It tells us when it wants to heal, by producing physical, emotional and psychological pain, as a signal. Think of any symptoms of pain in your body and how this affects your daily life, either physically, emotionally or psychologically. Obvious symptoms are physical pain, anxiety, crying, or inability to cry, tension etc. but what about the patterns running in your life and the things that trigger you? What about the emotions that these produce: love, hate, anger, grief, fear and guilt and a myriad of sub-emotions such as shame, worthlessness, abandonment and betrayal?
These emotions and physical symptoms are your body’s way of saying please help me, please heal me, I am uneasy, or in DIS-EASE.
So what do we do? As children, we bawl when we graze our knee, it hurts so we express our pain! The first thing a parent does is use the profound healing power of touch to ‘rub it better,’ and then spit on it! We use soothing and positive words, we kiss the area, apply love and attention, we hug and wipe away the tears. It is basic body, mind ‘first aid’ and as we know ‘good old’ spit, is antiseptic! Yet, we are also taught, particularly as we get older, that emotions/feeling are not good, put them in a box, bury them, ignore it and it will go away, boys don’t cry; the list goes on! It does not take a genius to recognise that the language, suggestion and belief that this will help is profoundly unhealthy and damaging. Long-term repercussions from such beliefs, only serve to damage us further, such as believing that it is wrong, or that we are selfish, to even discuss our problems in a positive and healthy manner with a view to resolving them.
How can we expect our children to learn ‘emotional intelligence’ and communicate appropriately in relationships, if they do not learn to articulate their feelings safely and are taught to suppress? How can we expect them to learn respect and to use touch appropriately if we do not teach them that touch is not just about procreation?
This takes on a cycle of potentially damaging behaviours into their relationships and marriages, to be repeated in the next generation. It is time to respond differently. We need to begin with ourselves and take responsibility for our own and our child young person’s futures. We need to begin at home.
Without these skills, we can progress to being fearful. We can ‘hit out’ both physically and verbally and regress to basic, ‘lower forms’ of human behaviour. We can suppress our pain, enter into denial and therefore move away from the very thought of even attempting to try to ‘heal’ or ‘release’ our pain and trauma. Pain is challenging. How many people ‘Won’t go there!’ What’s the point? How many people live life via life-limiting, or self-sabotaging behaviours and beliefs, therefore creating self-fulfilling prophecies?
Of course there is a point to ‘going there,’ to healing. The point is, that suffering is not fun……. but happiness and joy are! Who does not want to live as fulfilled a life as they possibly can? How is this possible, when we are in pain?
Doctors are acutely aware that stress/stressors cause physical illness. However, do we really understand what it means to work to free ourselves not only of external stress but also of internal stress? We know that supressing emotion, our feelings, our truth, ourselves, causes untold havoc to our mind and bodies.
We also know that if we care for ourselves first; we gain the resilience and health to care for our children and others far more effectively; yet we struggle to put this in to practice.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ Triangle
We only need to look at psychologist Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ Triangle, to realise that if these needs are fundamental to us as humans but if any of these basic needs are affected by our physical, emotional, psychological health; we are in trouble.
Later additions to the triangle took in to consideration ‘higher’ and potentially ‘spiritual’ needs, as an aspect to human existence. Above ‘Self-esteem,’ was added the level ‘Cognitive Needs’. This relates to ‘Knowledge, meaning and self-awareness.’ Then above this, ‘Aesthetic needs’ that recognises the need for ‘Beauty, balance, form etc.’
Finally, at the top is placed ‘Transcendence.’ This related to helping others to ‘Self-actualise.’
If ‘Self-actualisation’ means: ‘The realisation or fulfilment of one’s potentialities.’ Relate this to your and others ability to teach and support our children.
We need to have these basics in place to be healthy and happy. If these basic needs are unmet, they will simply persist through following generations. With basic flaws to the underpinning hierarchy, is it any wonder we are in ‘pain?’
As our child and young person’s greatest teachers, we owe it to ourselves and to our children, to do all that can come to stop the repeating cycles, show them positive behaviours so that they learn to gain confidence, build self-esteem, meet these basic needs and ultimately become self-filled, to ‘Self-actualise.’
Mental health issues are becoming, not only more recognised as to their influence on ‘well-being’ but an epidemic that Child and Adult mental health simply cannot support.
Here at ‘Well-Being for adults and Children’ I can give you the time and space you need to heal.
I offer complementary therapies that seek to work holistically to heal body and mind. Yes, there are ‘quacks’, charlatans and those out to cause harm, just as there are in conventional medicine, Dr Shipman was one.
Do not let that put you off looking to complementary therapeutic supports to support your allopathic medical interventions. Many are non-invasive; do not affect your medications, or medical support in any way. However, your doctor may need to review your medications as these supporting therapies may mean that you need to reduce or indeed not need them.
‘Heal ourselves, heal our children’
Maybe it is time to look at pain in a different way, listen to your body and address what it has been telling you?