Allergies, Trauma, and Our Relationship With Ourselves

We all have many relationships in life, some more significant than others. Yet we tend to forget about the one relationship that is most important – the one with ourselves.

Wearing masks

I spent most of my life running away from myself or running away from the person I thought I was. Or trying, anyway. What I failed to realize, though, is that those versions of me I hated so much were never really me in the first place. I was running from an illusion, a fear of who I might be or who others might consider me to be.

In a nutshell, they were just versions of me created through trauma and societal conditioning. They were simply masks. Unfortunately, these masks came at a high cost. In the end, they caused me to continue to develop more allergies and other health conditions.

There’s nowhere to run

One thing I’ve learned is that we can’t outrun our emotions, and we certainly can't run away from our traumas. We can try to drown it out with various different things, but pain will always demand to be felt. It will continue knocking on our door until it is felt, until we decide to acknowledge it and shine a light on it.

Most of us with chronic health conditions – allergies included – experience so much anger and grief. When this stays unacknowledged and unaccepted, it continues to fester within us until it starts to rip us apart from the inside.

My health conditions seemed to happen much like that – especially allergies, eczema, and topical steroid withdrawal. I continued to allow my traumas and fears, grief and anger, to fester within me. Until they had no other way to express themselves but as symptoms of allergies and other health conditions – whether that be a stuffy nose, itchy and watery eyes, or a skin rash.

You can’t hide from your pain

All of that pain begged to be acknowledged. So much so that it showed up on the surface, where I could see and feel it every day. Where I could no longer run or hide from it.

I was stuck then. I had to sit in my hurt and other uncomfortable emotions for many years and feel them all. It had all bottled up inside of me. It took a long time of me having to sit, unable to move or do anything for myself but just BE angry, BE sad, for it to start to finally release its grip on me. My body simply forced me to – I didn’t have a choice anymore.

Preventing needless suffering

The truth is, it takes a lot of running, stuffing, and constant pushing away for it to happen to this extent, where it covers your entire body from head to toe – inside and out – taking over like a raging wildfire. It was a commitment in itself to run for that long and continue to ignore it. But I believe we can prevent this from ever happening, if we listen to our bodies from the start. That is, if we have the courage to begin to acknowledge what’s going on within, not just on the surface. This includes diving deep into all the things we’ve never allowed ourselves to feel before.

Listening to the warning signs

So what if that little rash, that headache, the runny nose or itchy eyes, is your body's first signal warning that you are running too much, and that you simply can’t outrun yourself? If we listened to those first signals, how much pain and suffering, how much “dis-ease” would we be able to prevent?

I truly believe our bodies are always speaking to us. Sometimes in subtle ways, and other times it screams at you like a raging storm. All you have to do is start truly listening.

And maybe – just maybe – that’s the first signal to your body that you are here, present, and ready to heal. So it no longer has to scream for your attention. Once we begin to listen to these signals, we start to foster a true and meaningful relationship with our bodies and ourselves. And that makes all the difference.