On body talk, depression, and healing
This is a post about pains, suffering, depression, healing and self-growth. Today feels like the day I document the summary of my journey in healing and therapy – through body talk.
I had a session with my body talk practitioner today - today’s session ended so very differently, for the first time in two years since I started seeing Silvia in late 2020. She concluded that I have grown so much, mentally, through the roughest and toughest of times since she started seeing me. Today’s session felt like a little ‘graduation’ in mental health university.
“Without suffering and pains, there is no growth.”
All my life, up to just about two years ago, the person I have known myself to be, and to many friends, I was one who is sure of things, sunny-dispositioned, super extroverted, happy, driven, jovial, full of life, go-getter, clear-headed, positive, strong…etc – even after Justin’s passing, I saw myself as someone who rises above problems and a fighter.
The first time I was told that there could be something ‘off’ about my shiny exterior was during an acupuncture session, by my TCM then, Dr Fang. “I don’t know you that well yet, but something about you that I am reading, is that…you are lacking spark in your life. Your exterior is a very tall, well-constructed wall that seems to h
ole up what you are truly feeling inside.” I was taken aback, confused and upset at the observation by doctor, deep inside I sensed she was right about me but I had no explanation and understanding of it yet. I am glad I trusted her insights about me even though I had no clue what it was.
Time passes, I went on with my life, ups and downs and going all around. I had no further opportunities after that to dig deeper into discovering more of my problems.
Then March 2020 came.
Like so many out there, the lockdown and pandemic forced me into a corner in 2020, to face the demons…of life, of my minds, of all the self-destructive shits that reside in me that I had no idea of their existence. I spent most part of year 2020 covered in daily breakouts of hives (every morning and every evening), stomach bloating, and chronic inflammation of my lips – some of the ‘luckier’ ones of you have seen me in those uncomfortable moments. Anxiety, depression, frustration and grief set off all of that.
Sure, it was too easy to blame on the happenings around me in the year – the list of triggers is not long but they are surely all too common. Aging parents, uncertainties of work, finance, questions of self-worth, anxiety over confrontations that I could not made, loneliness, missing Justin, etc etc. Stuck, and clueless on how to un-stuck myself. I did the allergy tests, cleaned my home of possible triggers that gave me the hives, rashes and inflammation…nothing changed.
“This is not a case of allergy la, it’s your life problems. You have to start fixing your life problems…or else this inflammation will surely come back.” That was one of the most sobering, strangely satisfying advice I hear since the lock down in 2020. It was the morning after I got rushed to Pantai hospital for an emergency case of lip and throat swelling, at a close friend’s house dinner. A room full of friends watched in horror as my lips swelled to the size of….I don’t know…I subsequently lost my voice in just minutes. A steroid jab at the hospital later, my voice came back slowly and I was told to delay my working trip the next day to Ipoh. The next morning I took an allergy test at my friend’s clinic, and went to meet a group of friends at their breakfast. Dr Lawrence my friend told me that he thinks it was not a case of food allergy, or any allergy. “It’s psychosomatic.” He told me to start fixing my life’s problems. “Don’t cancel your Ipoh trip, go and work, do the things you enjoy, live. There is no point staying at home doing nothing, waiting for the problem to go away.”
I had the best work trip that weekend. My PA and I drove slowly to Ipoh and we talked through the shit I had to face and start fixing – at work, then. My voice recovered well on the trip, we had an amazing time with our show that weekend. My mind was all stimulated and excited about the change I was going to make in my life – to face my problems and fix them.
A week after that trip I made my first appointment to give body talk a try. I had no real or clear idea what Body Talk was when I made the appointment to meet with Silvia, a practitioner. A close friend of mine has talked about her own journey with body talk a few years ago. I decided that to start fixing whatever was haunting and hurting me, I would try something different and a little unknown to me.
The first session blew my mind…in fact, every session with Silvia has been like that. I will not go into gory details of what went on in all of my sessions in Body Talk. This is just a very personal sharing and rough documentation of what happened to me after I started body talk. I have been sharing with friends about my journey and feel strongly about having more people trying it.
It is alternative healing – generally speaking. But after I looked closer and experienced it myself, this is more self-healing to me. Body talk taps into communicating with our innate self, innate wisdom and consciousness, to repair and heal our body and mind. The level of self-awareness and consciousness the experience brought to me, works towards doing a better job than my overactive and overbearing intellectual consciousness.
Ten years ago I would never imagined myself to be one who talks and walks alternative healing, self-healing. I was all western medicine, well-documented evidence of results, and taking drugs to be better.
A rough ‘tour’ or map of my body talk journey since Sep 2020 till now. I have had six sessions in those twenty-four months. Over the course of these sessions with Silvia, it has been one wild, eye-opening, soul-searching, heart-wrenchingly sobering and cathartic roller-coaster ride into betterment, of my mental health and physical health. I had three sessions in 2020, between September and November. One session in year 2021, September. Two sessions so far in 2022. At the beginning, I was sent home with a complete new insight of what I needed to look back and move on – from my own family past trauma. Something of such magnitude impact that took place in my childhood that I never came to realise – have had a massive hold in who I came to be, and why I behave the way I am with my family all these years. To say that the first session at body talk was simply mind-blowing is not an over-statement, probably an under-statement.
I swiftly went in to see Silvia again in weeks, again, went home with a mind full of more new awareness, of realisation of what was eating me alive all these times. Basically it was like opening many cans of cannibalizing worms and insects that have lived inside my stomach and now having to pick them out one by one, with my bare hands.
Yes, you can only imagine how painful and uncomfortable the process has been. Like what they say about good medicine, there is good in the bitterness of the medicine. Silvia has always told me that I will not necessarily feel better or happier after each session. She is right. I mostly went home with a lot of realisation about how things came to be in my life, how I came to be the person I am, and what I need to work on myself – changing mindsets, picking up healthier mental habits, exercising better behaviours. To make all of that happen, there were many many lonely and excruciatingly painful self-reflection, and acceptance and facing up all things that are ugly, needy, need-to-change, childish, foolish within myself, and of the life I am in.
The first session I had early this year was to help me navigate through the thick of depression I was swimming in, having absorbed much of what life has bestowed upon me – it is what it is: my parents’ health is deteriorating, fatigue from juggling too much on my plate and not knowing how to let go of the intensity I was feeling all the time. At the same time, I had to learn to come to term with the new person I had become, one who is a lot more vulnerable (had always been but was lying to myself about it and not know it was a lie), quieter, lower energy, sombre, quite the opposite of who I thought I was all my life. I was scared shitless of the change; did not recognize the person I was, panicky and all that.
Silvia held my hand and told me it was all OK. “Whoever this new person that you are growing to be now, what is there not to love? It is still YOU. Ask yourself what are your fears of becoming this new person, what will you lose? Is it really a loss?” We talked about this ‘becoming’ at length and addressed all my fears. I walked out of there that day, feeling braver and excited about what I was going to find in the new Janet.
Months have passed, I am still tired with all the chaos that is my life. So much sadness in life that I cannot change, that I am learning to accept better. Today I spent a long time just updating her about the past five months of all the whirlwind happenings with my family and my work. Then we began the session and I focused on breathing.
“Letting go.” “…of your limitations.” came up as the main message of today. Nevertheless, she can see that I have grown so much through the past two years of struggles and new learnings. “There is nothing like watching someone come through here, struggling, learning, trying, and keep trying and growing from all of that.”
So much I have gained in knowing myself better, it has all been an overhaul of my mind and soul, and my heart. I am not all cured and fixed up from my life’s problems and depression (you don’t cure depression, you learn to cope better with life), and I am still at the beginning of my journey of letting go – but I feel way calmer in the chaos of my life now. I am much better in opening up to myself and knowing what being honest to one self is. I am more patient with myself and others (always a work-in-progress). I allow myself to cut some slack sometimes. I feel humbled by all my problems, I am grateful for them too.
I am a firm believer now, that only through difficulties and pains, we truly grow. “What don’t kill you makes your stronger.”
Read up on body talk, and give it a go. Or actually, to start making a change, talk to someone – open up about what is eating you up…or tell the universe that you are lost and you want some support and help.
If you are still here, wow, champion you. Thank you for reading.
#janetwrites
#bodytalk
#selfhealing
#healing
#mentalhealth
#wellbeing
#health
posted by Going-Solo at 10:41 PM
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