| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| csmoon |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 07:21:04
Been journaling a lot lately about things that I am unhappy about with myself. Self-consciousness (fear of embarrassment, call it what you will) is at the heart of nearly everything I have written. Memories of early childhood are coming back to me. I remember standing in the batter's box as a 9-year-old in my first LIttle League game and becoming so frozen in fear that when I eventually drew a walk (no way was I swinging), the umpire had to take the bat out of my hands and tell me to run to first base. Then, running was difficult, and the wind passing through the earholes on the helmet sounded like a freight train running through my head. I was great out in the backyard and could hit my older brother's fastballs, but something about being in front of strangers felt menacing to me.
I never got this deeply into early life in my anxiety recovery because the goal was to stop fearing symptoms. I was able to accomplish that fairly quickly, but the deep self-consciousness remains. I have trouble reading aloud if someone I scarcely know is listening. I think it's some sort of fear of being judged harshly, certainly something I experienced every day as a youngster from my father.
It appears to me that defeating TMS has for some been resolving the manifestations of inner disquiet, for others simply losing the fear of hurting themselves, others find niggling habits and learn to drop them in favor of being mentally healthy.
How many of you are extremely self-conscious and have major difficulty, say, giving a speech? I am beginning to believe that because of my sensitivity, I have never been comfortable living in my own skin. To protect the fear from ever being seen, I have built up an iron veil of anger and irritability. .
Interested to hear your thoughts and experiences. Thanks! |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Penny |
Posted - 10/09/2007 : 20:14:24
quote:
Originally posted by kiwi
What I do now (somewhat successfully) is (keep) focus on the feeling of the emotions, avoid the thought generation, and avoid the reinforcing responses. On a good day I also inject a planned response to try and change our pattern. When I focus on the emotion and avoid the thought clusters the emotion loses energy.
WOW Kiwi! This is a really cool idea/exercise. Although intellectually I believe we are not our thoughts, it's really difficult to recount that when in the heat of some heavy thought clusters vying for my attention. Trying to stay in the emotion instead of let the thoughts rule sounds like a really good response. I'm going to try it next time I'm disheveled by something.
Penny |
| csmoon |
Posted - 09/29/2007 : 17:29:21
I appreciate your contributions, all.
I did not intend with my last statements to set off a debate, just make the observation that my main obstacle in life has been fear, and since many get better simply by losing this fear, I think that is the tack I will take. So far it's working, as I am about 70% better than the day I began. I threw a football yesterday with the affected shoulder, and though sore today, it isn't a big deal.
Thanks for your comments. |
| kiwi |
Posted - 09/29/2007 : 16:18:11
Thanks for sharing that csmoon. I also resonate to the issues of accepting all aspects of myself.
Its interesting that it generates discussion of CBT and pyschoanalytic modes. I would comment on that:
- CBT is Cognitive layered on top of the original purely behavioural work and except in pure (thought undetectable) behavioural work the thinking aspect is very important.
- Psychoanalytic has been replaced by CBT in many things not for simple cost reasons but for efficacy reasons. CBT works much better on them than seeking insight.
I would not characterise CBT is temporary although the two may well work better together for the long run than one alone. Similarly meditation to provide insight and the buddhist model of the mind may also complement.
Sarno, like CBT, doesn't seem to require insight for many cases - just acceptance and action on the diagnosis. The insight is helpful and additional. Personally, its important to me and I use a model like this to think about it:
- subconscious mind (repressed desires etc that the mind is using TMS to distract us from).
- desires/urges/extreme emotions are what we feel (or repress)
- thoughts and ruminations that surround / regenerate / reinforce the emotions and urges (like "he shouldn't drive like that / they can't do that, its not right")
- actions are what we may do in response to those emotions / urges etc
I like accepting my self, accepting that emotions arise in my conscious and unconscious, but managing my response to those arisings. By response I mean both my actions and potentially my thoughts (cbt).
A strong emotion seems to arise (when my teenage daughter has dissed me), and reinforcing thoughts arise, and ruminating thoughts may make it worse, and actions can escalate it all the way to family disaster. What I have done recently is plan for these emotional events so I anticipate that if X happens Susan will do Y and I will feel/think/want to do Z (emotional algebra  ).
What I do now (somewhat successfully) is (keep) focus on the feeling of the emotions, avoid the thought generation, and avoid the reinforcing responses. On a good day I also inject a planned response to try and change our pattern. When I focus on the emotion and avoid the thought clusters the emotion loses energy.
So, why the long winded post? Because I think this is an alternative to the repression you describe and an alternative to acting out (and potentially spiralling out of control). Its a way of accepting myself and accepting what's happening within myself without having to let an emotional arising move on to (old programmed) destructive thought patterns and unhelpful emotions (what buddhist's might call our conditioning).
Its also not will in the traditional sense (loses against the imagination or different states of mind) ... the only will required is the will to first plan how you'd like to respond in a repeating situation and second stay focussed on how you feel and what's happening inside when it finally happens.
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| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 17:44:20
Before I start off I should say that I am very much in the insight-therapy camp, and I think CBT is useful only for smaller, temporary problems or as an adjunct to insight therapy; otherwise, it strikes me as a bandaid, from the Sarno perspective.
I emphatically do not believe that we should tell our 'drives' to buzz off. That is, for most people with TMS, exactly what we have been doing all our lives -- exercising the will rather than the emotions -- and can't do anymore. (I'm actually not even sure that I agree with the idea of 'drives' beyond the basic ones of hunger, thirst, sex, survival. I usually would use "needs" or "desires" (some of which overlap) or "feelings" to describe our internal lives.) We've been using our will to repress our emotions and continue on with what we've decided is the safe and correct thing to do/feel. Not being in touch with, and ultimately acting with respect for, our true feelings, is our main problem.
Here's how I see it, for you: your issues with anxiety are rooted in painful childhood experiences. In order to become whole and comfortable with yourself, you need to integrate those experiences, to acknowledge them as part of yourself, perhaps to even experience the emotions you couldn't really process at the time, the pain of not having your needs met.
I have done most of my emotional work onthis sort of thing, acknowledging all parts of myself, the desires and impulses I have, and understanding how they are all part of me and part of being human and whole. I find that this doesn't negatively affect my behavior. If I want to maintain my previous behavior, I do, but with greater awareness about what it means and why I do it. I acknowledge that by giving the other person the bigger piece of cake, or being patient with an irritating customer service person, I am behaving contrary to the way my inner self feels, and I remind myself it's okay to feel that way but I'm still not going to act it out directly (and maybe I will write about it or draw a picture or dance around or get out of the situation and go for a walk, but mainly, just the fact that I hear and acknowledge my real feelings is the important bit).
If I want to change, it makes me think about different things to do, and different ways to do things, that are more in line with what I truly want. Maybe it doesn't matter if I take the bigger piece of cake today, or maybe I can politely but firmly tell someone I don't like what they are doing or they are not addressing my inquiry effectively.
I think the time when we go downhill is actually when our will is in charge, still reacting to life as if the habits that saved us in childhood were the only way. In John Bradshaw's books, he writes that most offenders were in fact abused/neglected in childhood and operate from a shame-based posture, with their childhood survival habits and emotional repression fully in control. Much like you and me except that they cause other people pain, while we cause ourselves pain.
--
Wherever you go, there you are. |
| art |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 17:42:41
I had no idea how not to see myself as bad and lacking. quote:
I think you expressed yourself quite well...The above reminds me how stuck we can be in the beginning, how lost...In AA people are fond of saying, "I didn't know that I didn't know." This is not just some clever redundancy, but a quite profound observation..We can be trapped this way, without the requisite eyes to see for years and years, or in many cases for a lifetime...
I used to put it this way, You can't have an inferiority complex if you really are inferior...IN other words of course, one must embrace that first fundamental premise, that I am, despite how I might feel, completely ok...Then, and only then can the real work begin. |
| csmoon |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 14:46:39
ACL,
I really identify with what you wrote above, but I am struggling mightily with something just about now. You hit on it, so I will attempt to expound:
In therapeutic circles these days, there are essentially two camps: psychoanalysis and CBT -- behaviorist approaches. CBT is the current mode for anxiety-related illness, probably because it is quicker and less costly (HMO caps on visits, etc.).
The difference, in a very small nutshell, is that Freudian theorists revolve around drives, mainly, and CBT engages more the will, regardless of what the drive says do. That is perhaps why I tend to think it is more to my liking.
Innately, I think we all have drives occasionally to snap at people, flip our boss the bird and a host of other things that you and I and society have labeled "bad." I think we all have thoughts that we wouldn't share with a therapist or anyone else. Call it repression if you will, but it is part of our makeup and experience.
So when the will gets weak and we begin to operate based on our drives, for most of us, our mental health plummets straight downhill. I believe this happens because of our social nature (feelings of shame, guilt, etc.). Prisons and psychiatric wards are full of people who give in to those desires. So although I believe it necessary to recognize and not shrink away from those devlish thoughts, ultimately what happens to us depends largely upon exercising the will to override the innate drives and behave in ways that are productive, right?
So, what I have been journaling about and stewing about as I water my grass in the evening is this: since fear is such a dominant emotion in my history, and I am largely driven by fear (as I suspect many here are), doesn't my ultimate success in conquering TMS, getting ahead in life, and playing responsible roles as a citizen involve telling the theoretical "drives" in my psyche to buzz off and learning to exercise and strengthen my will? I have scores of examples where I decided to act according to inner drive and ended up a very unhappy chap. Irresponsible acts, mostly, and mostly as a youngster, but some as fresh as yesterday's laundry. (Still undone as of this moment).
Your thoughts? |
| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 14:18:54
quote:
Every bit of personal growth I've been able to muster over the years has begun at the same basic starting point, which is the proposition that I am, as a person, "ok."
I never understood the classic "It's only when I accept myself as I am that I can change" until I started TMS work, because before that I had no idea what it would have meant to accept myself as I was! I had no idea what varieties I had and what depths I had. I had no idea how not to see myself as bad and lacking.
The experience that really made this clear to me was one I had a while back and may have written about here, I forget. I had realized that a lot of my legalist annoyance with people comes from emotions that I have about their behavior's impact on me, like fear (e.g. in traffic). But even more of it came from an attempt to deny that I had any desire to engage in rule-breaking behavior (such as putting my feet on the seats of the train or riding my bike on the sidewalk), because to desire that would be 'bad.' Once I realized that in fact I had common desires with the people who did it, but had just made a different choice about the desires, I realized that I, as a person, was separate from my behavior and even from my desires. Thus to be how I was, human, was ok. My behavior (and others') might be wise or foolish, safe or dangerous, considerate or inconsiderate, but it all came our of our humanness and our hummanness is basically ok. How I am is that I am me, and also I do things, and I can change the things I do and that will change how I feel, and ultimately how I am. But it starts from a place of okayness about what is and then a gentle decision to change some of the outcomes of that, rather than a feeling that I am faulty in some way and must 'fix it.'
Trying to explain this on paper, I can see why I confused my therapist when I tried to explain it verbally! It's confusing. But it was a big moment for me, and I hope it'll manage to be clear enough to ring a bell for someone else.
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Wherever you go, there you are. |
| art |
Posted - 09/28/2007 : 13:07:30
I can readily identify with your little league experience..Years later I had to quit the varsity wrestling team at quite a good school because I'd get so sick with anxiety...
As a recovering alcoholic (drank for years to self-medicate), by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life was get up in AA meetings and speak...It never got the slightest bit easier either...I'd be literally sick for days afterward...
I'm convinced there's a genetic component to all this...Every bit of personal growth I've been able to muster over the years has begun at the same basic starting point, which is the proposition that I am, as a person, "ok."
I'm still quite a shy person (though at the same time sociable and friendly with those I know), but I've come a long way...Progress can be difficult, even extraordinarily painful, but it can be done...
Therapy can be helpful too.. |
| carbar |
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 21:24:15
quote:
Originally posted by armchairlinguist
One of the primary experiences that I am gradually escaping from is the anxiety that I'm doing something wrong in the sight of others or myself. It was such a low-grade ingrained feeling for me that I didn't even know it was there, until I realized, hey, I can do this differently, and I don't necessarily like how I did it before, but now I can go back and forth and I don't feel such a crushing responsibility to 'do it right'.
Interesting observation of a low grade feeling. I should take closer look at some of my low-grade emotions, pressures and what not.
Freezer burn is a pretty good metaphor too.
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| armchairlinguist |
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 09:21:31
Wow, carbar, that is a perfect metaphor. It reminds me of how I sometimes keep food in the freezer way past the time it is good, because it's nicely preserved and I don't want to destroy that by actually eating it! But I preserved it so I COULD eat it. Leaving it to freezer-burn doesn't do any good.
I've been talking to my therapist about how I've felt like I live in a box or cage, so stuck in my ways it's like there's only one option for me in any situation. Now I am learning that there can be more options, and how to find them and use them. One of the primary experiences that I am gradually escaping from is the anxiety that I'm doing something wrong in the sight of others or myself. It was such a low-grade ingrained feeling for me that I didn't even know it was there, until I realized, hey, I can do this differently, and I don't necessarily like how I did it before, but now I can go back and forth and I don't feel such a crushing responsibility to 'do it right'.
--
Wherever you go, there you are. |
| carbar |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 23:24:27
You wrote:
<<...I have never been comfortable living in my own skin>>
Another helpful book is "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Alice Miller
In recovering from TMS and doing this emotional work I realize that I was completely not living in my own skin. In fact, I was so far removed that the real me was atrophying in a box somewhere wanting to keep the skin clean for a special occassion. (I grew up with critical parents, as well)
In doing this work, I've gained SOOOOO much confidence about the most basic things in myself. Now I'm finding there's lots of room to develop parts of me that were not thriving in that whole atrophying the box situation. Exhilarating, but humbling.
If you are looking for advice, I'd say try to break down "self-consciousness" to the more basic emotions that your childhood self could not safely feel at the time. Freezing up was the defense -- numbing the emotions and even the body. Fear? Anger? Sadness/Lonliness? What was at the heart of these memories?
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| Penny |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 21:38:25
Hi CSMoon,
I've been reading Bradshaw's _Healing the Shame that Binds You_ and it is quite remarkable. When I read your post tonight it made me wonder if this book would help you too. Shame and fear can get ingrained in us at a young age, even in the best of parental care. I'm not even halfway in yet, and I'm hooked. Lots of people here talk about it. You may want to check it out when you get the chance.
>|< Penny |
| csmoon |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 09:30:52
I am just stunned as I reach deeper into this problem at how doctors have never been able to link anxieties with chronic pain and still refuse to do so. The simply state that depression and anxiety are byproducts of being in pain. But without fear, there would be no autonomic danger signals like palpitations and hives and sweaty palms and benign positional vertigo, etc. Why is this so obvious to us and not the healers out there?
I was listening to Dr. Sarno again yesterday describe the epidemic of chronic pain and the reason for it, improper diagnostic practices on part of doctors. I am convinced now that if a doctor had been trained to see pain the way they saw constant bowel problems and insomnia in an otherwise healthy man there would've been full resolution of all these things concurrently. I got rod of the nonsense ones, the ones that were labeled anxiety. But pain persisted because it was viewed differently, and certainly feared obsessively, as not caused by the frazzled state of my nervous system at the time, even though I asked my doctor about it. He told me to get outpatient PT.
Thank you, Logan, for sharing that with me. |
| Logan |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 08:39:27
CSmoon,
I think you've hit the TMS nail on the head, at least for me.
The trigger for my first major TMS outbreak was a deeply humiliating experience at my first real job out of college, where a higher up - in front of a room full of VIPs - criticized me for not bringing his materials to a meeting, even though he'd never asked me to do so, just assumed I would.
It was deeply humiliating to me even though my boss and several other people came up to me after the meeting and reassured me that I'd done a great job of coordinating the meeting and this person was an 'l'enfant terrible" who was known for his tantrums.
Their reassurances didn't stop me from believing that I was inherently flawed and was never going to make it in the work world because everyone could see how flawed I was...
And before that, from kindergarten to high school to college, I felt that I was somehow "wrong" and that I had something to hide. Growing up non-mormon in Utah did not help this. : )
But since I did the TMS work, it's gotten better. I still have moments of extreme self consciousness but I also have moments where I completely surprise myself. I'll get so involved in what I'm trying to teach my students, I sort of forget that I have 20 people staring at me.
I teach Composition at the college level - I'm a writer in grad school - and this is my third semester in front of a classroom. My first semester, every day I taught was a white-knuckle roller coaster ride of self-consciousness. I had the hardest time remembering what I was trying to teach because all I could "see" in my mind was a picture of myself in 20 pairs of eyes, kind of like a fly's-eye view of me, with all of my physical and social flaws magnified 100 times. : )
If it weren't for the fact that I have to teach to get the stipend that let's me afford grad school, I would have quit. I'm glad I didn't now but it wasn't easy to get to this point.
So, I can definitely empathize with your Little League experience. All that anxiety! I bet you had a whole list of TMS equivalents as a kid like I did.
I had allergies, hives, inexplicable but severe leg pains that landed me in the hospital a couple of times. The doctors could find nothing wrong. "Growing pains" is what they called it and sent my mom home.
I'm sure if you polled people on this site, most of them could tell you of similar experiences. I like how you phrased it, "to protect the fear of every being seen, I have built up a wall of anger and irritability." Yeah, that's it. That's what I do too!
Every semester before school starts I have a "flare up," because I can't help but obsess about the dangers of "being seen" and being rejected. And the anxiety that stirs up calls the TMS daemon like it's the frickin' bat signal. : ) At least I know how to fight it now, or reassure it, or whatever metaphor you like...
Thanks for the post, good insights! |
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