Radical Trust

On Saturday, I woke up without a clenched jaw for the first time in decades. Hot, right?

Grinding one’s teeth is hereditary in the B. family. I recall my mother saying my father and I would keep her up at night, he next to her and me a flight of stairs away, grinding our teeth “in stereo.” It didn’t bother me when I was younger though.

Sometime during my first year of teaching, the teeth grinding got worse. I saw my primary care doctor, a specialist and my dentist. My dentist, whom I adore, said this behavior was all stress-related, so I asked him when it would stop. He said, “When you’re not stressed anymore.” He took a mold and had a fancy night guard made custom night guard for me (sorry to be so alluring again). I wore it maybe twice. None of the three professionals I saw suggested tackling the stress, as if the only option was to stay stressed forever. With that stress came a tightness and clenching of my jaw and the possible ruination of my teeth. But this was just the way it was, so I was led to believe. We work, we live on a busy island, so we must be stressed. Some people drink. Some people hike. I clench and bear it.

7 or 8 years ago, I started wearing the night guard more consistently. Judging by how quickly I wore through one (again, really glamorizing my existence), the grind was still in full effect, even though I don’t consciously feel as stressed as I did at the beginning of my career. Some holistic treatments offer some relief but not fully. I resigned myself to thinking that I would forever have some form of this tension, clenching, sometimes sprinkled with a festive clicking.

Just the case… I’ll spare you the actual guard.

I receive a Reiki treatment once a month from my healer. As this month’s appointment approached, my intuition told me to text her and ask to change the appointment to a hypnotherapy session. I wasn’t sure why or even what we would be working on but I went with it. The Universe has my back. Friday after work, I arrived at Lisa’s office. We talked; we got down to it. Intuition told me to talk about the jaw pain and the teeth grinding. Lisa worked her magic. Through our session, I got to another level of understanding of myself, my habits, and my paradigms. I can barely put words to it but Friday afternoon was definitely a mark on the timeline of my life.

One thing I can share with you about my discovery through this session: I finally made the connection as to why I have a hard time counting on people. In our post-session conversation, Lisa used the phrase “radical trust.” I’m pretty sure she used in it reference to a trust I need to have in myself and in the universe, but I know that the third piece to that is having radical trust in the people around me… as long as I surround myself with “right” people. It’s all coming together.

I woke up on Saturday without jaw pain and without my tongue forced to the roof of my mouth (Check in on yours and peel it free now. Relax, breathe. You’re just reading a blog). I know that the strides I made, facilitated by my healer, freed me. It’s a step, not the whole journey, but an important step nonetheless. I will not resign myself to subconscious stress, just because that’s the way most people choose to live. I have radical trust in myself, in my work… and I’m working on having radical trust in all of you, too. Much love.