Not long after I moved to the state I currently live in, I was living with these “hippies”. It was a weird situation and all, but that’s another story. At any rate, I was in the kitchen of this “house” (yet another story!) and I remember the electric stove being there and it had been cooling off at the time. I don’t remember anyone else being around me and I ended up putting my hand on the still very warm burner. Burnt some of my fingertips, but I never felt a thing. Not an ounce of pain, even though there were marks on my fingertips.
There was another time when I had to go see a doctor for some now forgotten reason. He was checking my body out, asking if this hurt or did that hurt. Normally, I would just say no, but not in this case. My reply was “not right now, but maybe later.” He replied that’s what he was afraid of. I had this ability to put off pain until sometime later, no doubt when it felt safe enough to feel it.
That too happened before the others. I imagine this occurred in adulthood sometime as a remnant of things that happened in childhood. On some level it still wasn’t safe to feel, at least for the alters.
I had an extremely high tolerance for pain.
About 10 years ago, I happened upon a massage therapist (subject of the next blog). I started working with her, knowing I needed body work done. It took a long time, but I slowly began to feel things in my body as they actually happened.
My high tolerance for pain began to lessen. It almost sounds crazy to feel glad to feel physical pain, but that’s how I felt.
Unfortunately, I did not completely get back into my body, so to speak. There still are some issues.
I have several cats. One of my cats’ acts like the queen. She does not like any of her siblings to get close to her and starts to growl or hiss when that happens.
This particular event occurred a few weeks ago during the night. I woke up to the sound of the queen hissing at one of her siblings around 2 a.m. I got out of bed and turned on the bedroom light. One of the cats the queen was hissing at was on the floor to one side of the bed having a seizure.
After getting that situation taken care of, I was in the bathroom and noticed some of hair was down on my forehead. In the morning when I got up, I noticed the hair that was down on my forehead actually dried blood. It went from the top of my forehead down to my nose.
I had no idea what happened or how it got there. I never felt a thing. That’s what I found so distressing: not feeling a thing and having no idea as to what even happened.
So I guess it’s time recommit to feeling my body, particularly during massages. We’ll see how it goes from there.