Sometimes the pain that we feel is not the source of the pain that's in our lives. And let me, let me explain, let me explain this. There are times, I know for me, that you look at one thing and say, if this could go away, then I would feel okay.
Do you feel that way as a caregiver? I know that the lesson was for me driven home when I went to the podiatrist. You ever been to the podiatrist? I went to the podiatrist a while back because I have a foot dysfunction and I was having a very significant pain on the left side of my foot.
Okay. And, and, and particularly when I wore certain types of shoes, and it would feel like there was just a, like a, a pin sticking in on the left side of my left foot. And it was right there, you know, kind of below the middle toe, I mean the, the little toe, which the little toe serves no other purpose other than to let you know where the furniture is in your home at night. That's the only purpose of the little toe.
But in my case, I had it right below it and it was it was very uncomfortable. And it, it was it was a situation where I was trying to make all kinds of accommodation for it, for shoes, whatever, putting something on it, whatever. And finally, I just broke down and went and saw a buddy of mine who's a podiatrist. And I said, what is going on with this and what's happening with this? And he said, well, you have a bunion. And I said, well, yeah, but that's on the other side of my foot. And, and I said, that's not where the pain is. And, and he said, the pain is being caused because the bunion is throwing off your gait and it's putting pressure. You have a deformity in your foot that is causing pressure in another area. And it's, and it's creating a pinch. He said, I'm going to put pressure on it. He said, I bet your left knee hurts too, doesn't it?
And I thought, well, yes, as a matter of fact, it does. He said, your entire walking gait is being thrown off by this deformity over here on this side of your foot, but you're feeling the pain on the other side of your foot. And then it's throwing off your walking gait and making your knee hurt. So you're feeling pain in two different places, but that's not the source of your problem. And I thought, you know, and I, I just wanted to sit on that for a little while and think about that because I realized that as caregivers, sometimes we are looking to certain things as being the source of our problems, but they're really not. There's a deformity somewhere else that is creating a pinch in other places of our lives. We have a loved one who may be acting out in a way that we don't particularly like. And we think if they could stop that behavior, then we would not feel the pain that we would feel okay.
But that's not really the way it works, is it? Because if we are considering ourselves okay, based on someone else's behavior, who's really got the problem. And as my podiatrist buddy explained to me, I have a deformity in my foot. Now that deformity in my foot didn't really hurt that much, but it was throwing off everything else. And as caregivers, I would suggest to you that maybe we have some kind of deformity, some type of defect, some types of character defect in our own lives that throws off everything and the least little bit of pressure will cause pain and issues to erupt that will, we think that that's the problem and we'll make all kinds of allowances for the pain. We'll take medication for it.
We'll want to treat that place where it hurts and all that kind of stuff. But in reality, we got to deal with the deformity, the character defect, the issue over on the other side that's creating this ripple effect through our lives. And this is what happens to us as caregivers. And you spend enough time doing it and you'll see it. You've heard me say often on the show, there is nothing like taking care of somebody with severe disabilities for a couple of decades to expose the gunk that's in your soul, or in this case, my soul. And this is my journey. This is why I do this show. This is why I write books. This is why I speak on this, because I understand now after 34 years of this, a little clearer picture of what's really going on. And I've heard too many callers, too many people say, if I could just get mom to do this, or if I could just get my dad to do this, or if I can get my siblings to help me with this, or if this doctor would just do this, then I can be... If I could just relieve that pressure on that spot, then I won't hurt as much and I'll be okay. In reality, there's something going on in our hearts that's causing all types of alignment issues with the rest of our lives. You tracking with me?
Is that too... Am I too way out in the hinterlands? Because that's, I believe, the battle for us as caregivers, that we can learn to be at peace no matter what is going on. We can learn to be... To learn how to be calmer in the midst of whatever is going on. And if we're not doing that, why not?
Why not? And I used to think this way, if I could just, if we could just do this... And I learned a lot of this from Gracie, because as the number of surgeries that she endured soared past 80, then... And she used to think, okay, if I just get through this surgery, this will fix what happened to me. But in reality, she slammed into a concrete abutment in 1983. Some things don't get fixed. And she came to a place where she was at peace saying, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not going to go down this path anymore. I'm going to learn to live life here and accept this reality that I'm in and not fight against it with more and more surgeries that are constantly chipping away at my body and causing all levels of dysfunction. Now that's a physical manifestation of what I believe is going on with us on a heart level.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-23 09:49:38 / 2024-01-23 09:52:34 / 3
