Child Forced To Bathe Is Abuse

I read an article today that made my hair stand on end and my skin crawl.  Some days I wonder if adults really understand what it is to be human or are they just aliens in a human body.  This story was about a third grader at a Texas school that was forced to bathe.  Evidently according to teachers and school officials, the kid smelled and they took it upon themselves to violently scrub him down.  I'm sure Sandusky would have been jealous.

Of course I don't know all the facts in the situation nor do I accept the media's story as the gospel truth.  After all, the media does tend to distort the facts in a frequent manner.  Regardless, if this story is true, it leaves me speechless. How on earth anyone who calls themselves an educator could do what they did to this child, is beyond me.  Plain and simple, it was child abuse.  They should all be locked up.  When did we become a society that so disrespected our children and treated them as something we could do anything we want to with the kids?

This story of course strikes a chord with me because I was only allowed to take one shower a week as a kid.  This shower of course was done on Saturday night so we would be presentable for church on Sunday.  After all, you didn't want the people at church thinking we were bad people.  We had to keep up the image of everything being fine in our family.

Mind OVER Body Power

As a child, I learned early on in a very conscious way how to increase my core body temperature so I could get out of Physical Education (PE) class. I hated PE class for many reasons because most of the sports did not interest me and I was not coordinated enough to do them well. Because of this, I would often be picked last when we had to divide up in teams. Most of my classmates did not want me on their team and they would often yell at me when I missed catching a ball or some other mistake. On top of that, I hated the fact that I had to undress and shower in front of all these other people. There was humiliating reasons that caused embarrassment but for me, it was a very unsafe environment. And so, I would often use my mind consciously to raise my body temperature so that I could go to the nurse and get out of PE. She would of course take my temperature and then declare I was sick and send me home. If they ever caught on to what I was doing, they didn’t say anything and I was smart enough to not do it every time but to only use this when I just could not deal with attending PE class.

For a long time, I never thought anything about it. Then when I got into bodywork and I started to see just how powerful the mind was over the body, I realized that I had actually overridden my normal body controls just with the power of thinking that I wanted my body temperature to increase. It wasn’t like my body temperature went very high but it was just high enough to be outside of the normal body temperature range. Of course I would have to play sick and make it sound to the nurse and my mom that I was truly not feeling good. It had to be convincing or they wouldn’t believe you. It was nothing for me to make my stomach hurt and in fact it hurt most of the time, so that was the convenient symptoms to put with the story. It was believable every time I did it and I didn’t even have to work at it that hard.

Now, another situation has arose where I have seen this in a first hand way. I went to a trade day with some fellow massage therapists. My body was already in a place where I wasn’t sure if I could be touched but I felt safe with these people due to past experiences with them and thought this would be a good thing. Being one of the first ones on the table, I was worked on one by one for a few minutes each by several people. Not giving thought to just how much that was probably not a good thing for me in this moment, I of course obliged the group and received the touch. After all, I didn’t want to upset anyone by not allowing them to work on me. I was stronger than that I thought and I could take this. Why does that not sound good now? I get a chuckle out of what I did not see that day.

So the first person worked on me for a few minutes and it felt good. My body dropped down and I just enjoyed being touched without jumping out of my skin. It was a good feeling. Than the next person came and worked on me and while I proclaimed to them what I needed and wanted and even thanked them at the end, there was a part of me that was wishing the touch would stop. However, I could not bring myself to say NO, please don’t touch me. The third person came along and the same scenario played out. In fact, by the time the third person got done with me, I felt like I had really relaxed and gone out on the table. It was as if time had stopped and I was in a deep place. Most people doing bodywork or receiving bodywork would perceive this state as a good thing. However, in my case, it was anything but good.

When I saw that my pulse had went from the 90’s before the touch began to almost 115 after the table work was over, I was puzzled by this. In my mind, I had relaxed and my body had let go from this light form of touch. Yet, my pulse was showing something completely different. It made no sense at the time. The two perceptions were completely at odds with each other. I didn’t say anything to anyone of course as I didn’t want anyone to think less of me as a result. So I just traveled back home. However, I noticed that as the time went, I became very angry at the people that worked on me. How could they not do better and how could they not do this or that to me? I just didn’t understand.

As I went through the night, the anger was continuous. It grew and grew until I began to question where it was coming from. Here all the time, I had missed the obvious. Much had been kicked up in me emotionally but it had not been allowed to discharge or dissipate. So I was left with everything being kicked up to the surface when in all reality, it needed to be pushed out of my body. Without that part, I could not go into complete relaxation because it is like an overflowing closet in your house. If the closet has too much stuff in it, you can’t put anything else in it until you remove something from the closet or clean it out. Much like our bodies, until you dissipate or remove the excess stuck energy, you can bring in the relaxation and true peace.

In my case though, I was able to numb out completely what was going on and bring my entire body into a state of what appeared to be total relaxation because that was what the objective of the work was. My body did this unconsciously without any thought to what was going on. So even though my body showed all the signs that one would look for, without the pulse meter indicating that my pulse was still in the sympathetic mode, I was not in a place of peace and relaxation.

Just think though how powerful the mind is that it can present one set of conditions to the world and yet inside, it is completely full of chaos. For me, this was my survival technique that helped me make it through some difficult times growing up. Now, however, it is not necessarily something that is a positive reaction in me that I still need to hang on to. Without a feeling of true safeness though, my body is going to automatically revert back to old patterns that are based in fear. Without the pulse meter showing my pulse at 115, I would have never realized this was going on. In fact, I felt so good while lying on the table. My mind and body were not connected together.

I learned firsthand through my own experience, that a feeling of peace and ease was not necessarily the way my body experienced it. And without dissipation, my body can only come down so far. It really changes how I look at myself and how I am able to sense that within myself. Just the realization and awareness of this has caused a major shift within me.

If you’re a body worker or even just someone that wants to become more aware of yourself and monitor your own body, get a pulse meter and see just what is going on. I’ve got a feeling you will be surprised as you learn to work with the pulse. The pulse is a good indicator of what is happening in the body. Even though you might feel like you have the ability to sense and see what is happening, the pulse meter will show you in truth and reality what is going on. The mind and the body may try to trick you but the pulse doesn’t lie.

Sleeping With Night Sweats and Fears

Note: Picture from Don Shetterly's, "A Journey Through Words" (used by permission)

For some time, I’ve been dealing with all kinds of physical realities at night. Almost every night when I go to bed, in spite of the room temperature being very cool, I experience an overall feeling of a very warm room. As I often say, the room feels like it is a thousand degrees even though it is not. This is something I have experienced on and off for many years and more off than on. It is a companion to me.

Most of the time, I can manage this and within a short time of going to bed, I can fall asleep with the temperature issues not affecting me to much as I go into the night. Usually by mid night time hours, I will feel somewhat cool as if the room temperature is normal. I’ve always just lived with this and sort of guessed that fear is at the cause of this condition for me.

Going to bed at night is never something I look forward to. It is a must do exercise that in order for me to function the next day, I need to get myself to sleep. Without a night light on in an adjacent room or some type of background noise like a fan, sleeping is almost out of the question. If there is any activity or noise around, there is no way I can sleep. At some points in my life, I have actually had to sleep with every light on in the house.

As I write this, I am so exhausted from lack of sleep over the past week or several days. I have lost count when the last time was that I got decent sleep. Lately, before going to bed, I have been getting dull headaches. And by the time I get ready to get in bed, I’m just wishing there was something else I could do besides subjecting myself to the activity of trying to sleep.

Sometimes I am fortunate enough to fall asleep and then an hour or two later, I am awakened with a startling force. Things such as body memories where I feel like something is being shoved up my anal region, or feeling like I am being pinned down or even feeling like I am being slapped around, hit me with full force. It feels as if there is something in the room attempting to haunt me or just watch my every move. I shake and tremble out of fear as I try to hide within my blankets. I’m on alert as I hear every sound or feel like I notice any movement even if there is nothing I can see with my eyes. I feel like prey being hunted and having to outsmart the predator at every turn. It is as if, one simple mistake would land me in a state of failure succumbing as prey to my predator. My predator is an imaginary creature but one that I seem to know very well.

Out of all of this, my eyes try to close but my mind and thoughts race as if there is no tomorrow. I’m not only constantly evaluating all that is going on around me, but I am working to solve every problem, situation or concern I am facing or may face. Even with breathing exercises or working with the enteric brain energy ball or listening to relaxing music, I am met with an incessant barrage of brain thoughts. I feel like I could compute more calculations than any computer are able to do and yet, my brain never seems to find the right solutions. It just keeps attempting to process the same information over and over as if it is stuck in a loop.

The latest in this round of wartime struggles has been the excessive sweating. From what I can read, night sweats are common in situations where stress is over the top. It can be a result of the nervous system being in a sympathetic state or a state of anxiety. The sweating may start as I go to bed or more commonly, it begins around an hour or two later. Generally, it is my low back and my groin area where it takes place. There have been times, when my bed sheets were soaked from sweat. Keep in mind the room temperature is not warm and even on the coldest of nights, I still go through this. The night sweating wakes me up with severe itching and if I try to ignore it, it attacks me with full strength until I can no longer stand it. I then end up getting into the shower and running water on my groin area with a shower massager in order to find a momentary level of comfort. Due to all of this, I have endured the moments when I begin to scratch myself and while it initially feels good and offers relief, it has become something that is now causing skin issues. Even if I could convince myself that scratching is not in my best interest, my body cries out for relief in any form that scratching becomes as normal as breathing.

The areas affected have changed as the days wear on. What first seemed to be the hot area has not changed and moved on for the most part. Although there are times when the scratching and itchy feeling revert back to where things were in previous days, generally it has moved on to other locations within my groin area. Sometimes in addition to the groin area, I feel an overall itching across my body like little electrical impulses that bounce from one area to the next.

Even though I drink plenty of water throughout my day, I have found myself extremely thirsty at nights when all of this happens. I don’t drink much caffeine at all but if I do, this situation is much worse. After two glasses of water tonight, I am still thirsty which is very strange and odd for me. It is not normal behavior that I experience.

The past few nights, the only thing I could do, in addition to getting in the shower, was to get out of bed and come downstairs. I have found a comforting place in our family room. It provides me some calmness and almost an escape from the predators of the night. The itching usually stops for the most part or reduces down to such a low level that I barely notice it. The sweating stop and I almost feel somewhat cool from the room temperature. If however, I decide to go back upstairs into the dark bedroom, the symptoms come back very quickly.

I feel like I’m at the end of my proverbial rope. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take because these symptoms are draining and exhausting. They have robbed me of precious hours of sleep while leaving me to feel as if I am a zombie. I fear there is some medical condition that gives rise to my early death but that too is fear and anxiety more so than anything founded in reality. Reality is difficult to understand these days because there does not seem to be any relevant reason for the progression of these things to take place. I feel as if my mind is losing the last remnants of sanity or enjoying playing one of the all time greatest tricks on me. I feel as if there is no end in sight, only the torment I feel each and every night. I try to tell myself that this too shall pass and things will get better but the skepticism at hearing this grows exponentially.

Yet, I know that body memories, nightmares and all types of unexplained events have plagued my life in one form or another. They seem more abundant than anything I know. While I know these rough periods of life have moved on and I’ve experienced profound moments of healing, going through these things are beyond the concept of difficult. I know that many of these things are part of a nervous system dysregulation, yet my mind fails to convince my body of that as it is experiencing all of these things. So I am faced once again, with a night of torment, a lack of sleep and unexplainable events. I long for true relief but I long for just a moment of comfort, peace and just some plain sleep.