The Safe Enough Podcast
Ep 22 - ALWAYS Right About Your Experience
Welcome to the Safe Enough Podcast! This podcast is an exploration of what it means to feel safe enough in order to live the kind of life, or make the kind of changes that transform our lives, into those with all the love, connection, belonging and purpose that we seek and strive for. My name is MacPherson Worobec, Executive Director of the It Begins To Move studio, where we support your safe and gentle embodied healing. I am a safety and self-worth recovery partner, and I’m so happy that you’re here.
This is the final of three episodes in a series on how working with professional providers during a healing is a tricky thing. In the first part of this series I talked about the pitfalls of expertise and evaluation. In the second part, episode 21, I talked about the impact an inaccurate evaluation can have. And in this final part in this series, I’ll talk about the critical ingredient in a successful healing partnership. That magic, beautiful and powerful kind of connection that just allows inner wisdom and new options to pour forth! Let’s get to it.
How could I, as a provider, as a professional, as an expert, EVER know BETTER about YOUR situation, your experience, your thoughts and feelings, and all the other complex and unique elements of your history, all combining together in a unique way, how could I ever know better about that than you do? Unique actually means none other like it. Your experience is unique.  What works for someone else with…shoulder pain for example - even the same kind of pain and with the same mechanism of injury - what works for them MIGHT NOT work for you. It might work. But it might not. And I’m really more interested in the times that it doesn’t. And the reason I’m interested in the times that some standard solution doesn’t work for you, is because it begs the question…well, what next? And if the expert you’re working with says, this SHOULD work, the thing that doesn’t work for you, or this WILL work, again, the thing that doesn’t work for you, then what are you left with? and where was the breakdown? When two things totally align, they work together. When a key matches the lock, the lock opens. When a physical therapist, who’s an expert on body movement, tells you to do external shoulder rotator strengtheners and then your pain will go away, but then your pain doesn’t, what does this mean? Does this mean that your physical therapist is bad at their job? That they’re not a body movement expert? Does it mean that they got the diagnosis wrong and it’s not a problem with your shoulder rotator cuff, or the external rotators? Does it mean that you’re a failure? Or that you’re not doing the exercises correctly? Does it mean that something’s just wrong with the way your body moves and functions? …A lot of time and money are often spent trying to answer these questions, when a client doesn’t get intended results. Usually the intended results are something like relief and better quality of life. Integration and ease of moving about the world.  Sometimes the answer is easy. But sometimes the answer isn’t. What if there’s something about the exercise your physical therapist assigns you to do, that actually triggers a feeling of unsafety within you. Unless your physical therapist takes the time to ask you, and to really listen to your answer, they might never know. Heck, YOU might never know, unless you had the right kind of compassionate and friendly company, in which to really explore how that movement felt in your body. Again, expert assessment does not need to be abolished. Experts do in fact, by definition, have much more experience or specialty knowledge about a particular topic than most other folks do. And that expertise is so helpful! But, only when it's treated as just as credible as your own experience within your own body. YOU are the expert on you. Let me say this another way. YOU are the expert on YOUR EXPERIENCE. There’s no one else that knows BETTER about what it’s like to be you, and move about the world like you. Therefore professional providers can be consultants on trends, tendencies, how things typically work, and what they see or find when they evaluate you. They can even make prognostic suggestions, or suggestions about what solutions will LIKELY work. But! they don’t know any better about you, then you do. It is not helpful, in fact it is harmful when they insist they know better about you than you do, such that you can’t push back. Like I said in episodes twenty and twenty-one, the nature of expertise makes it so that power dynamics are imbalanced when one person insists they know better or know more than someone else who doesn’t have their training and specialized knowledge. It’s easy to say, oh You Must Be Right, to the provider, unless there’s a critical element in the professional relationship. So if a psychotherapist or a family doctor or a coach said that to improve depression you needed to drag yourself out of bed and go do something to distract yourself or interrupt the depressive process, but! you still weren’t able to, or you did that but didn’t feel any differently, what does this mean? Does it mean that they’re right and that you’re wrong? No! It just might mean that there’s something about your experience that has yet to be discovered. Listened to. Acknowledged. Some inner wisdom that has a message about what you actually need, what’s actually right for you, that hasn’t been heard yet. There is ALWAYS a movement forward, a movement towards good stuff like safety, connection and happiness. But sometimes it’s not so obvious. And sometimes, dare I say never, an external expert, expert at knowing what brings YOU more life. More happiness. More ease. And this idea can be both relieving, and also a bit uncomfortable to think about. Firstly, it can be really helpful to know that if solutions you’ve tried haven’t yet worked, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. And most importantly, it doesn’t mean that you’re destined to feel terrible and struggle forever. The solution that’s best for you simply hasn’t been found yet. Oh, that can be so relieving! Also, it likely means that YOUR experience doesn’t fit into a limited mold that represents many other folks’ experience. And that sort of matches with the uncomfortable part of this concept about not finding the right solution for you yet. The other side of this coin about being unique means that there’s no one else that KNOWS the exact code of what’s best for you other than you. Honestly, that can feel scary - like oh shoot, if no one else knows what to do, and I don’t know what to do, then HOW could the solution ever actually be found? I’ve been there, and I really appreciate how lonely and uncomfortable that can be. But here’s the thing…there is a way to find the just right solution for you. The absolute, most aligned, bespoke, unique, perfectly fitting thing for no one other than YOU…it’s totally findable. YOU…Must Be Right…about YOU! A physical therapist might be right about shoulder anatomy and the way shoulders move, but YOU are the expert on what kind of movement feels okay in your own shoulder. A psychotherapist, family doctor or coach might be right that data suggests forcing yourself to get out of bed and distract yourself can help relieve depression-for some folks-but YOU are the expert on whether that feels okay for you or whether it doesn’t. Your experience of life, of your body, of your environment, of your relationships, your experience is always right about your experience. I know it sounds kind of funny when I say it that way, like I’m repeating myself. Your experience is always right about your experience.  And when you’re connected with that wisdom within yourself, AND you have a professional “expert” who brings specialized info and knowledge, makes suggestions, but is comfortable when you assert those solutions don’t fit you quite right, affirms your experience, and continues to be both engaged and curious in your process of healing - Oh my word! It’s like magic comes from that partnership! That’s what I’ll be talking about in next month’s series. I’ll be talking about the best, safest and gentlest process for connecting with your inner wisdom, and finding that just right solution, that I’ve ever come across, and how you can experience it firsthand. Stay tuned. I’ll see you in the next episode. Take care, kind soul.
