Wood “Insults” Metal and the Loss of Order in my Life
When you’ve had a stroke, sometimes it takes suffering, that is, it takes another challenging experience to wake you up and teach you something. Just as in life, it’s easy to stay asleep as long as everything is copacetic. I may have been completely paralyzed on the right side when I first woke up in the hospital two years ago, but now I’m starting to walk without a cane outside of the house, and it takes something pretty serious to shake me up.
Even though I almost died, many things about my character stayed the same.., like my vanity! Waking up with a rash on my face that morphs into psoriasis over the next month is a sharp wake-up call for me.
I had been a licensed acupuncturist for 15 years before having a stroke. Dealing with my psoriasis is the first time in many years my mind opened like this to Chinese Medicine. Even before I had the stroke, it had been five years since I had approached the level of thinking that I’m about to reveal to you. Either your thinking the stroke has shaken his brain up, or what great insight is he about to let loose!?
My life has had its order (another word for the correct “structure”) broken down for many years. My former business partner had been secretly stealing the funds I had invested and transferring control of the business (a recording studio) entirely into his hands. By the time I started to wake up to this, I had invested so much money and time into making the business work that I now had quite a bit of back taxes (both State and Federal) to pay. I had to move out of the state (I moved from MO to CA) my children and girlfriend lived in, so your starting to get the picture of how my life’s order was slowly fading.
After moving to CA, I tried to keep some order through taking long walks daily, seeing my younger son in the summer and at Christmas, and working on new business ideas (practicing Chinese Medicine primarily through the internet and some film ideas I had been writing scripts for). Too little too late as my blood pressure had gotten exceedingly high in the past five years due to taking ibuprofen in excessive amounts. The stress of dealing with a crooked business partner had given me weekly migraines for the past five years! At the bottom of all this was wanting to prove to my Grandfather that my inheritance was being used wisely — exacerbated by my father’s passing away ten years prior. It sounds like taking BP medication was an obvious solution but one that was mentally out of reach for me. I was lost in the highs and lows of mania and depression (my, what a tangled web we men can weave!).
After a year and a half in CA, my BP was 250/?, I was in a million dollars of debt to the government, and in danger of going to prison soon. My body’s solution was to have a major hemorrhagic stroke on October 1st, 2016. My first two posts cover what happened in the first three months of my recovery and led to the start of what I hope is one of the last chapters in my struggle with a dependent personality disorder.
It’s 2018, and the year is coming to a close. Another way to say it is my structure (made up by my thought processes, physical routines, and emotional consistencies) that made up and supported me was now in danger of being washed away. My guardian (caretaker) was my girlfriend for many years before the stroke. Over the past two years, we’ve slowly broken up because I thought I would recover overnight, and my life was going to begin again. Another way of explaining this is that I have a dependent personality disorder, and when I returned to California (for the 2nd time), I was so manic that I just let her go. That phase lasted for about six weeks, and I’ve been trying to get her back ever since. Even as I read this, I think I got what I deserved for the way I treated her.
Around two months ago, my now ex-girlfriend was coming out to visit and travel with me to the Hai Shan Clinic for us both to receive treatment. I was so nervous about seeing her that I started drinking a glass of wine every night. We had been gradually fighting more and more (I was quite unhappy), and my sense of order continued to deteriorate rapidly.
This explains how my Metal Element got weakened and — I’m falling back on my training and studies in Chinese Medicine to understand and help me explain the dynamics involved in my recovery — my Wood Element was getting quite agitated (drinking was my short term solution to pacify myself). With a weakened Metal Element, my Wood Element took advantage of the situation and “insulted” my Metal Element. Wood “insulting” Metal is described as a long-term psycho-emotional problem in Chinese Medicine. I already had a fair amount of dampness (the metabolites or leftovers from digestion), and the alcohol was fueling the fire, helping to create damp/ heat. I made the perfect formula for my psoriasis’ inception! Western medicine cites stress, bad eating habits, and alcohol as some of the causes for flare ups of psoriasis.
Typically Metal controls Wood. A sense of order helps control and keep the robust Wood harmonious and flowing, the muscles/ tendons loose, and the body moving. Wood’s nature is benevolent, and if Metal lends order by controlling Wood, things are judged and decided in time and fairly. The Wood Element is likened to a judge and general. In the standard scheme of things, Wood keeps the Earth Element under control and dampness in check. With Wood “insulting” Metal, the traditional checks and balances are ignored. The order in my life again starts to get out of control, my skin suffers, and my ex-girlfriend stops speaking to me. The wise thing to do at this point would be to calm down and let my life’s order begin to return. I can’t directly control my ex-girlfriend’s decision or what my skin wants to do, but what I can control is my decision on when to rest, when to exercise, and continue to take care of myself (take showers, see my doctors, go for walks and continue to work on and publish this blog). Here’s to the return of order!
