| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| FarmerEd |
Posted - 07/25/2004 : 17:17:48
I've seen a good bit of discussion on the unconscious mind on this board. Dr.Sarno says it is the rage caused by the unconscious mind that causes various TMS manifestations. I believe he says that the rage we know about consciously is not the cause of TMS and this is difficult for most folks to grasp.
My question is, was this rage always unconscious in our lives or did we push it into unconsciousness. Let me explain:
When I was a child, as far back as I can remember, I had a violent temper I would reguarly vent. I had a brother only 13 months older than me and we would fight often. If I won all was well, but if my brother won he had to hold me down for a good while till I cooled off. If he let me up too soon I'd be right back on him.
Over time I learned that such temper outbursts were unacceptable in society. I was told again and again that I needed to learn to control my temper and over time I did. Throughout my school years I participated heavily in sports, especially football, that I believe gave some vent to my temper in a way that was socially acceptable, but mostly I learned to control and supress it. After a good while it was totally under control and I rarely thought about it. Even now, when something gets me mad it is not the rage I felt as a child.
Did the rage go away, or did I so often supress it that I have buried it in my subconscious?
I kind of think it is the latter and Dr.Sarno is correct that the personality we start with as a child never really goes away, I think we just supress the socially unaccetable portions into the subconscious mind over time.
One thing that has helped me in my psychological TMS thinking is to try to remember how a certain event would have effected me as a child back before I learned to supress and control these emotions.
Of course I don't vent them, that is still socially unacceptable, but I found that thinking on them and acknowledging them makes the pain go away. Is this the way others on this board understand the unconscious mind or do you see it differently?
|
| 11 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Dave |
Posted - 07/27/2004 : 10:09:05
quote:
Originally posted by FarmerEd
Did the , "child in us", start out in control and was slowly pushed into the unconscious or was it always in the unconscious? When I watch young babies I see truthful expression of feelings. When they are uncomfortable or unhappy they let this known loudly and immediately. Over time they are trained to supress such urges and I wonder if this forms the unconscious rage that becomes unpercieved.
Children can be conditioned to supress such urges when their needs are not fulfilled. For example, a baby who cries and cries in a desparate attempt to be picked up will eventually learn to stop crying if they are never picked up. Even an infant has learned the fine art of repression.
This is one reason why studies of alternative cultures are interesting in the context of TMS. Does TMS exist in African tribes, where babies are literally attached to their mothers as soon as they are born, for many months until they gain the confidence and curiosity to become more independent? Where there is a true sense of family among the tribe, a close knit support group, where children are encouraged to express their emotions? Where there is a ceremonial rite of passage at a certain age where a child becomes an adult?
Contrast this with our culture, where babies are put into plastic boxes as soon as they are born, parents are tought to ignore their baby's cries in the middle of the night to "train" them, mothers leave their infant babies in the care of others for hours and hours while they are at work, etc.
Right or wrong, our culture is such that children learn repression at an early age, and carry it with them for life. |
| kenny V |
Posted - 07/27/2004 : 09:04:06
quote:
Did the , "child in us", start out in control and was slowly pushed into the unconscious or was it always in the unconscious? When I watch young babies I see truthful expression of feelings. When they are uncomfortable or unhappy they let this known loudly and immediately.
Farmer Ed I would say “ yes”
Our emotions and the way we react to our deep inner feelings become refined as we mature, but we are taught from birth what is expectable to express outwardly. As we get older we are taught outbursts of anger and temper tantrums are not expectable, the way we are raised and handle these situations has a lot to do with how we might react and handle these outraged emotional situations in the future. As we mature we should be able to handle our emotions in a like manor, but we are not expected to express them outwardly, in anger or rage. This is not excepted by society nor do we any longer have a governor that has a rational that can guide us into how to handle our emotions. The result is to suppress these emotions a creating a surplus of anger inside that needs to be vented. Tms then has its fuel to be empowered.
quote:
Over time they are trained to suppress such urges and I wonder if this forms the unconscious rage that becomes unperceived.
Over the years because the culture we live in, face paced, forced to grow up to quick, and broken homes, we become independent and are forced to be self-disciplined.
We have lost our structure in being disciplined; we have lost a sense of what is right and wrong.
It is no longer common for a neighbor to grab you by the ear and bring you up the street to your parents, nor would a parent be able to discipline a child in public without getting looked at as they where a child abuser.
Children no longer have the boundaries that they so desire, so the structure that they long to have is no longer available, and they are forced to bare it them selves, either suppress ing their emotions or storing them up creating a time bomb of emotions, waiting for someone to hit the release button or putt he tank over the edge.
Always Hope For Recovery
|
| JohnD |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 22:17:35
TT,
Thanks for the honest reply. When I say out of balance anger(or other emotions)I just mean anger that lasts longer than it should, maybe for hours or days instead of minutes. Balanced anger comes and then once we allow ourselves to feel it, then it naturally fades. ie...a child can be angry for 5 minutes then feel normal again because that is just how it works for them naturally (balanced) vs. an adult who has been taught to stuff feelings so expressing feelings is so unnatural that when they do let anger out, there is so much there that is lasts for hours or days and is accompanied by other feelings like guilt or shame (out of balance).
When I say express raw emotion, I mean doing it alone or in a safe place aka in a responsible manner. Temper tantrums are irresponsible as they could hurt others, and ourselves and it re-inforces what we learned early in life....that feeling and trusting our feelings is not ok.
The other thing I want to mention is that we can feel raw anger (or any other feeling) in public without expressing it. SOmetimes when I get angry I just focus on it and let it have its time in the spotlight, without expressing it outwardly.
Hope that helps clarify!
John D
|
| tennis tom |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 20:48:27
Dear JohnD,
Thanks for your reply to my post. I'm sorry but I do not understand what you mean by, "... rage and anger fuel your pain because they are out of balance". I honestly don't understand psychological jargon very well even after purchasing 3 psych. dictionaries. If you could please give me a more concrete example or restate it, I would be happy to try to answer your question.
I have never had children so I'm not familiar with their behavior regarding anger--maybe that's one of the reasons I have TMS--societaly created guilt for not contributing to the sustanance of the gene pool. When I do see children that are allowed to express freely their tantums in public and their parents show no respect for the sensiblities of others around them, that does fuel my anger and increase the volume control of my TMS pain. If I would go up to them and tell the parents what I really think about how they are raising (or not raising) their children their would probably be fisticuffs, so I ignore it and go in the other direction. I can't be the policeman for the world and view that kind of behavior as more evidence of the downward spiral of civilty of our culture.
If I were to express my true feelings on issues, and vent my raw emotions, it would greatly relieve my TMS pain-- but it would not be socially acceptable. So I sublimate my anger through sports and smacking the fuzzy yellow ball. I try to find the humor in the situation and am pretty sarcastic. I try to remember the saying by the Chinese philosopher: "May you be blessed to live in interesting times". Well, I certainly think I live in interesting times, at least on the Left Coast, and I guess I should feel privleged to be a witness to Western Civilizaton devolving.
I hope this answers your quetions, JohnD. Feel free to quetion more and I'll try to answer better.
Sincerely,
tt |
| FarmerEd |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 20:05:10
Dave wrote: Conscious rage is not the same as, nor does it necessarily translate to unconscious rage.
I think Sarno's view of unconscious rage is that it is the manifestation of internal pressure that the child in us feels.
I agree that we have rage we do not percieve. I just wonder if we had unconscious rage from the day we were born or if all our emotions were out there in the open and given expression in the beginning and the rage became unconscious as we learned to supress them to the point they are no longer percieved.
Did the , "child in us", start out in control and was slowly pushed into the unconscious or was it always in the unconscious? When I watch young babies I see truthful expression of feelings. When they are uncomfortable or unhappy they let this known loudly and immediately. Over time they are trained to supress such urges and I wonder if this forms the unconscious rage that becomes unpercieved.
The reason I ask about this is because I have found this point of Sarno's theory one of the most difficult to explain to people.
Like Tennis Tom I am in a Metro area (Atlanta) with a lot of bad traffic. Incidents of road rage have become more and more common and bizzare. People erupt into fits of rage far above what the situation warrants. I wonder if eruptions like this are expressions of the pent up unconscious rage comming out and this is the type of thing the TMS mechanism is designed to prevent by giving our mind something else to occupy it.
` |
| JohnD |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 12:11:41
tt said: Negativity, rage, anger, in the present definitely magnifies my pain
Tom,
I am curious as to whether the rage and anger fuel your pain because they are out of balance. Did you ever notice how a 3 or 4 year old kid can vent their anger without all the accompanying guilt and shame and then seemingly be back to normal in a matter of minutes?
Somewhere along the line we learned that it was bad to express our feelings so we stuff them and/or get stuck in them...anger turns to hostility, fear turns to panic, sadness to depression, guilt to shame etc.. etc..
So I guess I can see how the rage fuels your pain. Do you think if you were able to express that raw emotion without judging yourself that it would help your pain or magnify it? |
| tennis tom |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 10:14:37
Negativity, rage, anger, in the present definitely magnifies my pain. It is the volume control for my pain. Living in a pressure cooker for TMS, California, there is a never ending torrent of rage causing incidents. Being a person who was raised, especially by my mom, to follow the rules, be good"ist", behave in public, find it especially difficult not to feed my pool of rage in a state where the rules are neither obeyed or enforced--we basicly have anarchy out here. For example, the state has doubled in size since I've grown up here, from 20 million to over 40. The size of the Cal. Highway Patrol has not been increased in that time. We have a powerful politician out here who likes to drive his Porsche from Sacramento to SF at high speed. I've driven the 500 miles from LA to SF, on I-5 and never seen a CHiP'S car.
I used to be a person who saw things in black and white. It's difficult to do that in an environment where all is gray. TMS thinking has helped me to be more accepting of the way things really are, lower my high standards, and let it be. I don't want my tombstone to read: "Scrupulously Followed All the Rules".
By dealing with the incidents at work, on the road, at play and at home, head-on, resolving them in reality or successfully rationalizing them, I feel, I am lowering the water line in my pool of rage. If I don't deal with it in the moment, the incident will be repressed and merge with all the other repressed thoughts lurking since the womb.
It's like the advice efficiency experts give about keeping your desk uncluttered, try to deal with each piece of paper just once--file it, throw it away or respond to it. |
| Dave |
Posted - 07/26/2004 : 07:23:05
quote:
Originally posted by FarmerEd
When I was a child, as far back as I can remember, I had a violent temper I would reguarly vent.
Conscious rage is not the same as, nor does it necessarily translate to unconscious rage.
I think Sarno's view of unconscious rage is that it is the manifestation of internal pressure that the child in us feels. The child wants to be left alone, to have it easy, but our personalities don't allow it. Perfectionism and goodism develop because for some reason, growing up, we never felt "good enough" perhaps because we did not get the emotional support we craved from our families.
I would say your conscious temper (other than the part you can attribute to simply being a child) was misdirected anger, not an expression of rage. There are deeper reasons for why you felt "rage" towards your brother. Perhaps it is related to your own unsatisfied emotional cravings while growing up.
quote:
Over time I learned that such temper outbursts were unacceptable in society.
I believe this also plays an important role in teaching us to suppress negative emotions in general, not necessarily only temper tantrums. |
| Carolyn |
Posted - 07/25/2004 : 21:21:06
I am also not sure exactly what this unconscious rage is and I'm not sure it matters. For me, one of the things I have realized as I have begun to pay attention to or 'simply notice' what goes on in my head is that I had formed the habit of actively repressing emotions though I was completely unaware I was doing it. I had gone through a very difficult time in my life and was just at the edge of coping so I think that I had begun to consciously ignore emotions that came up because I quite simply didn't feel strong enough to deal with them at the time. I knew that if I spent time mourning for my friend who had died for example or giving in to my fear over a medical condition, that I would be so overcome by the emotions that I wouldn't be able to meet my daily responsibilities so I felt it just wasn't an option to allow myself to think about these things. Now that things have calmed down in my life, I notice that when an unpleasant emotion or memory pops into my head, my reflex is to tell myself "I'm not going to allow myself to worry about that now, I'll deal with it when I'm stronger". Now that I am aware of this, when an emotion arises instead of pushing it to the back of my mind, I focus on it and try to feel if there is any tension in my body associated with the emotion. Often I find that there is and I can lessen it by letting the emotion take me over for just a few minutes. I think that this has also allowed me to stop fearing the emotions because now I know that I won't sink into them forever but rather I'll experience them and move on.
Since I have begun this process, I find that all sorts of emotions that I thought were long past- for example sadness and a fearful lonliness over the death of my grandmother that occurred almost 15 years ago- pop into my head at random times and it happens quite frequently. Instead of telling myself this is a silly thing for me to be fretting about now, I allow myself to have the emotion. I sort of think of this as slowly depleting the pool of rage and/or other emotions that I think are causing my symptoms. I have found this to be remarkeably effective so far.
Carolyn |
| tennis tom |
Posted - 07/25/2004 : 19:58:08
When I started reading Saro's books almost a decade ago, I bought a psychology dictionary to help me better understand the terms unconscious, subconscious, ego, id, superego,, etc. I was still confused, so I bought another psych. dictionary and another. I am still confused by these terms. They are like ether to me, sometimes I grasp their meaning for a moment and then the understanding evaporates. I think it's just me. I find it difficult to relate to things that I can't see concretely.
I've been thinking about something lately in regards to the TMS process and how difficult it can be to overcome the Pavlovian conditioning that creates it. I think it's universal. It is the urge to urinate when we are in the bathroom and hear the sound of running water. I assume this was imprinted on us when we were very young and being potty trained. There seems to me to be no logical reason why being near a toilet, and hearing running water should create such a great urge in the muscles that control urination to do their thing. If TMS conditioning, imprinting or whatever it is called works to some degree along those lines, I can see why breaking the bad TMS habit could be a very difficult job.
I know if I'm on a long driving trip and I have the urge to go it's realy hard not to focus on it and squirm more and more in search of a rest stop. But if I get a big enough distraction or can create one I can make the urge go away. I think TMS also works something like this.
Just some musings on a slow board day during the summer doldrums. Maybe we boys should keep this one to ourselves.  |
| JohnD |
Posted - 07/25/2004 : 19:06:58
The unconscious mind is just a theory, and Sarno's theory of unconscious rage is just a theory too. In my opinion he chose "unconscious rage/mind" as the cause of TMS so that his patients could accept the diagnosis. If he said that TMS is a conscious process, I'm sure next to nobody could accept it because that would mean that they are choosing to have TMS.
From my own personal experience I have come to believe that the "unconscious mind" is just the part of us that has become such a habit/so deeply ingrained that we don't consciously think about it. I am not a believer in the fact that we have some unconscious rage that cannot be tapped into because it is locked underground in some room that has no key.
|
|
|
