Settling the Bill
A Soft Place to Land
Nervous system-focused care for overloaded humans
Issue 07 · Settling the Bill · Week 7 of 52
Welcome. I'm so glad you're here!
This week I want to talk about something I experienced for years before I understood what it really was within my own self.
It's the particular exhaustion of people who give enormously to others while quietly running on empty.
I see it in caregivers, in parents, in high-performing professionals, in people who are deeply responsible and deeply kind and have somehow concluded that their own needs can wait.
If any part of that description feels familiar, this week is for you.
— Jenny
THIS WEEK'S TOPIC
The body keeps the score — and it always settles the bill
We are going to talk a little bit more about the book I mentioned last week. There is a concept that appears in trauma research and somatic therapy that I think about often: the body keeps the score.
It was made famous by the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, and what it describes is the way that experiences — especially stressful, overwhelming, or traumatic ones — are not just stored as memories in the mind, but encoded in the body itself. Your fascia is an extension of your nervous system that is directly connected to your brain and all its operating systems. It scans everything… it remembers everything. Even what the brain files away as not important.
You do not have to have experienced capital-T trauma for this to apply to you. The body keeps score of chronic stress just as surely as it keeps score of acute trauma.
It keeps score of the years of overgiving and how your body, heart and mind reacted or responded to the stress of it.
Of the relationships where you couldn't be fully yourself and you lived a life of internal constriction. .
Of the grief you didn't have time to feel so you hollowed it out and left it somewhere else to be dealt with. .
Of the anger that had nowhere to go so you bottled it up and its fermentation is on the brink of a nuclear explosion on the regular.
Of the times you pushed through when every signal in your system was asking you to stop until you physically collapsed and couldn’t move any further.
Your body has been keeping score for your entire life. And at some point — through pain, exhaustion, illness, or breakdown — it will present the bill.
Not as punishment.
As consequence.
As communication.
I say this not to frighten anyone, but because I have watched this pattern show up in my own life and in the treatment room over and over (and over and over again).
The person who finally "breaks down" physically after years of relentless pushing.
The chronic pain that appears at exactly the same time as a major life stressor.
The immune system that collapses the moment someone finally takes a vacation, as if the body waited for permission to stop performing.
These are not coincidences. They are the body settling its accounts.
What I want you to take from this is not fear, but respect.
Respect for the intelligence of your body's record-keeping.
Respect for what it's been holding.
Your body has been working so hard to keep you put together.
More importantly, I hope you develop a growing willingness to start making different deposits — before the bill arrives in a form you didn't choose.
The work we do together — in the treatment room and in the coaching space — is how we begin to settle those accounts with intention, with care, and with your own active participation.
THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION
Acknowledge what your body has been carrying
This week's practice is not problem-solving, not fixing, just recognition and acknowledgment.
Find a quiet moment. Take a few slow, full breaths. And then gently ask yourself:
1. What has my body been carrying that I haven't fully acknowledged — even to myself?
2. What have I pushed through that, if I'm honest, my body was asking me not to?
3. What would I say to my own body if I treated it with the same compassion I'd offer a good friend?
If emotions surface during this practice, let them. That is not the practice going wrong. That is the practice working.
CLIENT STORY
My Own Personal Story with Pain….Part 3
Not that I want to keep talking about myself, but I am my own best teacher and student in the work that I do- and I have no one else’s permission to ask but myself to share stories of how this work has impacted my life.
So you are going to get to hear more of my personal story.
As a sidebar- when I was in massage school, I was taught, rather firmly, to NOT share personal things about my life with clients. This was really hammered in there because the school of thought was- 1) it’s none of your clients’ business, 2) the session is about them and not you, and mostly 3) you are the professional in the room- act like it.
So for YEARS I avoided answering any personal questions about my life, and even having seen the value of showing up not only as a professional but as a human suffering from the same human condition as everyone else, to this day I really do filter what I share.
And my pain condition has been one of them. How I have experienced the healing work that I love to share with others has had the biggest impact on MY life and that’s why I do it.
So, as the professional in the room, I share with you a bit of the relevant details that may help inform you whether or not the type of work that I offer may also be of assistance to YOU.
Even before my divorce, my body began talking to me in other ways that I wrote off to being a tired momma of three kids who was just exhausted to the bone. That level of exhaustion is NOT normal by the way. The biggest leech to my energy was my emotional state. I am a recovering people pleaser who has a strong drive to think I need to be the one to keep everything together all the time for all the people in my life so that I have a perceived value enough to not be left behind. (read that as- I am abandonment averse and that is not a story we are getting into today- but it is a strong driver in my emotional racecar.)
I was a mess. I sometimes had a trigger point temper, I was daily prone to overwhelm and my capacity for surviving the life I was living was very limited.
And in 2016, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, her oldest sister passed away suddenly later that year, and a year later in 2017, to the day you are reading or hearing this- the 9th anniversary my mother passed away. The ultimate abandonment for so many reasons.
Three days after she passed, I’m sitting at the breakfast table with my children reading a book to them while they ate and I started to not be able to read the words on the page. And it was a challenge to speak clearly and my head felt really weird. I had a hard time walking straight and I thought I was going to be sick.
In panic mode- and thinking I was suffering a stroke, I managed to drive my kids and myself to my doctors office where she informed me I was in fact NOT having a stroke but suffering from vertigo.
So much better than having a stroke. And in the middle of her office with my children playing in the waiting room, I just collapsed into tears of overwhelm, sorrow and relief.
That was the moment my dr told me that I needed help. I needed to get my emotional landscape weeded and supported, I needed to drink more water and focus on nourishing my body AND my soul. I needed to learn how to fill my cup first. To find the oxygen mask that I needed to survive.
So now, vertigo is something that comes up in my life when I have been avoiding tending to my heart, tending to regulating my emotions. When I have been avoiding taking responsibility for the actions I have taken in reaction to my circumstances and not liking the outcome…. When the pressure builds- vertigo is what lays me out. Thankfully as I have been devoted to caring for myself since then- I now have warning signs before I kick myself over with a full blown episode. But the only reason I am even aware of those warning signs is because I now have a more resilient capacity to live the life I love. Without the capacity to respond to life versus react and thrash about in it, I would be the mess I was all those years ago and this missive would be a totally different story.
If you'd like to share your story for an upcoming newsletter, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out at hello@jennyodell.me I’m sure people only want to hear about me for so long, so we welcome other perspectives and experiences.
A FINAL THOUGHT FROM ME
Please be gentle with yourself if a piece of you sees yourself in a piece of me and my story. And know that support is available whenever you're ready for it. If this week's topic is resonating with something you've been feeling but haven't had words for, I'd love to have a conversation.
My Building Your Personal Resilience coaching program exists for exactly this and has been born out of a need for it in my own life.
I’m hosting a drop in workshop for how beginning embodiment practices can benefit your life. If you would like to drop in, I have sessions scheduled throughout the summer and you can check it out here:
Learn more or book a free clarity call at jennyodell.me or if you would rather, connect with me via voice note onVOXER or simply reply to this email to share what’s been landing.
Sincerely and with Gratitude,
Jenny O'Dell
