The Key to My Own Castle

I had been going to doctors about my back since I was eighteen.

Eventually one of them told me it was in my head. That baffled me. Another said it was emotional. Well, what good is that, I remember thinking. What am I supposed to do with that?

So I did what a lot of people do. I carried on. I survived in it. And it got worse, until I could only work part time, and by then I had developed chronic fatigue on top of everything else, along with a collection of other health problems.

The point where enough was enough

There was a moment, and I remember it clearly, where I thought: I have had enough. Enough of the pain, enough of the exhaustion, enough of being ill. I want to be rid of it.

That desire is what led me to Reiki and Bach Flower Essences. Not research. Not a recommendation. Just being so thoroughly done that I was prepared to try something I did not understand.

The realisation that undid me

Somewhere along the way I understood something that defied everything I thought I knew.

I was holding on.

Constantly remembering what had been done to me. How unfair it was. Why it had made me who I was. I could justify it until the cows came home, and honestly, I was happy holding onto it, for want of a better word. I could complain and people would sympathise. They would confirm I was right to feel that way. So I held on longer.

Bad things happening to me was almost useful. People understood me better for having suffered them.

I could not believe this about myself at first. It took a long time of sitting with it before I could admit it was true.

The castle

What I eventually saw was this. Every rule I had made to protect myself from something terrible happening again, I was still living by. Rules built at a time when I needed them, for events long finished, still running my life decades later.

I had built so many of them that I was living inside my own locked castle.

And the rules were no longer protecting me from anything. They were the thing keeping me from living. "Because of this, I can't do that." "Because of this, I won't do that." Over and over, until there was very little left I would do.

Then came the part I did not expect. I realised I had the key. It had been in my pocket the whole time. All I had needed was a different angle to see it from, and the understanding that nobody else could turn it for me.

Rock Water and the period dramas

Here is a small, slightly silly example of how this work actually surfaces things.

I used to idolise the past. Period dramas, the way things used to be, that whole romantic idea that I had been born into the wrong era.

When I took Rock Water as my remedy, I saw what I was really doing. There was nothing to idealise. The way we live now is better in every practical sense: clean water from a tap, a flushing toilet, heating, being able to cook. I had constructed a version of a past I never lived through, to make sense of a world I found difficult, and to protect me from it.

And those rigid ideals were part of what was keeping me physically rigid. Stiff back. Stiff shoulders. Literally rigid.

That is what Bach Flowers do, in my experience. Not a treatment for a symptom. A mirror.

The grieving

I should be honest about this part, because nobody warned me.

When you finally see the pain you trapped yourself in, and how long you were in it, you may cry. I did. Not from relief at first, but from grief. Grief for the person I might have been if I had learnt to let it go sooner. If I had not held onto regret, or bitterness, or resentment. If I had not spent years comparing myself to other people and finding myself lacking. If I had understood forgiveness earlier.

I grieved for not waking up sooner.

By holding onto all that anger, the only person I was hurting was me. I had been strong, resilient, always the smiley one. And underneath it I was lonely and sad and living in a permanently negative mind.

Where I am now

I am lighter. I mean that physically as well as emotionally.

My memories are still there. I recall them. They happened. But they are neutral now. I am not triggered by them, not thrown back into events I lived through years ago. And the physical pain that had been with me since I was eighteen has, for the most part, gone.

I am no longer carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, which turns out to have been a very literal description of where I was carrying it.

Why I do this now

Having lived it, I could not not share it. I trained, I qualified, and I now work with people who are where I was.

I want to be careful here. I am not promising you my outcome. I cannot, and anyone who does should worry you. What I do is complementary, it sits alongside medical care rather than replacing it, and every person's journey is genuinely different.

But if you are lying awake wondering whether the thing you are carrying is doing you more harm than good, I have been exactly there.

You may have the key too.

This content is intended for educational and supportive purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Individuals with diagnosed medical conditions should consult a healthcare professional before taking supplements or making significant dietary or lifestyle changes. The support I offer is not intended as a promise of cure or specific outcome nor is it intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease or illness. Each person's healing journey is unique, and results may vary. Healing You sessions offer complementary support and are not a replacement for medical care.