I’ve been feeling better mentally lately and seem to have myself and kids back on track. I have been trying now to talk about and address some of my anxiety issues recently. One major source of anxiety for me is related to physical touch. This is hard to understand since my career involves a lot physical touch. The bottom line here is I don’t mind touching others (in a therapeutic way). I just get very anxious being touched by others. I get triggered very easily, get hyper-sensitive, and then very anxious. These symptoms had gotten a lot worse as stuff started to surface in therapy but seem to have return to a pre-therapy level in the past few months. Luckily my anxiety does not seem to be paralyzing but it creates a lot of muscle tone and internal turmoil that is very difficult to deal with none the less.

Now the unbelievable has happened. My department has decided that it wants to offer a few therapeutic massage workshops for our majors as part of a larger program offering. My chairperson wants someone in-house to teach these workshops. Since I have a background and teach other related manual techniques, I’ve been asked to pursue the training and sit for the NCBTMB exam ASAP. I am not worried about my manual skills and ability to give a massage. I’m worried about my ability to chill out and be comfortable with others practicing on me. This type of learning environment was very stressful for me to deal with in undergraduate school. The MT courses are going to involve a lot more contact and I am not sure I am going to be able to handle it. I’ve had one professional full body massage and although the physical sensations were not painful, the emotions and mental noise it created quickly overwhelmed me. I was incredibly uncomfortable during the session.

I cannot believe I am being asked to do this, especially having recently faced flashbacks and body memories, just from recalling in a trying to talk about stuff. Professionally this is a no brainer decision-- an opportunity to expand my clinical skills at my department’s expense. Personally/emotionally I’m not sure I can bring myself to actually do it.