Aging, Injuries, and Healing with Mindfulness

Getting older is a fine balance between the wisdom that can only come from experience and the frustration of not remembering what I was about to say or do a moment ago.

Going slowly and being fully in my body, moment by moment, have been among the greatest gifts of aging. I am still working on both of these practices, and I get distracted by busy-ness more than I would like. But the more I stop, and breathe, and feel, the easier it gets - mostly because it feels good.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) - which I mentioned a couple posts ago - has become an invaluable tool for settling in and noticing subtle energies and staying with them, just noticing and nothing more, as they transform just through the process of attending and watching.

Sadness becomes relief, then anger, then power, then excitement, then joy.

Fatigue becomes grounding, then settling, then calm, then alertness, then presence.

This may sound like meditation, but it's more than I've ever learned in meditation classes. There is no effort to stop thinking. Thoughts happen. There is no concentration on a meditative object. Sensation is the meditative object. And maybe that just works really well for me because I am at the super far end of the kinesthetic spectrum.

One of the main reasons I decided to learn SE was to see if it would help reduce physical pain, which I've long suspected my body holds as "emotional trauma in suspended form." In several of my SE experiences, I've noticed the feeling of my shoulders and back melting - as if old armor is gently falling away. It's a delicious feeling, and one that I hope will eventually become a new normal for me. What I didn't expect, is that SE would follow me out of the classroom, and out of my therapy office into my daily life. Specifically, it has shown up in my footsteps.

In March, I twisted my left knee, and it's felt twinge-y and wonky ever since - not painful, but not quite right. I don't think it's a coincidence that I also have bunion on my left big toe, and that my left foot has been growing progressively weaker over the last few years. So I did what we all seem to do these days; I scoured Google for everything ever written about knee injuries and bunions and muscle imbalances. Several articles recommended walking barefoot.

Then, in June, I ran into a friend who was wearing Vibram FiveFingers on her feet. I had a pair once. I got them right after reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. But I was much younger then (only 44). And I had only just begun learning about slow and gentle living. I didn't know that in my mid-forties, my body would begin to rebel against being pushed to hard. I didn't know the wear and tear that my earlier traumas, and the resulting tendency to dismiss and deny my body's pain and fatigue signals, was catching up to me. So I put on my new barefoot "shoes," and went for a run, giving myself a muscle spasm (in my left calf, of course) that lasted a month. I blamed the shoes, cursed the book, and went back to supportive, orthotically correct footwear. And I watched my bunion grow. And I felt my foot continue to weaken.

Fast forward to June. Now at the wise and sage age of 49 1/2, I listen to my friend describe the slow, gentle process of moving from shod feet to bare feet. She wore her FiveFingers an hour a day at first, only at home after work. Then on little trips, grocery shopping. Then, adding more time as her body grew accustomed, she eventually started wearing them all day, just walking, sitting, driving. Now, she says, she is "addicted to them."

There is no definitive information about whether barefoot living will fix my knee or my foot. Anecdotal evidence points both ways - it really helps or it really hurts. Though in scouring blogs and message boards, there is one theme that recurs over and over. If you transition to barefoot, go very, very slowly.

Yesterday my new (and surprisingly cute compared to the last pair) FiveFingers arrived. I wore them for two hours, mostly sitting. Today I wore them for three hours, sitting, sweeping the floor and taking a short trip to the store. When I took them off, the angle of my bunion-y toe was less pronounced. My knee is still wonky, but it also feels like the muscles of my foot, calf and thigh are more activated and more stabilizing.

What's really wonderful though is the mindfulness of each step. As I walk, I am keenly aware of the sensations in my feet and legs and knees and hips and back. I am feeling my gait from inside. I have no idea what this will lead to, if anything. And the blessing of SE and of getting older is that it's soooo okay with me not to know. I am happy watching, waiting, trusting my body's signals and discovering what the next step feels like, and then the next one, and the next.

And I am relishing the loving feelings that come with all of this self-care. The armor continues melting, and as it does, the love and joy that is my birthright (and yours too) grows full and bright, a little sun rising in my chest.

Helpless Humiliation and Wondrous Healing

So in my last post I mentioned that out of my year of difficulty, I gained some wonderful wisdom that I might not have been open to had I not been in serious emotional pain. So here's one of the most important things I've learned.

First, the world is not always a safe place. Neither is it always a dangerous place. For me it has been mostly safe physically, and often times, not so safe emotionally. Anger, sadness, pain, loneliness and fear were not welcomed in my family. My mother regularly let me know I was "too sensitive." My father loved to provoke me to anger and then laugh, leaving me feeling helpless and humiliated.  I stayed small, quiet, and ate away my feelings and needs, since neither of my parents had the capacity to provide safety or soothing.

Yet over the years I have discovered that in the presence of people who are kind and respectful, I thrive. I am resilient. Even in the midst of a stinker of a year, I can lift up my head and feel awe watching bees drinking from flowers (especially knowing that bees are struggling to stay alive these days). I still believe in miracles like butter, redwood trees, sweat pants, and being held close by someone who loves me.

I am deeply aware that I am not alone. There is no way to get through this life unscathed. The trick is to remain open hearted or "whole-hearted" as Brené Brown likes to say. For me, keeping an open heart requires feeling safe in the company of other people. In this past year, I have been battered by people who, I'm sure, have been battered themselves.

The insurance rep, who I mentioned last time, was like a stern school principal, certain that every client is going to attempt insurance fraud. The contractor who was fond of bending the truth, I'm sure feels tossed around by the whims of the economy, trying to make as much money as possible while there is work available. With these pressures, it's easy to lose integrity and become untrustworthy.

For me, dealing with these personalities daily felt like I was being ground into fine dust - an apt metaphor since most of my house was covered in plaster dust. What was being ground away was my civility, my politeness, my calm. The raw nerves underneath were angry. And not just any kind of anger, but the most poisonous type: helpless rage.

At the time I didn't know that my armor (civility, politeness and calm) was about to be cracked open so I would have to heal that old wound inside - humiliation.

I've long understood that the pairing of anger and fear in me was connected to how my anger was treated when I was little. I didn't fully understand that it was a fear of being humiliated. I didn't know yet that the brain registers humiliation as a traumatic experience. As social creatures, humiliation, which separates us from the safety of others, is a threat. It turns out that sticks, stones AND words can all hurt us.

So enter insurance guy who treats me like a naughty child. Slightly humiliating. Enter contractor who keeps "forgetting" that he needed another day's work for this and another list of supplies for that. Mix in a husband who is worried that we won't be able to find anyone else to do the work (another long story of how difficult it was to find this guy in the first place). And I don't feel like I have any power - like the power to fire the guy - in our negotiations. Mix in a few personal attacks from a family member who has his own abuse history and tends toward abusive behavior when he's stressed out. And it's the perfect storm.

I lose my composure. I lose my cool. I lose my shit.
And it's about time.

At first my anger comes mixed in with the humiliation and the fear. I hate this kind of anger - hard to feel strong when your voice is shaking and you're sweaty and half your thoughts disappear in a fine, red mist before you can say them aloud. This is the vagus nerve, shutting down the body in the expectation that you're about to be eaten. Sucks when you're trying to stand up for yourself.

But over the next few weeks, through an amazing process called Somatic Experiencing, I start to embrace my healthy, strong, no-one-can-mess-with-me, anger. I like to call this Big Cat anger. The image in my mind is of a lioness, lying in tall grass, peaceful and alert. Muscles relaxed but also ready, if needed, at any moment. This calm is so different from the suffocating armor of being small and quiet and eating instead of biting in anger. It's a peace that comes from knowing that with one roar, one swipe of my claws, I can take down any of life's hyenas. And in that knowing, not needing to take anyone down. Just raising an eyebrow when someone is being a jerk, as if to say, "Really? Do you know who I am?"

In this state of empowerment, the world looks brighter, sharper, clearer. My body feels stronger, more agile, and my mind feels awake, open. My heart is open too. Safe to love even more deeply.

This is how healing from attachment trauma goes. We use the best and only defenses available as kids to keep ourselves safe and connected to family that should, but can't, protect and cherish us. For most of us, the defense involves being what our families needed us to be - the good one, the bad one, the skinny one, the fat one. And then those defenses fail. At first it can be terrifying. But moving through the process consciously, with the help of someone who gets it and cares allows for transformation - new strengths, new awareness and a deepening feeling of grounding, and centering. We become our Big Cat selves.