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Chiropractic Care in Keller
It's Okay to Not Be Okay
We all saw the towers come down 23 years ago.
We heard the phone calls from the doomed souls on the planes saying, “Baby, I love you” for the last time.
We all felt our hearts stop and felt our stomachs drop.
Everything you feel, every emotion, is felt through the mind and in the body. Specific feelings can be found in specific places in the body.
Today I want to talk to you about how grief affects on the body, and what you can do to help yourself through grief or help someone else who’s going through a time of loss. It could be the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of a child, or any other form of grief.
The most important point I want to make is that it’s okay to not be okay.
That’s a weird thing to hear in today’s “get it now” and “don’t worry, be happy” kind of culture. But, if you want to heal as best as you can, it is crucial to understand and admit that something bad happened to you and that you’re going to feel it for a while and then you’ll be able to move on.
Hiding from it is really unhelpful, with certain exceptions.
The second thing I’d want to share with you is that community is key. You need people around you to help you process. My experience has shown me that processing for guys and gals is different: Girls usually need to talk. Guys usually need to do something side-by-side with other guys, sometimes talking it out, sometimes just in silence.
Find the community at church, in family, or other trusted sources, but make sure you get out there and connect, even if you don’t particularly feel like it.
If you find that the grief is overpowering your ability to do activities of daily living, like dressing yourself, fixing food, or doing basic things that you know you need to be doing, then I’d suggest you need professional help.
If you live in or around Keller, TX, I’d recommend Jason Adams and Satin Pelfrey to you. ( satinpelfrey.com and jasonadamsonline.com ) They’re trusted friends I would go to if I was dealing with a major grief event.
The third thing I’d encourage you to do, especially if you’re caring for a grieving person, is to simplify their life by making specific offers.
I believe the fastest way to make someone feel very alone when they’re grieving is to say “Call me if you need anything”.
It sounds nice, but it’s actually a terrible thing to say.
You don’t truly mean “anything” and the grieving person knows this. They don’t want to intrude or be too much of a burden on you and your family, so they stay silent.
I know I did.
I know I’ve seen grieving people shrink back from accepting help because they didn’t know what “call me for anything” really meant.
I’ve found that offering to bring dinner on a specific evening, offering coffee, offering a 20-min phone call (the limit on the time is really important), offering to just sit with someone, those sorts of specific offers really help.
Specific offers make it so much easier for the grieving person to accept the gift of your time and attention.
Making food and drinking water is one of the self-care things that I observe fall by the wayside most often when someone is in a state of grief, so offering dinner on a specific evening is a great act of love.
Before I give my last suggestion, I want to briefly explain why grief affects the heart so deeply.
We know the saying, “He died of a broken heart.”
Grief particularly affects the cardiovascular system and your body’s ability to move blood and lymph around.
Grief limits your ability to detox through the lymph.
Grief often lowers your blood pressure, leading to a feeling of sluggishness.
The nerves in the brain don’t get enough food and energy, so they act sluggish, leading to brain fog and feeling like you’re wading through soup.
Chiropractic helps the brain regulate the heart better.
The nerves in the neck and shoulders affect your heart and make it run faster or slower and make it pump harder or softer.
If the joints in your neck and shoulders are inflamed, they can affect the nerves going to your heart, mess with the instructions from your brain, and make it work way harder or not work hard enough.
I can’t make your life easier.
I can’t make your grief any less.
I can’t be your entire community.
But I can examine you and adjust you if you need it.
Chiropractic helps your body function better.
So, if you’re grieving, don’t be shy. Come by and see me or another trusted chiropractor and see if chiropractic could help your body regulate your heart better and support healthy circulation so you don’t have as much brain fog.
God rest all of the souls lost on 9/11.
God bless you and thank you for reading.
Please share this with someone you know needs a good word of encouragement today.
Dr. Nelson
To learn more about how grief can affect the heart and body, please read these articles that I found helpful: