A few days ago, I received a text from a new client. On the surface, she was complaining of acute back pain and stabbing headaches. But the more we talked, the more problems intertwined throughout her body began to surface. Numerous questions were already pouring into my mind, but before anything else, I wanted to see her in person and talk. She wanted an appointment as early as possible, so we were able to meet the very next morning.
At first glance, she seemed pretty 'ordinary.' But like our clothes, the 'ordinariness' she surrounded herself with was as thin as a sheet of paper. She avoided my eyes. Her hands were red like raw meat, as if she were wearing red rubber gloves, but doctors couldn't find a reason why. Her nails had been bitten and bitten down to the roots, and her feet and ankles were severely swollen, like an elephant's legs. Both in her text and in person, she was very kind, she was quite kind and polite. However, despite such "efforts," her silent cry, as if her very existence were being shaken to its foundations and her life were sinking into a swamp, was not so easily hidden.
I wanted to dive deeper into the fragments, and I actually needed to do so in order to obtain the information that was essential to helping her recover, so I cautiously asked a few questions. It actually didn't take long to find out that her boyfriend had died earlier this year, and her whole being was still going through the aftermath all by herself. At least from what I've observed, some people who have suffered extreme trauma tend to reveal their deepest wounds quite quickly, even at the slightest knock. I can only assume that this is because their subconscious is desperately seeking an emergency exit. This was one of the commonalities I have discovered while meeting with a few clients who had similar backgrounds.
There was a fist-sized curve around her right waist. Her surgeon thought it was a lipoma and attempted surgery a few months ago. However, when he opened it, it turned out to be a tangle of malformed blood vessels, so he had no choice but to close it again. When she went to chiropractors with a severe headache, they found a problem with her neck disk and recommended a very costly treatment. After drifting here and there like that, she eventually ended up reaching me, someone unknown and, in some ways, someone who had chosen to remain as isolated as a remote island.
Since I am not a doctor, I didn't have any dramatic answer to give her like theirs, and my approach could not be as smart as theirs either. However, I understood that humans are not just rational beings, therefore, the way we deal with the pain of our bodies and minds doesn't necessarily have to be purely scientific. I was well aware of my limitations, but I was also able to offer my client my faith in her pain and promise that I would do my best within my abilities.
Caring for every inch of her body from head to toe, loosening it, getting things flowing, and breathing new energy into it, was literally a long race that took over three hours. Interestingly, as the session progressed, I noticed that her body had a peculiar odor. This was certainly a physical smell coming from her body and symptoms, but it was also complex and something beyond the physical, almost like a vision or a dream. I almost got lost several times in the middle of the session because of the scent whose name I didn't know. In retrospect, it was probably the scent created by her loss and the trauma she had been carrying since then.
We agreed to meet again in two weeks. At that time, we will be able to talk more about the things I couldn't ask her enough this time, regarding her loss and what she went through afterward. And by understanding her world better, I would come to better understand the meaning of that odor she has.
We agreed to meet again in two weeks. At that time, we will be able to talk more about the things I couldn't ask her enough this time about the loss and the long aftermath she had gone through since then. And by understanding her world more deeply, I would come to understand the meaning of that odor she has more accurately.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung