We all experience physical signs of unhappiness
They are a part of life
Life is sometimes hard
It is harder for some than for others
How can we heal ourselves
Without healing our feelings it is impossible to heal our bodies
Pain feels real because it is real
Psychosomatic disorders are physical symptoms that mask emotional distress
The very nature of physical symptoms hide the distress at the root
It is natural to seek a medical disease to explain the suffering
My sadness was so overwhelming that I could not bear to feel it
Instead I developed physical ailments
My subconscious chose to be crippled by disease rather than experience the anguish that existed inside me
The pain served a purpose
It happened for a reason
Words were not available so my body spoke for me
I had to listen
The pain is real
But it arises in the subconscious rather than being due to a brain disease
Or a diagnosis of premature aging
A split occurred in the mind
Dissociation
My conscious mind separated from what was happening around me
One part of me didn’t know what the other was doing
The symptoms were my body telling me something is wrong
I couldn’t see it until I saw it
Physical manifestations of unhappiness
Not personality flaws or signs of weakness
In fact, the opposite
I am superhuman
But life is hard sometimes
Harder for some than for others
Everyone manifests hardship in different ways
Some cry
Some complain
Some sleep
Some stop sleeping
Some drink
Some eat
Some get angry
And some suffer
Like me
In the legal system, the burden of proof requires evidence to support the truth
A diagnosis is made
My disability has a psychological cause
With every new thing I learned, my symptoms would evolve
Pain
Tiredness
Overwhelming
Nothing could account for all the pain I was in
I am a person beyond my medical history
I have a life beyond my illnesses
What was I hiding?
It felt real because it was real
A learned inability to understand
A struggle to accept the power of the mind over the body
A conversion of stress into paralysis
Symptoms that arose through stress and anxiety
Produced in the mind
Depending on what I understood at the time about my own body and disease
Lack of support
Financial woes
A bad marriage
A neglectful childhood
Being accused of lying, of faking, of imagining that things weren’t as bad as they were
The nervous system is like a computer
All the hardware is intact, the wires are in the right place
But a software problem kept my body from receiving message to leave
Fear
Trauma
Blocking the message I needed to heed
Sadness was looking for a way out
Emotions converted into physical symptoms
Letting others determine what counted as an acceptable public manifestation of stress
There was more than one cause for unhappiness
There was more than one answer for solving it
Loneliness
Breaking the pattern of fear, trauma and avoidance
Addressing the trigger meant leaving everything behind
And finding a safe place to finally heal