Somehow, someway unbeknownst to my conscious brain, I have been able to separate emotional from physical pain, at least in this one instance.
Last weekend, after spending hours doing yard work, I pulled a muscle in my low back. It makes sense, as I was mostly curled in a ball the majority of the winter. Then one day last weekend, I walked outside and the air had changed. It was warm thru and thru with the richness of Spring sensations. Immediately, without any forethought, I started vehemently and joyfully working in my gardens. It was so engrossing that I completely missed lunch and barely remembered dinner.
Anyway, I digress, so I injured my back. Funny thing is, I have had this injury a couple of times before and in both instances, I was completely laid up and unable to do the simplest of physical tasks. This time, whilst the pain was still quite there, I was able to....understand the pain, why it was there and work with it. I figured that I could go about my daily chores and just be slightly vigilante regarding bending and certain movements. Somehow, I had extrapolated the usual fear, worry and emotionality from the physical injury.
At first, all I knew was this owwie was different somehow. It wasn't until a week later, when I spoke to my therapist that she was able to put new found experience into words. As soon as she said that I had separated emotional from physical, a big ol lightbulb went off. I immediately recognized my truth in someone else's words.
Damn, it continues to be nothing short of miraculous when I can communicate with an NT and be understood! This is yet another incident of my great difficulty with putting feelings and sensations into words.
Back to my awakening. I think that when I wrote about it, became aware of how my everyday and every event was a convoluted mixture of emotional and physical pain, it registered. Somehow the awareness broke the chain....or caused the two to become compartmentalized....and they never had been two distinct entities before.
My back pain is highly manageable. Minus the emotional component, I am damn functional. This must be what most NTs experience with a physical malady. It is an extreme, far cry from how I experienced a similar injury before. It's like...I can see daytime, as well as the night. Grey separated into white and black. It feels like a whole new world...inside part of my head.
Looking back....I can understand why others could not comprehend my pain. Sometimes it was highly, through the roof emotional, mixed with a drop of physical. I can see that now. I don't hare myself or feel that I ever did anything near being deceptive. I understand that it's just the way my brain works....and I'm okay with that:)
Be Well
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