Why you can't micromanage your body

Healing takes time... why you can't micromanage your body.

An author's perspective from "doing the work" and maybe finally learning!

Recently I have been going through my own inner journey again. 

Over the years, I have been working with a recovering head injury. Through this journey I have witnessed all the remarkably specific and undermining thoughts that come up with working in that space

The 2am pain thoughts that come up when you're struggling:

"Why is this still taking so much time?"

"Why haven't I got past this yet?" 

"Is there something wrong with me?"

"Am I missing something?"

"If I approached it X way, would it at last be better?"

"Am I rubbish at my job if I myself still need to ask for help?"

Ahh don't you just love how much thoughts, sensations, and emotions, all drive each other round the bend.

It's so easy to travel around & around the whole mind-body roundabout doubting and undermining yourself in equal measure. 

So why am I sharing this? 

I think it is important to share that I walk and live this path too.

I am here with you, learning the whole time.

It is with full empathy when I talk with clients about just how frustrating, confounding, ironic, exasperating, insane and twisting up it feels on the inside. 

Through my own experience I am learning how deeply you cannot micromanage a body. 

Our bodies have their own time frame releasing shock, trauma, injury, pain or feelings.

It is like a five year old not wanting to go to school. - sorry Mum, I now realise just how irritating I must have been at that age!

Healing will not be rushed

And why will healing not be rushed?

A lot of the time these sensations take quite a while to build up. 

During all that time your body had been whispering to you for years.

Eventually your body started screaming.

In that time, if you are like me, you have been carefully saying:

"You can rest after this deadline I promise."

The only problem with that is life keeps moving forward.

Inevitably something else will come up & time & time again... you just keep pushing. 

I had this deeply ingrained subconscious belief that my value came from the things I did, the achievements I accomplished and the level of productivity to meet the demands of life. 

That meant for a long time I was treating my body with a level of dismissiveness.

A sort of "you will be there next week, anyway", kind of attitude. 

The problem with dismissing a body's needs

is that one day the straw that broke the camel's back happened,

I was left trying to heal a body I had been neglecting & treating without compassion.

Amid all of that, I was in a lot of pain. 

At first, I tried a very subtle way of running away with mindfulness.

- yep I really did, and you can imagine the horrible consequences. 

At last I have learned you cannot manipulate a body with force back into balance. 

What you can do:

Provide your mind and body with the time, space and the nourishment it needs repeatedly.

So that one day when you say internally: 

"I promise I am listening and I am here for you"

On that day, your body may be ready to believe you.

And at last it feels that your actions and words mean something real. 

The way to do it is to not rush in.

Imagine you are talking to a friend. A situation is really upsetting them. You could be that friend that instantly wants to solve the situation in an attempt to make it better. To just remove the upsetting situation for them. 

However, all your friend wanted was for you to sit and listen. To be heard.

All they needed was an ear that did not judge them for what was happening.

To hold space for how they were responding to the situation.

Realistically their response and reaction is quite simply their best in that moment. 

There is no right answer to being with your body.

There is no clever way to subtly send your awareness to a place that is in pain and quickly smooth it all over. If your body releases, it is largely a response to whether that place was ready to release and if you came to it with love and without demands from your brain. 

"This is the reality before something can be released or let go of—there is a period of time when it simply needs to be heard as it is."

• Heard in a way where there are no right responses. 

• Heard in a way where how your body is feeling is not wrong, it just is. 

• Heard in a way where you are just there sitting with it.

It is hard and it is really challenging because the more you do this when you are healing, the more your body might respond by saying

- Wow I’ve finally got your undivided attention - Please see all this too!

This might be scary, especially as your capacity feels reduced in these moments.

But realistically, rushing back to productivity didn’t work before.

Not allowing yourself to feel hurt didn’t help either.

You have tried that strategy. 

Engaging in healing. 

When you have trod this path for so long that you have arrived at a space where your body is opening and you might finally heal. You are likely to feel it all, maybe at different moments, hoepfully not all at once. But I won't lie, there may be times when you've had enough, you're done, and you just want to curl up away from it...

Please hang in there, please don't do all the work opening those spaces only to get there and instead of following through, slam the door in your body's face. 

Taking a step forwards can so often feel like taking a step backwards.

But please breathe and trust yourself and your support system.

Listen.

Yes, it will be difficult. Yes, it will push you hard and perhaps it will challenge you. 

I have to believe that the good is also underneath the pain.

When you actively show up for your body, you'll begin to notice the negative patterns of self-talk. When these patterns become so clear and obvious—where they were once subconscious—that's when real change starts to become a reality.

You can change. 

I am not ever going to say: "It is going to be easy."

I have watched Ted Lasso again recently and a psychotherapist on that programme said,

“The truth will set you free, but first it will really piss you off” 

From everything I have experienced I can unequivocally say that statement rings true. 

So why put the effort in? 

Because it does set you free. 

It makes you realise that every toxic thing another person does is itself an expression of the rhetoric and social words that have slinked into them too. 

At some point it has become so subconscious, that they themselves cannot see it.

Unable to recognise and remove it, they see themselves repeating a pattern they do not like. Yet they feel trapped by the situation. That is where more self-loathing comes in, festers and blocks healing.

The good news is that you are not trapped. 

You can change, but change is hard.

Learn to say to your body:

"I promise I am listening and I am here for you."

It will believe you—when, at last, it sees and feels that your actions and words hold meaning.

That is when trust and inner peace begin to grow. In that moment, you can finally start letting go of all the ways you have been holding yourself together. That includes the ways that have actually been blocking your healing.

When you can truly release these blocks in your nervous system it will open up a powerful space for opportunity and compassion.

At that point I believe the world is your oyster. 

This is a glimpse of the humanity of having to work through these very real things.

Let me know what you think in the comments, please be kind - these words come from my personal and professional experiences.

Carmen