Pain bodies!

Pain bodies!

It is said that pain is the symptom that something is not right with your body; a signal that you need to attend to the cause of the malady. It may be caused by a ruptured appendicitis or plain simple indigestion, but unless you take care of the cause it would recur, and in the case of the former, it may even be fatal, if you ignore it.

How simple the diagnosis is, if it is seen on the physical level! But we do not understand that our emotional body also undergoes pain. And it tells us in the form of our emotions: of anger, sadness, depression or plain helplessness. But how many of us really understand that what needs to be attended to is the cause of this pain; these symptoms are only the superficial signs of a corrosion happening underneath. We need to sit down and listen; listen to the need of the emotional body, and find out what is causing us so much pain. Is it a failed, or a failing relationship? Is it an unmet need from somebody? Is it something that someone has said, or more important, something someone has not said?

A client who had come to me for a session shared a story with me, wherein the case was of pure unmet expectations. But the hurt was festering for such a long time, that when she came in for the first session, I realised that it was not an isolated incident and the probing revealed the source of the hurt going as far as her childhood. She was the second of three siblings and her parents had always favoured her elder sibling, simply because the latter had been suffering from some deep complex born of her own thinking and inadequacies. Though she resented this favouritism, she was willing to live with it, because she had found succour for her emotional needs outside and maybe she did not have the courage to either fight, or even voice her resentment then. . Things settled down after both of them got married, and since they all got busy with their now extended families, this rivalry took a back seat.

Unfortunately, it surfaced again with the younger sibling now, who was living with her parents in the same city, and who somehow felt victimised by circumstances to take care of the parents. (It may not be out of place to say here that the parents had a fallout with the eldest sibling and are barely on talking terms now; somehow she kept insisting, ironically that she was always put down upon!). Anyway, to cut to the presenting problem, my client called up her mother to share some discord that she had had with the younger sibling, but the mother jumped to her defense, saying that she was never able to understand her younger sibling, and not to bother her with undue conflicts between both of them. Now this was ironical, and the only message my client could get was that she was not given a hearing, (it was very reminiscient of her childhood) and that her sibling was!

The issue of discord is irrelevant here; what hurt was the fact that my client was straight away brushed aside, with a blanket pronouncement. What came to my mind was what a famous psychologist, Adler had written about the profound effect birth order had on the personality of a person. This client of mine had projected to be a strong, mature and rational individual and had been a source of support for the family throughout her life. When she did manifest her emotional needs, I guess the family was unable to understand it and handle the situation. It made them uncomfortable whenever she buckled, even for a while under a crisis. And all along, to live up to her image, she continued to reinforce the behaviour of being a strong, rational person.
She had not understood her deep underlying resentment she bore against her parents for compromising her position every time in a sibling fight. She had been given love: but conditional love. And when the conditions were not being met now, the family was unable to accept her.

How is someone to cope with an unfulfilled need? It was not easy… The level of acceptance had to be very high in her, to surpass this need of being accepted unconditionally by her parents, and she had to work on years of rejection and the silent resentment she had borne.

I had lot of raw emotions to handle; and it was not easy. She was speaking from hurt, not from reasoning. I had to give her time, before I could make her understand where her mother and her sibling were coming from. She had to deal with unmet expectations, and to use a Transactional analysis viewpoint, she was the rebellious child, talking to a critical parent. No wonder there was a cross transaction!