This One Thing is Critical if You Really Want to Heal
Sometimes the simple things are the hardest to execute.
My greatest AHA! moments always happen mid-conversation with a friend.
Today was no exception.
It happened while another Nutritional Therapist friend of mine was telling me about her new client.
This client is experiencing extreme digestive distress that’s interfering with her ability to function, and therefore disrupting her life in unwelcome ways. Nothing unusual. Digestive disfunction is one of the top things clients come to us seeking relief from. Status quo stuff.
However, alarm bells in my head went off when she began describing their first phone consultation to me.
(By the way…our client work is strictly confidential. No names are discussed. But we often have brain storming sessions in which we discuss client cases because two or three brains is always better than one when it comes to cracking hard cases and getting the best outcomes for our clients. So don’t get the wrong idea here. We are ALWAYS thinking of how we can better serve our clients.)
Her client was so busy, she put my friend on hold for a moment to place her lunch order in the middle of their call. Mind you, this was a FIFTEEN MINUTE call. She didn’t (or felt she didn’t) have fifteen uninterrupted minutes in which to focus on a discussion revolving around how to heal her body so she could move on with her life.
(insert pregnant pause here, to really let that sink in)
“Oh dear,” I said to my friend. “She’s going to be a nightmare client. Are you sure you want to take this on right now?” Friends like this have come to expect extreme honesty from me, so I don’t think she was phased by my lack of enthusiasm. We talked for a few more minutes then hung up.
Now before you judge me too harshly, there’s a good reason I jumped to that conclusion. I know women like this well, because I used to be one. But. Dealing with a chronic disease tends to change things.
My brain immediately jumped to another conversation I had with an old friend a few months ago, a close family friend from our former life in San Diego. We hadn’t spoken, other than by text, in a few years. We had a great catch up session.
Right in the middle of our call she asked an innocent question that induced a profound lightbulb moment that has stuck with me since.
After describing her hectic schedule, and probably noticing my laid-back tone, she asked somewhat wearily, “So, did life start slowing down after you moved up there?” As if, by magic, life is slower when you move somewhere greener.
I paused for a moment as I let the reality of the answer sink in.
“No,” I replied, as it dawned on me. “Life slowed down when I made a radical commitment to heal.”
And it was true. We cannot go about our busy lives, treating our bodies like machines, ignoring the warning signs they send us, and expect them to continue to serve us well.
Digestive distress, an autoimmune diagnosis, chronic fatigue, hormone disfunction, chronic headaches…these are all warning signs our bodies are sending us. If they were road signs they would read “SLOW DOWN” “PROCEED WITH CAUTION” or sometimes, “STOP”.
They are the body’s not-so-subtle way of crying for attention. The problem is, we so often ignore these signals until it’s too late. Our society worships productivity, and working moms have it especially hard. Who has time to stop and slow down?
Here’s the thing. If healing is your goal, you can’t just squeeze it in between meetings or during your lunch break. Deep healing requires a drastic shift in the form of extreme rest.
If you want to experience truly transformative healing, you must put your life agendas aside and give your body the time and space it requires to do the healing work.
Our bodies are amazing, they are wise beyond our comprehension and know how to heal. But we must stop getting in the way of that process and support them with REST. There are other ways we can initiate and support our body’s healing mechanisms, but this is the master key. Without rest the healing is not going to happen, or it will be severely stunted.
In my own life, this looked like setting boundaries I’d never set before.
It was uncomfortable at first, and required major shifts in thinking and in my relationships.
In the beginning, it didn’t go over very well with my husband. He LOVES to lend a helping hand to anyone for any reason.
People catch on to that kind of thing, and he is used to volunteering for various needs as they arise. Which is a wonderful quality to possess, and I love this about him.
But I also came to hate it for a while, because every time he’d be off to help someone else, it would put more of a burden on me to take care of whatever needs our family had.
And that is exhausting when you’re in the midst of a health crisis.
I finally sat him down to have ‘the talk.’ It went something like this. “Look. I know you love to help. But I need your help. I need my health and our family to come first, before everything else right now. I need you to say no when people want your time and energy, because I need you to save them for us.”
Even as I write this, I realize some may perceive that as a selfish request. We are taught to serve others before ourselves. And sometimes that’s ok and the loving thing to do.
But sometimes, when our body’s ‘check engine’ light has been on for a long time and the engine is starting to cough and sputter, we need to become fiercely protective of our time and energy and direct in inwards.
It was a process for us. My husband was initially deeply uncomfortable turning people’s requests for help away. But over time, he began to see and understand the difference his support made in my energy levels and my overall well-being, and he fully embraced the boundaries I asked him to set on my behalf.
As for me, it was easy.
When I fully committed to healing, my go-to response for everything automatically became ‘no.’ It was a protective mechanism I set up to overcome my people pleasing tendencies that in the past had run me into the ground. I no longer cared about others’ agendas or priorities. Feeling well again became my sole focus.
This is sometimes what healing requires of us. To ruthlessly cut out everything that’s impeding our body’s ability to truly heal. It isn’t easy. But it’s not optional.
It will be interesting to see what happens with my friend’s new client. If she comes to understand the importance of slowing down, I think her prospects are good.
She’s in good hands.
If she doesn’t slow down, well…at some point perhaps she’ll be forced to by a worse health crisis than the one she’s already facing. The choice will be hers.
