This will fix your TMS: dig deep

Hi everyone,

Welcome, if you’re new! And *thank you,* to all the old timers on this wiki, who have helped me —and are still helping me—so much!

HUGE breakthrough in psychotherapy for me today!

I’ve been in Internal Family Systems psychotherapy (recommended by TMS experts) for 3 years —to handle childhood trauma issues. When I first started, I was hoping I could uncover “The” one deep dark secret that would unlock my TMS symptoms. But it’s not like that. Yes, rage is generated by these hidden and/or known, but unprocessed, childhood issues. But, there’s more to it than that. You also need to find *how* the memories causing rage are being triggered in the present.

And this is what happened for me today. In hopes my story will help someone (even one person!), I will share it.

I score high on the highly recommended to take childhood trauma tests: 6 on the ACE and 12 out of 12 on the PPD assessment. So needless to say, I have the entire gamut of childhood abuse. You name it, it happened to me. So I am a total candidate for TMS. And it showed up early in my life, and recurred through the years.

About 5 years ago, it started to brew again, until it got where it is today (extremely debilitating symptoms). During that time, my sister came into my life in a more dramatic way. She made best friends with my new daughter-in-law, who basically hates me. What’s more, they like to be together *with me,* to subtly humiliate me and exclude me.

I tried all sorts of ways to alleviate this. Talking to my sister. Telling her my feelings. Trying extra hard to be nice to my daughter-in-law. In the end, I just distanced myself from both of them. Still with symptoms gone wild. My TMS roared on.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to field all sorts of other issues past and present in my life, all of which could be contributing to my TMS. But which one is it? Probably all of them.

Then this week, my sister calls and wants to visit. Yikes! My Symptoms start screaming. I’m in panic mode. All sorts of crazy pain. I dig into journaling. I work with my therapist. And honestly, it was 3 years in the making, but I finally realized that my sister reminds me of my mother’s emotional abuse. My mother pulverized me. But she favored my sister.

You guessed it: this is rage city. But only my body was doing the raging until I made this realization. I need healing from this and I need to *protect myself* from more exposure to this severe trigger.

Do I feel bad about it? Yes! Because despite it all, I dread conflict. I don’t want to hurt my sister. But it’s coming to the point it’s her or me. I’m losing so much in my life right now. Im semi-housebound in pain. I can’t work. Im in pain 24x7.

I don’t want to make a scene in front of my daughter-in-law and especially my son. They live near me and my sister would be coming in from out of town. (“What?! You won’t let your sister visit you?) All these constraints of goodism and people pleasing and just plain denial have been blocking me.

My sister has always been someone I go to and rely on. We lost our mother early. I couldn’t see—Yes! In plain sight! —how much she’s hurting me rather than helping me. Because to lose her “help” would make me feel alone.

So now what? Well, first, I’m going to rest. Let this new awareness sink in. Love myself. Journal galore. Meditate and soothe myself.

I’m shutting this nightmare down. I found some of the poison and I’m going to turn off the spigot. Let the chips fall where they may. Let’s see what happens from here.

Oh, and here’s a bizarre coincidence. The past couple years I’ve been telling my sister I can’t visit because of my strange symptoms. It was like they were putting up the barrier for me. Now, I myself, with my mouth and awareness and heart and soul, will be putting up the barrier.

 

Your story reminds me somewhat of my husband's family and childhood. My husband has a younger brother who was, and still is, their parents' 'golden child', whereas my husband was their 'scapegoat child'; the following explains about this terminology, if you don't already know about it: https://toxicties.com/golden-child-narcissistic-parent/ (The Dark Reality of Being a Golden Child of a Narcissistic Parent)... It wasn't until very late in life that my husband realised that not only were both of his parents narcissists, his 'golden child' brother is also a narcissist. As with sociopaths, there is no winning with narcissists, you have to keep away from them for your sanity and health. I'm not saying that your mother and sister (or your daughter-in-law, for that matter) are narcissists (I don't know enough about them and I'm not a psychologist) but I think it's always worth reading up about the general traits and behaviours of such personality disorders, so that you can spot them. There are lots of websites and YouTube videos about their traits, which can be from mild to severe on a spectrum. (I wish I'd known about this when I was younger as it would have explained a lot about some of the people I had the 'pleasure' of coming across and having to work with.)

 

Did an hour and a half of journaling on this topic today and found more answers loud and clear. I need to Stop going to someone abusive for love and attention. I need to Give it to myself and/or find better people. I also don’t need to run scared about this. That’s creating a lot of perceived danger. There’s no danger. She needs to be out. That’s it. Trust myself. Carry on. (Wow! It’s so weird how blind you can be!) But your TMS brain knows. It sees. Self esteem is the new cure for my TMS.

 

@BloodMoon!
Yes! My sister is a narcissist. I just barely figured that out. And I was/am the scapegoat. These are very important lifesaving things to know. Because as I’m learning, the abuse from narcissists can actually destroy your health, so the experts say. No kidding! I believe it. Knowledge is power! Thanks for the link. I will check it out.