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Q: Chewing It Over ...
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jawjen
New User
perhaps I'm playing the devils' advocate here, but please hear me out. I believe that a lot of physical conditions come about due to our emotional and mental components also --- I do believe life is very literal and brings us things such as illness, pain etc that we need to become aware of. For fear of sounding like an ass, I am reluctant to say that we're all in fact responsible for our own problems and that we bring them about through our way of thinking. Don't get me wrong, I myself am suffering terribly from jaw-grinding and all the pain that comes with it, as far as loss of balance, eye-floaters, neck and back pain is concerned. It drives my up the wall! !! -- it's gotten really bad in the last few years, and I've been chewing my jaw for ten years now. So I know it's easier said than done to 'just change your way of thinking'. However, I do believe that the underlying causes are emotional/mental and when I look back on the last ten years that makes even more sense. I've been thinking about my condition for a long time, and because I believe life to be very literal I can't help but think that perhaps I 'lack bite' in my life, in my decisions in life. Or that I 'chew things over and over' and never get anywhere with it, i.e. can't find the right thing for me, always denying myself rather than go with what I love -- and that through this jaw-grinding condition life simply wants to try and make me aware of all of this! I can't make decisions. I lack bite. I chew things over without making any headway. I grind on and on in such a way that I even lose my balance in life etc. What I have realised as I was reading through a lot of posts regarding TMJ, one thing that struck me was the following: a lot of times people posting things mention things like 'there's the right cure for everyone, you just have to find it' and 'trial and error' being the way forward for TMJ sufferers. Perhaps one underlying 'theme' for all of us jaw-grinders is that we are all still looking for something to do with our lives but we just can't make decisions on what or how to get there. Perhaps this sounds all too weird for some, but perhaps there's a connection here and we can make each other aware of it and get to the damn bottom of this. Because if all this stress is causing us to eat away at ourselves, at the very things that make us have BITE in the first place (all our pretty little pearly whites and all the pretty little things in life that we love) I think it's worth looking into and discussing. What do you think?
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Replies(3)
grassy
Experienced User
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jawjen
New User
cool, Cindy, thanks for your reply. Phew, so I'm not the only one with decision problems, LOL. That's why I wrote this of course, but it's always good to actually have somebody else validate that point, somebody that agrees with it.
Yes, I do think we need to change ourselves ... just don't really know how to exactly, that's why I brought this whole thing up so perhaps more people can discuss and get to share their experiences. I know it's tough to come to grips with one's own faults, and in general people don't find it easy to change their view-points. And it is really hard when somebody says to you : oh, that dis-ease you have is of your OWN doing. I mean, that sounds really harsh and I don't think a lot of people would take kindly to that. But what if it's really true??? If it is, then we can definately do something about it. If no therapies really seem to help at all, then what else is left? Then there must be another way. And if that way is through introspection and getting to grips with one's self then I'm all for it. I'm just pretty much scared to do it by myself, LOL. But in doing it by myself there's power in that. But it always helps if there are others doing it also. One thing that's been gnawing away at me is this fear that I haven't done enough in my life, that I haven't had enough fun even, that I just got stuck in relationships for too long and that through that I stopped myself from being myself. Which is true to an extent, and it's very dangerous in the sense that you get kinda hung up on it and tend to blame other people in your life -- which isn't fair. That's just passing the buck. And responsibility. Perhaps I'm just lazy and don't really want to do anything, so I'd rather let somebody else make the decisions for me. Which of course takes away all my power, and all my bite
there's gotta be a way to fix this, surely. One thing that comes out of this is that we all have very strong jaw-muscles that will be able to chew through anything, even really bad experiences. But do we really need to do that? Why can't we just leave the bad experiences be? We don't HAVE to chew through them. we can choose better ones for ourselves, can't we?
Yes, I do think we need to change ourselves ... just don't really know how to exactly, that's why I brought this whole thing up so perhaps more people can discuss and get to share their experiences. I know it's tough to come to grips with one's own faults, and in general people don't find it easy to change their view-points. And it is really hard when somebody says to you : oh, that dis-ease you have is of your OWN doing. I mean, that sounds really harsh and I don't think a lot of people would take kindly to that. But what if it's really true??? If it is, then we can definately do something about it. If no therapies really seem to help at all, then what else is left? Then there must be another way. And if that way is through introspection and getting to grips with one's self then I'm all for it. I'm just pretty much scared to do it by myself, LOL. But in doing it by myself there's power in that. But it always helps if there are others doing it also. One thing that's been gnawing away at me is this fear that I haven't done enough in my life, that I haven't had enough fun even, that I just got stuck in relationships for too long and that through that I stopped myself from being myself. Which is true to an extent, and it's very dangerous in the sense that you get kinda hung up on it and tend to blame other people in your life -- which isn't fair. That's just passing the buck. And responsibility. Perhaps I'm just lazy and don't really want to do anything, so I'd rather let somebody else make the decisions for me. Which of course takes away all my power, and all my bite
there's gotta be a way to fix this, surely. One thing that comes out of this is that we all have very strong jaw-muscles that will be able to chew through anything, even really bad experiences. But do we really need to do that? Why can't we just leave the bad experiences be? We don't HAVE to chew through them. we can choose better ones for ourselves, can't we?
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TMJWorld
Extremely eHealthy
yes --stress, indeciciveness(my spelling stinks) the way we handle it effects our jaws. heck it even effects our life styles at times. but it not always is the cause. I was fine till i got hit by the car. untill that point i didnt know how much damage my chewing things over and letting things bother me really did to me. i try to limit my stress as much as possible. we do have to change some things and changing it isnt always easy.
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