There was a little girl fraught with shyness and insecurities, who ground her teeth relentlessly at night and spoke in her sleep. She was lively, loved her interests and other childhood joys but for as long as she could remember, she struggled to eat and drink and felt huge anxiety surrounding this in any situation. Alone, going out, staying over at friends, eating at the dinner table, being away from home, were agonising and exhausting in this respect.
She could not swallow consecutively at all to drink. She ate excruciatingly slowly, chewed relentlessly, spitting out and dribbling food and drink. She would leave the dinner table, or meal exhausted, having on many occasions, when not being able to swallow at all, eaten nothing and left starving and thirsty. For the most part, she had no appetite. The anxiety and shame grew as others shamed her. She was accused of being anorexic, yet just simply struggled to swallow. There was fear, huge fear of choking and no obvious reason as to why. She often wished she could bypass her throat and learnt strategies to deflect others from her issues.
Barium meal tests, where she failed swallow at the appointed time and a nose and throat investigation, found no abnormalities….and that was that! No help, no intervention, no support from the medical world.
When she hit adolescence, her menstruation caused her to double up in pain and feel ‘a well’ of deep grief and ‘below this’ anger that she could not quantify. There was the attached paranoia and low self-esteem. Every month into adult-hood, she did not wish to talk, to face others, to eat, to drink and felt suicidal at this time. At night, she was hyper-vigilant, therefore sleep was poor and this went on to affect relationships, as every move or sound would wake her. Her teeth smashed with the grinding. For two weeks every month, her legs refused to work and ached as if she had the flu. There was a cycle of deep exhaustion, possible undiagnosed PMDD (Premenstrual dysphoric disorder). Years of dental work, tortured by dental pain and acute fear of the dentist, were followed by years of migraines involving sickness and total body shut down. At college she realised she was numb between her legs one side. Her neck and back pain became worse and it was only when she could not toilet properly, she learnt that the years of numbness between her legs were due to her back misalignment. Her whole body that had shortened on one side and ‘turned in.’ A sacral cranial therapist later told her, that this ‘turning in’ of the body, was normal in cases where the body tries to protect itself.
In her love relationships, she subconsciously sought men primarily that she could trust. She could not bear control. She drew ‘friends’ towards her in her love relationships. She never married, or had children. It was her repeating cycle, as were the patterns of being bullied in her jobs, her inability to stand up for herself in such situations although she could for others, to speak at her monthly time, of betrayal, an inability to be heard when it really mattered, dissociating from ‘abusive’ situations. Her triggers became more obvious over time.
Over the years, she searched out help for her ‘swallowing’ disorder. She tried three hypnotherapists but her mind would not let them in. The first hypnotherapist gave her ‘You can heal your life’ by Louise L Hay…. and the healing journey began. She read, she trained, she learnt and finally when she and her body was ready, she revealed…… and as she practiced her therapeutic skills, the trauma began to leave her body.
