Join Nathan and Brian as we continue our conversation from where we left off last week. Learn what happens when Nathan does not heed the road signs, which may have been trying to tell him something...

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No Way! That's What Is Going On?

Listen to our conversation here:

Brian: All right. So we left last week we ended with…

Nathan: Yeah, we ended on: next week, we'll talk about what was on the other side of that intersection.

Brian: right.

Nathan: And we were talking about how I've been ignoring the pain for years and then it really came to a head and I was ready to stop ignoring it

Brian: Okay. So you ready to do something about it now?

Nathan: Ready to do something. Exactly.

Brian: So you are ready to do something about it Nathan, how did you know what you wanted to do about it, how did you know how you wanted to approach it? 

Nathan: That's a great question. I think in hindsight having been in your sphere for long enough I was aware that the results that I was getting in my life were a consequence of the beliefs that I was holding. I don't think I could have articulated that at the moment but I remember the feeling of being on your table and talking about what's at the core of this and that I'm ready to get to the root of whatever this is. 

I knew that I was not a powerlifter and that I did not have an acute injury that was the direct cause of the symptoms that I was experiencing.

I was aware that looking inward was a place to start, to get to the root cause of the symptoms and experience.

Brian: So it sounds like the big awareness was that you needed to look inward.

Nathan: Yeah. Totally.

Brian: Okay, so when we were working together I remember pretty vividly doing some deep tissue and trigger point work and probing through some of the areas that were really activated in the body. There was a lot of muscle spasm and those types of things going on and as we're working through this area I asked you a couple of important questions.

And one of them was where do you feel something?

And what does it feel like?

Nathan: Yeah…

Brian: And then I asked you if you had felt that before?

Nathan: Oh, interesting. Do I remember this specifically? It’s a good question.

Brian: You don't have to remember specifically but that series of questions I think is really critical in helping people understand what's happening on the inside, and they know that there's something internally they need to look at. Where do you feel it? What does it feel like? Have you felt it before? And then there's that other key part: what are you making it mean?

Nathan: Do you remember my answers?

Brian: yeah. I would say “have you felt this before?” and you would say “oh yeah I felt this before.” And I might have asked you another question around that. I might have said when was the earliest time?

Nathan: Yeah, I remember that question.

Brian: And you just kind of went quiet. And now I said, what are you making it mean? What you came up with was, conflict is not okay.

Or there was something around that and it might not have been really as clearly articulated as when your brother and Racey were talking in the kitchen. But something got started in one of those sessions around conflict.

Can you tell me about what you remember of the story?

Nathan: So the story begins on, you know, kind of a random Tuesday afternoon. It's summertime. I've been in bed for weeks now. One of the exercises that Brian and I have been working on is kind of the first half of those questions: where do you feel it and what does it feel like? In hindsight, it's a body in meditation. But at the time, it was a new experience for me to pay attention to what I was experiencing in my body. And through this exercise, I often found moments, even prolonged periods of pain relief.

So it's an afternoon. I've been doing this exercise for a while. I'm lying in bed and one of the questions that you have been posing to me is: when you find these moments where the pain is less or completely gone, when the pain starts to come back, what do you notice? So I'm lying there in bed, pain free, enjoying the smell of summer grass and the noises outside.

Then I hear Racey, my wife, come in the door downstairs and I hear my brother Dakin who has been living in our basement during our second covid summer and he's been stepping up in a huge way since I’ve been in bed for a few weeks now. He's been cooking meals, hanging out with the kids. And so this is kind of a meeting of the parents, so to speak.

I hear them start to have a conversation about dinner. Dinner is especially important to us at this stage in our life as parents. Kids often come home hungry and it can be a stressful time in the afternoon to get dinner on the table with hungry kids at your knees. So already the whole situation has me a little on edge.

So they're starting to have this conversation and I learn that it's Dakin’s night to have dinner prepared and Racey just wants to check in. She notices that there is pasta sauce on the stove and pasta water ready to boil, but dinner is not complete. Dakin explains that he has prepared most of dinner but needs to run back downstairs for maybe a meeting or something. 

All the while I'm upstairs. It's quiet. These are two responsible, kind, loving adults having a conversation. And with each little rise in emotion and what I perceived as conflict, boom! I get this shot of nerve pain down my right leg, which was the primary symptom that I was experiencing. And I just had this question from Brian of, what do you make it mean? And it all kind of came crashing into my head.

That conflict is not okay. I'm listening to these people and my body's reacting. It's not that I'm thinking, and it's not that I consciously have anything against conflict. There is a deep body reaction I need to protect against this conflict because it's dangerous. 

Brian: Amazing, so we're doing some work together. And there are these four key questions that we were working with. And conflict is not okay.

Nathan: Yeah, interesting. For all of the specific memories I have during that time, I remember the questions. I don't remember my answers. It was probably the first time I was really crunching in that space and chewing on those questions.

It's interesting how it is all blurry for me.

Brian: Yeah. Where do you feel it? What does it feel like? Have you felt that before? What are you making it mean? And that got some type of process percolating…all right. So you knew that it was time to look inside.

You knew that it was the time to look inside. You knew you were not doing powerlifting. You were not overusing your body. You had not injured yourself on the farm, it just really blew up. It sort of happened over night right? Was it the night your grandmother passed away?

Nathan: It is even more interesting than that. My brother and I went to visit her because she decided to stop eating and drinking.

And what is fascinating is that it is her lineage that all this stuff comes from. My grandmother’s father’s first wife had a child who died in childbirth. And her father cried when the baby died and his wife was so upset after the death of the child, she killed herself. Her father blamed her death on himself, as if had he controlled himself she would not have died.

Brian: Whoa.

Nathan: And so in that house, growing up, you did not express emotion, right? It was literally dangerous to express emotion, to have conflict.

Brian: So fascinating that it was visiting your grandmother whom that lineage comes and this sort of breakthrough came that night.

Nathan: Right? We said goodbye. She said, you know, I'm going to stop eating and drinking. She was totally with it, but was ready to die and it was that night something happened and I woke up the next morning and couldn't walk.

Brian: So when, when I was asking these questions

What does it feel like?

What are you making it mean? 

All the pieces started coming together. You had a realization that it started the night after your grandmother decided to stop eating and drinking. All the pieces come together and it crescendos at the realization in the kitchen of conflict is not okay.

Nathan: And it's almost like conflict is not okay and in conflict is this expression of emotion and that's dangerous. 

Brian: Yeah, conflict is not okay and emotional expression is dangerous.

We go through this process where you're like, No way! That's what is going on?

Nathan: Right? No way. The holy shit. That's what is going?