I read the book, The Body Keeps the Score, several years ago and did not really believe in the idea that the body stores pain from past trauma. But now I do.

One year ago, I had a traumatic emotional experience. Instead of dealing with it, I internalised it just as I had internalised earlier trauma, involving the same area of the body.

I mentally checked out of taking care of that part of my body and have ignored the trauma for the past year. Instead, I threw myself into taking care of my dad’s affairs and dealing with my own mental health struggles.

Strangely, this year, almost exactly to the day, I started having a lot of pain in this region of my body. I felt pain that I had never felt and grew to worry that a minor issue had become a major issue.

Normally, I am good at determining if something is emergent. But this time, I could not be reasonable about it. I felt pain and I am still hurting, actually. I went to the doctor for my issue and have seen another doctor. I have a high pain tolerance so I tend to ignore a lot of pain but this was not easily ignored.

It turns out that I have done a very good job with physical therapy to prevent my mild issue from becoming what I was fearing. I do have an issue that will need repair, but that is actually a less intensive surgery. It also turns out that I was right 1.5 years ago and my doctor wasn’t listening to me. This situation could have been avoided with proper treatment for my concerns.

I’m not even angry that my doctor didn’t listen to me at this point. I feel like this happened to me one year from a traumatic experience for a reason. I have a lot of unhealed pain from some earlier abuse when I was young and a traumatic emotional experience a year ago.

Now that I know the exact grade and condition of things I’m struggling with, I feel more rational. I can see the options and solutions. And I’ve taken steps to heal this part of my body.

In doing so, I really had to come to terms with how much pain I have been not feeling for a very long time. Not feeling this pain was making me bitter and pessimistic. Feeling it now, literally somatically, has been healing in a lot of ways.

I’m no longer closed off to the pain I was denying. Instead, I am optimistic and hopeful that the treatments options available will help. In additional to that, I think spending this year to heal emotionally is a good way to honour my resilience.

When I was younger, I briefly worked as a medic in a hospital. It always irritated staff that people were coming to the emergency room for non-emergency conditions. No one really addressed that sometimes care is not easily accessed.

Edit: I had great care at the ER. I even left a good review when sent a survey and explained why. I have had some bad experiences, but I feel like they were listening to me when my regular physician had not been listening.

Further, I think people do have trauma stored up in their bodies that reactivates under certain conditions and at specific times. Maybe future medical care will be more advanced and treat both the body and the mind at the same time so that healing is not so fragmented.

I’m grateful to be treating my condition and healing emotionally. And I hope to get back into my daily routine very quickly.

Thank you for reading.