Your Body Is Always Talking

by Marita Roussey, Sr. CBI

BODY PARTS:

I Am My Skin I am very important: I protect, excrete, sweat, regulate temperature, and breathe. I can be sensual and sexual.

I can contact the world and let myself be touched by it. I show everything: “as above, so below”; and as inside, so outside. I can show “you” to the world but “you” cannot get out of your skin.

The sense of touch has to go through me. I let you know if the touch is a punch or a caress.

I blush when I’m embarrassed, I become pale when I’m in shock, I sweat when I’m panicking or excited, and I get goose bumps or my hairs stand on end when I need to be on the alert. I can be red, swollen, infected, too tight, too loose, or too dry. I can be a liver spot or even a boil.

I serve as protection. If I need to overprotect, I become an armor of skin. In psoriasis I get so thickly crusted that eventually the opposite of armoring occurs and I break open and bleed, becoming more exposed than ever before.

A child always goes through a major push, a breakthrough in a developmental phase, by developing measles, rubella, or scarlet fever.

A thick-skinned person is presumed insensitive. And yet I become callous (develop callous) only because I feel too vulnerable on the inside. It works both ways: nothing goes in, and nothing goes out.

You can communicate with the innate wisdom of the body merely by touching me.

A lie detector gets it incriminating information from me.

Think again about some skin phrases you have heard: “You are thick (or thin) skinned.” “You only want to save your skin.” “Beauty is only skin-deep.” If you believe that, you may cover up or hide behind “the face you put on” in the morning. “Don’t lose face.”

I Am My Nails My nails show my strength. Any cat knows how to show off its claws as well as its teeth. They are weapons. If you bite me off down to the flesh, you show fear and willingness to be defeated. If I am not there to fight for you, you indicate that you can’t fight and you can’t show your aggression. I am the extension of your hand that gets you what you need.

Just like your face and hands, I cannot be hidden. If I am long and red, I would like to make believe I am passionate about what I want and will get it at any cost. If I am shaped like a claw, I feel I need to hold onto everything and life is hard. If I am curved upward, I feel things slip out of my grasp.

I am only following orders from my boss, the liver. Being hard and yellow with vertical ridges shows I am rigid and set in my ways. If I am chipped and thin, my boss feels weak and deficient. Horizontal ridges show that nothing is moving smoothly and I suffer from malabsorption. Those white spots mean too much sugar.

If I am shaped square and big like my fingertip, I am down to earth and know how to give a helping hand. Tiny and cone-shaped on a long and thin finger suggests I prefer to be in my head rather than work the fields.

I Am My Tooth I am an extension of bone. I know how to bite my way through. Nothing escapes me once the jaw is clenched. For a wild animal, it is pure joy of life and survival to bite into and devour prey.

My boss is the kidneys, the storage of my genetic makeup. They determine how much willpower and strength for survival are provided throughout my life. They know when my first set of teeth will fall out and they already know the hardness and shape of the wisdom teeth to come. If my jaw is too small for the set of teeth to fit in, it is because in the course of evolution there was less need for fighting and killing my prey.

Lost control over your life? Afraid? Without me you’d feel weak and couldn’t bite and chew the food that keeps you alive. It takes “bite” to prevail. Without it I am impotent.

If I am healthy, but at risk of falling out because of gum disease, have a talk with my boss, the kidneys. Have you dreamed of all your teeth falling out? What did you feel powerless about?

Humans have a strange way of expressing joy—by showing their teeth. If a dog does this he may actually be threatening, as nature intended.

Showing aggression is not socially acceptable in our time and culture. Children are not permitted to play fighting in the playground. In psychotherapy you are allowed to talk, discuss, and cry, but the office is not set up for you to ever shout out your aggression or scream out bottled up hate. Yet you need to do just those things before you can feel the tears of relief and think clearly again. It is a collective phenomenon that our teeth are rotting as early as childhood. Are you grinding and clenching your teeth at night? Ah, perhaps you have some aggression you cannot show.

I Am My Bladder You feel psychological pressure when I am full. Have you ever noticed how I pressure you most when you are under stress—in an academic exam or on the freeway? It is so relieving and freeing when you can let go and I can empty. I am all about control. Once you are conscious of being a “me,” you have outgrown your diapers but your “me” loses confidence with the arrival of “Depends” (adult diapers). A good tickle or nonstop laughter, even a fearful dream, can give us the same embarrassment of “losing it.”” Losing control makes you feel powerless. Having to dilate the sphincter muscle of the bladder because it is too tight is only the other side of the same coin.

Bedwetting shifts the child’s powerlessness to the parents. It shows parents they cannot exert power over the child without paying the price of being subconsciously manipulated at night. It is another way of crying.

Letting go becomes very painful during urination when I am red, inflamed, or infected. I see red! I am pissed off and unforgiving. Honey, don’t you dare come anywhere near me! You might have forgiven him for the affair he had ten years ago, but I HAVE NOT! I remember rape as if it happened to me! I am the one who felt the fear and the breaking of my will. I want to decide whom to trust and to let in.

PATHOLOGIES:

I Am a Pimple I want to explode and break open—I want to jump out of my own skin!

During puberty, sexuality wants break through to the outside but gets pushed down anxiously. Longings for the “other” and for love are awakening, but rarely come to fruition. It is an exciting yet frightening time. People want to attract others, to be touched and feel close. This conflict between needs and reality shows in red, irritated, inflamed pimples—shamefully visible in the face, impossible to hide.

As it is fashionable for teenagers to do, hiding behind a lot of hair seems the thing to do, especially when they have pimples. It is more difficult to hide me when I am “right in your face”!

I Am an Itch Sometimes I am itching to do something, or being touchy. This can drive me crazy and into despair. I want to be scratched—until I bleed! Stimulate me! Break me open with lust or passion until you feel relieved! I am flammable, irascible, restless! It is what you don’t see that is putting you so impatiently on the edge. Perhaps you have a fiery enthusiasm about something? Your search should be as compelling as your urge to scratch.

Pruritus is the word to describe itchy skin. In Latin, prurire means not only itching, but lascivious, lustful, lecherous, lewd, wanton. Live fiercely.

I Am a Migraine Not tonight, Honey! Tonight I want to be alone in a dark, quiet room, in bed—alone! I am irritable and exhausted. I just don’t want to think. The one-sidedness of a migraine is reflected the one-sided thinking of the “victim.”

Before you get into a fistfight, people may say, “Go and blow off some steam”—preferably outside, or “stay cool” and “don’t be so pig-headed.” The brain’s boss, the liver, is cooking and letting off steam. Not a little bit at a time: no, the valve opens all at once. The pressure goes as high as physically possible, trying to squeeze out of the eyes. The excess inside can be balanced only with extreme lack of anything from the outside. Noise, light, movement, and even the slightest touch are only aggravating and add to the excess.

You know what? I am a life saver. You should thank me for not being inside your heart right now! You are in luck because steam, by nature, rises to the top. (Mind you, my boss can stir up a wind that can cause a seizure or blow into the fire of the heart).

So you need to be alone tonight? If you are boiling over and it is coming out of your orifices, where else can we find a way to shift and release excess energy? A migraine is an orgasm in your head. The mechanics are the same: blood is pooling into the sexual organs. Even migraine sufferers know about a distant feeling of well-being and peace once the excitation and buildup—anger, frustration, weather, foods, people—are replaced by tension release and vascular dilation.

Go play—get out of your head! Even concepts like “grasping” and “understanding” use “hands” and “feet” to bring balance to “thinking” and “action.”