When you start to expose your feelings through a practice like journaling, your nervous system may be shaken up and activated. You may be wound up full of emotion from your practice, and feeling overwhelmed with negative stuff you’ve dragged up and let rip in your expressive journal writing.
Regulating your nervous system out of fight or flight is key to healing and soothing yourself is a great way to not only balance and ground yourself after the emotional work, but to soothe the fear in your mind. Dialling down the anxiety to allow your brain to let go of the over practiced fear focus and flare response that comes with having chronic stress illness issues.
There are many ways to self-soothe. Take a walk, do some yoga, listen to music, watch a funny show, cuddle your pets, sit in silence, meditate, practice breathwork etc.
My medicines of choice are yoga, meditation and breathwork.
Yoga is my preferred movement of choice which I usually practice after meditating if I have time that day. I particularly love yoga because it can be as gentle as you like, and it works the body, mind and breath at once and has been massively beneficial in my journey for this reason.
I now offer gentle beginner-level Yoga classes for the TMS community, focusing on calming the nervous system and getting back to movement without fear. Find out more about this by clicking here.
I also have an online course to take completely at your own pace that includes various TMS themed meditations, affirmations, journal prompts, restorative yoga, breathwork and much more, created to help you through your own recovery just like I did. Find out more about my course here.
Meditation has become quite an addiction for me. Another one of those things I used to be quite sceptical about. Meditation is NOT hippie nonsense, but I did think that the idea of quietening my monkey brain was impossible. Meditation soothes me like nothing else ever has for me. I usually prefer guided meditations so that I have less chance of my chattering mind distracting me - it still does, but I’ve come to learn that those distractions are normal.
I grab the headphones, turn my phone notifications off and get comfy. Lying on my back, knees propped up by a couple of pillows (or whatever rocks your boat) and just listen. Bliss out, surrender to the voice and music in your ears it's so freaking amazing.
It took me a couple of tries to properly get into it, but now, oh my good god! I feel like I’m teleported to another dimension. I see psychedelic patterns and all sorts, my body feels paralysed (in a good way) and nothing can get in to distract me. I crave this feeling now, and do it EVERY DAY, always after JournalSpeak, but often before bed too, and usually after yoga. Two or three in a row sometimes, if I’m not already knackered from the first one. It is truly life-changing.
Meditation has made me calmer overall, it's like a sweet sedative with NO bad side effects. The power of visualisation and imagination are really astounding. Being able to imagine your eyes melting like molasses into the bed beneath you, can put you in an incredibly relaxed frame of mind that has MANY MANY benefits to your overall wellbeing.
Meditation teaches you how to cultivate equanimity, which basically means you stay calm and centred amid any kind of chaos, which is really beneficial for TMS recovery as a mindset of indifference to your symptoms is really key.
Meditation allows you to observe, and then in time, slows down your monkey mind, reduces overthinking and massively impacted my tendency to procrastinate and ruminate over everything, hugely beneficial to everyday life, whether you're journaling or not.
Studies have proven that meditation changes the physiological structure of the brain, affecting emotional regulation, fear, anxiety and self-perception. Meditation training improves a wide range of willpower skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control and self-awareness. It dramatically affects the all-important "hypervigilance" mode of all TMS suffering by activating the parasympathetic nervous system and quietening the sympathetic nervous system. This basically means it allows the nervous system to recover by switching from ‘fight or flight’ mode into ‘rest and repair’ mode with ease...which is where we want to be.
Research even shows that meditation regulates our body's vibrational frequency, bringing it back into balance with that of the earth, which when out of sync can cause distress, anxiety, insomnia and a suppressed immune system - literally invading our ability to heal. I find it both a fascinating subject and a truly addictive practice. I’m slumping in my beanbag typing this just thinking about it...it’s utter bliss.
One of my favourite things about all of this work is that it takes very little external influence to work, once you've learnt the basics...
Find out more about the benefits of yoga, meditation and mindfulness here.
THE POWER IS ALL INSIDE OF YOU, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. It can feel like you are literally coming back from the dead, to save yourself!
Self-soothing can also come in the form of comforting and soothing your thought patterns. The more you can meet the chaotic thoughts you’re having about your symptoms, the more likely they are to relax.
I used to be quite a catastrophiser, I overreacted to everything and was always thinking the worst. I obsessed over how rubbish my life had become. Over time I started to understand that my thoughts were perpetuating my situation so I started to learn grace and patience with unlearning those patterns and changing my mind.
By turning fear, symptoms, anxiety and the ongoing stress of my situation around, I started to see real results.
Right now, take a deeper breath if you can, into your belly and fill your ribs right up to your neck, and as you exhale decide with your whole heart NOT TO FEAR what is happening because there is NOTHING to fear. You are NOT BROKEN! More on mindset in the following section...keep going. I’m sorry this story is long, but it's really important stuff!
Having the right mindset and redirecting maladaptive thought spirals and beliefs can give you the tools to banish chronic conditions for good.
