Day 2 touching emotions

I want to touch on emotions but first a a little background on my pain symptoms.
I've struggled with depression for as long as I can remember.
I suffered from migrate headaches in my twentys. (I'm 58 now.)Eventually they stopped as I began a serious drug habit.
After I got clean & sober, I was doing some teaching in recovery groups for people who had been sexually abused as children. Every time I was scheduled to teach I would get IBS. Diarrhea. I was able to eventually stop this by telling myself the nervous reaction to fear of public speaking was all in my head. (I didn't know about TMS either)
Then I became very involved in serving the poor. This requires lots of physical activity as we(my wife and I) were serving in various capacities distributing food. With this came back pain.
I tried chiropractors, & a tens unit, I couldn't afford an MRI but ex rays didn't show anything dramatic. I finally settled on drugs. In short order I was addicted to opioids...again. After several long months of internal conflict I kicked them. The pain hadn't abated so I went to see a neurologist. He told me to read a book by John Sarno. He told me the pain was real and that the origin of it was all in my head. I bought the book and frankly didn't read hardly any of it and the pain vanished.
Shortly thereafter I began experiencing greater depression. I found that physical activity was the best treatment for me. So I was hitting the gym and running...a lot. Last summer I had built my running milage up to 65-70 miles a week. Virtually no pain beyond tired muscles. Then I broke a toe. This sidelined me for about 6 weeks. When I started back up running I began experiencing pain. Mostly in my shoulders but sometimes in my back and legs. Finally it got so bad that I went to see my old chiropractor. I had forgotten about TMS and any way I was sure that I had caused a repetitive use injury. Like it said it in the article today (Day2):
"I do know that your brain chooses the handiest, most acceptable distraction. The one that you are least likely to recognize as tension-induced."
So that's the shorter version of my history, I seriously left out lots of the juicy parts.

So, on to the emotions and some responses to the reading from today.
First quote from the reading :
"At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, most people have no idea how angry and/or scared they really are. After watching the TMS pattern in myself and my clients for many years, I've learned something. If a person's immediate reaction is "I'm not upset about anything," it means one of two things: a) they know what's bothering them, and they just don't want to talk about it with me or b) it's something too uncomfortable to even admit to themselves." (Unquote)

I feel like I've denied my feelings for so long that I am self deceived. That is to say...I lie to myself so effectively that I actually believe me(at least on the surface level). It occurs to me that I have feelings that I don't want to admit. I am a Christian and it is required of me to be nice and have nice feelings. I am starting to see that what appear to be slight resentments at the surface may actually be just the tip of the iceberg with regard to repressed feelings.
For example, I went through a nasty divorce back in 2001. My ex was rather hostile and deliberately tried to alienate my son from me. I have always struggled with the fear that because I was sexually abused as a child that I would grow up to be a child sex abuser. It is tied to the fact that the man who abused me called me his protégé. Any way I had disclosed this fear to my ex. Consequently, after she had filed for divorce she used this fear against me,basically inferring that I was a child molester whenever I came to pick my son. This had the desired effect(from her perspective). I started to avoid the situation and resulting confrontation by not seeing my son. Today my son won't have anything to do with me.
Sure, I feel angry and I feel sad and I feel guilty. But these feelings are all in my head. There's no real emotion connected to them.

Second quote from the reading :
"In order to completely eliminate all symptoms, you must identify which unacceptable emotions are threatening your self-image. The physical symptoms are present for a reason: They distract your attention away from the unacceptable emotions. Once you acknowledge the threatening emotions, the symptoms no longer work as a distraction, and they go away. Quite dramatically, I might add. You don't even need to eliminate the source of the stress--you just have to become aware of it." (Unquote)

I'm thinking that the unexceptable emotions are rage and fear of rage, hatred, and resentment. For a start.

Funny, but I feel interestingly better for having said that.

 

Thank you for sharing your journey. Glad you've found TMS, this forum and the SEP! I definitely think there's something to the idea that most people haven't identified or scraped the surface of those unacceptable emotions. Most of my patients who I identify as having TMS-caused pain are not ready to delve into the idea that their pain might be stemming from these emotions...in fact I had a woman today tell me, "But i'm not stressed about anything!" Awareness is everything. Just admitting that the rage, shame, resentment and fear are buried within you can be a release...it definitely was for me.

 

Thank you Sir for your reply. It's encouraging to know that I am on the right track and will hopefully be progressing.
I have already experienced some success returning to my normal physical activity by simply using Dr. Sarno's twelve affirmations. It was amazing to do what I love to do without pain. I was able to log some miles running this morning.
I'm definitely feeling very hopeful. I was feeling like a snowball going downhill & picking up speed with regard to fear and hopelessness I was experiencing because of the pain from TMS while running. Running is a big part of my life and have specific running goals that keep me motivated, happy and healthy.
I have been smiling pretty much non stop all day.

 

Hi Timothy,
Welcome to the Forum. I am glad to see your relief by simply acknowledging more of your personal truth. It seems you are opening to a whole world of deeper learning about yourself. Good luck in this! We tend to relax when we're more real with ourselves. At the same time, it takes some self-acceptance, to own our "human condition."
Andy B

 

Thanks Andy.
It seems there is a lot going on beneath the surface that I have been either unwilling to acknowledge or unaware of. It occurs to me that I have this idea of myself or self-image that requires I have only certain self prescribed feelings or emotions. It's as though violating that self-image could be the (or maybe a) source of the tension that's resulting in pain. Amazing how just thinking about it has brought relief from back pain. I've been using Dr. Sarno's twelve affirmations several times a day to good effect.
Thanks again!

 

This is a huge insight! I am happy to see you grasping this. Our self images are fragile and take constant denial and "defense mechanisms" --which TMS symptoms are, in order to maintain. The emergence of feelings/experiences which threaten our self images are "dealt with" by TMS or other means, or we can gently explore and allow.

 

I'm happy to report that I am really almost pain free. I just started on Friday last week reading Dr Sarno's book. I'm planning on going through the course and being free.
This is the most hope I've felt for a while.

Thank you.