Smoking
More Healing Tales
"Carla," a physician of around 40, requested help for long-term stomach discomfort (16 years) and shorter-term back-pain (around six months). She did not a think a doctor would help her with either one.
During our first session, she said that the stomach discomfort was a worse problem than the back pain. When asked if she could just take care of one, which would it be, she said the stomach pain. In doing Therapeutic Touch on her, I had the feeling that she needed a lot of space. It came to me that her stomach would get better first, and fairly quickly, and that her back problem would take a long time. I mentioned this to her later in the session.
Her favorite color was red. I asked her to imagine that her stomach and back and body were red, and to play with that. She had a childhood memory: she and her brother were in a comic way banging their forks and knives on the table chanting, "We want cream puffs! We want cream puffs!" Her mother said to her father, "OK?" and he said, "OK!" knowing what she was going to do. She smashed the cream puffs in the children's faces. They roared and loved every minute of it.
Her focus was then directed to her wanting her stomach to feel better, and her back pain to go away, and really wanting that. What did it feel like to want that? "And as you focus on this, try chanting to yourself, 'We want cream puffs! We want cream puffs!'"
"And let your stomach be however it wants to be, and don't worry about how it looks, and notice your breathing."
We talked a lot about office politics. She feels that people should be equal, but they are never treated that way. She hates to see the office staff abused.
By the end of the session, her stomach was feeling much better.
Two weeks later, when she came for her second healing session, she said that her stomach had been better ever since. It was MUCH better. Her back was no better.
In doing Therapeutic Touch on her, I again had the feeling that she wanted space, but it was a flowing away from her kind of feeling: she wanted to be involved with people, but did not want to be crowded in on. "Perhaps a situation will come up in life where somebody asks you for something that puts a large demand on you, and also demands that you do it in a certain way. At this point you might have two choices. One would be to give them some feedback, 'This is what you want ...' and really determine what it was they wanted, and then to say, 'OK, I think I can give you that, but I have to do it in my own way, which is along the lines of thus-and-so.' At that point the person might be delighted and say, 'Of course!' And you both might be satisfied with the arrangement. The other possibility would be that you get mad at the unreasonable demand being made on you."
We suggested the possibility that injustice made her angry, and that she internalized this. Perhaps it turned into stomach upset or back-pain. "In the future, in a way we could not possibly figure out now, you might begin to negotiate with injustice and find some wiggle room, and change some of it. Perhaps you might use humor. You might make someone laugh. You might use an unexpected cold look that somehow shifted the balance of something. You might give a soft answer that makes the person feel really bad about his behavior, because you had been so nice."
Carla said she had had a more-or-less idyllic
childhood, and the world doesn't live up to it. She loves to play
with children, and loves games, like throwing a Frisbee around.
"And now, with your eyes gently shut, focus on the obstacles
in your life, ones that remain obstacles, and then begin at the
same time to focus on playing soccer with children, and Frisbee."
She played with this in her imagination. "At some point
it might occur to you that something that has been an arduous, difficult
task suddenly seems like a game. I saw a movie once I didn't think
was very good, but there was one line in this movie that really
struck me. The American economy had collapsed and there was a second
great depression. A banker said to a widow, about putting the pieces
back together and making a new start, 'You can't beat the system,
but you can win a game. So I see it as a game.'"
We played the cream puff game again. She imagined two children's
voices chanting, "We want cream puffs," and we
added the movement of the fork and knife butting on the table. "And
keep this going, and think of things you want. Your stomach to feel
better, and your back to feel comfortable, and things I don't have
to know about. And continue to imagine the chanting, 'We want cream
puffs' and think of these things you want. And, at some point, the
cream puff will hit you in the face and she can just let everything
drop and relax."
When asked, she said what really hurt her feelings was to have her intelligence put down. Then we played a game where, in the game, at some point someone was going to hurt her feelings by doing this. When, in the context of this game, I insulted her intelligence, she merely laughed, and her feelings were not hurt. Following this I said, "What if I said, 'it's really dumb, Carla, to let your back hurt?'"
She could not laugh at this. Perhaps her feelings were hurt. Perhaps she wanted to say, "No, it's not dumb to let my back hurt!" Or, "I'm not letting my back hurt!" Or, "Yes, it's really dumb to let my back hurt." Or, "It's really dumb to let my feelings hurt." Any of these answers could be healing messages, in the context of the unconscious.
She was mad at the way her boss treated her secretary today. She said, "I wish I could say she has no right to treat people that way, without endangering my job."
She was surprised that I remembered the story about the cream puffs, and that her favorite color was red.
Following the session, I had a sense of her sort of twisting around, trying on new roles the way you might try on clothes; trying new body shapes.
Carla saw me for one more session. Following this, her back and stomach were both better and she had no more reason to see me for these problems.