By Rita Hancock, M.D.
Seek truth and you will find a path.
~Frank Slaughter
"Great!" I muttered to myself, irritated, as I rolled over to get out of bed. "Don't I already have enough to deal with? Now I have to deal with this stupid shoulder blade pain again, too."
I knew what caused the pain. My rib popped out of alignment in the middle of the night. I remember halfway waking up from a bad stress-dream when it happened. I even remember thinking, "Oh, crud! Was that a good pop or a bad pop? (Did a bone go out of alignment or fall back into place?) I guess I'll know by morning."
As it turned out, it was a bad pop. By morning, the pain was excruciating. It felt like somebody plunged an ice pick into my shoulder blade while I was sleeping.
It was the third time it happened in two years. It usually happened when I was under exceptional stress.
Stress and back pain are related. Stress causes tense muscles, and tense muscles pull bones out of alignment. I'm a pain management specialist medical doctor, so I know these things.
I even knew what the emotional stress trigger was in this case. For a few months, my brothers and I had been fighting about how to care for our aging mother. Now in her eighties, Mom had begun to have nightly panic attacks. She also became physically unsteady and lost the ability to do complex tasks, like cooking.
If an Italian woman can't cook, you know she's on the decline.
Early in the course of my mom's illnesses, my brothers took up all the slack. They took off work to take her to doctor's appointments, they cared for her home and yard, and they paid her bills. They were the only ones who could help her, as they lived in the same town as she did.
I, on the other hand, lived 1,400 miles away, so I couldn't help at all, except for those few weeks a year that she visited me or I visited her.
Did that leave me feeling guilty? You bet. I was a "bad Italian daughter." At least, I would have thought that about me if I were in my brothers' shoes. Even though they didn't say anything to me about it, I just knew they were thinking, "She left us to do all the work."
My brothers and I weren't getting along, and I figured that was why — even though it was unspoken.
I guess none of us kids knew how to solve Mom's problems, so we just blamed each other and argued. It's understandable. All three of us are alpha dogs in our own packs. We all run businesses and we're all used to being in charge. However, in this situation, watching our mom decline, we all felt out of control and powerless to stop it — and that resulted in our feeling anxious, vulnerable, and irritable.
I guess I should speak only for myself, but I assume my brothers felt the same way. It would be understandable, don't you think?
As I said, my rib went out right at the height of this family conflict.
Deep down, I knew there was an emotional root cause that contributed to my alignment issues and my pain. I diagnose that kind of physical reaction to stress all the time in my pain management medical practice.
However, I also knew I needed physical therapy to fix the rib problem. So, I had my receptionist clear my schedule for that day, and I scheduled an appointment with my physical therapist friend, Holly.
As soon as Holly walked into the exam room and asked what happened to me, I started crying, almost uncontrollably. It was like the dam finally broke. "My brothers and I are fighting because of what's going on with my mother and I don't know what to do to fix the problem." I trusted Holly with this sensitive information because she was my friend.
As I continued to cry, and cry, and cry — actually, it was more like wailing — I felt something very, very weird begin to happen at the site of pain, near my shoulder blade. Even though Holly hadn't yet touched me, it felt like somebody grabbed hold of that knot and started squeezing it.
The squeezing pressure increased steadily, until it felt like that balled up knot of muscle in my back was nearly going to explode.
Right at the peak of the pain, I got a "word" from God. I didn't hear Him audibly. I just heard Him in my thoughts. But the message was clear: "It's not your fault."
"Not my fault?" I wondered. "What's not my fault?"
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That's when it hit me. On some subconscious level, I believed the whole situation with my mom and my brothers was my fault — as if I could cause my mother's decline — or as if my staying in my hometown instead of moving away could have prevented it.
Obviously, that was an irrational thought, but I believed it, anyway, at the emotional level. It just goes to show that the heart and the head aren't necessarily connected.
It also occurred to me that I believed another lie, deep down. I believed that I should be able to "fix" my mother's situation (because I'm a doctor) and I should be able to make my mother happy (because I'm the only daughter), even though she was losing her independence. Thus, her decline was my failure, and her unhappiness with the situation was my fault.
In reality, I couldn't fix any of those problems for my mother, not even if I lived right next door to her. My mom's decline was a natural part of aging, and her happiness or unhappiness was entirely out of my control — not my fault and not possible for me to fix.
To put it another way, you could say I believed many lies about the situation, deep down. I was also "shouldering" a burden that didn't belong to me — hence the shoulder blade pain.
As soon as God revealed the lies that I believed, I was able to see how irrational they were. Almost immediately, they lost their emotional grip over me and I felt peace that surpassed all understanding. The truth really did set me free.
Not only did I feel free emotionally, I felt free physically, too. Even before Holly treated my alignment issues that day, my shoulder blade pain decreased substantially. It was at least three quarters better, just from my letting go of things that were (1) not my fault; and (2) out of my control.
The best part is the relief of my shoulder blade pain was permanent. See? As it turns out, going through conflicts and hardships can be good for you. You just have to look at those situations as opportunities. Through conflicts, you can learn a whole lot about yourself and move toward healing in your relationships as well as in your physical body.
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