Stop Hammering Ourselves

Why We Need to be Relaxed About Our Healing

In my previous article,

The Roads We Are Travelling

I included a reply on a comment that a couple of folks said they found very helpful, so I thought it was worth working this up in to an article in its own right, here.

The trouble with suffering from a chronical illness or trauma is that usually we have lost our interoception, the senses of our own internal states. One of these is the sense of tiredness, especially when feeling chronically fatigued a lot is part of the problem, as then it is even harder to work out when we are just normally tired. There is also a serious temptation to go hammer and tongs at the neural exercises we hope will make us better. Unfortunately, this is not how neuroplasticity works - too much of a good thing isn't better. This type of healing process can't be rushed. It takes time.

Indeed, even only a few minutes a day on any particular neural exercise may be all that is needed for long term benefits, but over-doing do it just exhausts the system more and more, which can actually be detrimental, especially when we find it hard to tell that it is the work which is making us tired. The danger is we just keep hammering away at it, exhausting our system further and further in a negative spiral of descent.

Remember that exhaustion is one of the biggest factors which shuts down our right brain hemisphere, and keeps us in a state of right hemisphere cortical shock,

The Divided Brain and The Asymmetric Body

The second issue is that a very significant factor for many of us becoming ill in the first place is that we hold ourselves to impossible standards. This is often translated to our healing processes, so when we don't manage to fit in a busy schedule of neural exercises into our day (because eventually our body, once again, says no), we end up making it all worse by feeling like we're failures, or getting stuck in looping thoughts of self-doubt and guilt. Again, another spiral of descent.

We need to remember that healing is primarily about neuromodulation and neurorelaxation, calming our nervous and endocrine systems, and thus, while relaxation techniques are crucial for healing, being relaxed about our healing activities is also vital for increasing our aliveness. This is why I recommend healing exercises and therapies should always be done in the spirit of fun, joy and curiosity. It should be part of our day when our inner child can come out to play!

“Just because you're afraid,

Doesn't mean you're in danger,

And it also doesn't mean,

You don't have a really good reason to feel afraid.

You're brain is a holy echo chamber,

Of ancient stories passed to you,

From ancestors who loved you,

And wanted you to survive,

And so to keep you alive,

They planted sparks,

Inside your mind and your heart,

That say run away, run away,

Or fight,

Or freeze, things aren't ok.

I want to remind you,

And remind myself,

That we can honour the gift,

The gift of the fear they gave to us,

And not obey, not obey it.”

Lyrics from a song by The Bengsons.