Karen - stiff feet, long term problems with her back
Karen came to me with feet problems and told me about her medical history. Ten years previously she had a back injury when, as a nurse, she had to lift a patient by herself to another bed (they were short staffed). As a result she suffered protruding discs. Apart from suffering many years of pain from this injury, she also became a single mum and took on the job of raising her kids solo for 15 years, as well as working two jobs with a bad back just to support the family. (She did get a pay out from her injuries and purchased a family home with the money and later lost the house in a messy divorce). Karen also studied part-time so that she could have a better career when the kids were older. She wanted to work with the disabled.
In a nutshell she was super-mum, always supporting herself and her family and dreaming of a day when someone else could help support her. She came to me to ask if I thought that her feet trouble might be related to her bad back. I said I didn’t know a lot about backs, but perhaps we could talk about her issues about ‘support’, as the spine is of course the major support system of our body. This then led her to tell me that she was now in a financially supporting relationship, but that she had a problem accepting this because she felt she had lost her sense of control of her life. She had been so used to supporting herself that she couldn’t accept another’s support, yet all along she yearned for extra support. Sounds confusing I know.
When talking about her stiff feet, I asked her if she felt she was moving forward in her life, and then she cried. She told me that she had given up the studies that she had previously worked so hard on because her partner told her that because they were financially secure, she didn’t need to study to get another job. So she stopped her studies.
At first she was relieved because she didn’t have to work as hard any more. But then Karen felt dissatisfied. She realised that she would have liked to have continued with her studies because it would have pleased her to do so. I asked her to consider continuing her studies just for her own sake and then, when her studies were completed, she could assess the situation and decide if she wanted to earn money from working with the disabled or even do voluntarily work. She had never considered that prospect and immediately smiled. She was so happy she jumped up in the air with excitement forgetting all about her sore back and stiff feet. Sure, her back still hurt a bit, but she said it didn’t matter because she was used to the back pain, but her feet felt great!