Listening to the Body

My father used to say "some lessons in life need to be learned more than once." It was his understated and judgement-free way of saying forgive yourself for repeating mistakes. We are more likely to berate ourselves (I can't believe I did that again! I should know better!). That creates tension in the body which tips us away from the homeostasis of body and mind that leads to vibrant health. Compassion does the opposite - it calms us, reassures us. And we need to give it to ourselves as often as we possibly can. 

On a healing path, a BIG lesson we must learn is to listen to our bodies and respect what they are telling us. I think I've learned that lesson about 100,000 times and I still have more learning to do. When we experience distress, it is a sign that it's time to pause and tune in. What is out of balance here? What does my system need to get back to peace, calm, contentment? 

In my experience, physical pain is an especially difficult teacher. Of course we all know that pain is the body's warning system and is required for survival. We touch a hot stove and the pain tells us to jerk our hand away to avoid getting burned. We break a bone and the pain persists until we get it fixed. But when pain turns chronic, it is harder to work with it. There's no reflexive response. We no longer know WHY the pain is there or how to ease it. Medical doctors don't have much to offer beyond pain killers because they don't really understand it either. 

Then we get emotionally involved with it. It is frustrating, infuriating, depressing, isolating. We feel helpless and angry at it. We get terribly frightened - will it ever go away? The list of things we can't do starts to grow and we panic. Will I be able to do what I need to do in my life? What will I lose? Will I lose everything? Why can't anyone help me? Is it all in my head (that's a particularly nasty thought process!) Did I cause it? What am I doing to exacerbate it? What can I do to ease it. Often these questions have no answers. The fear and frustration grow.

These thoughts and emotions send the body further into a biochemical tailspin. Cortisol, the stress hormone, spikes. Seratonin, which gives us a sense of well-being, drops. Blood flows away from the GI tract, slowing digestion and causing discomfort and chronic dysfunction. Our muscles tense, our breathing grows more shallow. Our immune systems kick into gear increasing inflammation in the body. Soon nearly all of the systems of the body are out of balance, and we are stuck in emotional distress and negative thought spirals. All of these phenomena increase our sensation of pain. And the cycle gets locked into place.

We expend a lot of energy searching for causes and cures -- that's how we are trained to work with our bodies when something goes wrong. Those efforts usually fail and that failure throws more fuel on the pain-fire. We try to ignore it, to push through it -- often because we have to. Have to go to work. Have to care for a child. Have to do the grocery shopping. Have to make dinner. But pain was not designed to be ignored. It starts with a wisper, but if we don't listen it is going to escalate until it gets to a scream. It is at this point that many people experience a crisis and find themselves seriously immobilized or disabled. 

Then there's no choice other than to listen. But to actually begin to heal - to reverse the domino effect that brought us to this place, we have to find a way to break the cycle. We need to stop asking WHY (why do I hurt) and start asking WHAT (what does my body need in order to regain its balance?) 

Chronic pain sufferers go through this process over and over again. It took me more than 20 years, and the wise counsel of a brilliant therapist, to learn to respect the limits that the pain was setting. Because that's what it was doing -- it was setting limits. No, you can't do all of that in one day. Sorry. I know you feel you need to but you simply can't. Ok ok ok ok I hear you. So what CAN I do? I accept you, body, as you are, with these limits. Help me learn how to live in harmony with you so that you can stop screaming at me. Please?

It took a long time to undo the sense that my body was an adversary - I was so angry at it for hurting, for getting in the way of the life I wanted to lead. I was determined to NOT LET IT DEFEAT ME. I pursued a career, brought two miraculous children into the world, built a full and busy life that looked the lives of everyone else around me. And I raged when the pain protested. 

Then an analogy finally stuck for me. Would you treat your child this way? If she cries, do you ignore her? No, you go to her and figure out what she needs and then you give that to her. If he says "I can't," do you say, "yes you can, just DO IT.?" No, you help him find a way to do it - or you do it for him if he is not able.  So why are we so unforgiving and harsh with ourselves when we know perfectly well how to be compassionate and helpful to those we love?

Oh. My body is the baby here. It needs my tender loving care. My understanding. My compassion. It needs to be accommodated. I have to get past the fear that if I listen to it -- if I stop what I am doing when it hurts -- that I will be totally disabled. We're in this together (it's kind of ridiculous to even separate "me" and "my body" in this way but it helps to make a point). 

How can I create a life that is full and rich and whole WITHIN THE LIMITS of my physical comfort range? Not forever - but to begin the process of breaking the cycle. To begin to calm the system so it can work its way back to balance. 

For me - like many people - I began to learn this when I had pretty much totally fallen apart. When I was in so much pain that I could no longer work, or do most of the things that daily life requires. I was blessed -- I had support. I had people who did for me, took care of me, and taught me to reframe the entire situation. And slowly, gradually, I began to figure out how to heed the messages from my body - to stop when I needed to; to totally eliminate certain activities for a while; to make time for the things that helped; and my body began to calm down. 

It has NOT been a linear process! The problem with healing is that you get a little better and you're ecstatic, energized - now I can finally DO all those things that I had to stop doing before. And before you know it, you've overdrawn the account again and you feel worse. That is even more devastating than it was before! Crash, rebuild, overdo, crash. This is why chronic pain flares and wanes, flares and wanes. But I came to see that the swings could be less intense if I stopped before the crash. Conserving energy - literally like money in the bank - became the guiding principle of my life. And then, only then, could I start looking for resources that would help to move my healing to the next level.

It's beginning to hurt to sit right now. So while my brain would love to keep writing, I will sign off and go rest for a spell.

Illness, agency, and responsibility

There is a huge amount of chatter out there about the relationship between physical illness and stress. This conversation has emerged in our culture only in the last couple of decades (and there are still many in science and medicine who don't put much stock in it). But consensus is growing that our bodies are influenced by our environments and our perceptions (and not solely by genes and pathogens). Thousands of studies using sophisticated technology like FMRIs have "documented" the impact of the mind on the body. It is kind of ridiculous that we even have to talk about the "mind-body connection." Last time I looked in the mirror, it was my neck that connected my head to my body. I can't really imagine where my mind might be hanging out, other than in my head. Do we really believe that our minds exist outside of our bodies? That's what the "mind-body connection" suggests -- that there are two separate entities that need to be connected. To paraphrase Harvard sociologist Ellen Langer, we might as well talk about the elbow-body connection. (Check out her interview with Krista Tippett at www.onbeing.org - it's fabulous).

And yet here we are, in a world constructed on the paradigm that mind and body are split. The concept is especially prominent -- and dangerous -- in health and medicine. The body, in this model, is a machine, much like a car. We don't know how it works or why it breaks down. When it does, we take it to the mechanic/doctor, and he tells us what's wrong and gives us something to fix it. Then we go on, taking for granted that it will run as needed. We don't see ourselves as active participants in diagnosing or healing illness. That requires a trained professional.

But the truth is, we have a huge amount of control. And, if we pay attention, we're pretty keen diagnosticians. Control works both ways -- we can act and think in ways that promote health or that undermine it. We may not get to choose what happens to us all the time - but we CAN always control how we respond in our own minds. From the horror of a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl drew this lesson: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

 Every thought and every emotion that passes through our minds - tens of thousands per day - generates a chemical reaction in our system. A good thought or feeling has a building, strengthening and enlivening effect. A bad thought or feeling does the opposite. Stress - whether it is an event or a thought or a feeling - damages our cells. Constantly.

As healers, then, there is a huge amount of unlearning that we need to facilitate. We need to help people to see how their minds affect their health. But knowing this can take us to a scary place. If my mind impacts my health, then is it my "fault" that I am sick? People with chronic illnesses are told that they need to reduce their stress. Yes, that would help. But what they hear is that their behavior, their lifestyle, their choices CAUSED them to get sick. This is devastating to hear when you are suffering. 

So how do we accept and acknowledge the impact of stress or strain on health without, in effect, blaming the victim and further disempowering someone who already feels powerless? We frame it always in the affirmative. We are NOT responsible FOR our illnesses. But we ARE responsible TO them. 

How does that work? Stay tuned. I'll get to that.

Healing and Curing

I think a lot about the difference between healing and curing. Although many of us don't think about it this way, healing is something we do ourselves. A healer may help in infinite ways, but the body/mind/spirit of each individual much ultimately do the real healing work. Healing is a process and it can go on for any length of time. A cure on the other hand is an end. A goal. An accomplishment. And something that we generally MUST look outside of ourselves to get. Someone does something to us and that cures our disease. It's a misnomer, really, if you think about it. If a person is truly to get well, a cure can never be more than a tool for healing. But we believe and so we seek.

It was only when I gave up on the idea of a cure that my real healing was able to begin. For nearly 20 years I quested after a cure. I sought out new doctors, healers and healing modalities. And yet the pain persisted. Each failure was devastating. Something would help for a month or two, maybe three. Then I'd have a flare up and give up on the intervention. That happened with surgery, then PT, then (in no particular order) swimming, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, Yoga, elimination diets, every supplement on the planet, medications, new tests and new diagnoses, integrative medicine with more tests (this time not covered by insurance) and more supplements (thousands of dollars). I am not saying that none of these helped. I would feel a little better sometimes, for a while. They just didn't cure me.

I think of the process as what I have come to call "recurring traumatic stress syndrome" (look for it in the DSM 7, 8 or 9). The event was not PAST, as is the case with PTSD. I couldn't DEAL with it or "get past it." It kept happening. I'd gather up all my faith and energy and make another appointment. I'd have enormous hope that this was going to be it. The theory of the treatment made sense. I really liked the person. I spent lots of time and money (very little of this was covered by insurance, but that's the topic for another blog) and I held out hope. It might initially help and the hope would go through the roof! Then the improvement would stop or reverse and I'd crash back down to earth so hard that my world shook. Think of the coyote in The Road Runner. That was me. The fear was immense that  I would never have a normal life. That I would lose everything.

I resisted diagnoses. Fibromyalgia was the most common one - that has to be the most depressing diagnosis on earth. Chronic widespread pain with no known cause. Fatigue to the point of immobility. GI problems. Brain fog. What amazes me is that I kept pushing through it all. I maintained the career, marriage, motherhood, an active social life. I refused to let it beat me. So it ate away at me slowly. But all that time, it was only trying to communicate with me, with my rather closed-minded brain. 

It was asking me for acceptance.

Acceptance was no mean feat. It began only after the implosion of my life, 3 surgeries, a divorce, and the loss of my home and my career - all in a period of 3 years. Disability. Another awful word! There have been thousands of time when I have really needed a handicapped placard for my car - but I could never get myself to submit the paperwork. The form, signed by my doctor, sat in a folder on my desk for years. But disability was also a lifesaver when all the other options ran out. By 2011, I could no longer work. With child support, Disability provided just enough income to maintain a liveable budget for me and the kids. It was a gift from all those years of rising earnings when I just kept on keeping on in spite of the pain, fog, overwhelming fatigue.

Acceptance was the beginning of healing. Dana, meet your body. Hello body. What? You're speaking to me? Wait, is that what this pain is - it's you trying to tell me something? Well shut up - no that didn't work now, did it? OK damn it, I will listen. "Stop," it wispered. "Slow down. Give me a break. Take care of me. Put me first. Choose me," it said. And very very slowly (and more than a little reluctantly) I have learned to listen.

For more information please email me at danabarron.healthcoach@gmail.com

The Power of Stories

As I’ve walked a long and winding healing path these past few years, I have come to wonder: why are so many of us unwell? Take a moment to think about the people in your life. How many of them have a health issue? Are suffering? Are addicted to doing, to technology, to food or drink or a drug – as an escape from a life that is not satisfying? And increasing numbers of us are really sick: cancer, auto-immune disease, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, migraines, allergies, digestive problems, or just FLC (feeling like crap). (I was at the dermatologist yesterday and I mentioned to the nurse that I have irritable bowel syndrome. "Oh," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "everyone has that." Seriously?)

More importantly (and optimistically), what are the tools available to us for healing? This is the real inquiry of our time – how can we heal? Heal our bodies, our minds, our souls, our relationships, our communities, nations, and the planet itself. It’s an urgent question and there are many voices involved in the conversation about it. My own healing journey has been my classroom and I feel deeply driven to share what I have learned. So I write, and I am launching a health coaching practice, to do my small bit to promote healing beyond myself.

We all have a story. Some of us feel compelled to share our stories more than others do. There is healing in the telling itself. Rachel Naomi Remen says that the places where we are truly heard are sacred places. The telling allows us to step back a bit from the intensity of our lived experience and act as the observer, the narrator. And there is healing in the knowledge that we are being heard by others. So we write – and in this age of seemingly endless media, we find our audience. I hope my words will find their way to someone whom they can comfort.

If you have a story, please consider sharing it in the comment section. Who knows, maybe your story will be just what someone else needs to hear?

For more information feel free to email me at danabarron.healthcoach@gmail.com

From a Healing Path to a Healer's Path

Five years ago, I was a hot mess. My intricately crafted life – marked by accomplishments and a façade of perfection – crumbled rather suddenly around me. It shouldn’t have been sudden, really. In hindsight, signs of trouble had been brewing all the way along. But I had an IDEA of what my life was, and I was living according to that idea. Sure there were moments – many moments – when I peaked around the curtain and felt a wash of dread and discontent. I felt frustrated, angry, and powerless much of the time. But I always tucked those feelings away and got up to live another day according to the script. Don’t get me wrong – there was also great joy in my life. There just wasn’t any tolerance for the troubled bits to come out into the light.

Running through the river of my life, all those years, was chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety and depression. They called it Fibromyalgia, Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome, Degenerative Disk Disease. I suffered a back injury at age 19 and though it healed initially, the pain returned and gradually grew in my early 20’s. I was in graduate school at the time, and it got harder and harder to sit or stand without disabling pain. So I was convinced by “one of the best” neurosurgeons that he could make it all go away with a lumbar laminectomy surgery. He said to me, “in six weeks you will forget that you ever had back pain.”

Yup, you guessed it. He was wrong. He never should have made such an outrageous promise, of course, but I was 24 years old and suffering profoundly. My parents had chosen the doctor and taken me in to see him. I was led. After recovering from the surgery – which took longer and was infinitely more painful than I’d been led to believe – the pain resumed pretty much status quo ante. I did rehab, took medications, and got to a place where I could live with the pain and the limitations it placed upon me. I got married, finished my PhD, began a full-time career, had two kids, and enjoyed a wonderful community of neighbors and friends. Time went on and so did I. An energizer bunny who would go go go and then crash crash crash. Rest, adjust meds and activity, and then go right back to the relentless pace that is the life of most modern working mothers. It was NORMAL. It was what everyone else was doing. And I was determined to do it with grace and the appearance of ease, despite the pain, fear, and trauma that were my constant companions. Very few people – even my closest friends – really had any idea what I was going through.

Then a series of events led me to hit the wall – and I hit it HARD. It was sudden and yet utterly predictable, even overdetermined – based on what had REALLY been going on. But from inside the IDEA of my perfect life, I hadn’t seen the signs, so I, and my then husband, experienced it as a tsunami. I couldn’t stand to live this life for another minute. But I couldn’t imagine dropping a bomb into my family either. The kids were 9 & 12. I'd been married 18 years. I knew I would never heal from where I was, and yet to change it meant unthinkable pain for them. It took a long time and a lot of agony, but ultimately I moved out. We divorced and established equal custody of our son and daughter.

But I had also reinjured my back – a fainting spell had caused a fall which resulted in a severely herniated disk. So in the midst of struggling with the decision to move out, there was a second back surgery. Again, I recovered enough to go back to full time work, and I began crafting a life post-divorce. Things held together pretty well for a year. Then I fell again (yes, really – it would be a ridiculous plot development if it were fiction, but it’s true). I tripped over a dog bone and went down. This time I was unable to get up – and for the next 10 weeks I could only lay on my stomach. Any other position sent excruciating pain shooting down my entire leg.

Much medical drama (maybe to be told another time) led me to a remarkable neurosurgeon (and wonderful human being) who said he could help me. Another lumbar laminectomy – number three. The excruciating pain was gone as soon as I awoke from surgery, and I was pain-free 8 weeks later. But then I went back to my full-time jobs - running a non-profit agency and being a mom. And within a week I was again taken down by pain – filling my whole body and literally forcing me to STOP. I had ignored my body's wispers. Now it was screaming bloody murder.

So began a phase of “disability” with no job other than to try to heal. I think of that – more than two years ago now - as the time when I first stepped foot on my healing path – a process of putting one foot in front of the other with no idea where it would lead. Hope and despair took their turns with me, back and forth. But the old idea that accomplishment and appearance were the drivers of my life – that was dead. I had taken a permanent exit off the achievement superhighway. I was…”recalculating.”

Now I have been reborn as a healer. The healing path led me to a healer’s path, as has been the case for countless others. The wounded healer, as Carl Jung would have it. That’s what this blog is really about. How do we find a healing path? How do we guide others to find theirs? This is my life’s calling. This is what I will share with you here, if you’re willing to ride along with me.

For more information feel free to email me at danabarron.healthcoach@gmail.com