| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| 2scoops |
Posted - 05/28/2006 : 12:23:57
I read this on a site and thought it may help us more to concentrate on the root underlying causes of TMS, not the symptoms.
I am easily hurt by criticism.
I am very shy.
I may be overly aggressive.
I try to hide my feelings from others.
I fear close relationships because I fear rejection.
I tend to blame myself.
I don't feel I am as good as others; for example, I am not as attractive, smart, funny, etcetera.
I do not recognize my own good qualities.
I do not feel I have much to offer.
I avoid new experiences.
When I do succeed, I tend to attribute it to luck.
I may secretly feel glad when others fail.
I keep going over and over what I said in a social interaction and worry that I may have said the wrong thing.
I believe that things just happen to meäthat I have no personal control.
I sometimes feel like an outsider.
I am scared of failure.
I feel I am underachieving.
I am always trying to please others and have trouble saying no.
I sometimes feel lonely when others are around.
I feel depressed.
I sometimes think of harming myself.
I engage in self-destructive behaviour, such as drinking, in order to cope with my pain.
http://www.calss.utoronto.ca/pamphlets/low_self_esteem.htm |
| 5 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| miehnesor |
Posted - 06/05/2006 : 11:25:26
Logan-Thanks for posting your recovery story. It demonstrates how those low self esteem feelings are generated by early childhood needs not getting met and the resulting rage that is associated with it.
I've recently altered my process cranking up the intensity of acting out the repressed rage when I feel it and this has been a mini breakthrough for me as the symptoms have dropped down another notch. This makes sense because this is what i'm most afraid of inside and when I act it out i'm in a sense challenging that old belief system that I will not survive if this rage gets out. Slowly the fear of the rage subsides. |
| 2scoops |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 13:50:05
I find myself getting angry at myself when the pain gets worse. Like I've been at this for over two years and I get right back at square one. I just read this today and find it interesting.
"Whenever a person says, I'm inadaquate, he is actually telling us nothing about his person. He thinks he is commenting on his personal value(his self). Instead he is commenting on the quality of his relationships with others-from which he has constructed his self image." |
| art |
Posted - 05/31/2006 : 18:59:17
I think it's important for all of us to understand that the pressure we put on ourselves to be "good" can be quite destructive. Insofar as our subconscious is concerned, our "id" in Freudian-speak, there is no good or evil, only instinctual drives.
The "civilized" part of our brain wherein reside things like altruism and empathy are quite new in relative terms, and very fragile. That we feel pleasure for example, schadenfreude, at the misfortunes of others is quite natural. We literally can't help it. Best to embrace this primitive part of ourselves because any attempt to disown who we are is quite costly, emotionally speaking. NOt only is it doomed to failure it leads to shame and self-hate, two very unhealthy things..
I think it's better to define ourselves, if we have to define ourselves at all, in terms of what we do rather than what we think, and especially what we feel.. |
| Logan |
Posted - 05/29/2006 : 12:56:53
I found almost all of those statements to be true for me - except for wanting to hurt myself. I can function socially and professionally despite them but it is a constant struggle for me to risk rejection and to put myself out there for others to potentially harm.
This causes a lot of anxiety for me now because I am conscious of it; before starting to work on my TMS, I don't think I was really aware of how I was feeling and I knoe it was being funneled into my subconscious where it was simmering to rage and ended up as pain.
It seems that in the Mindbody Prescription Sarno describes the relationship between conscious/subconscious as sort of a closed system, or at least a monodirectional system where the unconscious occasionally bubbles up into the consciousness through dreams or Freudian slips etc.; or at least this was they way I and others have understood it.
And this monodirectional model generates a lot of discussion here on the board about how to deal with this "black box." The process of healing from TMS is this paradoxical thing because the subconscious mind is closed to revelation but yet we must still try to comprehend the mystery in order to get free of the pain.
But I think that the subconscious is also a cistern of emotions that trickle into it from the conscious - and I'm sure this is not my original theory, just something that sometimes gets overlooked as a baseline assumption in Freudian models including Sarno's.
If you don't feel your emotions in the present tense they get stored up to be dealt with (or not) and there you go, you get TMS or OCD or some other "disorder" that is the only kind of order the psyche can figure out to impose on this roiling mass.
I find myself feeling things now, now that I'm pain free, that I am sometimes shocked at. Me, miss nice girl, the person whom friends and family describe as "sweet" and "considerate" find myself hating people all the time. It's fleeting, it's momentary, I know that it's irrational and both real/not real at the same time.
I feel it, recognize and dismiss it as symptomary of my low self esteem. Usually it's people that I envy because they are beautiful or people I want to adore me and who don't find me as charming, interesting, desirable or adorable as I wish they did. It happens most often at parties. I'm learning to get the heck over it and try to socialize with people as my real self without trying to get them to like me so much.
And in a move that would make Freud happy, I blame my parents for this. : ) I was a spoiled baby/toddler of an indulgent Daddy whose world fell apart at age 4 when my parents divorced and Daddy pretty much disappeared leaving me with Mom who seems to lack the nurturing gene. Then my stepdad showed up who made Mom look cuddly by comparison. I was never abused it was more benign neglect because I was the "good" kid who could be counted on to take care of herself.
In order to get pain free I had to hate my parents, all three, for awhile, really get furious at them, feel the rage and grief from those childhood years and get it out physically by using a punching bag and letting myself cry, a lot. Then I was able to forgive them.
It's kind of an ongoing process with my mother because I needer her the most and she let me down the most because she just wasn't/isn't capable of what I needed from her; I have to remind myself occasionally that she will not change. I remind myself that I want to accept her as she is. In turn, I can accept me as I am.
I just wanted to write this because I don't visit the board very often and as someone who has healed, I feel that I should do so more often.
(I had terrible pain for four years, thought I had fibromyalgia, and was consoling myself with the thought of suicide when I found Sarno. I am totally pain free now and have been for three years.)
When I do I visit the board, I see so many posts from people who are almost "there" or who were "there" and had a setback. And you are scared that you won't get "there," won't be pain free, that the TMS cure is just too good to be true. It's not; but I know how and why you feel that way because I felt that way too.
If I have any advice to give at all it's this train your mind to notice how you are feeling, do an emotion "check" every few minutes at first to get used to it and it will become second nature.
Journal if that will help you clear the "blah, blah, blah, I'm a mature adult" fog to get to the raw "inner child" feelings (or as I like to think of it the inner creature because "child" is a sweet sounding misnomer). Daily journaling helped me at first immeasurably but now I don't feel I need to do it regularly.
And most importantly, don't be afraid or embarrassed to cry, and invest in a punching bag or a ping pong paddle or a mini baseball bat and beat the crap out of an old pillow or couch cushion on a regular basis. See Facing the Fire by Stan Lee for detailed instructions on this last bit.
Good luck and remember what Winston Churchill said about the only thing to fear is fear itself. |
| ndb |
Posted - 05/28/2006 : 17:41:05
wow...i got 20/22!
are these our conscious thoughts which make us feel low self esteem and this angers the inner child? or are these feelings in the unconscious which are a result of parents who were not supportive enough etc?
i guess i'm asking how do these feelings generate anger, and where do these thoughts reside?
ndb |
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