Families have a tendency to hand things down from parents to children. There’s the admixture of DNA, personality traits, sometimes skills and habits, and then there are the traditions around holidays and special events, the perspectives on how the world works, finances and social status, as well as things. Of course there is also the eternally fun social function or dysfunction the latter of which is the stuff of great stories, much wisdom, and entirely too much grief and heartbreak.
Most people have at least one story to tell on that score even if it’s the crazy uncle who came at the holidays making them miserable. And the psychology/therapy profession would be at a loss if we weren’t constantly trying to repair and heal childhood issues left even by well meaning and loving parents. I’m thankful every day for them because therapy has definitely gotten me through some rather sorrowful and difficult times and I am the better for it and for the folks who worked with me.
In these situations we look at the body as a battlefield or collateral damage. It gains weight due to our self medicating with food, the liver is damaged by alcohol, various organs give up trying due to the drugs we keep pumping in, structure takes a beating as we go through various ways to keep the adrenalin up, etc, etc, etc. We know that there is a connection to our body, our emotions, and our minds because that’s what we are trying to keep separate. Using the body we are trying to keep the mind and the emotions quiet so we can ignore the issue and live. What we don’t realize is that the body can help us to heal these issues if we would listen to it.
I see this over and over with clients. They have ailments or disease that is non-life threatening and when I look in their books and read their bodies it is a process that is removing the trauma at all levels through the body. For example, immense childhood trauma that has remained unhealed for decades can coalesce in the sacrum/spine and cause immense back pain. Through chiropractic, exercise and massage the area is healed and the trauma is released never to return. Memories, wisdom, and becoming do as those are the gifts of the experience, but the trauma is no longer alive and no longer plaguing the client. Family dysfunction that causes feuding and division can collect in the gall bladder making it shrivel and die. When it is removed the dysfunction goes with it as well and the client can see with new eyes the way the world can be. When the issue is something so deeply rooted in the client’s identity that it seems it is foundational to their being, a broken bone can give them a chance to create new structure, reevaluate their lives and reform it with a stronger and more healthy outlook on things.
The body is not a mechanism nor an add on to our lives, it’s part of our being and as such it works with us to help us have our best life. If we allow it…perhaps even listen to its wisdom….