How Our Symptoms/Signals Inform Us

Do you realize that you are always getting a combination of signals, physical, emotional, and thought qualities, that point to important information.

Here is an example.

When I worked in locked psychiatric settings and crisis centers, I learned that my body gives me very clear signals when I am dealing with manipulative people. Teenagers were my greatest teachers.

I would get a twist in my stomach, I would experience confusion, and I would get mad. Once I discovered I was talking to myself it was easy to know how to handle it. There was nothing wrong about the signals, they were very helpful in identifying what was going on. Then it was easy to make healthy choices and the signals would neutralize. The anger would go away because I was no longer buying into the manipulation. The confusion would go away because I trusted my signals and could step out of the dynamic. The twist in my gut went away because I was clear within myself and making healthy choices.

Now it is important to understand that my signals will very likely be very different than yours in dealing with a manipulative person. You must learn what happens for you in different circumstances and then trust yourself to give yourself accurate information.

There is no cookie cutter information on this. It is different for everyone. You must learn what your signals mean over time. Very often you learn in hindsight, which you can apply to future circumstances.

Being curious about what your sensations are communicating with you, opens up a whole new self-empowerment and trust in yourself.

This is an ongoing process that you will learn from for years to come. That is if you keep noticing and being curious and observing the patterns that begin to reveal themselves in different circumstance over time.

How did I discover this? In my first body-centered psychotherapy training we were taught to not listen to what people were saying. Instead to notice what was going on physically, emotionally, cognitively, energetically and in the big picture of what they were experiencing. We had to learn to track their physical, emotional, cognitive, energetic and big picture experience, and at the same time notice our own physical, emotional, cognitive, energetic and big picture experience.

You see when you listen to the content you are up in your head and don’t notice the wealth of information that is happening beyond thinking. Your prefrontal cortex is the result of ongoing conditioning and will often talk you out of what you know to be true. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it is your thought. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it is true.

Rather than symptoms being a problem to suppress, they are a signal for you to pay attention and discover what your innate truth is telling you. Or, pointing to. What if your physical and emotional signals and thought qualities are giving you really important information?

Learning how all your signals inform you of what works for you and what does not is a game changer.

It can take some time to learn your own innate language. Mostly because people are so conditioned to be unaware, unconscious. We are conditioned to ignore symptoms, make them bad and wrong. We are conditioned to medicate them, shut them up so we can just get on with things. It is not until the 2x4 comes out and hits you back side of the head that you may pay attention (high blood pressure, cancer, panic attacks, etc). You would have had much easier symptoms/signals prompting you to health way before things got that bad.

It takes checking in periodically during the day just to see if you are aware of you talking to you or not. And, when you start checking in you may not be aware of what your signals are telling you. Since you probably lost touch with your authentic truth a long time ago. Patterns and themes become more apparent over time

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