There are times when we feel that we don't fit in. Sometimes we may wonder if there is anyone out there who would understand us. It seems as though our point of view is so different from the rest of the world's. Being ourselves does not seem to be possible. Who would like us?
The only option appears to be to change who we are so that we can be loved. We think that being ourselves would result in a loss of love. See we devote out energy into being what we think others want us to be. We pretend to be people we are not. We don't share our true feelings. We don't contribute our uniqueness to the world.
Some of us have been doing this our whole lives. In fact, we may have been acting this role for so long that we may even believe that we are the person that we are pretending to be. We may be totally oblivious to the amount of energy we use to keep up this facade. We may think it is normal to always be stressed about what others think of us.
When we are always pretending to be someone other than our true selves, we are living in fear that we will be found out. There is always the danger that someone will blow our cover. This constant stress is our baseline, and everyday stress only adds to this, creating a lot of tension.
The constant struggle of being pulled in two directions takes a toll on us physically. Our heart says one thing and our mind tells us another. We show up to people as one person but we are really someone completely different. This internal tug of war pulls your head and neck one way and your body the other. The battle between who you are and who you are being actually makes you lopsided.
This may cause pain and discomfort in the neck or low back. A large part of the tension shows up in the lower mid back region where the forces really oppose each other. We literally end up torn between being ourselves and being what we think others want.
In Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), we refer to this distortion as Phase 5 (C2/Apex) because the tension on the spinal cord appears at the second vertebrae in the neck and at the apex of the sacrum in the pelvis. The neck can distort one way and the pelvis the other or both can pull to the same side. Either way, a lot of tension is found throughout the whole spinal cord.
An entrainment, a typical session in NSA, uses light touch in the areas of critical tension on the spinal cord, to make you notice how much force you are putting on your body by acting this way. When your brain observes the unnecessary tension and how much energy it can free up by releasing it, it instructs your body to do so. This creates a huge reduction in tension, and often a lot of relief.
However, the release of the tension also makes us conscious of the internal struggle. This often causes a realization of how hard it is to constantly be "acting." We will either have to re-distort to numb ourselves to the conflict or address the internal discord.
Whatever we may think, it is always easier and infinitely more enjoyable to be our true selves than to be a fraud. And it becomes more and more difficult to fool ourselves once we know what we have been doing.
We need to tell ourselves that, “Who we are, with our unique point of view, is exactly what the world needs now.” For a little extra support in this, just listen to Billy Joel sing "Just the Way You Are."
