I Have A Theory – The Many Uses of Pain by Kristen Fox

Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
August-September 2000, Issue 13

I Have A Theory – The Many Uses of Pain
by Kristen Fox

I mean this title with humor, or maybe sarcasm. Maybe both.

As many of you may know, many weeks ago (too many), I pulled a muscle and tendon grouping in my right leg (from my gluteous maximus (butt) all the way down to and through my calf), just by twisting funny.  And it hurt like crazy – I could barely walk on it or stand at all.

As the days passed I looked inside my personal “closet of the mind” and tried to find out WHY I had done this and how I could heal it.  In the overall view of this situation, my leg was restricting my movement – not letting me leave until I looked at SOMETHING.  Or even many things.  I really wasn’t sure at all – just hunting around in the dark for someplace to start.  I wasn’t just hunting around for ‘bad beliefs’, but rather trying to find and remove or move around the obstacles which seemed to stop me from “stepping ahead” into wholeness and healing, always keeping the latter as my guiding light.

Well, emotions are always a good place to look at first – I felt pain.  I felt like I couldn’t do anything to move or heal this pain either, which was one of my first of many discoveries on this trip within.  I didn’t exactly feel like a victim, but I didn’t feel like a powerful creator either – I mostly felt frustration.  So I followed that line of thinking for a while.

I started to realize that I was carrying a LOT of frustration, in other areas of my life – areas where I have been in “reactive” mode since I was a kid.  Let me offer you just one example.  I have hated doing things like washing dishes ever since I was a kid.  As an adult, I still hated doing them, and although I forced myself to do this task, it wasn’t a joyous experience.  I remembered when I was a kid and my mother was teaching me the “right” way to wash dishes.  I learned there was ONE right way – her way – and that there was no room for variance and that it was just something that had to be done.  And that’s where my resistance started right there.

It was a passive-aggressive kind of resistance – going along with the program while hating it at the same time.  I hated it because it was something I was told to do and yet wasn’t allowed to find MY way of doing it or to try different things or get creative.  I learned that I couldn’t put any of my own unique energy into it, and so it became a burden to me instead of a potential joy.  The problem was that I never moved out of that “reactive” mode – I never let go of it.  It was like staring at a car wreck – it’s horrible and yet you can’t look away.

Well, THAT was interesting!  So, I then set about letting go of reacting to my mother’s direction in this area, and started focusing on how *I* would prefer to do them – something I’d never actually done before – I’d only known that HER way wasn’t what ‘felt good’ to me.

I also discovered pocket of “resistance” in other areas, such as weight loss – I’d spent most of my life knowing that all the suggestions about diet and exercise weren’t really the answer (for me), as I had tried most of them at one point or another.  But once again, I’d spent all my energy resisting or tossing down one ‘outside’ suggestion after another, instead of getting my energy behind ME and my OWN ideas, as crazy or nontraditional as they may seem.

So – I had learned a LOT about myself and how I had felt stuck in quite a few areas of my creating.  And more areas to reorient my energy came up the closer I looked.  BUT, my leg was still stiff and still hurt!  I could feel the energy pooling in a block of tension in the muscles in my lower right butt cheek (never thought I’d be writing a column for the journal about my butt! <grin>).

It was really difficult for me to sit at the computer for very long as well, and so I worked on the journal in spurts – luckily my love for putting together each issue of the journal gave me something fun to focus on besides just the continuous discomfort I was experiencing.  I spent a lot more time laying down, trying to let my leg HEAL and scribbling in my notebook than I care to mention.

At the same time, it was rather difficult for my partner John to watch me as I went through this.  Many of the household chores that I couldn’t do fell to him as well, and even though I’ve told him, I still don’t think he realizes how much I appreciate his patience and energy and good humor.  Often he would come up with certain possibilities for healing my leg, but mostly I would just shake my head and grimace as I limped through the house.

During this entire process I had also been thinking other thoughts about my leg situation.  For instance – a friend mentioned to me that it seemed like “I didn’t have a leg to stand on” and that was about trusting myself, which felt pretty darn accurate.  And John had suggested that my right leg was my way of staying in the old predictable world instead of stepping fully into the magical, which also felt right.  And I knew it was my fear that was keeping me there, but fear of WHAT I didn’t know.

So, one night I asked John to do a deep relaxation and guided hypnosis session on me.  Before he came into the room, I had gotten relaxed, laying down on the bed, and had spontaneously began imagining my childhood home, and I was walking around outside, noticing the gardens and swingset and trees and a lot of details I hadn’t thought of in a LONG time.  Then, during the session, I found myself in the body of a tall, slender man who was walking around HIS house, admiring the little gardens and neat fences and such. (I believe it was about 1663, in the quiet French countryside.)  Suddenly, I felt this upsurge of emotion, it was a PANIC, and on the bed I was breathing quickly and had tears running down my face – all I remembered was blackness and didn’t know what had panicked me.  John moved me ahead in the scene.  Suddenly, I felt this swirling vortex of a power I hadn’t ever remembered before – it was pulling my attention off to the right.  The vortex was black and greyish, almost metallic in look and feel, and was very strong – that was what had panicked me before but now I was experiencing it awake and aware.  I was able to ride the currents and follow the pull without freaking out this time.

The, still as the tall man, I found myself inside his house – I realized that the inside of his house was very surreal and magical and this is where he often skipped through dimensions and played with his focus – he did it all very intuitively and had a lot of trust in the process.  This was the gift I had come here to realize.  In my life as Kristen, I had been realizing I was moving a lot more out of the predictable and into the magical, and had been reading the “sorcerer” books by Carlos Casteneda and Florinda Donner – those books are filled with stories where nothing is at it seems.  I was afraid that if I let go of this predictable reality I would be lost in the strong black current and never be able to get back!

But my tall friend had another perspective.  It seems that his walking around outside his house and paying attention to the details he loved, was his way of grounding himself in this reality.  He returned whenever he wanted to.  And I believe that’s very similar to what I was doing when I was walking around the yard in my own childhood home – I experienced a lot of magic as a child, which faded as I got older, and I had wanted to figure out how to reconnect with that kind of “flexibility of mind”, but at the same time had been very scared to do it, thus keeping one foot firmly planted (and unmoving) in the predictable reality. (I also realized another connection – the tall man’s name was Frederique (or something similar) and as a kid, I had a pillow that I’d made and put a big smiling face on, that I slept with every night, that I had named Fred!)

Another breakthrough!  But there was more.

It occurred to me one day that I was resisting John’s help and suggestions for  “fixing my leg” in the same way I had been resisting many of the other things I  talked about earlier.  I was freezing myself in place here because of my  resistance.  It obviously wasn’t a question of whether or not I wanted to heal the leg, but there was something else going on.  So I just started writing out  what I wanted to say to someone like John who seemed to be trying to help me.  The rant, after a few vague half-starts (and edited for shortness and clarity), came out, conceptually, something like this:

“Why are you always trying to FIX me as if me being sick or in pain was such an inconvenience for you?”  (My belief: I believed that people resented having to help me.)  “I know I could have avoided this whole thing by just paying attention, but it still HURTS.”  (Blaming myself for having hurt myself in the first place and not believing I deserved help because of it.)

And then out came a plea that surprised me to no end, “Why won’t anyone help me?  Won’t someone tell me that it’s okay?”  I hadn’t been looking for someone to fix my leg or heal my pain – I had been looking for someone to FORGIVE me for screwing up and doing something stupid in the first place!  I was looking for someone to tell me, “It’s okay Kristen.  We all do silly and stupid things from time to time.  That’s no reason to keep punishing yourself.  You’re still loved.”

I remembered that often as a kid, I would rather not tell a grown-up about having hurt myself because I would rather deal with it myself and heal it before they ever found out about it.  I didn’t want to be told that I was being stupid and not paying attention.  Like, when I was in second grade, I was at a friend’s party and there was a balloon popping game going on that I didn’t know the rules for and someone stepped on my finger and (although I didn’t know it then) broke it.  I didn’t tell anyone, and it healed, but the end section of my middle finger on my right hand is now bent to the right, since it wasn’t set correctly as it healed.

I had been looking for love and forgiveness and had instead using my focus to push against NOT being told I had done something stupid and that I should have known better.  Why didn’t I go to a chiropractor or even take any pain killers? Probably for the same reasons.

Back to the NOW.  I was afraid for a while that I wasn’t going to have a column for this issue of the journal – I hadn’t been inspired to write much, and hadn’t even been able to sit at the computer anyway, until now.  All the pieces do fit together, and maybe there are more coming, but I can finally say that my leg is definitely on its way to healing now.  I’m allowing myself to take a few pain relievers (as a friend once said, “Thank ATI I created these pills in my reality!” <grin>) and I’ve been able to walk around a lot more.  The muscles in my back and leg seem to be getting more strong and flexible, which I think was something I had to put energy into – they weren’t used to having to move in new ways – they were used to being stuck in that old pattern, just like I was.  And I don’t have to rest as much after ‘exercising’ (walking from room to room).

I wish I could say that suddenly my leg was just healed and the pain was gone, but my miracle, I believe, is happening a little more linearly.  Seems that this pain got me to clean out a lot of the corners of my belief closet, for which I am thankful, and maybe the attic and basement as well.  I shall be very interested to watch what the new Kristen feels like as I finally take those STEPS into my new reality.  I have good feelings about it!

©2000, Kristen Fox. Printed in the June-July 2000 Issue of the online Conscious Creation Journal. http://www.consciouscreation.com/ (Feel free to duplicate this column for personal use – please include this copyright notice.)
Kristen Fox is an Applicational Theorist- she “discovers” theories and then applies them to her life to see how they “work” in physical reality. Stop by http://www.consciouscreation.com for more.