Massage & Bodywork

MARCH | APRIL 2020

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Amanda FIX-IT MENTALITY Amanda spent 28 years—her entire adult life—in a secret and abusive relationship with her eating disorder. "I can honestly say my eating disorder has been my longest, deepest, and most all- consuming relationship." When I ask Amanda to talk about her body she says, "Mad. I was just mad at it. All the time. I wanted to will it under my control—most importantly I wanted to control what it looked like. When everything else was changing, I wanted to look in the mirror and see that I could control this one thing. But of course, my body fought back and that made me even madder." When Amanda became a massage therapist, her relationship with her body didn't improve—at least not right away. "It made me hyperaware of my hypocrisy. It was exhausting, all the subterfuge. I was always putting on a show. I was screaming, 'I'm the healthy expert'— screaming it because I wasn't either of those things. I was overplaying the role." Let me be clear: During this time, Amanda was a successful massage therapist with a thriving massage practice and devoted clients. She sought out the same sort of massage for her own body that she was giving to others. With her own body, and with the bodies of her clients, she was focused on anatomy. People as parts. Massage as a mechanical intervention. "I couldn't fix them. I don't think I really knew that. I could say it, but I still tried my damnedest to fix them. It was like, I have to fix other people to pay for the damage I'm doing to myself." Amanda also believed in the curative powers of pain. "If it hurt when I got massage, I knew I deserved that, and that's what would work. If extreme hurting did it, only extreme treatment could fix it." Many things influenced Amanda's decision to seek treatment, but her clients rank high on her list. "I was lying to my clients and to everyone else. It's hard to lie to people once a week. My clients care about me, and I'm lucky they cared about me. I was worried about just getting through each day without eating anything. That takes up all your energy. I wasn't even really in the room. I wasn't there doing what I should have done—give them a massage." I ask Amanda if she thinks she ever hurt any of her clients and her voice cracks, "Of course, I do. I didn't provide them the full care I could have. I provided a terrible example. I had clients who were young girls . . . that's what makes me the saddest." As massage therapists, we don't tend to think about the harm we might do with the things we say or think. We focus on what our hands do and how our hands can help. But Amanda's story points to the very important dynamic of our internal dialogue. A big part of recovery is kindness and, of course, letting go of control. "When I'm on my way to work, I'm not just trying to get through the day anymore. I don't know what's going to happen. Because I have had to let go of so much control, I have to just be in the moment." Amanda also remembers and appreciates the lessons she learned from other bodyworkers. "The client who doesn't listen to his body feels like justice. He reminds me of all the bodyworkers who didn't judge me, who just cared for me, and met me where I was. Because of them, I can't be mad at him or tell him what to do. I can just be quiet and let him go through what he needs to go through." Amanda still specializes in neuromuscular and pain-management massage. She provides deep, targeted work and lots of anatomical knowledge to help address her clients' injuries. But her work is not the same. "I have more grace . . . because I have that with myself. Now I can just say, 'It is really hard to be kind to ourselves,' and mean it—and just leave it there. And if people can hear that, maybe it will help them heal. I really listen now, and I do my best work because I don't try to fix it." There is an epidemic of fixing in massage therapy, and my conversation with Amanda and with others led me to wonder how much of this work is an inside job. You don't have to have an eating disorder to believe your body should bend to your will. Many of my colleagues and clients describe their injuries and illnesses in terms of betrayal. I'm guilty of it too. This image of the body as a disobedient servant is dangerous. If we see our own body this way, how could we help but see our clients' bodies this way? It makes for a slippery slope to the approach Amanda describes, "extreme treatment" as some sort of rough justice, or maybe just the magical thinking and foolish half-science we see so often in our profession. We all know we can't manually lengthen a muscle, but does that stop us from trying? Rebecca BODY IMAGE DISCONNECT Rebecca has a once-a-month regular client. "I guess you could say that her body is not conventionally acceptable, but she's never mentioned it before. I hadn't thought about it at all during our time working together, but then she came in one day not feeling well. The client apologized and said, 'I've been working on this with my therapist. I know you see all kinds of bodies, but I need you to reassure me that it's OK for me to be here.' It broke my heart and made me realize how not fully prepared I am to give that to someone else because I haven't really done it for myself. I think I was able to be present and reassure her enough that we went on to have a really good session. But it was a moment when I realized if I haven't done this work myself, and someone comes in like that, I can't create a safe space for them." As a result of her experience during a time of deep emotional upset, Rebecca's body changed in profound ways in her early 40s. Among other things, she lost a lot of weight. It is possible that her physical form today would be unrecognizable to someone who knew her before this change. She says that she is sometimes still surprised when she looks in the mirror. Her own face seems like it's not the one she knew. "I 62 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k m a r c h / a p r i l 2 0 2 0

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