This post has been stewing inside of me for quite some
time, and I've finally decided to let it out. It's very personal, but I've
decided I'm ok with it, because I feel and believe that it is something that
people need to know.
As a preface to this post, here is some quick information
about me. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Am I a
professional? NO. My knowledge is limited and I encourage anyone
reading this post to look for research articles to verify any comments I make
or you question. I believe that what I am posting is true, and honestly
think I could find the articles to back myself up, so this isn't so much of an
opinion as it is what I know and feel needs to be shared with others.
When I was a senior in high school I began experiencing a
lot of pain in my abdomen. This went on for several months, slowly got
worse, and finally after visiting some doctors it was discovered that my gall
bladder needed to be removed. The surgery was scheduled, the bladder was
removed, and I felt 100% better. After I graduated high school I moved to
college and began experiencing life on my own. All though still close to
my parents, about an hour away, I felt truly independent and was excited to
start living on my own.
My first semester was harder than I thought it would be,
though, and not just educationally. Living on my own brought with it
consequences I wasn't expecting, and the social life was much different.
I quickly found a young man though with whom I "fell in love"
with, and as an eighteen year old I was sure that wedding bells would be
chiming soon. After we started dating he started feeling really sick, and
he didn't know what was wrong. He went to several doctors, until finally
one of them told him that he was physically healthy as a horse, and that there
was something spiritually/mentally/emotionally wrong with him and that his mind
was making it known through physical symptoms. WHAT? Our minds can
make us physically ill even when there is nothing physically wrong? YES,
they can. After this diagnosis this young man confided in me about some
things in his past that were very personal. I felt honored to be trusted
with such personal information, and wanted to share things with him. That
night I thought of what I could share with him. As I thought, some things
that happened when I was younger and other things throughout high school and
other social interactions came to mind, and I decided to confide in my
boyfriend as he had confided in me.
It took me several weeks to do so, but I finally did, and
it felt good to get it out. The next day though, my boyfriend told me he
needed to show me something so we went for a walk. He walked me up to a
building on campus that I didn't even know existed. I asked him what on
earth we were doing, and he told me that this was the counseling center on
campus. He told me that he had been coming here since his doctor’s
appointment and that he thought I could benefit from it also with the things I
had shared with him. Because I "loved him" I agreed to sign
up. The building was closed by that time but I told him that I would sign
up the following week and get the help he thought I needed. That was on a
Saturday.
The following Monday my world came crashing down when
this young man came over and broke up with me. I thought I would die I
felt so heart broken. I didn't want to ever get out of bed again that
Tuesday morning, but I had to go perform with my choir at a devotional.
After the devotional, I walked outside of the building and saw the counseling
center. To this day I still don't remember walking up to it, but I did,
and before I knew it, I was filling out the form asking to meet with a
counselor.
Within a week I was sitting in a comfy chair across from
a man I had never met, and he asked me to basically spill my guts out to
him. Talk about awkward. I did, though, because I knew deep down
that I needed to, and it felt good. I got the help I thought I needed
over the next months till school ended, and then I moved up to a tourist spot
to work at a ranch for the summer.
The summer started out good, but quickly turned really
hard. I was working with two girls, who had been two of my closest
friends in high school, but suddenly I was not clicking with them and we were
not getting along, and I didn't know why. Slowly as the summer progressed
I fell deeper and deeper into a despair I wasn't even aware of, and near the
end of the summer I finally realized that even though I had met with a
counselor for a little bit, I had only skimmed the surface of my problem.
I knew I wasn't done, so when school started back up, I went back to
counseling.
This time I had to meet with a different counselor, and it was hard, but through the school year I was able to break down some walls I didn't even know I had and progressed a little more. Without knowing it, though, when I broke one wall down another part of me built a different wall that I wasn't aware of. Once again the summer came, and with my much improved "understanding" of my issues, I went to work at the ranch once again.
This year there were two different girls I worked
with. Things were going well, but inside of me there was a lot of turmoil
still mulling around that I wasn't aware of. About a month into the
summer I started experiencing SEVERE pain in my abdomen, and I was quickly
reminded of my gall bladder. The pain was real, it was intense, and it
was almost unbearable. I started my visits to the doctors, and nothing
could be found. I just knew deep down that I was dying of cancer, or
maybe some rare disease. I was worried sick along with my parents, and we
couldn't find any answers. I ended up having a cat scan to check my
appendix, and they were prepping me for surgery when the doctor came in to tell
us that the appendix was fine. I saw doctor after doctor, and no one was
listening to me. They all said I was fine, but I wasn't. My pain
was real, and it was slowly exhausting me. Finally we found a doctor,
bless his soul, and he agreed to do exploratory surgery to see what was going
on inside of me. I just knew it was going to be something awful. The
surgery was performed, and as I came to the first thing I asked was, "what
did they find?" My wonderful mother who had been there the whole
time took my hand and told me that they had found nothing. My insides
were beautifully perfect, not a single speck of something wrong. That
really scared me. What could possibly be wrong when not even surgery
revealed something? I burst into tears at the thought, when my mom asked
me how I felt. I stopped and thought about it, and realized that I felt
better. The pain was gone, so something had been fixed because I felt
better. (Now I know I was “better” because I had a break from life
to have surgery. I got tons of
attention, and that was what “stopped” the pain)
After recovering from that surgery and finishing my
summer at the ranch I decided to give 18 months of my life to my Savior Jesus Christ
and I decided to serve an LDS mission. I was called to serve in Uruguay,
and I was very excited to go. Once I got there, though, things did not go
as planned. I began having anxiety attacks and panic attacks, and the
pain inside of me returned. I called the mission doctor and gave him my
medical history, then asked what on earth could be wrong with me. He
sighed, and told me that I wouldn't like the answer, but that the answer was
that physically there was nothing wrong me, but
mentally/emotionally/spiritually, there was something very wrong. There
was something(s) in my life that needed to be dealt with, and because I wasn't
dealing with it, their need to be dealt with was being manifested through physical
issues. I didn't want to believe the doctor, but knew that what he had
said was true. As much as I hated counseling and thought I was done with
it, I wasn't. I was put in contact with the mission psychiatrist, and
after much conversation the decision was made to start some medication. I
talked with that psychiatrist every week for months, and she slowly helped me
realize what needed to be done to take care of myself.
Upon my return home after my mission I once again sought
counseling, from yet another counselor, and was finally able to break down all
of my walls and find the true source of my problem. Things went great for
a long time, and then just a few months ago things started getting bad for me,
and so I found a counselor here in my hometown and visited with her for several
weeks until I was back on my feet emotionally. I hate counseling, but I
know it helps me, and that it is a must to keep me "physically" and
"mentally" able to be a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend to
those around me.
So why the reason for this long story/post? Because
I want people, and especially parents, to know that physical issues can be
caused by the mind. I've heard so many stories about people who are
"always sick" and no doctor can find a reason, and except for those
really rare cases where it is something severe and almost undetectable, if you
or your child is visiting the doctor and the doctor isn't finding anything
wrong, then there is nothing physically wrong. This is the mistake my
mother and I made because we simply didn’t know that our minds can speak
through physical discomfort/sickness. We
thought the doctors we were seeing were not doing a good job, were brushing me
aside without really looking, because there was something wrong. My pain was just like that of my gall
bladder, and that time there had been something wrong, so there had to be now
too, right? WRONG. If the doctors aren’t finding anything it’s
not because they aren’t competent, it’s because the problem isn’t physical and
a different kind of doctor is needed, a doctor of the
mind/spirit/emotions.
As a young mother I know that I cannot yet comprehend the
pain of being told that there was something from my son’s past that was
troubling him to the point of making himself sick. I can’t imagine the guilt that would come
with that, but coming from my experience of being that child, it’s not the
parents fault. If your child needs to
meet with a counselor it says nothing about your parenting. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you or
your child needs to speak to a counselor, because as much as we may hate it,
life happens. We and our children experience
things that some people should never experience, but it happens. It’s horrible, but true. So let’s take this problem by the horns, and
get the help that we or those we love need.
Our minds are such powerful things, and they must be taken care of. Counseling is not a pleasant experience, it’s
sometimes downright painful emotionally, but the results are well worth it, if
the client/patient/whatever you want to call the person receiving the
counseling is willing to work with a counselor and do what they ask. Pride must be set aside, and an open mind is
a must, but with the help of trained professionals even those in the darkest of
dark can find the light again, and not suffer from unneeded emotional pain.
I know this was a long post, and if you made it through,
congratulations. I should come up with a
point system or something. I hope that
no offense has been taken by anyone by what I said. I just want to reiterate what I said in the
beginning though. If you don’t
agree/believe me, look up peer reviewed articles. No that doesn’t mean type it into to your Google
search engine and read whatever nonsense pops up, it means going to a library
or a site on line like ebsco or jstor and finding real articles done by real researchers
that have real results. You will find
that the research supports what I have shared with you. Let’s get ourselves out of the dark friends,
and help ourselves and those we love find the light.
Be strong, for we can do hard things,
Lacey Miller
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