Last week I massaged a Labradoodle's hips while visiting my friend. When I felt the muscles shift and relax the dog's pelvis he started bouncing up and down and licked my hands. I was telling a human client about this and she said "I am NOT licking your face when we are done".
Bumped into a client at the grocery and she said "Oh my goodness look at your freckles! I usually only see you in the dark so I never noticed."
Was doing intake questions with a client and asked if he thought his low back pain could be due to over-swinging when he played golf a few days prior. Grinning at me over his glasses he says, "Personally speaking, if I don't just about sh*t myself.....I think I am probably doing it wrong."
When a client and I were sharing funny stories we had heard that week, this one made me belly laugh. A lady at her gym was going into great detail about how bad her dog had been behaving of
late. She had been on a business trip and had hired someone to look after him for several days. Upon her return she was told that her pooch had eaten a pair of her underwear that he got out of the hamper and had to visit the vet. The vet asked if she wanted the panties back.
As I was massaging a 10 year old girl’s scalp, she said “I’m going to close my eyes but I’m not going to go to sleep.” She closed her eyes and started snoring immediately.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Monday, October 30, 2017
Quote of the Day
"The truth carries a weight that no lie can counterfeit." ~Black Jack Randall, Outlander Series
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
WWRDJD
I returned to the vet's office to pick up my cat, Oni from being spayed and this happened:
Vet Tech: "So Oni has stitches in her belly and you should try to limit her jumping so she doesn't accidentally open anything up. So if there are places that she likes to jump on, or perch, you should probably shut those areas off."
Me: (Thinks: Open concept floor plan. How do you shut that off? Envisions Oni flying across the living room in slow motion like the replay of your favorite GoT character dying in every conceivable direction and angle. Oral syringes? For Three days? Then I remembered the wise words of Robert Downey Jr. and smiled.)
Me: "Sure. Absolutely."
Vet Tech: "So Oni has stitches in her belly and you should try to limit her jumping so she doesn't accidentally open anything up. So if there are places that she likes to jump on, or perch, you should probably shut those areas off."
Me: (Thinks: Open concept floor plan. How do you shut that off? Envisions Oni flying across the living room in slow motion like the replay of your favorite GoT character dying in every conceivable direction and angle. Oral syringes? For Three days? Then I remembered the wise words of Robert Downey Jr. and smiled.)
Me: "Sure. Absolutely."
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Pains Me So
How is a skinned knee like an heated argument? I hope to answer this burning question.
By adulthood most of us have encountered enough skinned knees that we typically know how to successfully treat this wound with a certain degree of skills and knowledge. We know there will be an injury site and there will be varying degrees of pain and healing, and then in most cases the knee will be returned to its healthy status.
So what happens when I get a skinned up knee? Well, according to the pain cycle illustration above:
Ouch! Possibly a swear word. Pain. Gingerly standing up and gradually putting weight back on the injured side of your body. Guarding. The area around your knee begins to swell and ache. Over the next few hours your knee doesn't bend as much as it normally does. You mentally berate yourself for the poor choice in footwear.....
Most of the time this injury is very minor and very little wound care is needed, but at times you might be required to debride the injury site to help promote healing and keep out infections. This calls for re-opening the wound, peeling off some of the dead tissue, and putting antiseptic on it--which can be a bit ouchy too FYI. But all in all, it is assumed most folks will survive this injury without any significant scarring or irreparable damage.
But what if we do not treat that knee properly? Pain. Guarding, in this hypothetical case, amounts to a gait change to take weight off the injured knee. Swelling. Joint restriction....
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
If the wound is not properly cleaned and dressed we could potentially have infection and toxicity.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
Instead of overcoming this injury, the body is put into a pain cycle and cannot get healthy. It will spread to other parts of the body by means of compensation, referred pain, lack of mobility, depression, anger, vulnerability.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
.....Sensing a pattern?
So what happens when our pain is in the form of emotional trauma?
Ouch! Like the knee, our psyche (human mind, soul or spirit) also reacts to painful sensations. The knee will eventually scab over and the mind will compartmentalize the pain. (A great example of a mind body connection.) But let's explore emotional pain without a physical mechanism of injury. What if our pain was due to a disagreement? Are we as adequately equipped to handle this type of pain? And if we are, are we really willing to do what is necessary to heal properly?
In the second illustration we can see that PAIN is in the center of this emotional pain cycle. In my comparison, let's say our parties disagree and the exchange becomes heated. The initial reaction might be stressful and with that comes tense muscles. Hurt, frustration, regret, anger or fear could also play parts. From here the emotional pain might be ignored or buried in hopes of finding a peaceful resolution. We might mentally replay the disagreement many times to hopefully find clarity or understanding and as we mentally relive the moment, our bodies relive the tension and physical stress we felt during the actual encounter. Luckily most people are eventually able to look at things rationally and are able to find a mature way of resolving conflict without too much stress or pain.
But what happens when we are unable to handle emotional pain?
Let's revisit that skinned knee. Sometimes we can find a tolerable level of pain and stick a bandage on it and go. Then sometimes we see that damn scab and cannot help ourselves--WE MUST PICK THAT SCAB! We know that it will probably sting, but our OCD tendencies make it impossible to ignore that sore spot. Other days we might accidentally re-open the wound by barking our shinbone on the coffee table. All of these actions can bring back that dull ache and pain.
Emotional scars are quite similar. Some days we can look at our lives and understand how we got to this reality. Other days a song on the radio will send us to places we would rather not be thinking about. We become guarded. We vow to never open ourselves up to being vulnerable or hurt again. Soon we are really examining and re-examining our decisions and feeling the hurt again, the painful memories flow, the anger returns, sadness for our losses, stress becomes physical pain....
(See the FIRST pain cycle illustration above)
So what happens when I get a skinned up knee? Well, according to the pain cycle illustration above:
Ouch! Possibly a swear word. Pain. Gingerly standing up and gradually putting weight back on the injured side of your body. Guarding. The area around your knee begins to swell and ache. Over the next few hours your knee doesn't bend as much as it normally does. You mentally berate yourself for the poor choice in footwear.....
Most of the time this injury is very minor and very little wound care is needed, but at times you might be required to debride the injury site to help promote healing and keep out infections. This calls for re-opening the wound, peeling off some of the dead tissue, and putting antiseptic on it--which can be a bit ouchy too FYI. But all in all, it is assumed most folks will survive this injury without any significant scarring or irreparable damage.
But what if we do not treat that knee properly? Pain. Guarding, in this hypothetical case, amounts to a gait change to take weight off the injured knee. Swelling. Joint restriction....
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
If the wound is not properly cleaned and dressed we could potentially have infection and toxicity.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
Instead of overcoming this injury, the body is put into a pain cycle and cannot get healthy. It will spread to other parts of the body by means of compensation, referred pain, lack of mobility, depression, anger, vulnerability.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
.....Sensing a pattern?
So what happens when our pain is in the form of emotional trauma?
Ouch! Like the knee, our psyche (human mind, soul or spirit) also reacts to painful sensations. The knee will eventually scab over and the mind will compartmentalize the pain. (A great example of a mind body connection.) But let's explore emotional pain without a physical mechanism of injury. What if our pain was due to a disagreement? Are we as adequately equipped to handle this type of pain? And if we are, are we really willing to do what is necessary to heal properly?
In the second illustration we can see that PAIN is in the center of this emotional pain cycle. In my comparison, let's say our parties disagree and the exchange becomes heated. The initial reaction might be stressful and with that comes tense muscles. Hurt, frustration, regret, anger or fear could also play parts. From here the emotional pain might be ignored or buried in hopes of finding a peaceful resolution. We might mentally replay the disagreement many times to hopefully find clarity or understanding and as we mentally relive the moment, our bodies relive the tension and physical stress we felt during the actual encounter. Luckily most people are eventually able to look at things rationally and are able to find a mature way of resolving conflict without too much stress or pain.
But what happens when we are unable to handle emotional pain?
Let's revisit that skinned knee. Sometimes we can find a tolerable level of pain and stick a bandage on it and go. Then sometimes we see that damn scab and cannot help ourselves--WE MUST PICK THAT SCAB! We know that it will probably sting, but our OCD tendencies make it impossible to ignore that sore spot. Other days we might accidentally re-open the wound by barking our shinbone on the coffee table. All of these actions can bring back that dull ache and pain.
Emotional scars are quite similar. Some days we can look at our lives and understand how we got to this reality. Other days a song on the radio will send us to places we would rather not be thinking about. We become guarded. We vow to never open ourselves up to being vulnerable or hurt again. Soon we are really examining and re-examining our decisions and feeling the hurt again, the painful memories flow, the anger returns, sadness for our losses, stress becomes physical pain....
(See the FIRST pain cycle illustration above)
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Quote of the Day
Pause-ability: When you are able to stop, breathe, and see all the beautiful possibilities of the moment. ~ K. Blackwell
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Politics and Dating
I recently joined an online dating site and given that I am 53 years old, mostly content in my quiet, peaceful existence and have no desire to change my ways anytime soon, I stated that if you supported Trump then you should probably pass me by. Simple enough. But was it?
I started my account roughly two months ago and since then I have received unsolicited messages from SIX different men who felt the need to tell me how ignorant I was because I did not vote for Donald Trump. I did not try to insult them for their ideas about politics, so why did they feel it was okay for them to insult me for not supporting their candidate? The best guess I have is that by rejecting Trump I somehow ultimately rejected them as well. I can usually ignore idiots on the internet and did with most of the ugly six, but two had to take their insults to a different level and I decided to show them a wee bit of my wicked side too.
Now, with that said, I will also tell you that I was not a huge Clinton fan either. But when I am presented with a highly qualified person and a TV personality with zero qualifications....I vote for the lesser of two evils. Trump has been a blowhard, morally bankrupt, womanizer with very questionable business ethics for years. His Twitter fixation, rudeness, constant river of lies...so many things... I just cannot listen to people making excuses for his actions anymore. By getting Trump out of the way in advance, I hoped to eliminate a potential obstacle from any connections or relationship possibilities. So not simple enough.
Then came the men who wanted to know if I would really let politics stand in the way of finding true love. I added the emphasis on "really" as that was how I heard it....hard to know in written form if that was how they meant it or not.... But still, as polite as these fellows were, they were ultimately implying or occasionally outright stating that I was not smart about my political views, and subsequently my love-life was eternally damned. My answer to them was always polite but with the same sentiment: When I was asked to describe what I was looking for in a man, I asked for qualities that I envisioned my ideal man would possess and I know that my ideal man could never support Trump. Most of these messages were polite exchanges.
So this brings me to today. I received a message from a nice fellow from the latter group of men. He told me about how his sister voted for Clinton and her husband voted for Trump, politics did not have to come between folks....yadda yadda....abortion bad, guns good, thinks flag burning should be against the law and such. These millennials.....first time he can ever remember people not dating because they disagree on politics. So today I had to go really simple.
I started my account roughly two months ago and since then I have received unsolicited messages from SIX different men who felt the need to tell me how ignorant I was because I did not vote for Donald Trump. I did not try to insult them for their ideas about politics, so why did they feel it was okay for them to insult me for not supporting their candidate? The best guess I have is that by rejecting Trump I somehow ultimately rejected them as well. I can usually ignore idiots on the internet and did with most of the ugly six, but two had to take their insults to a different level and I decided to show them a wee bit of my wicked side too.
Now, with that said, I will also tell you that I was not a huge Clinton fan either. But when I am presented with a highly qualified person and a TV personality with zero qualifications....I vote for the lesser of two evils. Trump has been a blowhard, morally bankrupt, womanizer with very questionable business ethics for years. His Twitter fixation, rudeness, constant river of lies...so many things... I just cannot listen to people making excuses for his actions anymore. By getting Trump out of the way in advance, I hoped to eliminate a potential obstacle from any connections or relationship possibilities. So not simple enough.
Then came the men who wanted to know if I would really let politics stand in the way of finding true love. I added the emphasis on "really" as that was how I heard it....hard to know in written form if that was how they meant it or not.... But still, as polite as these fellows were, they were ultimately implying or occasionally outright stating that I was not smart about my political views, and subsequently my love-life was eternally damned. My answer to them was always polite but with the same sentiment: When I was asked to describe what I was looking for in a man, I asked for qualities that I envisioned my ideal man would possess and I know that my ideal man could never support Trump. Most of these messages were polite exchanges.
So this brings me to today. I received a message from a nice fellow from the latter group of men. He told me about how his sister voted for Clinton and her husband voted for Trump, politics did not have to come between folks....yadda yadda....abortion bad, guns good, thinks flag burning should be against the law and such. These millennials.....first time he can ever remember people not dating because they disagree on politics. So today I had to go really simple.
Oddly enough, about a month ago I saw a piece on political affiliations and online dating sites. Polled three different dating sites and found that many people have actually decided that they didn't want to date across party lines. The reason I said what I did about Trump is because I find him a disgusting human being and a certain element that supports him are equally disgusting.....six men have sent me messages insulting me because of my Trump comment. I am not a straight party voter, but here is what I believe in: less government, abortion is a woman's choice, marijuana should be legal, churches should pay taxes, healthcare should be reformed, and racists are pigs. And people who believe "America is the greatest country in the world" have never traveled to other countries. But millennials are too concerned with kneeling NFL players......Best of luck in your search!
Monday, August 7, 2017
From my Backyard....
A friend told me that these odd lilies are called Magic Lilies. I had called them Disappearing Lilies, which is cool enough in itself, but MAGIC lilies sounds even more awesome. So please enjoy my Magic Lilies.
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