“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” -Dr. Suess

Earlier today, I was thinking about  something I learned in my Cross Cultural Psychology Class: mental health practitioners in Asian culture focus just as much on physical ailments in their diagnosis and treatment as they do the purely emotional symptomology. 

In American psychology we call this “somaticizing” and tend to treat it as a separate disorder all its own.  Hmm. Interesting. It got me thinking.

The mental and the physical: how can you separate the two, really? 

I really don’t think you can.

In the past year, here are some of the unusual things that have happened to my body.  I once  lost 10 pounds in 2 days (and gained later them back in the same amount of time). I have shivered while sweating clean through my clothes (without any physical activity). I have experienced severe panic, difficulty breathing,  almost daily headaches, jaw soreness, nausea, irritability, fatigue and for awhile my hair was falling out all over the place.

This probably sounds like I have some weird disease right? This is all nothing, compared to the feelings my body has tried to contain from the grief I have been experiencing over the loss of my mom.  But really, it’s not too hard to connect the dots between what I have been feeling and what’s been going on with me physically. The rapid, initial weight loss followed the two days after my mom died. My stomach hurt, and I could not eat.  I’m know the stress totally screwed my hormones up for awhile. This contributed to the headaches I have always experienced. Additionally, I have had a lot of grief nightmares which lead to the jaw grinding. This also makes the headaches worse.  When your body experiences significant stress, it is not too uncommon to experience a lot of hair fall three months later.

All connected. 

I’m still dealing with the headaches and fatigue, but I’ve been taking better care of myself and am doing much better than I was. I have found that the best thing to do was give myself permission to just “be”.  Since my job requires me to be “up” so much, I have to have some quiet, some “down.”  I am not tutoring after school this year.  Most days, I am not staying late to plan or arrange anything. I am reading more for fun and writing more. For awhile, I was doing some yoga stretches everyday (need to get back to that) and it was very relaxing. I have been eating very clean and supplementing my diet with Shaklee vitamins. 

Dane and I took a ballroom dance class together. We paint together sometimes in the evenings. We do more things just because they are fun things to do.  I’m not an open book to most people (you probably wouldn’t know that from my blog) but I have a few friends in my life now who have been so nurturing and healing.

It’s interesting, because many of these things aren’t usually prescribed to cure the physical, but taking care of myself  on all levels has relieved many of my physical symptoms. I also feel that being more balanced has helped me to cope with my emotional grief in a healthier way.  

Futhermore, the habits I have adapted to take better time for myself are things I have always been pulled towards.  It’s kind of funny that, in taking time to not “do so much,” I have found myself doing the things that matter to me most. Family. Friends. Creativity. Peaceful time. Adventure. I’m sure the list differs for everyone. Also, my work isn’t suffering. I feel a lot more able to perform than I did in the fall, when I would just come home and crash completely.

 All this without even getting into the spiritual element.  I’m not going to give you a Sunday school answer. My spiritual life has been uncomfortable. I’ve thought a lot more about what real love means, and a lot more about eternity. Big picture. Small picture. Big callings. Little callings. Why are we here? God loves me even though I’m selfish. I know I am. I know He still does.  I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been angry with God over the last several months.  However, I also would be lying if I claimed to believe that God actually deserves my anger. I know that He doesn’t.  He’s God. I also know that He can handle my hurt and confusion with Him.  There are beautiful things in this nightmare, even though I’m not sure what they are yet.   I have faith that there are things that I just don’t understand, and can’t understand.  

There is a word in ancient Hebrew that can be translated into English as “nephesh.”   It is kind of like your soul, heart, mind, altogether, but even that’s not really it. It is the essential “youness” of you. Everything that makes you up.I just don’t think we can separate the “youness” (that’s what I’m going to keep calling it).  I especially don’t think we can do this when it comes to any kind of healing.  

 

In America we have such a “get it done” mindset.  We are machines who can do anything as long as we have a cup of coffee in hand and are well-dressed and on time. We don’t need sleep. We have to pick and  choose between what's left over after work: family life, social life, spiritual life, physical fitness. Some items will not make the cut. We have this tendency to be so business- minded, for our own “success”, that we lose track of what is really successful in terms of being a complete person.   

We treat physical sickness without addressing the state of the soul (check any hospital). We try to address the soul without considering the state of the mind (this is a tough question, and more than long enough for another post or thousand posts: how does the one’s mental state affect his/her spiritual life?). We judge the mind without compassion for the body (“Don’t go near that hobo. He’s crazy”…. “You don’t have to worry about talking to John. He’s a little weird since he got back from the war. PTSD.”)

I’m learning to accept people as a complicated creation-a piece of music, perhaps- which cannot be compartmentalized.  Every instrument, every note played (or not played) by that instrument affects the overall experience.  We are not just our bodies, or minds, or feelings.  We are even more than all three of those categories affecting one another.  We are not machines, and our actions and malfunctions are completely unpredictable. Therefore, it just seems obvious to me that the  things which hurt our very beings need to be addressed on every level possible, and not just one.

 

I’m open to thoughts, comments, criticisms, donations, whatever.