Day 15 - Dialogue Letter With My Face (Then We Talked To My Brain)

I wanted to share this because I just re-read it in response to another post where the person had talked to their brain. I see now how incredibly insightful and helpful this process is, and how our bodies are trying to speak to us in the only way they have available until we learn techniques like this. As the back story, the right side of my face still has some residual distortion from a bout of Bell's Palsy 9 years ago.

Me: Hi Face!
Face: Hi Lainey!

Me: Thank you for taking time to talk with me today.
Face: I’m always available.

Me: I am learning that now. I appreciate your patience waiting until I did.
Face: It’s all good.

Me: I’m so sorry for everything I put you through with the acupuncture and such.
Face: Yeah, that wasn’t a fun time, was it?

Me: No, not at all. I was terrified.
Face: I was really mad at you then.

Me: Understandable.
Face: It wasn’t my fault, you know.

Me: I know that now. I know now it was me not realizing the emotional child inside of me needed to be heard.
Face: I’m tired of still not looking my best. It’s still not my fault.

Me: I know. I am learning ways to connect with my emotions so the brain will send you the oxygen you need.
Face: It’s been hard struggling for so long…

Me: I know. I honestly didn’t know what to do…
Face: I know that. We’ve had some beautiful times before this…

Me: I really believe we can have them again…
Face: I feel like you are not fixing this fast enough, now that you have the tools…

Me: You’re probably right. A part of me is still not sure if I can really fix this.
Face: You’ve read so many testimonials…

Me: I know. It is just hard to feel the weight of responsibility. I am afraid it won’t fix you.
Face: It is worth trying.

Me: I know. It’s hard to comfort myself all alone. It reminds me of my entire lifetime of comforting myself alone. It would be nice to have someone to lean on as I go through this, and bring up old pains. I don’t really feel like I have that much more support, much like I felt so alone when the old pains originally happened.
Face: That makes sense.

Me: Yeah, I’m still family-less and friend-less when it comes to processing this stuff. Always trying to “save face” and act like I can do this all on my own, and the brain isn’t fooled.
Face: I can understand why that would be so hard.

Me: I didn’t realize how much until I just said it out loud.
Face: Good that we can talk about this then.

Me: Yes. I agree! I feel like you, and the neck and the shoulder blade have all been storing the burdens and the pains for me. I’m sorry to have put that on you all - I definitely didn’t do it consciously.
Face: It has been frustrating to not have a voice in this situation.

Me: I can see that. Makes perfect sense.
Face: You know you’re well loved, right?

Me: I don’t feel that way most of the time, actually.
Face: We all love you, Source loves you, many people in your life love you.

Me: I believe all that, but the way I need to feel supported hasn’t been available. I haven’t even bothered to articulate exactly what I need to feel supported, in order to give it a chance to manifest. I just nip it in the bud based on infancy wounding. It was so helpful to learn about that!
Face: I don’t mind being a part of the solution, so if my distortion helps remind you to stop and connect with your emotional inner child, then I can willingly take on that role without resentment.

Me: I so greatly appreciate that! I wish I could do an instant fix for it all! Maybe that is part of the problem - I get discouraged because it is a slow, steady process at the moment. I do see and feel slight changes and improvements in you day-to-day.
Face: I wish it could be a lot faster, too. Could we ask the brain to shift the connection reminders from me to something else in your body

Me: Let’s ask! Oh Brain!
Brain: Yes Lainey.

Me: Face and I would like to find out if you can use a different part of my body to remind me to connect with my emotional inner child, and allow Face to go back to completely normal now.
Brain: I think I can do that, yes. Which body part would you like instead?

Me: Hmmmm… lemme think… do you have any preferences?
Brain: Well the foot seemed to keep your attention, since you are always on the move.

Me: That is very true!
Brain: How about if we use the right foot instead then?

Me: I hate to ask, but could you take away the pain in Neck and Shoulder Blade at the same time, and have the foot be my only reminder instead?
Brain: I’m not sure you’ll get the point, which is the emotional pain is from people and situations that are a “pain in your neck”, and “a burden to carry”. Thinking about Face, that message was about people and situations that you “didn’t want to face”.

Me: Ah! I see that you were speaking in the only language you had available to talk to me with!
Brain: And the foot was “not knowing what my next step should be”.

Me: I definitely figured that one out on my own.
Brain: Do you see what I mean about the body part being key to the message?

Me: Yes. Very clearly! Face, does that make sense to you, too?
Face: Yes. Very interesting!

Me: Yeah… how about if I do some work around all that over the next week and we see what happens?
Face: Sounds good to me.
Brain: Sounds fair.

Me: Thank you both! I love you!
Face and Brain: We love you, too!

 

Thanks for this post

 

Hi, thank you for this post, Lainey. I recently completed a dialogue with my nervous system -- which wakes me up a lot at night, does not let me go back to sleep, and in general gives me a lot of bothersome trouble. I started off in a contentious tone with it, only to have it answer, "Wow, you sure do talk a lot . . . maybe you should try listening." Well, after several pages of back-and-forth like that, I agreed to listen the next time it woke me up. So interesting -- because the next night all I heard was tap tap tap tap tap tap, etc. coming from within me. I wrote it down, went back to sleep immediately, and thought about it the next day. I happened to have an appt. with a Healing Touch practitioner the next day. I told her the story and she suddenly perked up and told me about EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique, which involves tapping specific meridian points to release negative or traumatic emotions. As it turns out, it is very compatible with TMS and there is probably information on this website about it. I have begun tapping these meridian points to release negative feelings and find it is a great addition to the structured educational program here. I am amazed at how eager the body is to respond to our sincere efforts to overcome and heal.

 

I’m so inspired by this entire post. Thank you for sharing this. Such insight! It plainly breaks down TMS and I feel like I have the tools to explain what it is to people, in language anyone can understand. I am going to talk to my legs and back right now!!!

 

Here’s what I came up with... lots of inside language pertaining to my biz that won’t make sense but I wanted to share anyway:
Me: hello body

Brain, back and legs: hi Melissa!

Me: I love you guys, you know that right?

All: yes! We love you too!

Me: thanks guys. I wanted to have a conversation about what’s going on that’s not working well. I really appreciate all you do and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you! We’ve done so much: grown up, gotten married, we’re raising a family, and we’re starting a biz. I’ve run marathons with you legs, and did a bikini show with back, and brain orchestrates everything! Thanks so much.

All: our pleasure!

Me: yeah; And I feel like we’re not working together optimally. How can that change?

Brain: it’s about time you realized that! I can’t believe you chalked up your leg pain to such an old injury. Obviously you’d been healed for some time, but I needed a way to let you know to rest and slow down. To not try and do it all. To stand on your own two feet as an independent woman. To run and be free.

Me: but I feel like I’ve been those things. I took care of myself for so long. I was strong in raising a family.

Leg: perhaps but you were so pregnant and it was time to nest. I couldn’t keep you going at full speed anymore.

Back: I think you are carrying to much, that is the message I want to send. And I didn’t come into the picture until later.

Feet: what about me? You were “go go go” ever since you could walk. I eventually had to give in. I couldn’t keep up. I do love the reflexology tho...

Me: I forgot about you feet, I’m sorry. I hope you like the Birkenstock’s!

Feet: yes and they are so good for me! Thanks for spending more money than you typically would on me. I’m worth it.

Me: you guys are all worth it. I really do try to do it all. I want to please people. I want to appear successful. I get that something has to give. I need to recognize that my priorities lie with my family. I can’t take care of everyone else if I don’t take care of you.

Brain: a lot of this is about your herbalife biz. It was growing well when this all started. And then you had a baby. It was just a lot to manage. Then you moved again. Do you see how stressful this is? You needed to rest and take care of yourself. I had to do something that would sideline you for a bit. But you kept going so we kept trying to get our point across!

Me: okay I see, I need to not take on so much and make time for myself.

All: hello!! Exactly!!

Me: you know this is a huge request with the types of goals that I have, right?

All: duh! But you’ll figure it out. You’re smart!

Me: thanks

Brain: I’m the smart one!

Me: ha! Okay let’s do this. It’s time for essentialism. Let’s cut out everything but family, fitness, and the trophies. and that looks like maintaining and growing my FB group, launching my marriage course, and spending my work hours learning how to grow my audience.

All: yay!

Brain: and after grow your audience you can do list builder, tribe, and Instagram.

Me: okay this all sounds great, thank you body. I love you!

All: we love you too, you rock!

 

Wow, I never thought about dialoguing with the exact body part.