I was lying on the chiropractor’s table. She’d been helping me with a hip issue, almost magically it seemed, and I had asked her to look at my ankles and feet as I was having ongoing pain.
She gently picked up my right foot, moving it left to right, front to back. Felt fine. She picked up my left foot. Gently started to move it and stopped. I noticed at the same time she did ….
“This foot isn’t supposed to move like this.”
I knew in a flash what was wrong. A few years prior, we had our driveway repaved. The new paving was four inches higher than before, but the dirt hadn’t been filled in along the edges. I was taking out the trash in the dark, like I sometimes did, and stepped wrong.
The pain was intense, unbearable at first. I couldn’t stand or get back in the house. I laid on the ground, in the dark, tapping and breathing through the pain. Once I got inside, I’d iced it, arnica’d it, bandaged it. I kept my weight off, and it healed in a few weeks.
Or so I thought.
On the chiropractor’s table, I realized in a flash that I had been walking around with a torn ligament for three years. My body adroitly had compensated for the instability, protecting the injured foot, but at a cost. I was limited in my responsiveness, agility, and stability, but I didn’t realize it.
You know where I’m going with this, right?
This happens emotionally, as well. We get hurt, we heal, but sometimes we are left with an injured, inner part, and we don’t know it.
We walk around protecting our hurt parts, draining our emotional reserves. When there’s a significant event, like a pandemic, we don’t have the stability and flexibility we need. We get overwhelmed, but we don’t know why.
Ideally, you’d have tended to your injured, inner parts before the pandemic. That’s what my clients have done. They are navigating the pandemic with grace and ease. Grief, anger, overwhelm, and shock come and go, but they aren’t thrown off-center.
I don’t mean to be blunt or unkind as I say this, but right now, I see far too many signs of people being emotionally overwhelmed. The cost of carrying around past, unhealed, inner injuries has left them less resilient, and now they are suffering, stuck, and reactive.
This is why you do the inner work; this is why you tap and tend to your past so that you can be fully functional in the present.
If you are struggling, there’s no shame. It’s just a sign that your reserves need some help. I wasn’t embarrassed on that table, I was relieved. I understood what was wrong, and I could fix it.
If you are struggling, I invite you to spend some time tapping and addressing the current stressors you’re facing. If you don’t know what to say while tapping, listen to my latest podcasts or try the book I put out a few weeks ago.
You deserve to feel better. Let my voice and words support you.
Photo by Joel Holland on Unsplash
