff etc are just reactions of our ego to a feeling we don't like (shame, neglect, other people's egos)
But since the 'problem' is in me, a deeper awareness of the truth will always ultimately be more of more value.

During my last TMS episode, I found I was miffed by a guy who happens to be doing the job I have always wanted... (jealousy)but upon really deep inspection, I wasn't as mad about his success as I was of my own inability to succeed (sloth, apathy)... so imagining saying and doing horrible things to him (my old strategy) wasn't as effective as getting off my ass and trying harder. TMS can be a good motivator....

 

Yeah, I think "going through the motions" is actually helpful alot of the time, but often it doesn't make sense for the situation (if you're in public then yelling and breaking stuff will get you stares ), so just acknowledging the emotion and trying to feel it is sometimes good enough. I thought that was insightful too, I find I usually get a useful nugget or two when I listen to Eddy's podcasts.