I know today’s blog title may sound a little ‘woo-woo’ but I was recently thinking in the last eight years, I haven’t had that insane level of pain like I did when I walked away from my last call-center job. I know sitting as long as I did and not always in the most ergonomic way wasn’t good for my body, but now I’m seriously beginning to think how much of my physical pain was caused by my emotional and mental silence.
As I look back at April 2016, the month before I left my last call-center job, I almost see it through a haze. In all my fifty years, I can’t remember a time like that month because I felt like I was in a god-awful amount of pain whenever I was awake. I felt like I could never get totally comfortable and sitting in the chair became a nightmare. By the end of a shift on the phones I almost wanted to scream or cry. It was so bad I had to take a break between almost every call some days just to catch my breath.
I told no one of this at the time because pain doesn’t make me think completely straight and I also didn’t trust my employer at the time not to manage me out the door if I asked for any accommodation because of this. So once I began to think I needed to walk away from that life, my pain began to let up almost immediately. And when that happened, it further strengthened my resolve to follow through on my decision to walk away from that life once and for all.
I’m not discounting any physical causes for pain in any way, shape, or form here. If you go to a doctor for a specific pain and they blow you off without running tests or trying to locate the source, then find another doctor. I was diagnosed with scoliosis when I was thirteen years old so I know I’ve done damage to my back and the disks from that misalignment of my spine. And yes, I know sitting for long periods of time in a not-so-ergonomic way wasn’t good for me either.
I believe there is a relationship between your physical health and your mental and emotional health, too. I’m not saying there is a one-size-fits-all approach to it, or that if you just do this or that, or the power of positive thinking or anything like that. Because there are causes of physical pain no amount of mental or emotional work will ease off or cure. But getting your head together and dealing with your emotional baggage is worth doing, not for a cure, but because it will help you feel better in some way, shape, or form.
In the last eight years as I’ve uncovered the origins of how I think and feel, I have dealt with massive bouts of anxiety. I’ve had some absolutely vicious anxiety attacks and days where I lived in what I call an ‘anxiety spiral’, a time where I was functioning on the surface but inside my mind was focused entirely on something else in the worst possible way. But in the last few months, I haven’t had this level of anxiety because I have spent a lot of time working to change the way my mind works, to find and implement new ways of dealing with things. The human brain is very adaptable, but you also to have to work your ass off to make it a reality.
Yes, there will be people in this world who will not like you when you break your silence and change yourself for the better. That’s for them to deal with, not you. Because if you’re not causing harm physically, mentally, or emotionally, but yes, maybe being more honest in the way you speak and live your life, you’re not a bad person for changing like that.
Too many people still try to medicate against mental and emotional issues and dysfunctional patterns with alcohol/drugs, food, bad behavior, or just trying to numb themselves out and not feel anything. You can’t live like that forever and yes it’s hard to do the work instead of medicating or numbing out. But the results are worth it, even if you feel like you’re all alone. You’re not alone because other people have done this work, and are doing it now. It’s why those of us who have done this work share our stories in order to reach out to people who want to break their silence, and do the work to heal themselves as much as they can.
And yes, there are physical results to doing mental and emotional work. For me, it’s not being in as much pain as I used to be, and also not feeling as poorly as I have. Yes, I’m going through perimenopause but I can identify when I’m having those funky symptoms and deal with them. And yes, I still have allergies but again, I can deal with those. But I believe I have finally learned not to bottle my mental and emotional shit up and hurt myself physically for it. Because when I realized I needed to stop punishing myself mentally and emotionally, I stopped punishing myself physically.’
I know I spent way too many years beating the shit out of myself mentally and emotionally when I shouldn’t have. When I stopped doing that and started telling myself that I wasn’t a bad person, and if anyone didn’t like that about me to ‘fuck off’, I felt better physically. So don’t beat the shit out of yourself in any way, shape, or form, for anyone or anything. And be sure to tell anyone who doesn’t like that to just ‘fuck off’. Take care of yourself first. It’s worth all the hard work and working through all the pain.
Break your silence.
MicheleSayre.com 