I'll call him Daniel here. He and I knew each other from church years ago, before life put a lot of distance between us. When he reached out, he'd heard I was doing somatic healing work, and unlike almost everyone else who comes to me, he didn't need the explanation. Usually it takes a good half hour to walk someone through the triune approach, through what it means that this is led by the Holy Spirit. Daniel skipped all of that. He knew me. He trusted that whatever I was doing, it was holy work, and he was ready to start.
We worked entirely by phone. I never once put my hands on him. He was on the other side of the world, and it didn't matter.
His life had narrowed down to almost nothing. Constant depression. Anxiety that never let up. His legs would hurt so badly some days that he couldn't walk, couldn't function at all. He'd been seeing a psychiatrist for a long time, trying one medication after another, and nothing ever touched it.
A few sessions in, I got something clear. Not a feeling, not a hunch, just clear, the way water is clear, the way glass is clear. This wasn't a mental health issue. Whatever was happening in him was happening in his nervous system, and it was badly out of order.
He went to a neurologist. The neurologist started asking questions Daniel didn't have answers to, so he called his mother, and that's when it surfaced. Years ago, in college, he'd had encephalitis. One of the lasting effects of that illness is scar tissue on the nervous system, and that scar tissue can produce exactly what he'd been carrying for years: the depression, the anxiety, all of it, dressed up as a mental health problem when it never actually was one.
The neurologist prescribed the right medication, and it worked almost immediately. We kept working together after that, on the spiritual side of things too, the parts a diagnosis alone couldn't reach. And then one day he sent me a text. Just two words. I'm good.
The man who couldn't get up off the floor, who'd tried medication after medication with nothing to show for it, telling me he was good.
I don't diagnose. I don't treat. I listen, and I help a person do the work in front of them. That's what happened here. That's all it ever is.
