Day 11 The pendulum swings

Day 11 anxiety, then pain, then back to anxiety. I am getting some actually breaks in the anxiety now and it’s going back to pain but the pain is shorter lived as of now. The dizziness and vertigo has lessened. Some of the weird symptoms I used to experience after eating is down about 90%.

I painted the other day. Painting is another hobby I picked up besides fishing. I had zero back pain and up and downs with anxiety but I was still able to focus.

Something I have been noticing, when I very first started to exercise back in December 2017, I would get winded and dizzy very easily. I would feel overwhelmed by 20 mins and by 30 mins I would feel like vomiting or like the room was spinning horribly. I would be laid out for an hour or more even. I started doing visualizations while exercising. I started with a stationary bike. I would do 5 min increments and imagine myself in the past doing exercise, back when I was very active. This helped so much. It helped boost my confidence while giving me something else to focus on besides my fear and pain and overwhelm.

By July 2018 I started to notice a significant shift. I could do 45 min bike or jogs but nothing that would spike my adrenaline too fast but if I went slow I could get my heart rate up fairly good. I used more and more visualization during my workouts and then on difficult days I would picture my weakened self and imagine picking him up and carrying him on my bike while we rode down some street from my favorite memories. The benefits of this visualization was tremendous, why hadn’t I ever thought of doing this before.

By October 2018 something different started to happen, the visualizations didn’t produce the same effect. I felt better in general during the workout and also a bit more distant from my body and pain. It was as if the mind body effect was separating it self a good way.

As of Feb 2019 the visualizations have very little effect beyond just motivation but probably not more than before the TMS journey. What is of note here is while my mind was able to generate pain very significantly it was also able to generate a profound effect in a positive way during these visualizations as the effect to generate pain reduced so did the effect the positive had. I had now started to experience what felt like a healthy removal, being so close to my mind body for so long and now I felt I was feeling further but not disconnected but more like just something closer to normal.

Something similar is happening with my panic and anxiety. Some distancing, less reactive symptoms and occupying a little less space mentally and physically. Even if only a little less, I can see it.

It feel good to look back and see how far I have come so far.

As I read the first part of this I am reminded of Steve Ozanich’s book, where he describes how his pain and anxiety seemed to battle for consciousness. I can relate. I remember reading this back in Jan 2018.