When the body knows before you do

In the summer of 2011, my body stopped mid-workday and refused to move. I didn't yet have the language for what was happening — the connection between stress, self-silencing, and physical pain. I just knew something had to change.

Fibromyalgia, my neurologist told me. And then, more importantly: the choice to address the root, or manage the symptoms forever.

I chose the root. It took over a decade.

What I know now — and what I try to bring into my work — is that the body is not a separate department from the mind. It is not a machine that occasionally breaks down. It is the record. It holds what we couldn't say, what we learned not to need, what we absorbed from the rooms and relationships we grew up in.

When clients come to me with chronic pain, fatigue, or physical symptoms that have no clean medical explanation, I don't dismiss the body or rush past it toward the "real" psychological work. The body is the work. It is speaking. Our job is to learn to listen.