OMG! This is so correct in my own experience. Yes my emotional pain which was kept silent has radiated to the various part of my body and caused many illnesses, some even now with the chronic pain of osteoarthritis. I love this description. There are many wise people who have written books on this aspect but I've not heard this term before.

A serious book about the early research is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD. It is more geared towards professionals but it explains how they figured out that trauma is stored in the brain/central nervous system and then it "comes out" in the body. I also have Soul Speak - The Language of Your Body by Julia Cannon (easier to read). I've read things by Louise Hay but can't remember titles.

May be show him these websites about ACEs, adverse childhood experiences - you read it first. There is a test for people to take. It show how these adverse childhood experiences have the propensity to affect our health. Someone who grows up with trauma and he likely has experienced this has a greater likely of health issues later in life. This has been studied since the 1980s or so.

The CDC has a good website on "adverse childhood events." Maybe there is something in there about what you are trying to describe. I have heard of it as trauma or bad life experiences can give us chronic stress. Trauma is the major type thing and bad life experiences is the more minor types of things. They have widened the definition of trauma to include more adverse childhood events (like food insufficiency, parent in jail/prison, parents not working, suicide in the family, etc.). They have found such treatments as EMDR and other things helps the brain reroute the stored trauma.

Explain to him how the trauma affects and changes the brain and central nervous system and then it comes out in the body, or how we react to things, how we think even. If he can learn this NOW, he will start to heal and then be able to grow up more healthy emotionally and physically.

Experiencing emotional physical pain is real.

Thank you for putting a name to it that makes sense. Whether others think it's correct or not, it grabbed my attention and allowed me to see what I'm dealing with now is exactly how you shared it.

Here's to your success in figuring out how to help heal with the release of the pain naturally.

Thank you for sharing.

i can easily imagine those soulful brown eyes glazing over and shutting down with all those big words and loosely connected concepts, hasty. shoot, i only have to remember. the social workers were all over his dissociation, all the way to appointing a grief counselor after the funeral. the glazed looks of further dissociation were all the reaction we ever got out of him. there is a substantial difference between 6 and 11, but adult psychobabble still confuses the unholies out of him. i don't think children are the only ones suffering that phenom.

i was in my 20's (1970's) before i began studying "psychosomatic pain," beginning with a malady called, "spastic colitis" which runs through my birth family like a freight train. i don't care to do the research on what that is called today, but i have zero doubt my 10 siblings can tell me in great detail. they would enjoy every minute of the telling, all the way to how the malady translates in the geriatric phases.

i'm a bit worried that i am getting too creative in the attempt to simplify and connect, but? ? ? this morning he woke with tearful pain in both feet. i spoke with more confidence about the pain radiating from his heart and settling in unpredictable places. we spoke of breathing, stretching and releasing tension through his muscles. i think that's what we spoke of, anyway. it was a long and winding dialogue which i couldn't recapture if my life depended on it. the important piece is that he got off to school with impressive confidence.

side note:
he missed the bus, so i had to drive him to school. as we drove, he told me of a dream where his parents were fighting and his daddy was being arrested by police (this actually happened). he was trying to reach his daddy, but a monster under the bed was holding him by his ankles. radiations of a broken heart?

thank you, mid. testing, 1, 2, 3. . .

of course his distress is radiating into my own grief. it's been more than 5 years and i still miss my son every day.

processing. . . doing my best to practice what i preach.

Grief is life long, as the heart remembers the love, the cherished moments, and no matter what else happened, that's the part that stays with us.

I'd say you're dong a wonderful job of healing, balancing, and finding the calm in the moment, and adjusting to each and every moment.

update
turns out the assignment included a presentation of your ofrenda. yesterday morning was rough, with all the physical pains he has been experiencing attacking him, all at once. my admiration of how well he pushed himself through the get-ready routine to limp his way to the bus stop on time was well laced with worries of whether he was pushing himself too hard.

he was carrying his ofrenda when he got off the bus last night. i asked him how the presentation went and he chimed brightly, "good." not a limp in sight as he skipped ahead of me up the driveway to the house.

repressing my own urges to grill him for more detail, i quietly danced a jig to the tune of "nanny nanny boo boo."

we survived another one
we survived another one
yay us, yay us,
ain't we good! ! !

still monitoring, but methinks the pimple has popped. testing, 1, 2, 3. . .

He might benefit from pen or pencil to paper hand-written journal in the evening. Print off the list of feeling words, the charts found all over the internet. Have him write his feelings from that day or the right now of when he is writing his journal. You are a very good grandmother.

My take on his dream of dad being arrested and the man holding his feet under the bed is probably too creative. But what if the "monster" holding his feet to keep him away from daddy is really his wise mind or his guardian angels. Holding his feet to keep him from living that old awful, hurtful life. Just a thought as I was reading.

Your original explanation gave me much insight. You are a fantastic grandmother and don't ever forget that. You are giving him a voice to the emotional demons that live in his brain and central nervous system. Hugs to you.

i've been tempted to suggest the journal writing, hasty, especially as he is showing wordsmith potential. but he already has teachers at school giving him journal writing assignments. he knows of my journal keeping and knows the information is available, if he asks. my quiet voice is telling me to let the journal keeping potential grow of its own volition.

interesting and feasible take on the dream interpretation. my own guess is that the monster under the bed is the self-repression which has been keeping him from processing the trauma and grief of orphanhood. just guessing. . . i don't believe certainty is available in the mysterious world of dreams.

i'm still calling myself his foster mother. the grandmother stereotypes hit my heart as a harsh reminder of just how much we lost in that fatal car wreck. additionally, the family estrangement trends have created an official conundrum of family restraint orders and such. i need to carry proof of legal rights when i call myself his grandmother. when i introduce myself as his foster mother, i encounter far less red tape and stigma.

i miss being a grandmother. the grandmother stereotypes don't quite cover the impact of the demotion to mom. the difference between being a preferred vacation resort and the bully who has to get them off to school every day is mind boggling.

Wow. This sounds all too familiar. My father was murdered when I was 8 years old. I don't remember ever crying and I was very upset my mom tried to make me go to a school counselor (I didn't want the other kids to deem me different for going to the "special" school office). Radiant Pain is so real! After my dad's death I wore neck braces for a couple of years because my neck was so stiff I couldn't turn my neck. I also got lots of chest pains and other bodily pains that the family doc just labled growth pains.... it all makes sense now.....Thanks for being a great parent and putting in the hard work

thank you, mel. your experience sounds quite similar to what i have been attempting to heal in my foster son. he had been in protective custody for almost a year before the protective custody was shifted to us. his parents died about a month after the protective custody shift. i won't hazard a guess as to which trauma affected him most. it's an integrated package now. your feedback is priceless. thank you again.

i have wondered if it is significant that with this assignment, he got up in front of his class and spoke of his orphanhood. one less "dirty" secret to guard? it is NFF (no fucking fair), my love, but it is not worthy of guarding as a "dirty" secret.

the presentation was last week and the still unidentified pain continues. my wandering wonder is if he is experiencing anxiety over potential fallout for the crime of being an orphan with no parents to bash during the parent-complaint sessions with his peers. just wondering. we see where the healing mysteries lead us.