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glowgirl
USA
42 Posts |
 Posted - 06/30/2012 : 10:46:32
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i've been reading SteveO's book and listening to HBP (Sarno) on audio.
SteveO says to heal you have to feel your anger. So let me back up a moment because while i am doing a lot more of that, especially around stuff that happened as an adult and teenager, i don't feel a lot for stuff from younger years (like childhood abuse, etc.).
part of the problem is that i do have repressed memories. i have been to therapy before and usually therapists have said, just let stuff come into your consciousness when it is time or you're ready to handle it (etc.) but don't try to force it. (i remember one story that my sister-in-law told me (my father had bragged to her about this some years ago before my brother was killed), where my father used to agitate my brother and me, when we were little kids, and then, dunk us in a bath of ice water to calm us down. it validated me when i heard Sarno tell the story of the mom who did that to her kid because i could relate and that actually felt good to me. still... i don't remember things like myself and i don't feel angry. see my point? and of course there's so very much more...)
also my spiritual training is that anger only leads to more anger (karma).
how do people get around these roadblocks? i can hardly remember my childhood! and am classic TMSer so i would love to be able to do so.
i am wondering if in hypnosis i could recover some stuff, get mad, and move on all at once as one strategy? even with hypnosis i have never gotten too far.
thanks. mostly i feel compassion for myself (and people like that poor child who was splashed with cold water and hopeful that she overcame her upbringing.)
ps my family is all gone except for me. so i can't go to anyone for history, either. except occasional stories, like this one, so i know of my abusive environment on some levels, and have some memories... but people don't always like to talk or know what really went on. no, i am pretty much on my own on this. |
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ED500
3 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2012 : 04:48:51
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Well if I remember correctly Sarno said that you will not be able to bring repressed rage into your consciousness. Basically, you will not be able to ever recover these feelings. I think he said that it could happen but it is rare. This was right out of one of his books.
However, I have a very interesting story that brought out alot of current repressed rage and maybe this could help you figure yours out.
I play video games very competitively online with other players, and there is this one video game that I play that gets me so angry. If my team or myself did badly I get so angry that I yell, bang and punch things. I play for statistics and rank, so losing is very bad for me. I hurt my voice once screaming, and even my hands to let you know how angry I get. This is not normal really.
One thing I noticed is that when playing this game that my feelings towards things, specifically people that were bothering me came into my consciousness. For example, I would be doing badly in the game and feelings of hate would come over me about one of my roommates or anyone that I was hating and repressing it. Then I would realize that this hate is because I am not sticking up for myself with his demands.
Or how people in my family are not leaving me alone with certain things. This game got me so angry that it brought out my hate towards people in my life. Yes Hate, I am not afraid to say it.
To me this was a blessing in disguise as the next time my roommate was unfair with me I was ready to defend myself and did and this helped relieve depression that was coming from this. He basically said that he was going to charge me and another roommate if he had to clean and we didn't. I let him know that it is not his house and it is up to us if we want to do it and if he does not like it then he can leave. He was the only one using the kitched really with his cooking and making a mess of it. This was very hard for me to do to confront him as he was a big guy and I am not confrontational. But it was one of the best things I did by finally sticking up for myself from what I felt he had no right to do.
It is amazing what your body will repress, and when I repress these problems it causes me depression or what would be your TMS equivalent.
I think if you are suffering from TMS that it is probably something more current or something that you could change in your life. I doubt it would be about child abuse when your family is all gone and there is nothing you could do about it. Your repressing these feelings because you could act on them right now and your body is trying to stop you from acting on them.
You have to find a way to let your anger surface, this game really does the job for me. I was playing this game all day yesterday and was getting so angry that a current problem came to surface. I have someone who is constantly taking pictures of myself and I already let him know I do not like it. However, I let some of it pass to be nice. Remember being "nice" is the problem alot of us TMS sufferers have. We "nice" people do not stick up for ourselves and repress our problem and unjust acts by other people.
When playing this game this friend came to mind and his picture taking came to the surface. My rage really came out and I said that if he points that camera at me again I am going to smash that camera in his face. Especially when he takes close up shots of my face. It is bothering me more than I thought and I was repressing these feelings to be nice. However, by being nice and letting him get his way, it was causing my TMS to get worse and also causing me depression. Well, now that I am aware of the problem now I will be ready to deal with the issue. It is in my conciseness now and not repressed. This little Bastard won't be taking advantage of me anymore or my niceness. You see, you will be amazed what you are repressing and how much it bothers you. But most of it is current stuff and stuff that you can change. Do not focus on how your father treated you 20 or 30 years ago but how people around you today are taking advantage of you.
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PianoGuy
USA
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2012 : 16:56:52
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Hello glowgirl,
I'm in therapy working on my repressed feelings, so I relate to your struggle. It's possible to uncover that stuff, but not easy, especially on your own. It sounds like you have a lot of buried feelings to deal with. A good therapist has many ways to help you. But lots of therapists aren't very good, or are good for one client but not another. If you didn't make progress with one, don't be afraid to quit and try someone else. My second therapist is doing more for me in weeks than my previous one did in years.
As far as karma goes, anger may lead to more anger when directed at another person, but dealing with your internal feelings is different. When you become aware of your buried anger, it lessens in intensity over time.
I hope this helps a little.
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 13:30:43
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Just a quick clarification here. I never said that you need to feel your anger in order to heal. If I confused you somewhere I apologize.
This is a huge topic that needs a new thread because of the confusion it brings. But it's important. It was the final piece of the healing puzzle for me when I was stuck in mid-healing. Once I understood it, I healed all the way. That could be where the confusion is; I needed to understand anger to heal, not feel it. I don't think 99% of people could ever feel something that dangerous--but necessary.
I never felt my anger and I healed. I also wrote that I believed that Thich Nhat Nanh's ideology was the better way of coping with it.
Steve |
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PianoGuy
USA
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 19:33:20
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Steve,
Yes, I am confused about this. I'm hoping end the anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic symptoms that have plagued me all my life (I'm in my fifties).
Through therapy I'm beginning to recognize that I received psychological abuse from my parents, especially my father. (That was such a hard sentence to write.) I'm starting to feel some of the anger, shame, and rejection that must have been hiding all along. I'm not in touch with all of it, but certainly some of it is becoming quite conscious.
So ... Are you saying that I don't have to feel the repressed feelings to be cured? Wouldn't that mean I'm still repressing them?
David
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 22:41:32
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That's a good question that many people ask. I'm not a professional therapist, all I can answer is how I've seen people heal from TMS, including myself. And of course I've been lucky enough to have been taught some things by TMS docs over the years.
The answers to anything where the brain is involved can be very complex, and there's no simple answer. If there were, there would be one type of therapy, the docs could just say, "ok: x = 1, go do this and this." The same is true for TMS healing, if there were a formula for success I could just say do this and this. But I have to know the person a little to see if they're very physical or have had extreme separation anxiety, etc. Even then no 2 people seem to respond in the same fashion, so I try to get them to try something they feel might work because they're the ones who know inside what is wrong. No one is a better therapist than the individual himself. He just needs someone he feels good about opening up to.
When I was reading the collective works of Carl Jung I saw one thing that stuck with me; that the choice of analyst was far more important than the problem or method. In other words, if the person feels good about the analyst they are more likely to solve their problems, it didn't matter what technique they used. Jung also said that the majority of the problems people were coming to him with never happened. The anxious ones were just "readying."
So if you find someone you can open up to that's critical. Everyone who lives has been hurt deeply in their past by someone. Only the individual can make the decision on whether he or she feels the need to begin to express themselves to someone nonjudgmental in order to heal.
I think it depends on the level of disability, or intensity of chronicity, or even the number of symptom imperative shifts that the person wants to put up with.
The medium length answer is "no" you don't have to dig up the past to heal, but I would recommend it. If you can find a culprit or put to rest some deep wound, it's more likely you won't experience a severe shift in a symptom. I've also seen a couple people in wheelchairs, unable to walk, eventually heal without finding the root cause of their pain.
It would be rare to have to feel your emotions or release your anger in order to heal, but you do need to pull the anger level down significantly. I recommended in my book to transform it. But, some people might need to release the anger, it's nebulous.
Now, if you're totally debilitated like the Helen lady Dr. Sarno wrote about, you probably have something buried in your unconscious that needs exhumed.
So therapy = all good
Necessary = sometimes
Need to feel buried emotions = rarely
I hope that dazed and confused you. No, I really hope it makes a little sense to you. If you are digging up some pain in your past do it, but beware of psycho-archeology. I've seen therapists keep people crying for years digging up their past, picking at the same things over and over. There's a time to dig and a time to put the shovel down and rest.
The problems may still remain but if you can live a happy life relatively pain-free just let it go. Anyone can make anyone cry if they dig hard enough. The difference, I believe, is in the degree of anxiety and depression. Only the person knows "when" to start digging and when to stop. The analyst's job is to show him where to dig.
Steve Ozanich |
Edited by - SteveO on 08/11/2012 22:11:47 |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 23:10:04
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As always, SteveO, great post and great advice! You should write a book...Love that term psycho-archeology, I was an anthro-archeology major way back when. It put me in good stead to sift through life's garbage to get to the buried body, arrow head or coprolite--(don't ask). Liked Jung too back in my college days. I'll give you a call if you don't get to me first. I've been procrastinating, waiting for all the planets to line up, view the pics of Mars and make the perfect phone call. I'm all the way up to page 95, TRAFORDIFICATION (sp?), hope I live long enough to finish the book, I read it in the hot-tub. Interesting how Helen Keller would have picked hearing over sight.
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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional." Author Unknown
"Happy People Are Happy Putters." Frank Nobilo, Golf Analyst
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." Mark Twain and Balto
"The hot-dog is the noblest of dogs; it feeds the hand that bites it." Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter
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Edited by - tennis tom on 08/09/2012 23:11:57 |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2012 : 22:56:37
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TTom, I hope you live long enough to finish my book too. But if you only read 10 pages per week we're looking at about the year 2136. Do you exercise regularly and eat well? Maybe.
I hoped I would live long enough to finish writing it. So hopes and dreams do come true, as long as they're about misery and toil.
You read my book in a hot tub? Why can't I get females to do that?
I did a lot of phone calling to college professors and research before creating that word tracordification, or tracordify. It was becoming more obvious to me that most people were suffering from TMS due to a deep love that was lost, or from the fear of loss, rejection and isolation. Deaths, divorces, family fighting, life-threatening illnesses, aging, etc. We want to feel connected and secure, and aging just happens to be one of the biggest triggers because we sense the inevitable future disconnect.
Whenever I would talk to people about their pain it was clear that some type of attunement problem had occurred in their early years and had been exacerbated by another recent separation (McKenzie's Two Trauma Mechanism). So separation rage seemed to be the main culprit in TMS no matter what type of separation it was. I also knew that most psychiatrists and psychologists had come to the conclusion that their patients needed to feel connected and secure, and that they feared isolation. Allan Watts' work helped me to heal and he also knew that we suffered in the West because we are such an isolationist society when it came to our emotions. And the pain rate is higher here than most developing countries, I forget the study I cited offhand.
Our deepest desire is to keep mom and dad from leaving us, and to keep our family whole and united and healthy, and argue and alcohol/drug free. This is when we are at out happiest because we don't feel alone when loved. I also knew from talking to people and listening to them that their deepest desire was to keep the hearts of their loved ones together with their own hearts.
So tract means pull, and cord means heart. When the family unit gets disrupted havoc begins, but also some people never had the nice family unit at all and they were even angrier and in more pain; many were adopted or abused. The heart is cut by the separation, and where the heart aches so does the body. And that's why we have hot tubs. Oh and that big word I made up.
That's why I put the Huna in there too, to show how the family unit used to work before we became modernized.
Yes, Helen Keller always "said" that if she could have one sense back it would be her hearing. Hearing is in the deeper brain and it is far more acute than sight. In music/taping, when I record and video, it's much easier to fool the eyes than it is the ears. That's why it's important to say I love you. But action speaks even louder than words. If you love someone it's good to tell them you love them, but if you do something for them you've proven your love to them.
SO
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glowgirl
USA
42 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 10:19:34
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Hi all, thanks for such rich comments.
i took Steve0s advice and contacted the tms psychotherapist he recommended in Marin county. I have seen him 3 times so far. the first time was mostly intake, the second, a tad awkward as i learned a new language and way of thinking of things. basically anger is a defense mechanism that is preventing me from accessing my real emotions (or ones my defense mechanisms are trying to hide). that is what is more important - what emotional truths am i using my defense mechanisms for, to "not notice?". by the third time i had uncovered more defense mechanisms (and emtional truths i was trying to hide) and discovered a deep double bind and from here i see some life long patterns that have kept my rackets in place. this in only three sessions. and it's not about digging up old memories (though i did have a few) as discovering the defense mechanisms. thanks, SteveO, for suggesting I go. i think this is going to be a very fertile path for me. |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 12:36:47
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Good job GlowGirl, I have faith in you to heal. I've never met Clark but from what I've read him say, he "got it." And he's right, it's not always about digging up the past, it's about showing the person how they use pain or emotions to hide within, or defend against.
It's the therapist's job to show them where to dig.
Thanks for coming back to report on your progress. I hope you come back again with even better news.
SO |
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susan828
USA
291 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 12:59:43
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| Steve, in your first post on this thread you clarified that you don't have to feel your anger to heal. But then you said 99% of people could not feel that anger...dangerous but necessary. Now I am confused because I interpret this as you saying that feeling the anger IS necessary. If I am wrong, can you say *what* is necessary? |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 14:25:08
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Hi Susan new and improved on #827,
You don't have to feel your anger to heal. Also, 99% (just an arbitrary number to show largesque) don't feel this anger. I stick to these statements as general observations.
I'm not sure why you think they would need to feel it or where I lost you? Can you expand a little on your question? Sorry I confused you, I'm trying to help here but I understand that it gets confusing sometimes.
SO |
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susan828
USA
291 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 17:44:18
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Hi Steve...here is your quote:
"I needed to understand anger to heal, not feel it. I don't think 99% of people could ever feel something that dangerous--but necessary"
What I meant is, what exactly is necessary? It sounded as if feeling something that dangerous (the anger) is necessary. That's what I wanted clarified. Sorry, just confused! |
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SteveO
USA
272 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2012 : 20:26:45
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Ahhh, Susan, no wonder you were confused. Sorry, that wasn't phrased very well. I try to keep things clear but it's tough to do.
What I meant by "necessary" is that anger is necessary, both healthy levels and the overflowing anger.
We need some anger to move, to be aggressive in physical activity, and for sexual purposes. If this energy is directed in the proper manner life is good. All creativity comes from the collision of polar opposites. So these emotions are ever present.
The TMS anger is also a blessing as I've written, since it provides the message and the catalyst for necessary change. In other words, anger is a defense mechanism against worse things, assuming it's not acted out. I was happy to hear recently that Dr. Sarno ended all his lectures by telling people they were fortunate, so he and I are on that same page.
Anger is necessary for survival, and you don't have to feel it to heal, but if you could make it rise to consciousnesses you would heal. But that's a tough prospect since it's not controllable.
Steve |
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susan828
USA
291 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 08:03:57
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| Thanks for taking the time to clarify that, Steve! Much appreciated as always :-) |
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Importance of anger and repressed memories?
