A bit long as the first, future ones will be much shorter! Working with people in a rehabilitative setting is a privilege that presents an interesting dance between being open in empathy and not becoming lost in their story. I sure wish it was simple…a big open heart and boundless energy and passion all of the time, every encounter. But it isn’t. Instead I notice even within a single visit the shifting from deep, heart-centered connection to a insulated, distracted, “How much longer?”. Early in my career I would just bull through the experience and “get it done”, but then often found myself later in conflict feeling guilty and callous for not having been “on” the entire session(s). Over time I have come to be more compassionate and now use the awareness, either in real time or reflection, as experience to ask deeper questions of myself around meaning, purpose and self-discovery. A much more “evolved” approach that surely deserved commendation. Until this week….

On this past Tuesday, October 6th I had the honor and privilege to present an in-service at the US Army’s Burn & Amputee Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, TX. I was eager to share my expertise in mind~body science with my peers. It was a homecoming in effect, as I was Army trained and specialized in burn care in my 8 yrs of active duty in the ‘80’s. What I wasn’t ready for was my own visceral response to the setting. It began as I drove onto post through the gate amidst all the new construction. A heaviness and a tingling of “this isn’t right” washed over me. Mind you the not-rightness wasn’t the heroic work of the troops rehabilitating, or those providing service to the troops, but a much more global awareness of “how could you be so busy as not to have done more to prevent this from happening or from continuing now?”. Not in some simplistic “scoot and run” from the complexities of our shrinking world, but a huge veil of the tragedy descended of how my loss of consciousness in the flurry of daily urgencies distracts from a bigger healing that has to happen.

I’ll post more about this experience, but will end this first post with a snippet of the experience. It is my contention that we in rehabilitation show up at each encounter with the same potential to heal ourselves as our client…if we are present and compassionate in our own self-awareness. When we aren’t aware or are “comfortably numb” (credits to Pink Floyd) that opportunity is lost. In no disrespect to my colleagues at the Center for the Intrepid, early in the presentation I asked them to pause and be aware of their breath…the size, location and rate. I then asked them to move out their collapsed, slumped posture to a more neutral alignment. This group was more slumped and collapsed than I have observed elsewhere. I then asked them to notice the difference in their breath. Only two people sensed any change in the entire group. My initial response was “oh-oh, it didn’t work!”…but I could see them breathing differently and more fully, I wasn’t imagining it! I now understand that was a collective response to the nightmarish work they show up to do each day for those who deserve so much. Surely I would have to change my sensibilities if this were my daily work? That trip threw me off balance and now eats at me for re-commitment to my mission to not only improve care for clients, but how important it is we must step up and care for ourselves each and every day. “Comfortably numb” only allows these tragedies to happen again and again in both big and small ways.

Check out this link for more about the research I've led in MN to address this matter.

Have you ever had to numb up to get through?