Tag: healing

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If you don’t like it, do something about it

I’m a student of human behavior, of other people’s, of my own, and of other people’s in relation to my own. It remains endlessly fascinating to learn the why behind behavior because, there’s always a why. Although we can examine factors that may lead to outward demonstrations of behavior, I often wonder, particularly with bad behavior, what tips the scale towards acting out. Towards aggression, rage, controlling behaviors…what switch gets flipped? Assuredly, countless books have been written on the subject, providing, in elaborate detail, the reasons why. Which is helpful. But what they’re not is a healing salve to the person whose been on the other end of the behavior. Those books? Harder to find. But what if we could do something about it?

Emotions get stuck

I found myself becoming irritated, ok, maybe pissed, last week about the lack of actionable steps to heal from bad behavior. There was a season in my life when a relationship was especially difficult and while I can diagnose the reasons why, that’s only helpful to a degree. I could study and understand the behavior all day long. But understanding doesn’t erase the impact on my body. Words and tension having an impact on me as though the behavior was physical.

I was probably described as an emotional child, fairly. And that continued into adulthood. Over the last 15+ years, a noticeable shift happened within me though. Emotions, both mine and other people’s…I felt them in my body. Primarily my gut. Harsh words may have well been a kick in the gut and negative emotions around me became imbedded within. I’ve learned that’s a characteristic of an Empath. You experience emotions and energy in your body. In Dodging Energy Vampires, Dr. Christiane Northrup details techniques to prevent those emotions from lodging in our bodies, because they do. I was late to the party in reading, and wish I’d had the tools earlier. To prevent the words and emotions from impacting my body, from taking up residence.

Why isn’t more written about how to heal our bodies?

Why is so much written about the signs of bad behavior and how to protect or extract yourself, but it’s harder to find truly helpful articles and books to heal from the residue it leaves within your body and mind. How to heal the impact of trauma, whether big T or little t trauma, left behind, the emotional and physical hangover from the experience. We talk about talking through it and therapy is helpful, but how do we heal our bodies? Heal the emotions stuck within us?

To be clear, excellent resources can be found, The Body Keeps the Score, Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk,  Waking the Tiger – Healing from trauma by Peter Levine are two I’ve found. But people shy away from conversations about trauma. Particularly with little t trauma, their own discomfort leads to dismissal. Explaining away the experience as a misunderstanding, a mistake, or ‘not that big of a deal.’ Those comments? They further internalize the impact and trivialize what should not be ignored.

Do something about it

Anger is a funny thing. We, ok, maybe just me, have viewed it as a negative emotion. I still contend that’s fair. But, anger has a positive impact, it can propel us into action. In my own irritation/anger earlier this week, I decided to do something about it. Still a baby something in my mind, but prep work had begun. The anger is cheering me on (or more like egging me on) from the sidelines. Stay tuned for what the something will evolve to and be.

This issue, genuine healing, is personal, but also a wider issue. And though all people could be impacted by traumatic experiences, women are disproportionately so. We need to normalize talking about it because when hidden or brushed aside, the impact only grows. I don’t like it and I’m going to do something about it. From my own little corner of the world, something.

What is your ‘something’ that stirs anger within? That you’ve pushed aside but which continues to bubble up in your consciousness? If you don’t like it, do something about it. No one will do it for us and we’re in this together. It’s our journey. Be brave my friends. Lisa

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Do you want to be well?

I’ve had a migraine for 3 days…and I’ll probably have it another 10. The migraines I experience are food triggered and although I do my absolute best to avoid the deadly culprits, I had a salad this week. Without fully thinking it through I ate the delicious take-out creation and upon finishing it realized the dressing likely had red wine vinegar. Dastardly. You see, alcohol in any and all forms, triggers the migraine.

It was said to me (and has been said before) “you should be more careful.” To which, I want to scream. This zero-conflict Enneagram 9 wants to lash out. Because in absolutely zero way do I want the migraines. They are level 10 awful. I AM careful. Yet mistakes still happen.

Is it “mine” or simply “the” [fill in the blank]

Earlier in the week as the headache was curling up with a good book and tea in my head, settling in for the long haul, calling a few buddies over, I thought about the notion of referring to it as ‘my migraine.’ I remember reading in a holistic health guide (or read on the internet…who knows anymore), that one should avoid personalizing a health challenge. The concept, which I think is valid, is that personalization embeds the symptoms, the diagnosis, into our bodies.

I’ve thought about this idea in combination with a sermon I heard years ago entitled, “Do you want to be well?” The degree to which we personalize our medical problems, as a for example, they become our identity. In our minds and narrative, we are the person with…migraines, fibromyalgia, cancer, arthritis, extra weight, thinning hair…not all of those are mine, I borrowed, but fill in your own. But a few of them are and when we identify with a hinderance, are we not further hindering ourselves? Could we just as easily be the person who is filled with joy, gratitude, beautiful hair, a positive body image at any size and whatever positive characteristic people ascribe to us that we ignore?

Why we hold on to what we’re fighting

Yes, we could. Yet… There’s something we get from being the person with the affliction when we’re including it in our narrative. We allow it to hold us back, or use it to explain X, Y or Z.

Do we want to be well?

These thoughts flooded my mind this week as the U.S. watched the presidential election play out. I’m thrilled we can now exhale from this week. But all week, the negative narrative associated with the entire race continued. The fight. And I thought for a moment, “Do we want to be well?” Is our country so engrained in the fight that we’d rather stay in that space than move towards a peaceful existence? What are we gaining from ‘the fight’?

And believe me, I’m not naively espousing the idea that there is nothing to fight for. There are groups of people who continue to this day to be treated as if they were less than. Our BIPOC brothers and sisters, our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters, the marginalized groups who we deserve protection and equality because of the sheer fact that they are human beings. To correct the injustices that many have faced, we have that responsibility.

What would it look like to be well?

But do we want to be well? It seems that many identify with the fight more than what is being fought for. A broad statement? Maybe. But what would it look like to associate less with the fight and more with the desired outcome? Being for equality instead of fighting against injustice. That’s a much different mindset. How would our collective lives change if we shifted the narrative to being well instead of fighting the illness? And I do think the racial and LGBTQ+ inequity in the nation is an illness. But how would it be different?

I, for one, don’t have an answer. But I’m thinking about it. As we emerge from the election battle, could we shift to a unified country who is for equality? Who acts from that mindset? The choice is truly individual, do you want to be well or are you the illness? Brave choices ahead for us my loves. I hope that we will be well. Lisa

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Strength emerging through storms

Make you strongTears started welling up quickly the other day. It was the end of a long, stressful time in life. Tension and stress that built up over a prolonged period and had not yet found a place to release. Tears had not yet found their way to my eyes, but I knew they were coming, I wasn’t sure when, but I knew it was a matter of time.

Our bodies are adaptable to great levels of stress. I read a book once about using stress for success. Adapting and essentially using stress as a catalyst. Which it can be. Like anger, it can propel us into action. But what is really driving that ship? Most commonly it’s the avoidance of a negative consequence. Or, as with anger, it can be driven from hurt.

I’ve gone down quite a few rabbit holes researching to effects of stress. Yes, it can drive you into action. But while it was formerly an intangible condition, medical experts are now saying that consistent exposure to high levels of stress can lead to a myriad of health conditions. Immune system issues, high blood pressure, weight problems, anxiety, the list is lengthy. So, while you may outwardly adapt, your body is keeping track. It absorbs the stress and the consequences may be unseen but are slowly deteriorating your health.

When the tears started forming, they weren’t over anything catastrophic. They were the outward evidence of the culmination of stress in my body. What did they start over? A Wi-Fi router. Really. A router that stopped working for me unexpectedly. That I needed to watch television, my recent friend and escape. When I discovered it wasn’t working, the tears involuntarily started, and were vastly disproportionate to the situation at hand.

The tears weren’t about the router. Just like when you snap at someone when you’re stressed, or lash out, it’s only a symptom of the underlying stress. We can hold only so much inside before it spills out and it’s usually something little that does it.

When you’re in a period of stress that seemingly ends, one would hope you could instantly return to life as normal. It doesn’t work that way. I was thinking about the unwinding of stress within the body and was reminded of Scuba Divers. When they’ve been in the depths for a long period of time, they cannot return to the surface quickly. A diver who rises to quickly risks decompression sickness, typically known as the bends, which is described as “a condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization,” (Wikipedia)

The unravelling happens over time, it must. If we push the pace, we heal, but it takes longer and we might get the bends which you only avoid by rising to the surface slowly. As stress slowly fades away, you find that you’re stronger. You’ve allowed the stress to leave your body and healed. You can’t rush that process, it’ll happen on its own with some intentionality. Self-care, some TV binging maybe (just saying…not a long-term solution but it can help!), a period of readjustment. One day, you’ll wake up and feel different, a shift. You’ll realize that you feel whole again, stronger and happier. Love yourself on the journey and love others you meet along the path. Happiness is right around the corner.