This is a good long one, you guys- but oh, so worth it! About an amazing client who demonstrates that strength, perseverance, and a good heart can get you very far- then we also get to go deeper into our bodies to heal. As always, it is not easy, it takes some time- but it is always worth it. Hope you enjoy her reading her story as much as I did experiencing it. She’s pretty incredible.
THE “BACK” STORY
A sweet and strong mama client, with 6 kiddos, came in after texting a bunch of stuff that was going on in her family. And that her back pain was back. I told her it was a better idea to come in and get a session to go through some things for healing.
She had come to me initially because of severe, debilitating back pain. She was a special needs pediatric nurse with a slight build and had been lifting up her 60 lbs client and probably injured herself over time. We found out as we spoke in the first session that it was also activated during stress.
She had a lot going on in her life, both positive and stressful, and said she could feel the emotional parts of her get spun out when anything happened with her adult and younger kiddos. We talked about people’s paths, and she realized how much of an empath that she was. Having learned to feel the emotions of others, she had not yet learned healthy boundaries and how to protect herself and not absorb all of it.
As a nurse, she was definitely an informational person, so a lot of facts and philosophy came out during her sessions. She drank them all in and processed them quickly. She wondered aloud why she hadn’t come sooner- which we quickly concluded together that she wasn’t ready to know these things, or work on them, until now.
This day, we spoke about a big incident that happened in her house with her adult teenage son that involved her nine month old grandson. It was rough. And she had to get the authorities involved. She cried as she told me that she was okay, and that she was so surprised how she dealt with it. That before the work we had done together, she would have yelled and screamed- and created more chaos on top of the chaos. Instead she had more command of her body and mind, and was more calm, she had her faculties about her and did what needed to be done. She said she cried and was devastated, but it was different. She laughed and said her husband asked who she was because he didn’t recognize her.
“Ahhh, sounds like you are having normal emotions, instead of reactions. When you are empath, you can get stuck in just reacting to everything that everyone is going through and feeling. We don’t have a separation. To have normal emotions, such as sadness and anger- that’s huge progress.”
We spoke about how she was trying to not get involved in it, how her adult children were just that: adults. And how involved we get when we are codependent empaths. How we can take on more of others’ situations then sometimes they do. And how this doesn’t help them, it actually gets in the way of their growth and learning. And makes us sick.
She told me that she had always taken on everyone else’s “stuff.” That she could feel their feelings. That it affected her like it was happening to her. I nodded in agreement, because this was textbook. I had been through it many times in my life- and had watched sooo many clients go through it too. And only now, being out of it, could she tell the difference.
I told her about the ways that we learned to adapt when we were younger. And feeling other people’s feelings could have been one of them. The “barometer” in the house of what was going to happen. And if it happened to them, then it was going to affect you as well. So we learned how to feel the winds of change, and all that caused it.
That sometimes we don’t get our needs met, and other people who are in charge of taking care of us can’t or won’t, so it can be up to us to know what their needs are. We can try and take care of them and all the situations around us so we don’t feel their pain and aftermath. One of our superpowers is that we had to learn what other people’s needs were so we could try and meet those- otherwise bad things would happen in our households. And sometimes, if we did it well enough, we would get some of our needs met, and maybe some, or a lot of love- for a while anyways, until their needs become more important again.
We talked about those younger selves that sustained trauma that were left behind. They had to grow up early. And take care of others. Without care and nurturing to grow, part of us can stay in that development stage, stunted and stuck. And things happen that are similar or trigger us- these are ones that we tend to act like. Those parts of us don’t have the mature skills to deal with those hard things, because they haven’t grown up and are still stuck at the age they were when the trauma happened. They deal with things the same way they learned to respond to those other things.
She nodded her head in agreement. It looked like her wheels were turning….
THE REALIZATION
The room went silent for a bit- and then she looked up at me and started talking about the connection she had just had. She told me how, when she was fourteen, she had watched her grandpa have a heart attack and die. It was just her in the car with him and they had gotten a flat tire and had pulled over to change it. He fell over and died, and cracking his head on the road. The way she said it, you could tell that it still bothered her. She said was that there was a “before” this incident and an “after” this incident.
This is pretty common, I told her. A turning point of our lives. We end up fractured. The person that we were before the trauma can feel like they are trapped behind glass- and the new person we had to become to adapt and survive, is not fully us. We have parts missing, and we know it. But we do the best that we can. We use whatever defense mechanisms that we can to give the illusion of safety and joy- and do what we need to do to take the pain away.
She went on to tell me about how no one consoled her after this huge trauma happened. That she had to go to the police station and be interviewed about all the details of what had happened. How he cracked his head open on the road. And that no one asked her how she was. That her parents were devastated, but they didn’t come to her side. That she had to go to the funeral and no one was there for her. She had to deal with the trauma of this alone. At the age of fourteen. Not only had she lost her dear grandfather, but she had to see and experience this huge trauma by herself with no way to process it or heal it.
I nodded, and listened. “How horrible that must have been for you. That this happened to your grandfather. But this also happened to you. And there is part of you that is still back there?”
“Yep.”
“And she hasn’t healed yet.”
“Nope.”
She said she still remembered it like it just happened. That she had dreams and nightmares of it. That she can still see all of it right there in the treatment room. I told her that sounded exactly like PTSD.
She went on to tell me that that was when she started doing drugs. Trying to make those pictures in her head go away. And all the feelings. But no matter how much she did, they always came back when she got sober. And she ended up making bad decisions. And then having more shame and loneliness, and then doing more things to try and cover up the increasing pain.
This is the cycle of trauma. Ever person that I’ve worked with who has done self destructive behaviors has some kind of trauma under it. They usually open up with it pretty easily. (Because I am open to it. And can handle it.) If we don’t get to it through talking and their opening up, it will usually come out in the body- for these are the ailments that they come to me to heal.
There she was, speaking bluntly about the pivotal time in her life that she had only told a handful of people in her life. It was the thing that helped shape her life more than anything else. How did all treatment miss this? How did it never come up before now? It was such a significant story in her life.
Would we say that it was the only cause? No, I haven’t had that experience in my practice. And it doesn’t mean that everything is tainted and awful because of it. Its an outcome from this person’s path- and she had gotten clean on her own after years. But this. This part of her, was still living in her system and never got to heal. Not only had we determined that when she has stress in her life that this the part of her that “shows up,” it also has been running the show. She can’t fully move beyond her 14 year old in how she runs her life. Because when things get hard, she knows she flips back into her 14 year old self. And uses the coping mechanisms that worked for her back then. There was no one to take care of her, so she is still left alone having to help everyone. She was really good at it, but the rest of her is over it. The rest of her is tired, resentful, and fed up.
Because she also doesn’t get access to all of her 14 year old’s great, unique, and amazing characteristics. She’s all locked up away. In her subconscious mind. And in her body. We decided that now she can continue to learn how to love up her younger self and give her what she needs. Once she integrates her, she will have access to even more of her positive traits, and be more whole.
She took a breath. And then started talking about her back pain. How she realized that it was doing so much better after she slowed down and started taking care of herself. With six kids, we all know that isn’t easy, unless you are strong and determined as she was. If you want to be the good role model in your kids’ lives, and be someone solid for them to come to, you can’t be the martyr that ends up sick and in pain anymore. She knew it was time to grow beyond her trauma. And she was doing the work.
HEALING IT IN THE BODY
She popped off the chair as she was telling me that she was doing some stretching for her back. She said “I know you teach yoga, so I wondered if you could show me if what I am doing is okay- I don’t know that I am quite getting it…”
“Sure, show me,” I replied, smiling, since she was obviously moving to the floor to show me. :)
She laid down and bent her knees to her chest and I saw her energy block up and contract. “Oh hang on, hang on a minute…” My yoga and stretching is therapeutic- all alignment and energetic based. Basically its bodywork in action…”body architecture” as I like to call it.
I showed her the alignment of a beginning standing pose, so she could see how the body can work together. I showed her how to bring all parts of her body together to release the pressure off of her low back. I had her mimic this pose as she was laying down and spouted off the cues so her body and mind would get where she needed to be to open up her energy and bring it in to start accessing her sore back. Bringing her belly button toward her spine is what she needed to do to support her back. I had her open her hips and imagine her sacrum moving forward.
Her ribs were splaying wide open on the front of her body, which I could see that it meant her energy was leaking out of her solar plexus. I showed her how to “knit” her ribs together, kind of like a corset- which helps contain the energy. It also allows the back of the body space to open up. Very often, when the solar plexus is this open, it can show up with people being very available to everyone- the “front side” of us. But the private and past side, the “back side” of us can take the strain. So we can borrow energy from the front of us to form a more equal balance of the yin and the yang energies of an area.
You could see her energy shift. And ground. She became more calm. I asked her how she felt. “Wow, it feels so much better already.”
I told her she had been working so hard to drum up so much energy and she was just giving it away. It was time for her to contain it and be only involved in things that don’t drain her as much. I explained the solar plexus chakra area some more and how it can be affected.
And then I said, “All the chakras run in cycles of 7 years. This one develops starting at….yeah, 14 years old.” I paused. “It’s time frame is between 14-21 years old. And the front needs to support your back because it is causing you so much pain. It started emotionally and ends up physically. It just can’t take it anymore…”
The room became still. She cried. I got tears in my eyes. We looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. The energy was palpable. The story of the body and mind had come together.
This was the time of her massive trauma. The time frame that we were talking about. And we both knew that we had just found it in the body and knew how to help it heal. It was time to quit making her 14 year work so hard and spill her energy out all over the place. It was time for her to heal her younger self. Finding out what she needed back then, and beginning to give it to herself. Her body told us, if we would just stop to listen. Because the body is always the perfect map…
THE AFTER STORY
I’m happy to say that this client no longer suffers with harsh back pain. It still bothers her from time to time, but she states that it’s usually when she is doing too much (what mom of 6 isn’t??) and/or stressed. That she knows what she needs to do to take care of herself, and if it starts flaring, how to slow down to give it rest. She says she continues to apply the skills of not taking on the energy of other people’s issues- as we know this isn’t always easy, especially when people are suffering.
She is still a very busy nurse, mom and photographer in our area, and I thank her from the bottom of my heart for sharing her healing story with us, and helping me to show how the body holds this trauma until it is truly released. That is when healing can begin, and then it’s an ongoing process- of self care, love, discovery, and learning.
This is how the body and mind heals- and it never ceases to amaze me.
Take care of you.
Peace,
Melanie