Your Body Is Screaming — Can You Hear It?

If you're very lucky, you still talk to your college roommate. Who knows you better? The intimacies shared sleeping only six feet apart stand the test of time. And perhaps to her, you reveal things you don't tell anyone else.

This is the case with my friend Liz.

It's just past 6:00 a.m., and having dropped my son off for the long trip to a basketball tournament, I head into Newport. It's too early for work, but having forfeited my chance at sleeping in, I point myself toward the office anyway, stopping only momentarily for a sublime latte, accompanied by little bits of the peach galette my husband made the night before. It still has a little crunch to it.

Somewhere between the car and the coffee, I butt-dial Liz by mistake. And she actually picks up.

Two Former Athletes, Comparing Notes

We talk about the pains that are new to us as former athletes, and about the self-sacrifice involved in getting our eighteen-year-old sons closer to their athletic dreams. Her son is a squash player headed to Bowdoin in the fall. Mine just got his second Division I basketball offer.

This didn't happen by itself.

On the parent side, all of this happens with outrageous commitment, time, energy, and financial backing from parents who clearly have no life. Lol — like us.

All the while, silently or not so silently, little bits of exhaustion have taken up residence in our bodies. Shoulder pain for me. Sciatic pain for Liz.

Then she said it, plainly: "It's time we take care of our own bodies. If we redirected even a portion of the resources we put into these children's athletic careers into our own rehabilitation, imagine how great we'd feel."

I nod quietly on the other end of the line.

The Cost of Giving Too Much

Of course, seeing my children succeed is a great joy. But there is a cost to giving too much. You see it most clearly in caretakers of the older and infirm, or just regular mothers, like us for that matter. The CDC has measured it: adults who regularly care for a family member or friend report worse health than non-caregivers on thirteen of nineteen indicators, including more chronic conditions and more frequent mental distress. And caregivers are exactly the people who postpone their own check-ups and treatment while they're busy holding up everyone else.

To what extent do we aggressively spend our energetic savings on others and not realize our own body is breaking down? Do we just ignore how we feel, hoping it will go away?

I hear it in my practice all the time. A woman settles onto my table and says, "I've done everything to take care of everyone, and my body is literally falling apart. Can you help me?"

She isn't being dramatic. That shoulder pain and that sciatica aren't random. The American Psychological Association describes it plainly: under chronic stress, the muscles live in a near-constant state of guardedness, and pain in the shoulders, neck, and low back has been linked to stress. This is one reason acupuncture for tight necks and shoulders is some of the most common work I do, and why evidence reviews from the NIH place acupuncture among the recommended non-drug options for exactly this kind of pain.

It's easier for me to think about how to do this for other people than for myself. But I do know the answer: a thoughtful (re)allocation of time and resources.

The Defiant Toddler

It seems the more we ignore the body, the more it insists: "Watch, I'm gonna give you something you can't ignore." Like a defiant toddler yelling, "You WILL pay attention to me!"

Perhaps if we listen more closely to these messages from the body, we can stave off the harder, bigger surprises. One could hope.

Researchers have a name for this listening: interoception, the ability to sense and interpret what's happening inside your own body, which neuroscientists increasingly link to emotional regulation and to mental and physical health. It's a skill. And like any skill, it atrophies when you spend twenty years overriding it.

But alas, for me and for many people like me, ignoring and pushing through has been the modus operandi. It works perfectly, until suddenly it does not.

And that's a little bit of a shock.

When Your Operating System Becomes a Liability

Can we see that our internal operating system, our internal software, is not helping us anymore, and is actually a bit of a liability?

It reminds me (only tangentially) of the women I see who are trying to conceive and have been high-achieving in everything in life so far. She knows that added hard work, determination, and concentration always yield results, because this nose-to-the-grindstone mentality has always worked — until it just doesn't. And for fertility, it can actually make matters worse: a 2021 review found the relationship between stress and fertility runs in both directions, and that easing distress may improve both well-being and the chances of conceiving.

The grindstone got us the degrees and the careers. Getting out of this one takes the unglamorous opposite: resetting the nervous system, rest scheduled with the same seriousness as the tournament calendar, and the acupuncture and bodywork appointments we book for everyone but ourselves.

Maybe the Youth Have the Key

In closing, maybe I revert to the youth. My 26-year-old assistant, Chelsea, says: "I know my body is trying to tell me something, and I'm trying to listen."

Maybe she's got the key. We just need to start listening to the body's rumblings long before it starts to scream.

Liz, if you're reading this, I'm holding you to it. A portion of the tournament budget, redirected to us. I'll book the appointments if you will.

And if your own body has been whispering (or worse, if it's already raised its voice), don't wait for the thing you can't ignore. Come see me. We'll start by listening.

Featured photo by ohlamour studio on Unsplash.