Is Chronic Pain Real or a Stress/Trauma Response? (Part 2)
Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash
In my last post. I shared somatic tracking and other techniques by Alan Gordon, author of The Way Out, as ways I’m dealing with my chronic back pain. But there’s something else I’m diving into that may be playing a part in my pain as well…emotional trauma. As they say, “our bodies keep the score” and I just can’t ignore what my body is trying to tell me. I’ve been reading How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera and just wow. So much of what happens in our childhood, even if it seems “normal”, can linger with us and keep us stuck in a pattern of emotions and behavior that are not to our benefit.
The Way Out was super helpful and it sparked the idea that some past trauma was also playing a part. I followed the breadcrumbs ad they led me to Jen Ciszewski, Inspired Health by Jen, functional medicine practitioner, yoga instructor, doula, and what I came to her for, energy healer. I had had two previous experiences with energy healing…one from a dear friend who did a Reiki session via Zoom (crazy but I could FEEL her presence) and one from a practitioner I found through Groupon. I walked out of there thankful I didn’t pay full price for whatever that was. I was open to trying it again, hoping that it unlocked something that’s been stuck and perhaps sending the signal to my brain that I was in danger, therefore, I should feel pain.
My session started out with a conversation: why I was there (mostly a refresher for her since I had filled out a questionnaire prior to coming in) and a few questions for me as well. I laid down as she stood near my head and we went through a series of breathing exercises to calm my nervous system and allow me to get me into a relaxed state. She asked me to do a body scan to see where I felt any tension, pain, etc., and then she went through a series of visualization prompts that had me in tears within seconds. I cried as I saw in my mind’s eye my younger self, what I suffered through as a kid, and then saw my highest self comforting her. Holy hell, y’all. It was such a powerful vision and legit, tears streaming down my face.
She asked me what my higher self was doing and saying and I felt this wall of grief, hurt, mistrust, abandonment, and feeling invisible begin to fall away. This vision of my younger self being comforted by my higher self was the love and comfort I needed at that time of my life. This inner child work, exploring memories, and emotions, communicating and nurturing my younger self is also called “shadow work”. When we have unmet needs as a child, we carry those emotions with us. And then when things in our adult life trigger those emotions, we can digress or experience pain (physically and/or emotionally) as a result.
It was through this work that I realized there was an event back in December that may have triggered my back pain. It brought up old childhood feelings of walking on eggshells, worrying about someone else’s reactions to my actions, and feeling uncomfortable, mistrusting of others, and unsafe. Those emotions have been negative energy holed up inside me and what I experienced last December both triggered and added the negative energy. That experience sent a signal to my brain that I was unsafe; my nervous system was probably on high alert the whole time. This emotional experience may have triggered my brain to send pain signals to my back because it just registered “unsafe” and went to work.
Through my meditation and visualization practices along with these energy healing sessions, I get to recreate this experience and ones from my childhood with a different outcome. I get to show my younger self that she was loved, cared for, heard, and cherished by envisioning the people in my life or my higher self showing up differently.
I visualize what I needed to hear and feel when the trauma occurred. The key is to just let my mind be open and let the visions come. I had to let go of what I thought I should be feeling, seeing, or hearing and just let my mind be open to whatever came through. Jen did such a great job of guiding me and asking all the right questions to help me uncover what I had held onto for so long.
This release process has been so, so necessary for me to start moving forward in life and out of my limiting beliefs and stress triggers. The thing about trauma is that however we coped with it in the past, we now carry it like a shield, thinking it will protect us from future hurt. But all we’re really doing is carrying the hurt with us wherever we go. We tell ourselves we’re unlovable because of the boyfriends that had cheated on us or the parent who chose alcohol over spending time with us. Or we tell ourselves we don’t matter because we didn’t feel seen or heard by a parent. sibling, etc. when we were younger. So we apply that ideology to all things moving forward. We reinforce it by finding evidence…that friend who constantly interrupts us, our spouse didn’t ask about our day or thank us for running that errand for them. We view our lives through these trauma-colored glasses and it’s all we seem to see.
This trauma causes us to live in a constant state of fear and when the brain senses fear, it sends out signals…one of those is pain. Which leads me back to my back.
Since that energy healing session with Jen and the somatic tracking I’ve been doing, I’m happy to say my back pain has lessened significantly. I haven’t felt this good since last year, no lie. My pain comes and goes now and feels more like the soreness I get from a hard workout.
I was so focused on seeing the root cause of my pain as something physical that I spent this whole year doing all the physical things I could do to fix it. Chiropractic care (still necessary as I’m dealing with mild scoliosis and helps calm my nervous system), an electrical stimulation device I bought off Instagram (huge sucker for IG ads), stretching, yoga, and cutting back on lifting weights, etc.
But I think the combination of both physical and emotional healing practices, the Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and emotional trauma healing, are doing wonders! I will continue the chiropractic care for wellness and to keep my spine as healthy as it can be but you can bet PRT and trauma work are where my focus is at the moment.
Reparenting and retraining my brain isn’t quick nor easy work but it’s definitely lessening my pain so I will keep at it, one trauma at a time.
*****
Here are the books and tools I’ve mentioned, in this post and in Part 1:
Energy Healing: Jen Ciszewski (Inspire Health with Jen)
Articles: Can Trauma be Stored in the Body? - Mind, Body, Green
Inner Child Work: How to Heal by Reparenting Yourself - Big Self School
Books: The Way Out by Alan Gordon
How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera