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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
 Posted - 09/09/2007 : 08:19:46
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I've been doing my reading this morning, which helps me examine and reflect on the last few days of my journey out of the TMS hole.
I've been amused, annoyed, and just plain amazed that my brain has spent the last couple of days working its way through every previous pain from the last ten years or so (oh wait! It hasn't gotten to my hips yet! lol). And then a new (old) symptom that I had just been thinking about in the context of wondering if it too had been a TMS symptom. I'm talking about asthma-like shortness of breath.
When I was 12 (same time I developed gastritis), I developed an asthma-like symptom that became the source of intense teasing from my sisters (years later I was "diagnosed" with "exercise-induced" asthma). Even though I was breathing fine, getting plenty of air, no wheezing, I would suddenly feel as though I was NOT getting enough air, that I couldn't breathe DEEP enough to get sufficient air, and I would begin taking BIG sucking long gulping breaths, lifting my shoulders way up, and thus also riding up my first bra, so that I would hook my thumb on the bottom of the bra and hitch it back down.
And I would also start yawning madly.
So the dance step was: heave shoulders, suck air, hitch down bra, yawn yawn. Repeat.
My sisters picked right up on that little dance step and replayed it back at me with glee.
Well, heck. I was probably just having a damn anxiety attack.
Anyway, that symptom came back last night, and i remembered that it was occasionally associated with pain in my shoulders, as though it were my shoulders not allowing my body to expand and breathe.
It is mostly fading away this morning, because I've been focusing on the psychology and thinking about the original experience.
Now on to something else. The thread about the person with the stressful job, in which I asked how much the job really meant, got me to thinking about TMS personality traits and how they affect career choices.
Dr Sarno talks about both anger and sadness. I got to thinking about how each have affected my life choices and self-pressures. When I was a kid I only wanted to be a vet. I had that dream for many years, right up until I took an animal husbandry class and had to see animals suffering. Not that I wasn't forewarned. I was the kid who picked up all roadkill and buried them, each with their own cross and tears. But I suddenly got a lightbulb look at my intense sadness reaction to the pain and suffering of other living things. I briefly flirted with the idea of being a nurse, but realized quickly that I had the same problem there (I had a home care housework job for a while, cleaning house for seriously ill people. One day I tried to go to work at one of my houses, but I drove right by. I turned around and tried again, and drove by again. I gave up after the third try and went home and quit my job).
Well...I ended up as a geologist, studying rocks. Rocks cannot experience pain and suffering. Very convenient. Am I happy with my career choice? Not really. I'm overeducated and unemployed.
And I still have tremendous issues with sadness.
I'll talk next time about how anger has affected my life choices (not to mention being a pain in the ass, literally). |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 08:33:29
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| I think exaggerated affect is a clue. If consciously experienced/expressed sadness or anger are out of proportion and negatively affecting your life, there is likely some serious internal pressure that needs to be dealt with. I almost can't get through a conversation without tearing up at some point. I'll bet I'm not alone with that. |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 09:21:45
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Another thing: think of two common sayings and how they "describe" a TMS equivalent.
"I can't stomach that."
"That bugs the s**t out of me."
The brain tends to be excessively literal and/or punnish in its expression, as I'm sure you have all experienced in dreams. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 10:28:59
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I share that inability to tolerate animal suffering and I've often thought there's more to it than meets the eye, especially inasmuch as I can tolerate stories about children suffering, at least up to a certain point...IN general though, I'm overburdened with too much empathy..whether it be on behalf of animals or people.
IN fact, once when I was a little kid and I was playing in the woods, I knocked over a bunch of little ferns with a stick (I was forever playing Robin Hood and a stick served as either my sword or quarter staff, depending on my mood for the day)...I was suddenly stricken with guilt and sadness over the harm I'd brought to these "defenseless" plants..
Not a normal kid, that much is clear. |
Edited by - art on 09/09/2007 10:30:18 |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 11:16:50
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| "too much empathy" is often how I describe myself. I'd love a better balance of more sympathy and less empathy. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 12:12:04
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It's a huge pain in the ass...I approach each day as a kind of mine field of painful sights and stories that must be avoided...
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miche
Canada
283 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 14:03:42
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Hey you two, I thought I was the only one who felt this way, I can't stand to see anyone suffer, I FEEL their pain, their fears, I go through great lenghts not to embarrass anyone, make excuses for them so they don't feel embarrassed, I will tell people that it does not matter if they did not deliver on their promise to me because I don't want them to feel bad or embarrassed on my account, now that part is really sick and I cannot explain why I act this way, I have questionned myself , I don't think that I am a masochist so much as I hate for anyone to feel bad even if they deserve to, what is wrong with me?  |
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carbar
USA
227 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 17:06:07
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quote:
Originally posted by miche
I FEEL their pain, their fears, I go through great lenghts not to embarrass anyone, make excuses for them so they don't feel embarrassed, I will tell people that it does not matter if they did not deliver on their promise to me because I don't want them to feel bad or embarrassed on my account
When I was little I couldn't watch any of those animal in peril kid shows or I would get worked up with tears and worry.
I think the traits that people are talking about are not necessarily bad one's. Being able to intuit people's emotional responses is helpful to a degree. So is being considerate of other's feelings. It's just when that consideration trumps the consideration you feel for your OWN feelings.
It seems like this relates back to the inner child. In reading Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child, she writes about effect of an insecure mother on the young child. The insecure mother cannot adequately meet the needs of the child and often reacts with fear to the infant's natural emotional response of crying. The child learns unconsciously as an infant to react to the mother's fear and worry in ways that sooth the mother. Thus, checking the infant's natural reactions in order to fulfill the innate need to please the mother. The mother's emotional state in some way becomes the responsibility of the child.
So -- carry that all the way to adulthood -- we are stuck with this tape, but instead of applying it to our beloved mom, we are applying it to the jerkface who cut in front of us at the grocery line because surely he must be in a rush or he wouldn't have done that...etc.
Meanwhile, our inner baby/toddler selves are still stuffing away our emotions to be "good" and pleasing to mom and that sure is enraging.
Thank goodness for Alice Miller.
ps -- mamab, excellent topic!!!
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 17:19:06
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quote:
So -- carry that all the way to adulthood -- we are stuck with this tape, but instead of applying it to our beloved mom, we are applying it to the jerkface who cut in front of us at the grocery line because surely he must be in a rush or he wouldn't have done that...etc.
This sounds good, and had a nice tidiness to it, yet this sometimes crushing burden of empathy is, or feels like it is, much more than a defense mechanism. There is an intensity to it that to me feels more inborn than a "tactic" that developed in response to certain environmental conditions.. |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 18:18:30
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I'm wondering if it is an innate trait that is common among TMS sufferers. I don't know. cart/horse thing?
And think about this. That narcisistic inner child we all have is NOT heavy on the empathy. Somebody here mentioned that lack of empathy is part of narcisistic personality disorder. So, if our inner child is a bit lacking in the empathy department, and we also have an over-developed conscious sense of empathy (innate or created?), what the heck kind of havoc does that wreak in our unconscious? |
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ndb
209 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 18:23:08
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quote:
Originally posted by mamaboulet
I'm wondering if it is an innate trait that is common among TMS sufferers. I don't know.
I dunno, I don't have any overdeveloped sense of empathy. In fact, I feel pretty selfish all the time. I don;t mind squishing bugs etc for my own greater comfort. Perhaps you're drawing a conclusion in the wrong direction : it may well be that people with lots of empathy tend have TMS, but it may be going to far to say that everybody developing TMS has lots of empathy. :)
ndb |
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mamaboulet
181 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 18:34:39
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Yes, I meant that it might be part of a possible TMS personality profile. We know we aren't all the same, and while we overlap on some "pain-prone" personality traits, there certainly isn't one rigid TMS type.
I'm just curious about the connection between empathy and sadness, and how it might relate to TMS in some people. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 19:22:37
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I don't see how a highly empathetic person could escape sadness in a world where living creatures feed upon one another as the natural order of thing....Viewed in a certain light, the world is a pretty nightmarish place...
...."a hall of doom" according to one philospher... |
Edited by - art on 09/09/2007 19:35:16 |
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carbar
USA
227 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 21:11:34
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I think it's possible that having an inborn proclivity towards being more sensitive than the average both physically and emotionally could be something TMS sufferers have in common.
Aren't there pyschological studies about people's resiliance towards negative situations in life? Two people w/very similar life stories full of painful/abusive/dangerous childhood events and very different outcomes.
But, (over)identifying with the emotions of others rather than the self could be another way to avoid one's own emotions while still feeling something.
Also, anyone in this discussion familiar with Nonviolent Communication (NVC)? There's a very specific definition of empathy that goes along with NVC.
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reflections of a newbie
