The Rash That Won't Stop

 Written by Don Shetterly

At the slightest hint of anything, the rash picks up.  It changed from being constant to giving me moments of reprieve.  However, in exchange for this, it kicks up harder and with more fierceness than ever before.  The itching may subside after some moments, and if I’m lucky, the burning sensation doesn’t start in because it can last for a long time.  Most of the time lately, I’m not so lucky on that.

It doesn’t take much.  It can be fabric touching it.  It can be something touching me emotionally (good or bad).  It can be a conversation with someone.  It can be stepping outside in the warm summer weather or trying to wade in the pool.  It can be a phone call that I’m on or even listening in on these days.

When it picks up with intensity, I care barely sit still.  I struggle to keep my fingers from clawing at the rash.  Sometimes it won’t let me stop and sit down.  It keeps me pacing the floors screaming out in agony as if it won’t ever let me go.  Sometimes I find myself hitting and pounding my body just to numb it, as if I was doing what I once used to do as a kid.

My breathing gets shallow during these times.  Sleep is like something a million miles away.  My brain begins to run incessantly as if it must solve every issue known to man.  I find no relief – only distraction.  Most don’t understand.  In fact, it is almost too difficult to explain.  I feel ostracized by virtually everyone, but I want NO ONE to touch me or come close to me.

The images flood my mind of being held down while boiling water is poured upon me.  I know what they want me to allow them to do, but on that day, I’m fighting them.  I know I shouldn’t fight them for it will only get worse.  I just don’t want them to today.  I’m tired of enduring this.  I’m tired of them doing it to me.

Regardless, bad boys that don’t do as they are told suffer the consequences, and so the boiling water is poured on me as a punishment.  It seems boiling.  It could be hot water.  I can’t recall.  My body screams in pain.  My body shivers as the cold air of the winter in a drafty old house touches me.  I shiver and shake.  I tremble.  Just like in the days of the seizures.  I couldn’t control those either.  I would shake and tremble and flail around until exhaustion hit.  It went until I numbed and disconnected enough that I no longer was aware of what was happening.

But good little boys don’t have these images of their fathers and brothers.  Good little boys should never think about these things happening.  After all, God will torment and punish me forever for thinking this way and not obeying their every command.

My body wants some rest and relief.  It wants to numb at the same time because it is just too much at the time to deal with at this moment.  It is much too much even to want to deal with at this moment.  It seems like it has been an eternity that is has been happening when in reality, the rash only started last Christmas.

I try to tell my mind and my body that it will get better.  It laughs at me like a pack of hysterical hyenas.  It scoffs at me with ludicrous thoughts as if there is any way to get beyond this.  I try to have hope.  I try to have hope.  I know I’ve been in similar darkness before, but it is of little use because I feel too worn out and exhausted to care.

By the time anyone reads this blog post, I will have had some Unified Therapy sessions to hopefully help me get past this.  So, stay tuned for the follow-up blog posts.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Traumatized By Seizures

One of the things I experienced in 1991 was a condition called Conversion Disorder.  Many people see it in different ways, and there are many who do not understand this condition.  In a nutshell, it is like an overloaded circuit in the body that tends to flip the breaker and shut you down.  That is how I've come to understand it in my own healing and life.

Pseudo-seizures in Conversion Disorder are part of what I experienced after I lost control of my body through paralysis.  In those early moments, I could not walk or stand and function on my own.  Eating, talking, moving, and many other actions we take for granted were gone from me in the blink of an eye.

However, the seizures I went through was by far the worst.  I did not understand what was happening to me.  They would go on forever, it seemed.  My parents would watch me in the wheelchair I was sitting in as the seizures kicked in.  They would be frightened, and so would I.  The only thing that stopped the seizures was when my body got completely exhausted.

In these seizures (that's what I call them), my body would tremble and shake.  It felt like my arms and legs would move violently all over the place with absolutely no control.  It didn't feel as though I was present in the moment of what was happening, and it always felt like there was nothing I could do.

I was so frightened during these times.  I wanted so badly for someone to come and put their arm around me and hold me.  I didn't want people to stare at me as if I was some freak because they were afraid themselves.  If anyone talked to me or put a hand on me, I don't remember that.  I don't think that happened.

While I was in a healing session the other day, this is the subject that came up.  It took me by complete surprise because I had not even thought about it.  I sure didn't think I had been traumatized by the seizures.  However, I found out just how much is still locked up in my body from these seizures.

In the work I have gone through called Unified Therapy with Dr. Paul Canali, shaking and trembling are often part of the healing session.  It is normal for our bodies to shake and tremble to dissipate stress or trauma.  However, most of the time the mind and body stop this.  So if we allow ourselves into these healing moments, they can release so much locked energy within our cells, tissues, and our mind body.

It is important to make a note here that just shaking and trembling by themselves are not the healing part.  When you connect it to an emotion coming up in the body or some experience you've been through that automatically appears, then you have the basis for a very powerful healing moment.  If you're not careful though, you can get locked into this trembling and shaking and have it yield nothing more than re-traumatizing yourself or a person you are working with.

As the session went along, all of this came front and center and something that was actually healing and helpful was frightening to me.  Dr. Canali is able to understand this and work with me so that I don't go into the overwhelm moment.   I go up to the edge of it, where I am instead empowered.  While this may all sound like too much and too scary to go through in a session, he is careful not to re-traumatize you.  The more you can go into these moments, the more healing and awareness comes out as a result.  It becomes empowering to aid you in further healing and growth.

It did not dawn on me until this session that I was storing so much trauma in my body and my mind from the seizures.  I just thought that once they were done, it was all over and I had moved on.  As I keep gathering the fragmented pieces together of what I went through, I begin to see a new picture of who I am.

All too often, we think that once things are over we are past them and we've moved on.  In fact, we often tell ourselves and others that we have moved on, or that they should move on.  It isn't until we allow ourselves to connect all of these things together that we truly are in the healing part of the mind body connection.

This is what healing and awareness are all about, but it all depends on how far I'm willing to let myself go into these moments.  If I hold myself back, they will not happen.  If I let go and surrender to them, the other side of peace and joy that I gain is beyond any words I can use to describe it.  If I do not integrate them in and acknowledge their presence in my life, I will continue to wander through life as if it is another foggy day.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Conversion (Somatoform) Disorder

If you read my book or some of the blog entries I have posted about, you will quickly see that I personally suffered from a conversion disorder. There are many names for it which include hysterical paralysis or a more common term of somatoform disorder. For me, the situation turned into complete paralysis with loss of speech, feeling, sensitivity and brain function including seizures.

At the time, I did not think there was any way through this and it seemed hopeless. I experienced the seizures and a feeling of being so tired that I could barely stay awake for any length of time. Test after test was done and at first they diagnosed it as MS (Multiple Sclerosis). Imagine being 26 years old and told you have MS. I was not prepared to hear that and I'm sure no one is every prepared to deal with the trauma that a diagnosis such as Multiple Sclerosis. In those days, there was no internet and so even though I knew very little about MS, I knew it was not good.

As with most episodes of a conversion disorder (somatoform disorder), there is usually some underlying trauma and then when a certain trigger or switch is thrown, the two events collide to bring about conditions which are not easily diagnosed. I often explain it to people that it is like an electrical circuit in a house. If you start putting to many items on a circuit and then turn start turning them on, at some point they will flip the breaker. The same thing happens to our body where we continue to put one stress and trauma on after another. It builds up and something in the body ends up breaking or giving way to a shut down. The nervous system if not properly tuned up can only handle so much before it says - that's it - I'm outta here!

Unfortunately, all too often somatoform disorders are misdiagnosed by well intentioned specialists. I think back to the days when I was going through this and each doctor would run test after test to trying to explain what was going on. Early tests indicated Multiple Sclerosis but after I was started on a drug treatment (which was some type of steroid medication), my body had a severe reaction to it and started in with seizures and violent trembling and shaking throughout my body. After weeks of MRI's, blood work, a trip to the Hospital Emergency Room by ambulance, most of the doctors were giving up. Each time, I would be sent home with no explanation of why things were happening. Each time, friends would have to help lift me in and out of a car and carry me into my apartment as I could do none of this for myself. I could not care for myself during this time, yet no doctor or emergency room would admit me to the hospital.

Fortunately, some doctor got me in touch with a neurologist. It did not take long for the neurologist to begin questioning the tests that had already been done on me. She was the wise one that began to ask the questions and put things together that there was something behind all of this and it was not physical. Once she had me meet with a psychiatrist and as I began talking to the psychiatrist, I took my first steps that day. That was the beginning of my recovery. It was not an easy road and it took great will power and determination to keep going when all seemed hopeless for me physically.

Back then, I was not aware of the work that Dr. Paul Canali, D.C. was doing with trauma healing. In fact, I didn't even truly understand what a conversion disorder was at the time and it took some time before the doctors even told me this was what happened. It is a very rare condition but I know there are more out there that go through this. I have found there is healing from this and from the trauma that I suffered. I also learned that to heal the trauma in my life, I needed to go in and touch the depths of it which were located within my body and my mind. It was through that connection that I really found my way through deep healing and started to reclaim my life.

There really is hope for someone if they are experiencing this situation in their life. No one needs to go through what I went through because tests and medications are not going to heal it in the end. When I first met Dr. Canali and began listening to what he was talking about, the concepts were foreign to me. You don't hear these things talked about in our every day world. However, my body knew without a doubt that what he was saying was exactly what had taken place in my life. My body also realized that he had discovered some of the answers that I had longed to find in my life. Through his work, I have changed completely from what I used to be and I have begun to discover just who I am and what I am made of. My physical ailments from depression, anxiety, migraine headaches, stomach ulcers, stiff necks, muscle tension, anger, despair, and the list goes on - these things are no longer in power over me. I have found freedom from them by finding the necessary tools within myself to move through all that comes up in my life.

Further Reading

1. Autonomic Nervous System by Dr. Paul Canali
   
   
2. Hope And Possibility Through Trauma by Don Shetterly
   

(Copyright 11/08/10 - Use by permission only)

From Paralysis and Fear Through Touch

Note: For a licensed print ready version, click here.

Imagine a 25 year old guy laying in a hospital bed and struggling to talk, move all parts of his body and remember basic things like his name. There was no car accident and no disease. The muscles had the same tone in them as they had before this time.

Just days before, this same guy had been an average hard working person just trying to make it in life. Of course he had the usual aches and pains that everyone has and he had been getting medical attention to deal with all of this. Of course most of the doctors didn’t have the slightest clue what to do in this situation. After a severe episode of seizures, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital only to be sent home because they found nothing wrong with him.

As the situation worsened, family and friends once again took him to seek additional medical help. Fortunately this time a neurologist knew to ask the right questions which began the road of healing for this young man. He had been diagnosed with a condition known as a conversion disorder.

Conversion disorders are technically known as Somatoform Disorders which involve physical bodily symptoms that suggest there is a medical problem when in fact no medical condition can be found. Symptoms may include anything from chronic pain, blindness, and deafness to paralysis of the arms and legs, and seizures. Conversion Disorders are estimated to occur in about 15 out of 100,000 people. It is a very rare condition.

If you have not figured out by now who this person is, it was me. I suffered through this condition in 1991 and have fought hard to overcome the effects of it. Although some sources indicate there is no treatment for the disorder, most people would not be able to tell I suffered through paralysis to the point that my brain was shutting down on me.

As part of my continued healing, I spent many years undergoing counseling and therapy to overcome the effects of this condition. With conversion disorders, there is usually an underlying emotional situation such as child abuse that goes to the root cause. I did suffer through intense child abuse as a kid and I have had to deal with the effects that this brought into my life.

For a long time in my life, I struggled with touch. Since my body was beaten and sexually abused as a kid, touch and closeness to other humans was not something that was a comfort to me. Yet at the same time, I longed for touch and I longed to be close to people because it was a very lonely life.

Several years ago, I started trying to receive massage from a very good licensed massage therapist in NC. This lady was very professional and tried to make sure she could do whatever it took to help me begin accepting touch as something good, healthy and beneficial. I think I made it through about 3 sessions before what she was doing just triggered me to past events. I still remember leaving her office that day, so silent and withdrawn, not able to say what was going on and afraid of her even though she was doing a fantastic job. Of course it was not her that I was afraid of, it was the touch.

More healing took place in my life which allowed me for the first time to accept touch in a healthy and wholesome way. As time went, I began to trust a very special person in my life and touch became so much easier than it had ever been in my life. However I went through some very intense periods where a hug would leave me feeling nauseated and I would feel at times like my skin was crawling with bugs. Even with all of the struggles I faced, my body longed to be touched and to actually feel the touch and feel the goodness that it held.

After a life changing event where I lost my mom to a car accident, I began to contemplate the future direction of my life and the role the universe was asking me to play in it. Amazingly with all of the touch issues I struggled with, I was drawn to massage school. Just before massage school, I once again had a massage and it was actually something that was a much more enjoyable experience for me. I knew that I was drawn to massage school for some reason but was not totally sure why at that point nor was I sure if I could handle learning how to touch others. Fortunately, I trusted my intuition enough and took a giant leap of faith into massage school.

I felt so at home at Educating Hands School of Massage and I felt like I would be able to learn how to trust others. So as time went and we began doing the touch on each other, I was so frightened. My body didn’t know how to take all of this and so most of the time, it just shut down to what I was feeling. I know several of my classmates were frustrated when we tried to give feedback about the massage and I had no words to describe it because I could not feel it. I knew that the massage was not bad, but I absolutely could not feel it.

With time and continued massage day after day, my body began to wake up. It started to see for the first time in my entire life just what touch was. It was like a miracle to me and as I began to feel the touch of my classmates in my body, I began to feel and sense through my fingers wonderful things that were going on inside of those people I got to work on. As school progressed and the experiences continued to come my way, my body became more awake and alive. Life started to change in dramatic ways for me.

Last July, I again followed intuition and attended a workshop by Dr. Paul Canali on the Enteric Brain. It was at this workshop that I heard someone speak a language about the body which my body fully understood and realized that no one else had ever spoken in this way. Through my continued work with Dr. Canali’s, “Unified Healing Therapy”, I am for the first time in my life becoming totally aware of what it means to live in my body. I’m actually experiencing what it means to reach a relaxed state far from the anxiety, depression and abuse that I suffered from all of my life. Touch is becoming so much more alive in me and life is becoming more beautiful with each new day of awareness that I am introduced to.

Working with people who struggle with touch takes a great deal of patience, understanding, compassion, sensitivity and non judgment. There are others out there like myself who may come across your massage table and I hope that you realize from my story that touch is sometimes a very scary thing but you may just be one of the healing stones for that person on their journey. From first hand experience, I know there is hope for each and everyone of these people and while the journey may get rough, it is well worth it in the end.