Brian is a neuromuscular therapist. One of the things he had to learn was how to deal with a client having an emotional breakthrough during a massage session. Sometimes people will just break down and be a complete wreck because some memory has been stored away in knotted muscles.
I learned that Brian learned this because I recently phoned him after the passage of many, many months. My infodump was about the recent situation concerning my physical and mental health. How I learned there's a significant connection between the human body and the mind. It took me some time to understand that when my back would give out that was due to stress and my emotional state rather than overexertion. Even though the time my back gave out in August 2002 happened after vigorously riding my bike was just a coincidence. Every other time my back gave out it was around my mother or during a stressful time in my life.
Now I'm reading about my particular course of therapy and reading tangential stuff. It's called EMDR which supposedly works really well with people suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder. Since I'm adamant in my stance against taking medication this was the second option. I got the idea that it might be something like neurolinguistic programming. While talking with my therapist and after learning my accupressure relaxation technique and hearing about how his patients feel that neck pain which has dogged them finally go away or how a weight has been lifted because the muscles are no longer constricting them I was reminded of Reichian therapy.
One of the anecdotes I've read about Reichian therapy is regarding one of Wilhelm Reich's patients having a session and finally losing this pain in her jaw because for all those years she had been holding back her grief over the death of a beloved animal companion.
Next Tuesday I'm doing guided visualization in preparation for EMDR. According to my therapist I'm going to need these techniques so I can handle whatever is dredged up from the depths of my brain.
When I went to Jaybird's place I only glossed over that the end of my Friday was not pleasant. We drove to Cassius's place, did our mobility and warm-ups and while Jaybird went to take a piss Cassius asked me how I was doing in life. I unloaded my stress about being nickled and dimed by either my doctor or my insurance company. How my health insurance sucks and how I'm afraid that they'll deny my emergency room visit from the 17th and it'll end up costing me big money.
I beat myself up over it. I broke down and made a scene. Life sucks. Jaybird helped rationalize the situation. Ended up doing the accupressure twice on Friday night in order to be normal. Also Jaybird pretended he didn't know the definition of ataraxia.
