If we make the glaring 21st century mistake and
allow the TV to feed us health information, we’ll begin
slipping into a mindset where ‘relief from symptoms’
is the goal.Now, isn’t that rather shooting the messenger?
I say, open the envelope first. Better yet, invite the messenger
in for tea.
For starters, let’s look at this odd WORD….symptom.
Any word that starts off with five consonants has some kind
of agenda.
symptom [n]
anything that accompanies X and is regarded as an indication
of X's existence
Right there, we see that ‘symptom’
does not EQUAL ‘X’, and that’s the entire
point.
One
phrase pretty much everyone is familiar with is ‘flu-like
symptoms’. Sure wish we could call them something else,
something more accurate, like “Immune-Kicker Signals”
Then perhaps folks wouldn’t get so frantic to SQUELCH
them before they even know what their Immune System is KICKING
about. Yes, they’re uncomfortable, that ‘oh no,
I’m coming down with SOMETHING’ feeling, usually
aching all over, often sore throat, headache, tired, cranky
-- everybody’s are a little different.
It’s truly foolish to start scarfing down
Ibuprofen to just STOP the feeling if you haven’t listened
to WHY it’s happening. It’s also truly foolish to
just take the same mindset over to the herb patch and immediately
begin loading up on Echinacea root to STIMULATE your immune
system if it’s doing a fine job on its own. If you MUST
grab a bottle of SOMETHING, how about the empty one over there
marked “LISTEN”.
Symptoms are a whole lot like toddlers. The sooner
you listen and respond, the less likely they are to start shrieking.
Ignore them all together and you’ve got a tantrum lying
on its back in the grocery store.
It really changes everything to consider symptoms
to be the language in which your body tells you things. They’re
the way your body gets your attention, and the closer you listen,
the more you learn. I’m sure every one of you has some
subtle signal that says you’re just pushing too hard.
Time to back off, get a little more rest. Ignore that one for
too long and you’re flat on your back.
We also each have a set of signals that tell us
of a serious infection. The sooner we catch on to those, the
sooner we can start HELPING our bodies really HEAL themselves.
Chronic symptoms are a real pain (how’s
THAT for a bumper sticker?) But the more deeply we can understand
even those symptoms, the better chance we have of helping ourselves.
One
of the best places to start learning ‘symptom-ese’
is with just plain old PAIN. Pain comes in lots of different
‘flavors’….muscle pain, which is rather tight;
nerve pain which is somewhat sharp and ‘electric’-feeling;
inflammation, which is a hot and swollen feeling (whether there’s
actual swelling or not); there’s pressure-pain, telling
us something is swollen and leaning on something else. (and
all you said was “ow”)
Taking that a step further, it helps to take a
little time to just try to imagine what would REALLY relieve/release
that ‘symptom’ – not just an OFF button, but
what would it like to have happen. If you find yourself thinking
of frayed wires, there’s a good chance it’s nerve
pain. If you don’t get all tangled up trying to figure
it out, and just use your imagination to grab some image (we
use this a lot in hypnotherapy) whether it’s changing
the color of something, or seeing it as totally unrelated objects,
you can get some pretty amazing insights.
One client of mine had a chronic neck pain and
when all relaxed down, she ‘saw’ it as a spitball
stuck in a straw and had a great feeling that AIR would help
move it through. When she explored that in more detail, she
was clear that for some reason just BREEZES made sense to her
and it also hooked in with some ‘not being allowed to
be a child’ issues and round and round we go. It’s
all connected.
So, perhaps, before your body feels the need to
stick its foot out and STOP you, you might check in with it
to see if there are any small messages. If it starts to get
truly cranky, try to hear what it’s getting cranky ABOUT,
before you send it off to ‘go watch TV, I’m BUSY’………LadyB
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