Do I Really Want to Heal?
This article is Inspired by Caroline Myss' Why People Don't Heal and How They Can.
On reading about the way that many people continue to be ill because of the benefits they receive from the illness and the fear of what changes they need to make to return to health, I decided to write around my potential blocks. For a long time I have believed that illness is here to teach us, and pondered on what my body may be trying to tell me. I've come to see it's mostly things I already know and have been working on, and it is especially the areas I resist working on or putting into action in spite of knowing!
I've heard this premise of illness being our teacher before and understand why so many reject and dislike it. At first it seems as though that means we are being punished in some way, or choosing to consciously be ill, and I do not take it in that vein at all. I believe our body loves us and wants what is best for us. Any symptoms it displays are like arrows pointing you to where you need to go, what you need to do, what you need to stop doing or let go of, and how you can heal your life as well as your body.
Let's use me as an example and get into the nitty gritty.
What I feel my body/illness/symptoms may be trying to show me -
One of the major things energy illnesses that slow you down can teach is the value of rest. I am a classic perfectionist type A who likes to check off boxes, get it all done in a day, and push myself beyond my limits. If I meet my own standards, I will likely just raise the bar. Of late I have had to lower my standards dramatically, and am made better for it. I am still frequently unable to do even the bare minimum and am having to learn to love myself anyway.
The other part of this minimising and stripping back to basics is needing to learn what my true priorities are. There are certain things I can drag myself up for no matter how exhausted, like a crying child, and things I refuse to give up and take off my list even when I can barely get out of bed in the morning. These are mostly to do with my husband and children, and I am learning to include my own self care in these basic priorities because I can't give as much from an empty cup.
As an aside to this, I am learning to separate my sense of worth, self esteem and identity from my doingness and accomplishment. I had no idea how enmeshed they were until put in the situation where I couldn't 'do' and 'achieve' as much. I could've gone my whole life without realising. I believe this is a key reasons why people with energy disorders often suffer depression as a by-product. It is so hard for me to get up in the morning on a bad day (many), knowing I may not have the energy to reach my now much lower standards, or do the things I love like play with the kids, crochet, see friends, get into nature, converse properly with my husband, have a shower etc (I told you my standards were lower!).
Being a working mum of three means my bare minimum responsibilities are pretty fricking high, and staying in bed all day is not an option. To meet these responsibilities I have sometimes had to ask for help, which is another huge lesson of this illness. I hate asking for help. I hate being needy. I hate being vulnerable and the not self sufficient. I am independent to a fault, and it still sometimes physically hurts to go to people when I have been desperately ill. What I still haven't learnt is how to ask for help before I reach this too-far-gone point, and unfortunately pride myself on how much I get by without. This needs to change. I also need to find people who really want to help me raise my family rather than doing so reluctantly or out of obligation. It would be lovely to find people who ask to help routinely because they take pleasure in it, but I feel I am a way off that yet!!!
The meatier stuff - I believe my illness is driving me into self employment. I have always wanted to work for myself as long as I can remember. I have never taken the time to sit down and figure out what I could offer because deep down I believe I don't have anything to offer. Which logically is a load of rubbish. I want to creatively offer my talents for better money at a schedule that suits me and my family. So far I have only ever tried self employment when it involves a formulaic criteria I can follow to get paid pennies, like Avon. It's not really self employment, just another form of employment. I did actually prefer it and enjoy it, but couldn't make any sustainable income from it.
Self employment is one of my greatest fears. It is self reliance to the max, unpredictable even when established. It requires self drive which I doubt I have even when I know from evidence I do. It may require a lot of work for a lot of nothing at first. I worry how I would find the energy for the initial heavy input building stage. I wonder who on earth would pay for my services and find my clients. I wonder, how dare I be a person who is paid well for doing what I love? What do I have to give that is unique?
I feel my illness is also teaching me to create an avenue for my vocal gift. I have suffered for as long as I can remember with sinus problems, throat problems and ear problems long before the energy illness kicked in. All of these interfered with my singing consistently and wreaked havoc on my confidence when I was performing. They put me off singing professionally because of the amount of stress caused when I did - the show would go on but I could never be at my best and I learned not to trust my voice to deliver the goods when needed.
I look back now and realise this may have been to drive me out of pub singing (which I hated), singing others music (most of which I hated), singing for such long times without rest (really bad for my soul and my voice) for people who didn't really come to hear you sing (fucking soul destroying as a performer). I hated being asked to sing Mustang Sally, and the way that people would turn off because you sang a song they didn't know. I hated that people would be there to get drunk and talk over you, the energy of the pubs, the long sets, constantly worrying about what you looked like, and whether your version of someone else's song was good enough. I hated to singing to backing tracks.
I tried amateur dramatics and enjoyed the group singing and the social element but felt creatively quashed and unable to become someone else when I didn't even really know myself yet. I didn't enjoy much of the music from the musicals or the characters I was cast as. I tried singing rock music (which on the whole I really do not like), I tried teaching singing only to find I wanted to sing myself more (I hated that about myself). I tried playing with a rock band (again wrong genre). Finally I tried writing my own music and playing my very basic guitar to write songs. Here I found the most joy yet felt unbelievably exposed, vulnerable, and frankly talentless when sharing the stage with people who had mastered two crafts - their voice and an instrument.
I actually played cello in school, but due to the many moves and starting over every time, as well as a reluctance to practice because I was busy (guess what) singing and songwriting, I was pretty shit at it even after many years playing. I tried picking up guitar very late on, to discover limited talent, a preference for 'just singing' and instead returned to backing tracks. Of course I couldn't write with these, and ended up with pages of lyrics with nowhere to go. Once I didn't work for about a year and actually got fairly good at guitar. I wrote so much, but as soon as my first son was born my practice diminished and so did the talent I'd developed. I'd also stayed hidden in the bedroom! I'm fairly proud of my song writing but feel my instrument skills let me down. Eventually I couldn't get on stage anymore at open mics. Having a young family and working left so little time to practice that my guitar was more basic that ever and I felt like it was an exercise in humiliation to share the stage with real guitar players. Sure my voice was okay, and my songs were semi -decent, but the guitar ruined it.
So when I walked away from music it felt quite a relief. I gave up all the inauthenticity, and no one had any control or say or ability to judge my built in instrument. I didn't have to sing what I didn't like, or rely on my unreliable voice, pretend to enjoy songs I didn't like singing, or feel ashamed on stage. I didn't have to accept compliments that I felt unworthy of. I didn't have to smile through upbeat songs when I was in the mood for a tear inducing ballad. I didn't have to sing covers when I wanted to sing my original talent, or awkwardly share it with musicians and hope they'd reach inside my mind and hear the version I wished to bring to life (I often hear the harmonies, piano parts, harmonica and so on in my mind for the songs I write). I didn't feel lost in a crowd of musicians and ashamed that I was 'just a singer'. I didn't have to revisit the negative thoughts, beliefs and experiences I had around my voice over and over anymore. I didn't have to pretend that I still enjoyed singing.
However, the fact is I've walked away from and ignored my greatest talent. Many would kill to have my voice and now it doesn't even get airtime most days. I have come to believe that this is what happens when we put conditions on our abilities and try to channel them in a way that is acceptable to the public, rather than in the way they want to be expressed. I gain so much energy from singing naturally, and now every time I do I have all these negative experiences and thoughts and voices that take the joy right out of it and I clam up. I can't sing through those. I can't even sing about those. I feel like Ariel in the Little Mermaid when her voice is taken and trapped in a shell. I exchanged my voice for more happiness (or less pain) and yet I can't enjoy it or be myself without that voice.
When books and people ask me what I did when I was little consistently, what I always did, my first response is to say 'nothing'. If I'm feeling honest, I know it was always singing. As well as writing generally and being in nature. At 5 years old I wrote my own lyrics to Cher's 'not enough love' and playing my mum's tape backing track on tape, sang my own version over the top. I once heard the recording. It was fricking awesome. This is Cher's version, and it's beautiful -
I was either standing in your shadow or blocking your light
And though I kept on trying I could not make it right
For this girl, there's just not enough love in the world
I always blamed not mastering my craft on so many things, but especially on moving so often. Really though it's just an excuse. At some point in my early teens I decided I didn't like the attention. I still don't. I always assume it's negative, and don't like the ability to affect people emotionally, often they don't either! Around aged 11 I realised that it made as many people jealous and dislike me as it did admire or feel drawn to me (it's pretty much 50/50 in life I find). And then I drifted back into singing a few years later but now it had conditions. I could only sing songs that people like, in the way that people liked, to people who liked singing. All notions of originality had gone and I became a mimick artist. Quite a good one too. I was told by well meaning people what I 'could' sing and what I 'couldn't', what 'suited' me and my voice and what didn't. I tried to listen to all the conflicting evidence and felt incredibly stifled. They often wanted me to sing the exact opposite of what I loved. This was what I 'couldn't sing'. Of course my voice was still in development, trying to stretch itself to its full capacity, experiment and grow up alongside me. And then the throat and sinus problems started.
I have lost touch with the girl who wrote and sung for love and joy, in natural flow, without censure or expectation. She has been silenced and belittled. Mostly by me. The major thing this illness is trying to teach me is how to set her free. Because guess what? It involves resting, and less doing, space for inspiration to come through. It means lowering my standards and not attaching my self esteem to what I achieve, but instead allowing myself to create. It means asking for help before I need it so I have time to look after myself and create. It means working for myself, so I can work around my creativity and give myself and my family what I need. It means removing conditions from the way my talents express themselves. All of those things together can show me how to find my voice again, how to recognise it, and this time, how to put faith in trust in it, ignoring what others say and think and singing for the joy and love again.
This is a recipe for how to live life well whatever you want to do, or create, or be. If I can learn these lessons I really will be able to look back and say this illness was a gift.
Fingers crossed!
From my stifled voice to yours, Bee <3 x