Don't Just Chew Anything

Sometimes we have such a gaping hole in our emotional well-being that we become so starved for whatever it is that needs to fill the hole that we would pick up the emotional equivalent of chewed gum off the sidewalk in hopes that it would satiate our desperate hunger. I mean, this is obvious when we look around at people who have addictions to harmful substances and behaviours and hey, I'll be honest and I've admitted it before that when I'm stressed my running mileage goes up in some pathetic attempt to gain an upper hand on the emotional dial.

I have an incredible example of what the human psyche is capable of when it comes to protecting itself: A few months ago a ten year-old girl came into a physio clinic with a sprained knee from falling of a piece of playground equipment. Despite repeated treatments her injuries were not getting better but worse. Her slight limp developed into an exaggerated almost leg-drag. She is developing osteoporosis in one of her hips and her muscles and ligaments in one of her legs are getting shortened and causing even more problems. Upon some investigation it has been revealed that her father has always favoured her brothers more than her and since injuring herself, she and her dad have had to spend a certain amount of time every day together for her rehabilitation. It seems that her psyche is so starved for father-love that it is essentially "telling" her body to get worse so as to hold onto her father's attention.

Incredible.

I guess it's an extreme example of how an attention-starved child will gladly misbehave and receive discipline, as any attention is good attention. But in this case it blows me away that her emotional needs are so great that her emotional health would chuck her physical health under the bus for mere survival. Drug and food addicts can relate. But how do we fill a hungry void? How do we soothe a screaming silence?

Recognizing that we live in an imperfect world and being aware of our needs is the first step. Knowledge is power. We smarten ourselves up with whatever we need to know about where we might be hungriest and then figure out what we might be most vulnerable to and by the empowerment of this self-awareness we are then able to make healthy choices. Boom. Easy as that. Right? Ha.

When we lived in California I used to peel the previously chewed sun-warmed gum off the sidewalks and pop it into my mouth. So, I'm not gonna judge.