Got to Feel to Heal

Looking back on my life, I was chronically disassociated. That pattern began in childhood. When the energy in the room felt overwhelming, I would float up and out of my body to where it felt safer.

I kept repeating that strategy long after I had the ability to choose something different. I thought I was “doing good,” but in truth, I couldn’t see my own blind spots. Dissociation had become my normal.

For years, my body carried the cost. I lived with intense pain and was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia. My hips hurt so badly that I would calculate how many steps it would take to do anything and move only when absolutely necessary. If I sat down on the sofa and realized I forgot something in another room, I would simply go without it. Standing up and walking more felt impossible.

When the pain came, I took pills. Cyclobenzaprine, tramadol, gabapentin, all prescribed. And living in Colorado added THC and CBD to the mix. None of it led me anywhere except further away from myself. Each remedy treated symptoms, never root causes. And each one became another form of dissociation.

Even meditation became a way to float away rather than drop in.

If disembodiment kept me stuck, what would happen if I tried the opposite?

Enter Dr. Sue Morter. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Her work on embodiment changed everything for me. I learned that pain is simply blocked energy. I learned that when pain arises, the invitation is to Take It To The Body (TITTB, The Energy Codes, pg. 130), based on the work of Dr. Sue Morter and the Morter Institute.

Instead of escaping, numbing, or overriding, I learned to feel what I was feeling, breathe into it, and become curious. Each time I did this, a pocketed-off part of me, a fragment I had abandoned long ago, returned home to me. I was becoming more whole. My capacity expanded. My life force grew stronger and clearer.

And after practicing TITTB again and again, something extraordinary happened: I became pain-free.

My system no longer blocked energy. I was living from the inside out, full of my own life force flowing like a river.

What This Means Now

Healing didn’t come from avoiding what hurt. It came from turning toward any pain with presence. Feeling was the doorway. Embodiment was the path.

If you find yourself dissociating, numbing, or checking out, I offer this encouragement:

Start small. Feel a little more today than you did yesterday. Stay with your feelings one breath longer. Bring your awareness back home to your body. (See the next blog entry about Subject–Object–Subject, The Energy Codes, pg. 101.)

Your body is not the enemy. Your body is the portal. The only way out is through.

Healing begins the moment we stop fleeing ourselves and become completely present.