Not every symptom in the body is a metaphor.
In my days as a psychotherapist, I carried so much shame about being chronically ill. The going theory in my flavor of psychotherapy was that physical symptoms/illness occur when we experience overwhelming emotion. It’s too much to process so it goes into the body. Therefore, I, with so many symptoms and health issues was a walking example of someone who doesn’t deal well with their feelings. This opinion/judgment was communicated to me over and over in so many subtle comments over the years. I really took it to heart. There was a constant refrain in my head, there must be something I’m not dealing with, there must be something I’m not looking at, I must still have so much work to do on myself.
Of course trauma affects our health. This is indisputable. But my therapy world took this waaaay too fuckin’ far. After awhile it just didn’t add up to me. All kinds of people around me who were way worse at dealing with their feelings, including some of the therapists in my community for chrissakes, had great health. All kinds of people around me who had experienced horrifying amounts of trauma in their lives had great health. Therapists are still the people I like talking to about my health the least, hands down. Everything is a metaphor, everything is a part of the non-physical me trying to speak through the body. Of course this is sometimes the case, but my god, there is so much not-so-subtle dismissal of the body being a physical thing that in addition to it’s interwoven-ness with the rest of our being, is also a part of us having a truly physical experience. It’s basically just another perpetuation of viewing our minds as so much more important than our bodies. (It’s also a hope to have control over something that feels out of control.)
Then I entered the spiritual/intuitive/medical intuition world. Those ways of understanding chronic illness made me feel somewhat less judged. There was still the interpretation of symptoms as an energetic imbalance, but with varying degrees of “it’s always about that” to “this is a possibility.” There were also ideas about soul agreements and the path of the healer, that you chose a path of illness in order to equip you for your work as a healer.
(Thankfully I dodged the New Age circles who mercilessly blame you for every bad thing that’s happened to you, saying - You chose this. That thing you’re feeling, that symptom you’re having, that thing that’s happening in your life, you made that happen. Why would you do that? Are you going to take responsibility and change it? Good fucking lord. Though I guess this is basically my therapy world without any kindness.)
If I were to land on a theory about why I’ve had such a long road with illness, it’s some combination of the path of the healer idea, and living in a world that’s toxic and makes people really sick. In my intuitive work, I definitely see a difference between people who have a system oriented toward somatization of everything and people who don’t. So when they’re sick it’s much less about how much they are in tune with their feelings or how extensively they’ve “dealt with their shit” than the average human. It’s like a personality type. For some people everything shows up in their body regardless of what they’re doing with that difficult feeling or thing. I am, or at least have been, one of these people.
Here’s where I’m at with this today. I’ve been saying it in a few different ways lately. I’m done submitting to illness, difficulty, and pain as a gift that has arrived in my life in order for me to learn some kind of lesson. Lately this has looked like letting my body and my energy system know that I am done somatizing. If there’s some significant stress that I’m blatantly disregarding, physical or not, I totally accept the fact that that will at some point take a toll on my health. I see that as the baseline standard of having a body that is interwoven with my beliefs and my feelings and my energy. But until that point, I expect some sturdiness. At this point in my life, I profoundly trust how resilient I am, how well I’m able to handle difficult things, how resourced I am internally and in the care and love of those around me. And I’m not open to a certain flavor of reactivity in my health or energy system in response to stress. I’m not interpreting it anymore, I’m not rolling up my sleeves to “deal with myself”, I’m not gonna analyze. I’m claiming space to have patterns I’m still working on, to wildly fluctuate, to even fall apart if needed, and have my body hold steady.
I’m pulling up my chair to the cosmic table. Not with demands as a dictator to Life, but as an equal. As an intimate partner who collaborates, with all the principles of mutuality and reciprocity alive and active. I’m aligning with what I think Mother Earth is shifting us to, more ease, growth without ass-kicking, transformation without masochism, healing that happens faster than we think it can, collective (instead of individual) responsibility.