I started researching more about my chronic pain from fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis and severe disc degeneration, and yes, even my kidney disease. I found out that all of these, and autoimmune diseases as well, often have one thing in common – unresolved distressing emotional memories.
Now, you may not think you had any upheavals in your life – if so, I applaud you and am happy you’ve led a totally joyful life with no uncomfortable moments. Oh wait, you say you’ve had uncomfortable moments? But that’s not unresolved emotional memories, right?
In truth, we’ve all undergone uncomfortable times. Some of us have been bullied, teased, abused. Some of us are repeat failures at everything we try. Some of us are obese, some anorexic. We’ve all been embarrassed, yelled at, made to do things against our will. Many of us have lost our voice to object.
But if your uncomfortable moments from the past keep popping up over and over again, then that’s part of the unresolved emotional memories being stuffed down to where you may think they don’t exist. Maybe you were embarrassed over what you said or did (or wish you had done but didn’t); maybe you were totally stressed out caring for elderly parents or special needs kids; maybe you’re regretting not following your heart’s desire in your career or relationships.
These are the small, everyday things that most people ignore. I can hear you now “That’s life, it’s normal!”. But really, it isn’t. Yes, it happens more often than we’d like to think, but we shouldn’t have to live with that for our entire lives.
To further complicate matters, these small issues could be what’s holding you back from experiencing the life you always dreamed about. It’s true that big issues will hold you back, but many don’t realize that the small, niggling little things could be doing the same.
If something keeps rearing its head over and over throughout your life, that means it’s bothering you in some way, it hasn’t been resolved, and it will continue to crop up until the day you die.
Still, embarrassment over something done or said years ago is in the past, and cannot be changed, right? Best let it lie in the hazy remembrances of yesterday. Ummm, no.
Here’s the thing: emotions cause all sorts of bodily functions – releasing hormones for the fight or flight response is one of them. Ordinarily we use these fight, flight or freeze hormones to do just that – keep us from danger and help us get the heck out of there. And that works really well.
We get the adrenaline we need for immediate action, until the situation is resolved.
AHA! Until the situation is resolved!
Obviously, we haven’t resolved something that keeps cropping up over and over again, causing us the same emotional reactions each time as if the event just happened. Even though the brain may have filed this memory away as now being unimportant, the body never forgets. Once in fight, flight or freeze mode, it continues to stay there until the event is resolved.
What does that mean in the way of bodily pain?
Think of a time you were stressed. Did you notice muscle tenseness? Maybe a stiff neck, sore shoulders, headache – or maybe the pain was in your organs, legs, knees or feet. The location of the pain often tells us what has caused it.
For instance, shoulder pain could have been caused by “the world on your shoulders”; knee, leg or foot pain could have been caused because you either are afraid of, or just don’t want to go somewhere. Arm pain could be caused by not wanting to do something, especially if you know it’s wrong, or it’s too difficult physically.
Even non-pain conditions can manifest due to some emotion. For instance, if you are losing your hearing, what is it you don’t want to hear? Shouting? Arguments? Being told what to do?
If you are losing your sight, what is it you don’t want to see?
It’s amazing how our bodies work, right?Large text.
Chronic pain has a definite link to emotional pain – and the longer the emotional pain continues, the more intense the chronic pain becomes.
It makes sense, then, that reducing (or eliminating) emotional pain can go a long way towards relieving or eliminating physical pain.
Remember those tensed muscles from caring for elderly parents? Often when the parents are moved to long term care facilities, the tension in the shoulders abates. Why? Because someone else is responsible for the daily care, ups and downs of bathing, bathroom trips, special diets and medications. Not to mention shopping trips. Those can become nightmares for the body and emotions if you are constantly (as I was) loading/unloading parents, heavy wheelchairs and walkers all day long just so the elderly parents can have a “normal” day out.
That’s part of what happened to me. But my emotional issues went all the way back to early childhood, preteen, and teenage years.
When I started releasing the uncomfortable emotional reactions to previous events, I quickly began recovering from chronic pain. Many clients have experienced the same relief.
Do I still get pain? You bet! BUT, it’s much less intense, and much less often. 3 years ago I could barely walk to the bathroom. Today, I can garden. I recently refurbished both my garden and my garden pond (a lot of backbreaking, heavy lifting) and am doing so many more things that I used to love doing. I’m even helping with renovations to our home.
Did this come about solely from resolving emotional issues? Not quite. I did other things too, but they only helped get my recovery started. They didn’t do as much for my chronic pain as dissolving my emotional memories did.
Am I done? No, of course not. We are all works in progress until we die. Things crop up, things get resolved. But the process is fairly quick, easy and relatively pain free.
I like to think of life as a book. As I close one chapter after another and start fresh, I see a brighter, happier life ahead. I’m well on my way.
