Free Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup Page B

and what doesn’t. Our bodies know immediately when we are doing something or even thinking about something that doesn’t support us fully. One of my friends gets diarrhea and stomach cramps when she just thinks about going to visit her par ents. She was abused both physically and emotionally throughout her entire childhood, and this abuse has continued into adulthood. Her body knows that visiting her parents will not be good for her, and it gives her symptoms as messages to stay away. When she gives herself permission to stay away, her stomach problems resolve immediately. (She has also had to learn how to soothe the anxiety that arises from the ingrained belief that not visiting or doing what her mother expects makes her a “bad” daughter.) In time, she may well be able to visit without it having to “cost” her anything. But that’s Ph.D.-level healing work!
    In order to flourish and stay healthy, we need to pay attention to the subtle signals from our bodies about what feels good and what doesn’t. Foggy thinking, dizziness, heart palpitations, acne, headaches, and back, stomach, and pelvic pain are a few of the common but subtle symptoms that often signal that it is time for us to let go of what we don’t want in life and start using our own power to improve things. Here’s an example from my own life.
    Back in the 1980s, when I had two young children, I was working too many hours, and I often felt that aspects of my work weren’t respected by my colleagues. My face often broke out in large blemishes, which I had never had as an adolescent or at any other time in my life until then. I tried taking vitamins, changing my diet, and using a variety of skin creams. Nothing helped—until I left my place of work. Within six months the problem cleared and has never returned.
    Clearly, my face was a barometer of my well-being during those years. Through my skin condition, my body had been telling me that my work setting was not supporting me optimally. My complexion had been registering my “thin-skinned” sensitivity and my anger at not being completely accepted by my colleagues. (I hadn’t completely accepted myself, either, at this point, and my work environment was a reflection of that.) All of these emotions lay just below the surface, though I couldn’t appreciate this at the time. Once I faced my inner most needs and left the situation that simply was not supporting me, my complexion improved automatically. As my life cleared up, so did my face.
    Negative emotions exist to let us know that we are not facing the clearest path to what we want. When we realize that our bodies and their symptoms—feelings—are our allies, pointing out what serves our highest good and what doesn’t, we become free. Whenever you feel an gry or upset, or have a headache or a bodily symptom, take a moment to reflect upon what unmet need the symptom is trying to bring to your attention. When I am caught up in a downward spiral of negative feelings, I instantly know that I am out of touch with my inner guidance and that I’m giving too much attention to what I don’t want. I have learned to notice when I’m feeling bad and stop for a moment. If I can catch myself at the beginning of the bad mood, I can often get my energy flowing positively again by going through the following process:
    1. I acknowledge what I am feeling without making any judgment about it . I avoid wallowing around in the negative emotions and prolonging them, but I definitely feel them fully. I stay with the feeling.
    2. I acknowledge that there is a reason why I am feeling the way I am. And it’s almost always an unmet need of some kind.
    3. I spend twenty seconds or so identifying what is causing my energy to flow negatively. For example, a while back I was angry because a staff member didn’t get an important message to me in time for me to return a phone call promptly.
    4. Having identified the source of my negative emotion, I then ask myself what I