A sweet elderly woman has been a patient for some time. She generally waits until things go really wrong before she comes to see me. We have been working on a low back pain flare-up recently; it had been pretty straightforward until this morning, but then an emotional pattern came up.

I checked her for when the emotional issue began, and 35 years ago came up. When I asked her about it, she said she knew exactly what it was. I just told her to hold it in mind and adjusted what came up. While adjusting, she started telling me about the incident: her son, who was eleven at the time, was accidentally shot in the abdomen. He survived, but it was a long year of recovery. She had a good cry, and we hugged it out.