INTRO TO THIS SERIES
If you are just now finding me, there is a Part 1 where I share a brief “Intro” to this series. Rather than repeat it here, I’ll share the link below. Please feel free to go there if you’d like a better idea of where I’m coming from.
Part 1: Facing the Knife
Part 3: Oxycodone, Ice, and …
A COACH’S PERSPECTIVE
I encounter a lot of mental health therapists in my work, and a therapist… I am definitely not! What I am is a Coach, and from this perspective, I want to challenge myself and those around me to do the work required so we can operate at our maximum potential. When we operate in mindsets that limit our belief in our capabilities, when we allow damaging experiences from our past to continue hindering how we approach present and future challenges/opportunities, it seems to me we may be missing out on some great experiences, but it also leads me to believe that we have no idea what our true potential really is. How can we honestly determine what mountains we want to climb if we fail to address and heal from an injury that prevents us from discovering what that true potential really is?
That’s it… not some therapeutic approach here, just a coach who understands that an athlete’s unhealed injury will limit his or her potential to perform… and in the same manner, a person who is mentally or emotionally injured and not addressing the wound will also fail to operate at their potential in whatever realm they desire to compete in.
So, with that, here we go.
GRANTING ACCESS TO THE WOUND
I recently had knee replacement surgery. I limped into the physical therapy office 8 days post-op with the aid of my walker for the first appointment, and I’ll admit I also carried a heavy guardedness due to the unknown about what I was going to experience that day.
I learned my therapist is part-owner of the company and has been doing this work for over 17 years so, for some reason, that reassured me a bit. He was friendly, soft-spoken, asked about my knee history, what I did for work, you know, conversation designed to set my mind at ease, but also to distract me from what he was trying to accomplish in those moments.
As the therapist began working with me, he moved his hands around my kneecap, working both sides near the incision that ran vertically down the front of my knee. He worked slowly and carefully, explaining why he was doing what he was. He spoke of how we needed to combat the problems created by the formation of scar tissue – something I will talk about in a later post on this subject.
Although he was incredibly gentle, I could not help but be intensely guarded, and by intensely, I mean like, “hold-my-breath-and prepared-to-jump” kind of guarded. I was bracing myself for the physical pain I have spent years guarding against.
Trust began developing as he was both careful and slow. He gave no impression he was in a hurry or had any need to accomplish certain steps by the first appointment. The atmosphere was mellow, conversation was casual, and I was allowed the opportunity to both recognize my guardedness and begin to work on the mental side, to bring myself down from this heightened state of fear. My therapist appeared to be aware and comfortable in the moment I was in, willing to move slowly and allow me to feel a sense of control. As he continued to massage my kneecap, there was very mild physical discomfort but major mental discomfort. He continued to reassure me I was in control, but he convinced me the goal of what he was after was vital to my recovery process… I was incredibly uncomfortable but beginning to feel safe in his hands.
As he worked, he shared the stages I needed to reach to develop full recovery. One stage in particular created stress. It was a step that would require me to let go of the dysfunctional methods I’ve established over the decades in efforts to protect my knee from being vulnerable. These techniques actually hurt my knee joint in the long run but protected me in the moment. This is important to point out because so often I’ve come to believe we can get stuck wanting what we want in the moment with little regard given to long-term consequences.
Anxiety grew as I thought about letting go of those “trusted” but damaging go-to methods over the years, all those dysfunctional safeguards I’d become dependent upon. To be specific, I was told I would need to allow my knee to completely straighten, causing the backside of my knee to touch the table surface I was laying on. For years, I have adopted an improper positioning with my knees slightly bent forward because I had no confidence in the knee holding up if it were completely straightened. The physical effect of doing this was that my quads were always engaged, always firing off to keep my knee supported. The consequence was that my hamstrings were never utilized to also provide much needed support to healthy knee functioning.
I know I’m getting into detail here, but the point is to provide a real-life physical example and explain how this method actually hurt my long-term goal of having a healthy knee required to climb the mountains my heart dearly hungers to climb.
THE WOUND
My knee has been a wound which, over the years, has exposed how vulnerable I am physically. I have spent decades developing methods to compensate for that vulnerability, even though the methods have led to further deterioration.
For the past few years, I have been able to participate in some amazing hikes, but with each season, my knee became weaker and weaker, until this year, the option to do anything outside of a paved path was putting myself at risk for significant injury.
When the therapist came along and began touching the area around that vulnerability, genuine fear, intense fear was exposed. As I fought through those moments, he began gaining my trust, and another very odd emotional response took place. I began getting teary-eyed! Seriously? We’re doing this now? I’m in a room full of other therapists and clients and I’m in the middle of a mental breakdown… what a freak I am! (It’s been about 4 weeks since I wrote this portion of the story, and I laugh as I reread it, but I am amazed at how powerful fear is, and the process of breaking free from that fear came with some serious emotional response.)
I’m having this incredibly intense emotional reaction to letting down my guard and trusting someone to touch the areas of my life I have been so guarded over – for decades. I have spent years building layer upon layer of self-protection, to conceal my vulnerability, to prop myself up and avoid the pain.
Wait… Gordon, are we still talking about your knee, or something else altogether?
Uhm, yeah… that’s my point here. In the moment, I’m talking about my knee… but in the long-run, I’m talking about all the other shit that comes with living life.
BEATING THE SAME OL’ DRUM
I’ll keep beating this drum until the day I die. My work and interactions with people over the years have only served to reinforce my belief that we share so much in common. Our stories are all so different; outcomes are certainly unique, but there is a vein of familiarity that runs a course through our lives that leads me to believe so strongly in why I keep bringing up the wound in various posts. Injuries are sustained in this life, they aren’t relegated only to those who have gone through some form of violence, some form of abuse or neglect. Experiences we had in our youth may seem to be distant memories that rarely, or never come up, and yet, if we tracked current patterns of decision-making back to its origins, I wonder how many would suddenly remember a time when… (fill in the blank).
STRESS IN THE LUNCHROOM
I’ve got to share this personal example to drive this point home. I hate going to large meetings. I hate the feeling of walking in the doors of a conference room and wondering where I’m going to sit, where the people I am most familiar with are sitting, and is there an empty chair open close by? Where did this anxiety come from? I tracked it back to my middle school years in the lunchroom cafeteria. I’d get my lunch tray, and then turn, wondering who were my people, where were they sitting? Was there room for me at the table? The bigger concern back in those days was that I really didn’t know where I fit in. I didn’t know who my people were. I was an athlete, but I wasn’t a star athlete, so I didn’t fit in with that group, and ultimately, I never really knew where my place was.
Was it traumatic? No. Did I need counseling to heal some wound? No. But here it is, some 50 years later and I still have the feeling walking into a crowded room… wondering where I’m going to sit… wondering who my people really are?
So, I’m driven to bring these things up when I talk with people. It’s always amazing how things begin to come out once an atmosphere of trust has been established. People begin talking about things they’ve never really been comfortable acknowledging or addressing before. It once again reinforces my belief that within our unique stories, we share a common experience around the wounds delivered by “Life”.
CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN MAY REQUIRE ADDRESSING THE WOUND FIRST
As I said earlier, I came to realize that the mountains I desire to climb were not going to happen if I remained unwilling to address my damaged knee. This process has been painful; I’m incredibly antsy about my circumstances. Recovery is not happening quickly enough. I am stuck married to an ice machine, needing to keep my foot elevated when not exercising it. I’ve lost the freedom (temporarily) to get in the truck and drive down to the local coffee shop to have a drink.
And worst of all… cringe… I am required to attend physical therapy so I can recover properly, and within that PT process, I must allow a trusted professional to have access to my wound. There is nothing easy about this process. It doesn’t get easier the second or third time… I can only hope somewhere down the road it will. The guardedness has taken 25-30 years to develop, and it’s not going away quickly.
The consequence to allowing fear to control our choices is that we never truly heal, we’re always avoiding the process. Prior to the surgery, I lost the ability to remember how to live with a fully functioning and healthy knee… and how did that limit my decisions regarding the mountains I chose to climb? I don’t want to pursue that path to find out. I want to be healthy and whole.
TOUCHING THE WOUND
Okay! So, I want to be healthy… you want to be healthy. Hold on! There’s a catch. The wound has to be touched. We must allow the wound to be touched in a responsible manner so we can heal properly. I’m talking about my physical wound here, but when we start talking about those wounds that cannot be seen… how do we allow them to be touched; what does that process look like? I’m not here to provide those answers. That’s your path and you must feel confident about what that course looks like. For so many of the people I’ve worked with over the years, the process began with conversation. They had to be willing to talk about it. And an important part of talking about it always involved honesty – first to themselves. I suspect that so many of us navigate through this life lying to ourselves. Sure, the lie may also involve others around us, but ultimately, I believe we’re lying to ourselves because we just don’t want to deal with the wound… and we certainly don’t want to touch it. We learn to live with it, like a limp, like poor posture, we live with it until it becomes just a normal part of who we are.
The problem is, it’s not who we are!
In my limited example here, the version of me that had to cancel plans for hiking this summer because of my health issues is not who I am, but until I was willing to take steps to “face the knife” and enter into the recovery process, that false me was going to become the new “me”. If we fail to address the wounds sustained over our life – and by wounds I really mean those events that have significantly impacted us in an adverse manner and have influenced who we have become today, then I strongly believe we will walk through this life with a limp that causes us to make life decisions about what we can and cannot do… all because the limp is allowed to be a normal part of who we are today.
CLOSING
This post got long. Sorry. Once again, I hope you find something within here to challenge you, to cause you to think. I’m finding so much to share through this process, and I look forward to continuing my own work.
I’ll probably post my first two now, but I have a 3rd ready in my head. Once I add it, I will include the links connecting each part.
Other stories within this series on “The Things I’ve Learned in Rehab:
Part 1: Facing the Knife
Part 3: Oxycodone, Ice, and …
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