Very personally

Are people that "takes it very personally" prone to develop TMS pain?
If yes, why ?
Thanks.
M

 

Perhaps that falls into the "perfectionist" category?
Our desire for being good, perfect and liked makes us take things harsher than others might?

Just guessing here. I'll shut up and let the experts speak.

 

I’m not an expert, but “taking things personally” falls into the general categories of People Pleasing and Goodism. It’s - again, I’m no expert - but having poor boundaries, less than ideal levels of self-esteem, would also seem to be part of it, and yep, these traits can contribute to TMS.

 

Interestingly, I was married to someone who took all slights really personally - and it wore me down. We're talking about a guy who would come home at the end of the day and rant to me about someone who cut him off in traffic or a sales clerk who supposedly dissed him - from hours before. It was of course even worse when the slight came from someone he knew. I hated it, I hated living with it, it got worse as he got older and more dissatisfied (which in terms of our marriage was a vicious cycle) and it got to where I just wanted to escape it. I mainly just wanted to slap him upside the head and shout that it wasn't about him, and to get a life for f's sake! I ended up divorcing him, and now we are friends, and I'm happy not living with that crap. The whole picture is more complicated than that, of course, but the really interesting thing to me is that although he obviously has repressed rage (related to his father), in him it doesn't manifest as anxiety or chronic symptoms, and at age 70 he's more active and in better shape than I am - even though he's gone through treatment for prostate cancer, and has been on a platelet-killing chemo drug for a while, for a rare overproduction of non-cancerous platelets which caused a stroke about five years ago. He is a responsible patient and does what he's told, and otherwise continues to live his life without worrying about it, and he also has no drug side effects (even though the list for the drug is lengthy - and we had an interesting convo about that).

So go figure. I'm the one with anxiety, TMS that comes and goes, and stress-induced RA.

I have often thought that people with TMS who are attached to victimhood do not achieve recovery. That's based on eleven years of observation.

Ultimately, however, none of this is black & white. I don't think this is a question that can be answered by anything other than conjecture and subjective personal experiences. It's all part of the mystery of human personalities, in all of their infinite variations.

 

@JanAtheCPA My gosh, he sounds like my ex.

 

I couldn’t take it any more when I returned from a week away and he just bitched about something annoying that had happened to him several days before. No “How was your trip? What did you do?” Self-absorbed is an understatement!

 

Yes, Because we are perpetually angry.... TMS being largely the product of rage , people who 'take it personally' are going to be angry a lot more often.

This gets a little confusing too when we take into account the fact that REPRESSION is operating here, so lots of people who seem to be really Hakuna Matata are actually unconscious seething cauldrons of turmoil. Merely having an exterior projection of not responding isn't the same as not taking it personally and that's why writing and having a spiritual life are so important if you're really gonna get 'free'.

I used to fight the whole world.I was taking it personally... Not too much TMS back in those days, but lots of drama and violence.
I had a profound change and stopped kicking against the goads. Became calmer, more adult and responsible...stopped fighting everything and everyone.... That is when TMS slowly snuck in.

If I have an attack or relapse, I usually don't examine how I think I feel... I review what was going on at the time of onset in context of what the old me would think/feel/say...the one who took every slight so personally. That is usually when I have the 'aha' moment. I realize something I thought I'd shrugged off really bugs. 99% of the time just the acknowledgement is sufficient to stop the whatever

 

Self-absorption certainly comes in many forms (and yep, my ex was that, as well) but it's interesting that you bring it up, because it occurs to me that in TMS, self-absorption is a common characteristic of someone who continues to suffer with TMS symptoms, without ever doing the real emotional work that is necessary. These are the ones who obsess, overthink, intellectualize, and typically respond with "yes but..." to all advice.

Mind you, it's not them, and it's not conscious - this is the product of extremely resistant and fearful brains, that expertly fool the individual into thinking that if they just keep coming up with new ways to ask the same old questions, eventually they will ask the "right" question, and will receive "the" answer to all their problems. Instead of facing the truth about reality, and just doing the hard (and scary) work.

 

Jan, first of all, sorry that you had to put up with this guy for so long, but at least now you are free!

And secondly, this is my read into it: your ex dumps his frustrations on other people while you carry it inside. He unloaded and moved on, but you continue carrying the burden, whether you recognize it or not. Also, compassion often comes at the cost to the compassionate people, and you are one of them. It is not easy to detach yourself from others' suffering.... Be well, I am sending you my hugs!!!!

 

>> your ex dumps his frustrations on other people while you carry it inside. He unloaded and moved on, but you continue carrying the burden, whether you recognize it or not. Also, compassion often comes at the cost to the compassionate people, and you are one of them. It is not easy to detach yourself from others' suffering.... Be well, I am sending you my hugs!!!!<<
You are spot on! They dump their anger on others and the helpers among us take it all in. It does ugly things to the soul. I am at the point now that I feel sorry for my ex despite all the crushing damage he did to me - and that I allowed because I was such a people pleaser. It was hard to stand up to.

 

Brilliant observation.

 

If this can help: I had couple people in my past who did a lot of damage to my soul. Getting to the point that I feel sorry for them means to me that I am fully healed from damage.

 

You are right.

I realize that the damage done by others (he wasn’t the only one) only came to me because I didn’t have good boundaries (think: porous boundaries) and I certainly wasn’t looking after my needs.

Goodist/pleaser/etc etc although when I first read in Sarno that these are classic traits of a TMSer I thought, “No, that’s not me!” Apparently I had effectively brainwashed myself.

Sometimes it feels like a miracle that I was able to keep functioning and ultimately change.

 

Taking it personally does not always mean you are a people pleaser or goodist, it is often directly related to the ego. The stronger or larger the ego, the more vulnerable someone is to criticism or slights. A self inflated person is a fragile person, like a piece of expensive jewellery. Look into meditating on the ego and breaking down the insecurity behind it. It helped me!

 

Not saying you are egotistical or anything, I don't know anything about you! Just useful if people pleaser doesn't fit your personality.

 

We are each unique.