What if physical pains were actually indicators of emotional distress?
Have you ever experienced pain in your body that seemed to have “come out of nowhere”?
Perhaps you wake up in the morning with a stiff neck… So sore you can hardly get out of bed.
Thoughts go through your mind like, “Did I sleep wrong?”, “Is my pillow old and needs to be replaced?”, “Why is this happening to me?”.
It is common to have these conscious thoughts. But what if we decided to dive deeper into the unconscious for answers to the physical pains?
The job of the unconscious mind is to protect and hide, or bury, pieces of our most painful experiences as a way to protect us. The mind prioritizes avoiding emotional distress over increasing physical distress. The three most common emotions it tries to avoid are guilt, shame and heartbreak.
SOCIAL PROOF
With her permission, I’ll share a relatable client experience.
She woke up in the morning and described her neck as feeling ‘so heavy, I couldn’t lift it. It feels so tight, throbbing pain, like it is locked up on the left side.’ She said, “I am in so much pain and I’ve noticed that little comments from family members feel really triggering.” She tried the chiropractor and physical therapist with minimal relief.
Time to holistically explore what emotional components
are underneath the physical pain!
She had recently been having challenging conversations with many of her family members. She had also recently experienced some epiphanies about her relationship with her dad and that he has not been there for her most of her life.
The physical area of her pain is where the throat chakra is located. Some of the things the throat chakra is responsible for are:
Communication
Self-expression
The place of the “void”/ change
Here are a few indicators that healing may need to take place in the throat chakra:
Fear of speaking our truth
Doubting our value or worth
Struggling to set boundaries
Poor listening skills
Lack of confidence
Feeling rejected
Having social anxiety
Feeling unsatisfied
THE RESULT
We were able to determine that her throat chakra was dull and lacking in color, that she was afraid to speak up for herself, afraid of the “void”. She was feeling lonely and resentment.
We were also able to bring in some positive affirmations like:
I face life with courage and confidence
I speak up for myself
By bringing awareness to the unconscious negative patterns and to the positive patterns that she needed to integrate, she started to relax a bit more.
After completing an exercise to bring the bright blue color back into her throat chakra, her pain immediately dissipated! When I checked in with her the following morning, her words were “I feel like a trillion bucks!”
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Have you ever considered your physical pain as an indicator of emotional distress? If so, what did you do to acknowledge and move the emotional distress out of the body? Did it relieve the physical pain? If you have not done either, are you curious about learning more?
Please leave me a comment below and let’s start a discussion about this immense topic!
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