A conversation with a patients son in clinic last week….
J: “I won an award in school”
Me: “Really!, that’s fantastic! What’s the award?”
J: (giggles) “It’s a brick”
Me: “huh?”
J: “The award is the school brick”
Me: “Why did they give you the brick?”
J: “Because I owned up…..Miss wasn’t angry at all. Miss asked who did it and I owned up so they gave me the Brick”
Me: “Fantastic”
I thought this was fantastic! Rewarding children, not for exam results this time, but for acknowledging a brave act. To encourage talk about something that might potentially hurt others or hurt us, is an act of bravery.
Some great advice we were given in the first blog was…
“Don’t keep secrets from your nearest and dearest“
and
“Don’t bottle things up”
Life becomes a challenge the more we separate from others, the more our self intensifies. And the more we think about our problems and worries, keeping secrets, bottling things up, we start to alienate ourselves and can become detached and distant from others.
The list of physical problems of this type of anxiety varies from palpations to back ache and from nausea to dizziness. Worrying about future problems and past events is exhausting and self-punishing. I’m sure the reason this affects us so greatly is because this life is a shared experience and the more isolated we become the greater the symptoms become too.
The treatment room and “hands on” therapy can often be a place for the therapist to lend a non-judgmental ear. A safe environment can become a platform to share and there have been occasions in clinic where the more a worry is released verbally, it often corresponds with a release in the muscle tissue.
“Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Stephen Hawkin
One thing I know for sure, is that we are not that different from one another. Life can be pretty bumpy sometimes and I’m sure we all have experienced a feeling of alienation. I also know it’s not easy for some of us to be heard. But please, be kind to yourself and go for that school brick.
“When there’s talk, there’s hope”
Matt Haig
Much love and thank you for reading
Lou
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