The Shoulder That Wouldn't Heal (And What Frustration Had to Do With It)

Years ago I worked with a client who had injured his shoulder. The doctors had looked at it and it was only a minor tear .. nothing that needed surgery, just some gentle strengthening to get him back to normal. He'd already done PT and a few other therapies by the time he found his way to me, wanting to try massage and craniosacral therapy to help with the pain and encourage healing.

He was so ready for his shoulder to be back to normal. He was doing all the things, but it just wasn't getting better. It felt stuck. By the time he came in to see me, he was super frustrated. He was an active guy who just wanted his life back, but his “stupid shoulder just wouldn't heal.” (His words, not mine.)

The first thing I noticed when I put my hands on his shoulder was not inflammation or tight muscles, I noticed overall protection. His muscles weren't actively contracting, but the entire area felt guarded, like his nervous system still believed it needed to keep that shoulder safe. And this didn't surprise me at all.

When we have an injury, there's a chemical reaction at the nerve root that starts sending the signal that this area is injured and now needs protecting. The body responds with inflammation if necessary, stiffness, and immobility, all to allow the tissue to heal. It's actually a fascinating process.

But what often brought people into my office was because this process wouldn't stop. They would be far past the healing stage and yet they continued to have pain and inflammation as if the injury had happened last week. The nervous system was continuing to stand guard, even though the threat was gone.

After over two decades in bodywork, I saw people with this exact issue over and over again. And each time, there was a common thread at the root of it, one I'd eventually recognize in my coaching clients too, and it brought my understanding of the nervous system full circle.

Did you notice I said that my client was frustrated about his shoulder not healing?

And of course he was frustrated. It was completely understandable that he'd feel that way. He was working hard to get his body back to where it was before, but nothing seemed to be working. He was still in pain and his life felt limited.

But something remarkable happened during his first session. By the end of our appointment, his pain had decreased dramatically. He was half convinced I had magic powers, but it wasn't because I used some special technique. It was because he was able to work through his frustration. His nervous system that had been telling his shoulder to protect could finally begin to back down.

It was as simple as this: as I worked on his shoulder, we talked about how his nervous system doesn't understand why he's frustrated, it can only sense that he is. The frustration he was feeling was sending off alarm bells: protect the tissue, it's not safe yet to let go.

His frustration was prolonging the very thing he wanted to be over. And once he was able to view his body differently and trust that it was doing what it was doing on purpose, suddenly everything shifted.

The same thing happens with everything else

As I mentioned, I've seen this exact pattern show up in bodies that didn't have any physical injuries.

So many people have a nervous system that's overwhelmed, anxious, dysregulated, and that can understandably bring up a lot of frustration. I've definitely felt that too.

You're frustrated that you can't relax. Frustrated that you're still anxious after doing "the work." Frustrated to the point of shame, feeling like there's something wrong with you for continuing to react this way.

And that frustration does the exact same thing it did in my client's shoulder.

It tells the nervous system: Not safe yet. Stay protected.

Your nervous system can't reason. It can only react.

I say this a lot, so let me actually walk through what it means.

Your nervous system doesn't sit back and evaluate your life. It doesn't think, "Well, she's just tired, this isn't a real emergency," or "He's frustrated because he cares, that's actually a good sign."

Think of your nervous system less like a judge deciding what's true and relevant and more like a smoke detector responding to smoke. It has no access to your reasoning at all. It only has access to signals.

And those signals aren't emotions themselves; they're what emotions do to your body.

When frustration, or shame, or feeling out of control shows up, your jaw tightens. Your breathing gets shallow and high in your chest. Your attention narrows to the problem in front of you. You get a dump of stress hormones and your whole body braces.

That's what your nervous system is actually responding to. Not the feeling of frustration itself, but the racing heart, the clenched jaw, the shallow breath it creates. Your body doesn't file any of that under "emotion I'm having about my situation." It simply detects a body that appears to be under threat, and responds the only way it knows how.

So when you spend your day monitoring your body (which is incredibly common when you're frustrated with how it's responding), what often happens is you start gauging whether it's doing the "right" thing, getting frustrated when it isn't, and then feeling ashamed that you're still reactive.

Your nervous system reads all of those physical changes as evidence that you're not safe. And when you don't feel safe, the solution is: Stay on guard. Stay protected. Don't relax yet.

The very response you're trying to talk yourself out of is being reinforced by how you're relating to it.

The belief underneath the frustration

Let's go one layer deeper. Because frustration is really the second reaction. There's a belief underneath it that's driving the whole thing.

After enough confusing symptoms... enough moments where your body didn't respond the way you thought it should... many people arrive at the same conclusion:

Something is wrong with me.

Every "negative" response your body has becomes evidence that you can't trust it. Sometimes you're okay, and sometimes you're really not. Nothing you try seems to help.

You start to believe that you have a broken system, a broken body.

And once that belief is in place, every activated moment, every racing heart, every wave of anxiety, every time your body does something you didn't ask it to do just becomes more proof that you're right.

There it goes again. Something's wrong with me.

That belief is what turns anxiety into frustration and frustration into shame. And it's those exact emotions that trigger the signals that tell your system that you're not safe.

What I learned from my own panic attacks

I know this pattern personally, not just professionally.

For a long time, every time adrenaline released in my body, it created a huge wave of anxiety because I had labeled that sensation as a bad thing. It meant my body was breaking. I truly thought my heart might stop. I was terrified I would pass out. I felt completely out of control, and I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me.

What I didn't know was that a dump of adrenaline is a very natural occurrence, and my system was doing it on purpose. It thought it was necessary for whatever was happening in front of me.

But because I didn't understand it, I responded with fear and anxiety, and that escalated everything into a full blown panic attack that would sometimes last for days.

Once I understood how the nervous system works, it all made sense. My responses were never random, and even though they weren't always appropriate for the situation, they were never evidence that I was broken. It was all protection.

As soon as I understood what my body was doing and why, everything changed. Those same sensations that used to send me into a full on panic attack would now just bring on curiosity instead of fear and frustration.

Instead of immediately asking, "What's wrong with me?" I was able to ask, "What is my body trying to prepare me for?"

And the moment would pass in seconds instead of hours or days. The understanding meant that I was able to send a completely different signal.

Both things are true

Let me be clear: this does not mean frustration is now this evil thing that you need to avoid at all costs. It doesn't mean you're supposed to shrug off everything you're struggling with and just be okay with it.

You're allowed to feel that.

When it feels like your body isn't cooperating, or you're still anxious after months of trying every technique you can find, or your panic response keeps showing up at the worst moments, of course that's frustrating. I'm not asking you to bypass that.

What I am suggesting is that you notice what the frustration is doing once it's here. It's not neutral. It's changing your physiology, and your nervous system is responding to those changes.

Both things are true at once: Your reaction makes complete sense, and it's also part of what's keeping your system on guard.

So the answer isn't to eliminate all frustration. It's to understand what's actually happening in your body and allow that frustration to move through instead of taking up residence.

Something to sit with

Where in your life are you currently frustrated with your body, or ashamed of how it's reacting? Or maybe it's your patterns or habits that have you responding with frustration or shame.

Is it possible that the frustration itself — not the original thing you're frustrated about — is part of what's keeping you stuck? Is there a belief underneath it all that’s keeping you in that frustrated state?

When we think in terms of signals, our nervous system starts to make sense. It doesn't respond to your intentions. It responds to the state you're in.

When we're able to shift out of thinking that our body is supposed to respond a certain way and instead become curious about what it's trying to communicate, we move out of judgment and into understanding and compassion.

This is often where healing begins.

Not the moment your symptoms disappear, but the moment you stop seeing your body as the enemy.

When your body senses that you're no longer fighting it, you start sending one of the most powerful signals of safety that it can receive. 

And it’s with that signal that it’s finally able to let go.