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Albert
USA
210 Posts |
 Posted - 02/03/2005 : 10:28:40
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Does this add up, or am I making things up?
Yesterday I realized that the thing about TMS's strategy of diverting attention that bugs me, is that it seems to be such an unconscious strategy when compared to my other psychological conditioning. This bugged me because part of what has allowed me to overcome conditiong in the past, is the fact of how such conditioning has had a conscious element. I felt perplexed about how am I'm going to decondition a strategy that is so unconscious.
So I wrote down in my journal and realized that I went from being a person who didn't get consciously angry very often and didn't feel bad when I did so, to being a person who would have occasional erruptions, and afterwards feel bad about doing so. When the later happened I started to tell myself that I have to be more controlled, and "viola," I started to have TMS symptoms. As I followed the history of my anger, I found that the more I felt compelled to be a person who doesn't become angry (as if it's possible to become anger free), the more back pain etc. I started to experience.
So this makes me think that even though I didn't consciously plan the strategy that causes TMS pain to play the role of distractor, I did consciously instruct my mind to not let anger come into my awareness. DOES THIS MAKE SENSE? DID I CONSCIOUSLY, WITHOUT KNOWING IT, CAUSE THE TMS STRATEGY TO COME INTO PLAY? HAS ANYBODY FOUND THAT THEY DID THE SAME THING?
Right now I'm trying to recondition myself by telling myself that it is okay to feel anger. The key is to not push it away, but rather to allow it to be felt in a way that doesn't become problematic. For example, there were a couple of situations at work yesterday in which I justifiably felt anger, but it wasn't appropriate to express it. Therefore, I just acknowledged it and inwardly allowed myself to feel it without outwardly showing that I was feeling it, and later on in solitude, I allowed myself to experience it in a more overt manner. I'm trying to let my mind know that year's of repressed rage isn't going to turn me into an out of controll maniac. |
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n/a
374 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 02:44:24
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You wont become an out of control maniac, Albert. What you describe does make sense. I feel that I 'colluded' in my own anger repression - to the point that, like you, I did not get conscously angry. I enjoyed my reputaion as a very calm, even-tempered person. I still have that reputation, by the way - only my husband and therapist were part of the transition which involved ranting and raving - and the journal that I kept at the time is full of the most extreme anger - I read it the other day, really as a result of reading and contributing to posts on anger here on this site. I stopped keeping it a year ago.
It was a frightening process for me and sounds as if it is for you also - experiencing these feelings goes against years and years of conditioning and extreme self-contol. But, honestly, you will get to the point where you can feel anger the same way that you feel any other emotion.
Best wishes
Anne |
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Baseball65
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 06:09:30
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Hi Albert..
I don't think it was necessarily something we did intentionally,but YES,good self-parenting IS one of the main reasons we get it.I had NO pain when I acted out on every single emotion...every single conditioned "goodist" action was at some point approved by my conscious mind on the way in.
I used to be AFRAID of what would happen if I let the anger out all the way....too many times it cost me more than I could afford...and FEAR of your own responses(anger) causes.....drumroll.....anxiety!!!
BTW all psychological conditioning is unconscious.....the part you are aware of is the very tip of the iceberg.
peace
Baseball65 |
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Does this add up?
