| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Lizzie |
Posted - 11/28/2007 : 08:28:07
I continue to have relatively mild pain that moves between neck, back etc, but believe it is TMS and therefore for many months have not been to a PT or chiro or anyone etc and really things are nowhere near as bad as they once were. I have made progress. I feel I am aware of the long list of things that make me angry and do not want to see a therapist but today I suddenly realised that I kind of missed my PT. While I do not think seeing her helped me as I have TMS, I liked the attention, I liked the massage (even if it did no long term good)and I suppose I liked having someone to moan about my symptoms to on a regular basis. I know I am meant to ignore the pain and think about what is causing it or think about anything but the pain. I know when I did obsess about the physical/pain (which i still can to some extent despite my best efforts)my husband found it frustrating which in turn made me frustrated at not being listened to in a caring way. I love my husband dearly but we have dealt with my TMS differently and I can see how frustrating I used to be. Because of TMS I never say how I physically feel and no one asks, though I suppose I would not say anyway because I believe there is nothing wrong and as a goodist hate to moan in public. I suppose I wonder if I can beat TMS when things are stressful as they are now (friends' bereavement,a lot to do at work etc,) My PT was positive when I used to go and listened to my pains and I suppose it was nice. Dealing with TMS is something I have to do myself and that can feel a bit lonely, though there is this board to make me feel less alone in this.
Hope you all do not mind the moan and maybe understand.
Lizzie |
| 20 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| qso |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 22:19:52
Excellent - great progress and glad to hear that the UK is picking up on this more and more. I grew up in the UK but have been in the US for 15 years. If you haven't read it already I would recommend reading Dr. Sarno's latest book as well (The DIvided Mind) - there are a lot of success stories in there and some new stuff and the reading really helps even if you have heard most of it before. Also if you feel the TMS is letting go of you it is time to do the deconditioning and reprogramming (Fred Amir's book is very good on this) - otherwise even if the TMS is ready to leave it may not be able to if your brain has set up hard-wired conditioned responses to certain stimulii, scenes, events or activities (and this is almost certainly the case if you've had TMS for a long time). I remember once just walking into my office after being away from it for a while produced extreme nausea and an immediate attack on my back. At the time I found it puzzling but it all fits in now.
QSO |
| samchar1 |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 13:08:55
Hi qso
The physio i went to see is one of the few in England that has committed to TMS. She made a visit to the USA to see Dr Sarno and came back inspired by him, his findings resonated with her own opinions regarding long term pain.
When i went to see her i thougth it was for a standard physio session, (i had never heard of TMS, this was two weeks ago) she did all usual physical test and said i had TMS. We had a 2 hour one to one consultation and of i went with Dr Sarno book, and some of her own advice. 2 weeks on i am now no longer taking Morphine and a cocktail of other stuff and feel that inch by inch i am getting results. I have given up all physical based stuff. I would like to say the comment you made in a previous post " In a nutshell, when my conviction that I have no physical injury or damage turned to 100% the TMS melted away" this is the key to it all
The TMS/Physio in the uk is
georgina@painreliefwestyorkshire.co.uk
kuk yorkshire |
| qso |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 10:45:20
At the risk of sounding repetitive and boring myself, and with all due respect to physiotherapists and everyone on this forum-
I totally underestimated the importance of renouncing all physical treatments. I did not understand the importance of it. I thought I could pursue the Sarno method and physical treatment simultaneously (just in case). But it actually cancels out and negates all of the Sarno work. I was not able to recover until I deep-down renounced physical treatments. It is an absolutely crucial step but it is a very very hard hurdle to overcome. You have to find your own way to do it as it can't be faked. Even though the physiotherapist may have recommneded the TMS path he/she may also have underestimated the critical nature of renouncing physical treatments.
I know there are also family pressures to pursue physical treatments. Aside from pretending to go to the doctor/therapist, if this is a problem, perhaps you could convince your subconscious that you are only getting physiotherapy to keep your family happy and maybe your brain might let you off the hook.
To help you along the path try getting hold of the book
"Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy: Its Clinical Science and Evidence Based Practice"
by Kathryn Refshauge & Elizabeth Gass
This is a state-of-the-art book on physiotherapy written by a bunch of experts and the bottom line is that their conclusion is that the evidence for the benefits of standard physiotherapy procedures *for people with genuine physical injuries* is not very encouraging. And that's for people with real physical injuries!! (Of course they don't even acknowledge that there are people who have injuries caused by their brains).
That's the other point - with TMS your brain is literally injuring your body every day over and over..physical treatments are meant for one time injuries but TMS is doing stuff to your body all the time, undoing any healing physical treatments provide. That's why they all only provide temporary relief, if any.
Best wishes,
QSO |
| samchar1 |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 09:55:34
Hi lizzie
aye lass of course i am a tea drinker i'm from yorkshire.
Back to what i have read in this thread it mirrors exactly what i have been through since i started (2 weeks ago) i feel better when i speak to peolpe about Sarno and TMS, mainly to work collegues but it gets repatative and i am sure after a year they are sick of my back stories. Do you think there a more success stories (qso taken into account) than are on here cos there seem to be alot of questions? i have been to the physio in yorkshire it was her that introduced me to TMS.
kuk yorkshire |
| mala |
Posted - 01/02/2008 : 02:59:28
This is such a good thread. Everyone on the post has something invaluable to say.
I found that my pain was directly related to the problems I was having with my mother and that it was easy for me to be debilitated because it meant that she would be good to me and we would avoid confrontation. It worked well for my mom because my mom likes to be in control and in charge. She's very good at looking after people -even puts herself out for them. It feeds her martyr syndrome in many ways. It worked well for me because she would soothe me physically and be nice to me, fuss over me. The longer I was in pain, the better the relationship because I didn't have to get into arguments with her. I was too'weak' too much in 'pain'. Being in pain solved a lot of problems.
But thank god for Sarno for helping me to understand what the pain really meant and for providing a way to deal with it.
We will all of course deal with/handle/solve our situations differently but still within the parameters of his theories.
Good Luck & Good Health
Mala |
| qso |
Posted - 01/01/2008 : 23:58:27
The DVD was from www . backpaindvd . com
I would still recommend it as it is good for maintaining flexibility and circulation as long as you don't believe the excercises are going to fix you (a mistake I made which set me back 2 months or so). Like all such excercises they are extremely tedious and boring and I'm glad I don't have to do them every day any more.
Yes, you're right, we start and end at the same points but each person will have to find their own unique path to recovery. However there are signposts along the way and we hope that we can accelerate people's journey along the path and help avoid taking wrong turns or dead ends (I took many).
QSO |
| lidge |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 14:04:54
Thanks for sharing qso. I assume the DVD was Janet Travell?
Yes I've had many moments where I read passages that resonate but as of yet no recovery. Doubts creep in of of course. Your phrase about it being a "software" problem as opposed to a "hardware" problem is great. I think Lizzie's observation about it being a lonely journey is so true. We all have to find our own path. |
| qso |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 13:18:21
Dear Lidge,
Yes the painkiller issue is a very subtle one. I know what you mean but I didn't take them simply because I can't swallow pills, they make me throw up and give me bad stomach problems. Also, in some of the TMS episodes it wasn't that kind of pain. Sometimes it felt like there was nothing holding me up and my body wanted to collapse onto the floor and it wasn't clear how pain killers could help with that. Yes, I spent a lot of time horizontal and had a zero-g chair in the office and at home.
Also in the early stages I believed that if I were taking painkillers maybe whatever it was inside that was injured would heal quicker by allowing me to do more. However I think this hindered me even though I wasn't taking pain killers! I had learned how to move different muscles deep inside my body and could feel tenderness which I thought were healing abdominal muscles deep inside.
The humiliation - yes it was very but I have had worse humuliations so it was not that which fixed me. As you know we look normal to people and I didn't have a doctor's note as I had given up on them so it is even more humiliating. The air hostess was very rude the second time I asked -fair enough that they could get injured and I suppose we are supposed to book help in advance but then we have no doctor's support that we are effectively disabled.
As for the challenge of the plane journey - it wasn't that either -I had done a more challenging one between Washington and London in July and after each one way journey I was struck down for two weeks with a severe attack. The significance of the San Diego journey is that I was able to eliminate a lot of factors. All I was doing was sitting, reading, and thinking. Before getting on the plane I really didn't want to go as I could hardly bend down to tie my shoelaces but I had to go to justify my existence for work. I was also thinking that this is what it's going to be like for the rest of my life because even Sarno's approach had not worked for me but I took Amir's book and Sarno's last book on board to give it one more chance in case I had missed something obvious.
So what was the Eureka moment? Well, in combination with reading Amir's book and putting together everything that had happened in the year at the same time, it happened without me even trying..a big clue was the excercise (Amir talks a lot about excercise).
I had been religously doing a 35 min routine everyday from this DVD made by JFK's physician, for two months. But I was hitting a brick wall in strength. Everytime I would try to step up beyond a certain difficulty level, even gradually, I would not be able to do it and would have an attack. While reading Amir's book I realized, hang on a minute, even healing muscles just don't work like that. They don't suddenly improve in hours and then reverse for no good reason. In hindsight these attacks were telling me 'dude -you're on the wrong track'. Finally, putting everything together, it came to me that I have a 100% software problem and there is absolutely nothing wrong with my hardware! Next thing I know, 'ermm sitting in this plane seat doesn't seem to be uncomfortable anymore..um this book doesn't feel like it weighs 100 pounds..erm, wow, is this what it feels like to be normal?'. Later in the hotel room I kept walking around the room wondering whether I am normal again as it had been so long I had forgotten.
Hope this helps..you will get there for sure.
QSO
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| lidge |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 12:31:40
qso-
I think the vast majority of people who take painkillers (TMS or non TMS issues) know full well that it will not "make" them better. Their purpose is relief of pain so that one has some chance of resuming normal activities of life. I think Sarno understands this and therefore prescribes them. I recall one person who was a past patient of Sarno called him recently for new pain and Sarno called in painkillers despite the fact he had not seen the patient in years.
I had some doubts as to painkillers and TMS. But after reading some passages in his books, and certainly after hearing it from Sarno's mouth in the tapes, I have to go with what he says.
I often wonder whether many people who have TMS revel in saying that painkillers are a no-no precisely because of perfectionistic tendencies - ie. I will conquer this pain syndrome on my own- without help of medicines or anything else!
I found your recovery story very interesting. You mention that you had to ask other people to lift your luggage. I'm sure this was humiliating for a TMS personality. By the time you got off the plane, you did not have to subject yourself to this humiliation. Since you mention it, I wonder whether this played some part in your sudden recovery - could that humiliation have triggered enough anger that you broke through to recovery so as not to have to repeat that humiliation?
I was a little confused as to the significance of the plane ride and your recovery- was it the reading of Amir's book that suddenly propelled you from 99% to 100% belief?
You mention you had been looking at ceilings all year (flat on your back I assume). Was the plane ride your first challenging of what you could do?
You talk about not getting bogged down in the details and I agree- but I'm not clear on how "freedom" came to you- was it just some sort of divine intervention? - an AHA moment?
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| qso |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 11:59:50
Hi,
Re. pain killers - this is a grey area - I think it depends on what you think the pain killers are going to do for you. If you truly believe they are only for temporary comfort it it ok but if you think they are going to make you better in any way then it is likely to be a hinderance because some part of you then believes that the problem is physical. Dr. Sarno says you must stop all physical treatments. This is not inconsistent with his advice to take them when things are bad. The question is, do pain killers constitute physical treatmeant? The answer depends on what you, the TMS sufferer, thinks (or more accurately your subconscious..and we don't always know what *it* is thinking) the pain killers are doing for you.
I would also take this opportunity to say that my last vestigal denial (as it says in Sarno's book, denial of the syndrome is part of the syndrome) was that I believed that even though I was connvinced that I had TMS my muscles must be weak from a year of relative inactivity so I believed I was not going to completely recover until I had regained my muscle strength. However I now know that this mistaken belief was the last thing that the TMS was hanging on to. On that plane journey I realized that the notion is ridiculous-although muscle atrophy happens, the human machine is much cleverer than that - if you are eating ok your muscles will not drop in strength so much that they can't even hold you up against gravity. If that were the case we would be extinct by now! As soon as this realization sunk in the TMS just melted away and has not come back and I know it will not and cannot because my conviction is now perfect and inpeneterable. You MUST NOT believe that your muscles have become so weak. Believeing that your muscles are too weak tells your subconscious that a small part of you believes that some of your problem is physical. Even after a year of TMS, I think I am actually stronger now than I was before.
Many accounts of the subconscious portray it as kind of stupid compared to the conscious part of the brain. There is no denying that it has child-like qualities - that is to be expected. But I think it is actually more intellegient than the conscious layer. It knows how to trick the conscious you - don't underestimate its intelligence! It knows how to make you think that your TMS episodes correlate with physical activity or minor injuries. It is testing you. Be resolute and really examine in every way where your conviction could be anything less than 100%. Don't get bogged down with the details of your "issues" - the way freedom came to me tells me those details don't matter and resolving issues does not matter.
Dr. Sarno is years ahead of his time and a true pioneer - don't be put off by what anyone else says - remember that about 100 years passed between the first serious proposition of the existence of atoms (things that could not be seen, felt or heard) to the point where they are described in school text books and taken as truth by kids without even the slightest need for direct proof. The notion was violently rejected by the scientific community for a long time. One hundred years from now people will be wondering how most of the world could have been so blind to what TMS is telling us.
QSO (Mr.) |
| lidge |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 10:14:54
12/30/2007 : 23:24:03
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All,
I forgot to say that taking pain killers is also not consistent with 100% conviction so they will hinder you. I never took any because of the side effects and it never made any sense anyway, in terms of finding the root cause of the problem.
QSO
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I purchased the video put out by Dr. Sarno- The Mindbody Prescription.
In it, the question is posed to him- "What do you do when the pain is really bad?"
His response is to take painkillers and continue working the program.
Has Sarno changed his mind? Would he approve of something if it hindered recovery? |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 12/31/2007 : 03:51:16
BREAKTHROUGH ALERT
Check out this post above by qso in which he (she?) has a big TMS breakthrough in a few hours!
Thanks - this was very helpful
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| qso |
Posted - 12/30/2007 : 23:24:03
All,
I forgot to say that taking pain killers is also not consistent with 100% conviction so they will hinder you. I never took any because of the side effects and it never made any sense anyway, in terms of finding the root cause of the problem.
QSO |
| qso |
Posted - 12/30/2007 : 22:11:02
Dear Lizzie and everyone,
I think I have made a breakthrough 3 weeks ago which could give you virtually instant relief. For a year I had TMS from the neck down to the legs and in the worst episodes could not sit or stand for more than 10-15 minutes. I spent most of the year looking at ceilings - you all know what it's like. I knew about TMS for years before I had it so when I did get it I thought I knew what to do. I turned the house of my mind upside down and spent a lot of time on "issues" of the mind. I even did some deep meditation and uncovered distrurbing childhood experiences that I didn't even know about. But still no relief.
I got on a plane to San Diego 3 weeks ago, concerned about the journey and could barely lift 5 pounds and had to ask people to lift my luggage. However by the time I arrived in San Diego I was lifting my own luggage off the carousel and since then have been walking, sitting and driving for hours everyday and this week picked up my 50-pound son for the first time in a year. I am free and the TMS is never coming back (it tries to sometimes -but
you can stop that-see later).
So what happened on that plane? In a nutshell, when my conviction that I have no physical injury or damage turned to 100% the TMS melted away. 99.99% is not good enough. It must be total and utter belief, deep down. You won't even have to tell your subconscious when you reach that 100% -it will know before you are aware. That means you can't fake it. Nobody can do that for you. That also means that you must believe deep down that none of the physical treatments are going to fix you. You must believe that you excercise because it is good for you anyway, not because it is going to fix you. If you have massage therapy you must believe deep down that you are getting it because it is nice and that it is not going to fix you. Getting physiptherapy is not consistent with 100% belief and your subconscious knows it. Your subconscious wants you to be in no doubt that your pain is due to it trying to communicate with you. Once you submit 100% it will let go of you. You will no longer be imprisoned in your own body.
I didn't even have to resolve any emotional issues - indeed from the menu of items I don't even know which of them caused my TMS. Nothing about my issues changed on that plane journey. The only thing that changed was my 99% conviction (that my subconscious is trying to communicate with me) turned to 100%. I was reading Fred Amir's book, and half way through I knew something fundamental had happened. Here's an analogy: a baby that is crying before it can speak: you don't know what it wants but often just picking it up will stop the crying.
To help you reach that
100% level think about how your TMS episodes are totally at odds with physical injuries-
they heal in weeks. Sudden reversals as in TMS do not happen with physical injuries. Think about really unfit people who do no excercise and yet are living in blissful normality having no problems sitting or standing. People who are cut open with major surgery are running about after a month yet TMS goes on and on and on. My Dad who had heart procedures done was in better shape than me and he is more than twenty years older! It just doesn't add up.
Here's another often neglected factor but Sarno has mentioned it many times. The subconscious does not have a concept of time. It does not know past or future. Therefore things that happened to you in childhood are as if they are happening now. The downside is that all your issues accumulate from birth. The upside is that you can console the child *now*. When you reach that 100% conviction you should console the child. You can do this in general terms. Imagine yourself meeting the younger you (not sure what age is appropriate but just let your thoughts flow and a vision of a younger you will come...hang on to it). Tell the child that you know life has not turned out the way you expected but don't worry, you are here for you now, no need to be afraid now, you are listening and you will protect (the younger) you. However, this consoling will have no effect until you reach the 100% conviction because your subconscious will know that it (and that includes the you at every age from birth) does not have your undivided attention. The consoling will be most important for fighting off the twinges that come after your intial relief, as the subconscious tries to test your 100% conviction.
I hope this helps you all, it is still unbelievable how I got my life back in a matter of hours.
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| Lizzie |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 05:55:07
Hi Samchar
If you are in Yorkshire I think there is a a physio in Huddersfield who specialises in TMS. Dr Sopher mentioned her but I am sure if you google you should find her. She might be able to help. I do not live near Yorkshire so can not vouch for her.
How am I getting on...well on a positive I know episodes are always related to stressful times and they generally do not last very long since discovering the theories of TMS. TMS makes so much sense. I have made progress but think I am my own worst enemy sometimes at making total progress. That is why dropping into this forum helps. I receive encouragement here and know I am not alone with TMS.
Good luck!
Lizzie
PS:Samchar...take it you are a tea drinker! |
| samchar1 |
Posted - 12/22/2007 : 10:01:45
Hi
I am new to the site but live in england yorkshire i am i think a goodist like you and i was wondering how you are getting on with TMS and the Sarno approach. My pain is my leg and bum had it for 12mths.
kuk yorkshire |
| campbell28 |
Posted - 11/30/2007 : 14:48:49
it sounds like maybe your back is acting up to stop you thinking about exactly the stuff that skizzik wrote about. it is definitely doesn't feel nice acknowledging that you can feel really strong anger, hatred, resentment to people you are close to - but it is totally normal. I have always wanted everyone to like me, been nice to people, excused other's bad behaviour but felt guilty about my own, tried to live up to very high standards etc etc.
Since doing all the TMS work i have realised that inside I really was seething, and was actually really angry and resentful towards various people. This is a very hard thing to acknowledge if you think of yourself as a 'nice' person - but it is absolutely normal. I have realised that it is OK for me to have really nasty feelings about people I love. It is much much better for you to acknowledge the feelings, write them down or just accept them, than to try and igonre them because it doesn't fit with your ' nice' image of yourself.
I reckon maybe you have started to get closer to acknowledging and maybe even experiencing those feelings, and so your back is acting up to distract you. And it is very effective, because now you are thinking about how awful TMS is and what a difficult thing it is to deal with, rather than the nasty feelings you don't want to deal with yet. just keep telling yourself it is really OK to think awful things about people! and do write them down if you can - you can rip them up / burn them straight away. |
| Lizzie |
Posted - 11/30/2007 : 09:16:38
What do you make of this? I have had only mild pain and no major episode since early September but after reading Skizzik's reply an hour before and returning home after a very stressful week and glad to have got to Friday, my back spasms up big time! I feel so annoyed with my body, myself and TMS for playing so appallingly with my life. I deserve a good weekend. I knew this week was stressful and returned to the forum more this week to help prevent pain by keeping up my TMS understanding. That was conscious!I will go and write down all this anger and guilt looking back at previous posts but I do envy those who appear symptom free and I do fear my abililty to tell this episode to go away (stronger words uttered under my breath!) and am finding it hard to ignore this pain. So how did it start...well I did some daily stretches I enjoy so when it hurt/spasmed I simply carried on and repeated the stretches thinking that would challenge the pain to go away/pit battle against it, but it did not. The spasm intensified and I felt so annoyed, frustrated and a little fearful. TMS is awful!
Now what! I suppose i know the answer: find some soothes (but even they are not so much fun when in pain), talk to my brain and carry on. Should I try the stretches again yet? I envy Dr Brady and his ability to carry on playing golf in pain until the pain went away. I lack that kind of courage.
I do not think I have ever written so much on the board in such a short space of time.Funny it should lead to an episode. It can't be coincidental but it is maddening!
Lizzie |
| skizzik |
Posted - 11/30/2007 : 04:26:49
quote:
Originally posted by Lizzie
as to seething, that is not how I want to be. The idea of seething is so destructive......... but what if you do not like this knowledge? What if you do not like what you find out about yourself? Does that add to the reservoir?
Lizzie
Yeah...I think that IS the reservoir. Not the seething, but the conflict of seething.
Its taken me a while. But...I'm realizing that HATE is just a normal emotion as LOVE. As we have become a society however, our minds have realized that if we lash out our hate as we feel it, there w/b no society. Just anarchy.
So over the eons, thru the way we are raised we are taught from a young age to be NICE, LOVING, CARING...ETC
Then society/parents tell us not to hate, not to lash out, turn the other cheek, take the high road, ignore unpleasent thoughts, if you have nothing nice to say....etc
Well, what do we have? our PERFECTLY NATURAL INSTINCTIVE EMOTION TO HATE is now REPRESSED.
I used to take pride that I was a nice guy. I used to get compliments for never complaining.
No wonders I've suffered from everything mentioned on this board at one time or another.
No one on this board is suggesting you walk up to those, and tell them you hate them, but until you acknowledge that HATE is as natural as LOVE then you will continue to feel guilty all the time.
Can you acknowledge in your journal how much you hate 3 people in your life? Write down all the hate, you will probably flow out a repressed 10 pages. Perhaps you were afraid to do this because you feared someone would find your writings. Just write it and toss it. You don't have to tell the people you hate them to neutralize it, just let it flow out your hand, not into the body.
When I journal now, I sometimes put "this is the inner kid in me talking." This helps take away the guilt. Then I write as if I'm a child and journal how much I hate some people for what they did to me.
BaseBall65 who had perhaps one of the best recoveries on the board would write about what he'd like to do to some people and this relieved him. He never would of course (hurt anyone), but now those thoughts were neutralized.
Lizzie, I would love to see where your symptoms w/b a month from now if you could channel out the repressed hate from your back or wherever out through your arm on to paper.
Try writing at the top of the page you plan to throw away or not, "no apologies, no more guilt, I'm pleasing me now. Its not my fault that I hate" and have a go at it.
Write how you hate/resent your husband, kids, Mom. Dr. Dave/Sarno tells us that resentment builds when we please everyone as we get older and unconciously see that we did'nt get this kind of treatment when we were growing up and that resentment thanx to our clever minds of keeping the peace gets repressed. BUT IT HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE!!!
I don't know what kind of journaling you've been doing, but if you've been doing the work w/ no resolution, then you have to be missing something per every guru (Sarno, Rostocki, Sopher etc) out there. You know definition of insanity and all that (doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result).
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| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 11/30/2007 : 04:11:47
quote:
There is a huge cosmic debt of soothe that needs to be delivered to the perfectionists/goodists of the world, and nobody is going to deliver it but ourselves. Now get out there and seek your soothe!
Ah - what a relief to read this.
I am going through a hard time, and got up at 3 in the morning feeling anxious and variously TMSing, and was very very pleased to read this.
When I have broken out in tears about my pain and exhaustion that have recently seemed to take over my life, and asked myself "what is it?" a voice has come out saying "I want my mummy!" Almost immediately, especially if there is someone there (I do have compassionate friends thank God), I say, "Well, I don't mean I want the mummy I had, but I want A mummy."
My mummy wasn't very motherly, to put it mildly, and now she is in her final decline in which she is needing love and care and nurturing from me and my sister. Although I am doing my best, and have gone over to England many times and am going again soon, I find it quite enraging the way she demands what she didn't give. I notice I feel guilty saying this. I feel that I am making a fuss, and shouldn't have these feelings, which is exactly the message she gave me.
I feel like I need tons of soothing, but a lot of my usual methods don't work when I am this exhausted, lying on the couch in pain. I am also aware that in a way I am trying to take myself out of having to take care of mom, although I will anyway when the time comes.
So all that is one of the causes of my current outbreak of "illness." My sister, on the other hand, has manifested a one in a million form of cancer. She is overtly enraged about my mom's demands, and by many things she has said, seems to be taking herself out of responsibility to my mom also. The weird thing is that my mom has early (and getting later) Alzheimers, and doesn't seem to remember about my sister's illness.
Mom also has never believed in my illness, from childhood. She called me a hypochondriac when I was a little girl. It was probably true, but if my childhood symptoms were coming from emotions, I needed some love and soothing, not to be told it wasn't real. It certainly didn't work to tell me my symptoms weren't real - they just became more virulent and insistent.
I think so much of my rage comes, basically, from not feeling soothed, nurtured and loved by my mother as a child.
Thanks for all being here.
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
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