I bring you a small break from the crushing despair and horror and anxiety we Americans are currently enduring to share a great experience I had recently.

It’s been months of waiting for my first appointment with a rheumatologist (after years of ever increasing pain and discomfort), and I finally had that appointment last week. I filled out the medical history forms dutifully, hoping something would come of it, hoping I wouldn’t just be seen by the doctor, but really be seen by the doctor. I sat in the examination room waiting for her, fortifying my mind with all of the self-advocating energy and bullet points I figured I’d need to make myself heard.

In the end, for the first time in my life, I did not need the bullet points.

She reviewed the medical and family history I’d written down, and we discussed my symptoms. She advised that we would do some x-rays (which turned out to be more thorough than any doctor I’ve seen for my pain have ever bothered to do, finally they scanned where it actually hurts), and some bloodwork. She told me about a medication that she’d like me to try because it could really help, but I should do a round of steroids first. And then she said candidly that we would pursue this plan regardless of the test results, because the x-rays and bloodwork could show nothing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there.

New doctor say what…?!

Never in my life have I had a doctor tell me they would continue to treat me even if the test results are negative. It’s always been, well, the bloodwork shows nothing so it must be nothing. This was, you’re here in this office because you have a problem we can help you with, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, so, of course we’re going to help you. It was mind-boggling.

The best part of the whole experience was that no one, from receptionist to nurse to doctor to phlebotomist to x-ray technician, no one at all, uttered the words “your weight” to me, not once. This in itself and above all was a drastic and fantastic improvement from nearly any other doctor I’ve ever met. My weight might impact how the joints in my lower extremities feel. But what it doesn’t do is cause my hands excruciating pain when I try to grip a paintbrush or mix up tuna salad.

In summary, it was one of the single most validating medical experiences of my life. My pain is real, and it has a legitimate cause, and that cause is treatable. For someone who’s spent her whole life ignoring her own needs in order to support everyone else’s, who’s gotten quite used to being dismissed, to being made to feel less than, to being taught that I must keep powering through for everyone no matter how I’m feeling, this was huge for me. Call it somatic validation.

Anyway, before I went to get blood drawn, the doctor had me get up on the exam table and manipulated my joints in different ways to examine how they operated and how I responded. I’m sure it was routine examination for a person complaining of extreme joint pain, and she did so gently and respectfully. It seemed to inform her working diagnosis, whatever she did. So I’m glad for that. But I felt more sore than usual for a couple days after the appointment, and what’s more, I started feeling really grumpy and aggravated a couple of days after the appointment. By that following Monday morning (the appointment was on the previous Thursday), I woke up at like 4AM filled with ambiguous anxiety and stress that I couldn’t shake.

I lay there for hours, hugging a pillow, waiting for it to subside and hoping it would do so in time for school. It was one of those days where it would have been best for me to not be around children, except, as a teacher, that isn’t really an option. In hindsight, I should have taken a personal day, but, it’s a moot point. I powered through and for the most part everything was fine (meaning I didn’t yell at any kids and they all had a good day themselves). But, in light of my new efforts to pay closer attention to my own needs, I recognize that “powering through” is not what I should have done. I’ve historically prided myself on being a master of compartmentalization, of keeping my own stress and emotions buried and locked away in order to carry on with my days full of supporting other people. This has always been a successful survival technique for me, but, as I am not living in survival mode anymore, and I’m learning how to let myself have my own needs and feelings, compartmentalization doesn’t seem like something to brag about anymore. Now that I arguably know better, spending a day compartmentalizing my ass off really doesn’t feel good. I was fucking exhausted by the time I got home from school. Utterly spent. It’s kind of like when you decide you want to eat something you know isn’t good for you, and you end up feeling sick afterwards. Not that one can’t indulge occasionally, but I mean it more like that overindulged feeling. I overindulged in my ability to command my executive functioning to override my feelings.

While I lay awake in the early morning hours before school, I naturally pondered why I was suddenly feeling this way when I didn’t have any obvious triggers, and eventually I realized that my body was remembering the trauma it went through at this time several years ago when I had a terrible miscarriage. While I don’t consciously dwell on it too often anymore, every year at this time, I have a difficult day or two when my body presses rewind.

My therapist had another point to add to this experience this time. She pointed out that the rheumatologist had manipulated my joints including my hip and SI joints; there’s evidence of a significant connection between that area of the body and emotional storage. If those joints got adjusted in the doctor’s office, it is likely that some emotional pain I’ve been walking around with got released and was working its way out of my body as well. That might sound like a strange idea, but there’s an entire industry of fitness called somatic yoga that deliberately targets areas of the body connected with not just physical pain but emotional pain, and aims to help release that pain for healing of body and of spirit. Think about it in terms of stress. What do our bodies do physically when we feel emotionally stressed? Our shoulders tense up, we hunch more, our jaw muscles may tighten, our fingers and may toes curl in. It’s not an uncommon thing to say, “I carry my stress in my neck and shoulders.” Well, it follows logically that we could say, “I carry my (insert personal detail here) emotions in my hips.”

Somatic validation is crucial for healing, and we have to pursue it with the same zeal as we used to use to power through our pain. This process includes paying attention to your body, listening to what it has to say, and not just powering through the pain and stress and anxiety. It also includes finding supports, both personal and professional ones, who will properly listen and guide you. It’s hard to say which of those two parts is more difficult. One thing I can say about people like myself who’ve spent a lifetime powering through and carrying too much of everyone else’s stuff, though, is that as difficult a process as somatic validation may be, we sure don’t shy away from a challenge.