Why are my hands itching?

I've had eczema for as long as I can remember. According to my mother, it suddenly manifested on the skin of my throat when I was around three years old. In the years that followed, the eczema spread to my elbows and later to the base of my hands. My mom has always been very holistically oriented, so over the many years of trying to conquer the skin condition, I had tried more ointments than I can count and attempted (to the best of a young boy's ability) to cut lactose and wheat products out of my diet. Unfortunately, all of our efforts didn't have the effect that I so desperately desired — and it wasn't until much later that I finally figured out that my eczema wasn't coming from some physical intolerance to food or the environment, but was actually the result of an outward projection of stagnated emotions from a long time ago.

Fast forward to the summer of 2025. I was coming out of a long period of introspection and contemplation, having travelled throughout Asia for almost eight months. Before I left, I didn't expect it to be such a soul-searching period as it turned out to be. But it definitely was, with one of the main themes being a long-awaited integration of the seemingly hidden emotions mentioned above. For the first three months, this meant a constant daily outpour of sadness, grief, and loneliness — feelings that I had no idea what they were about, or that they were even there. After the first three months, the intensity slowed down and dealing with these feelings went from a daily task to a weekly background activity.

Back home in the Netherlands, my skin was better than it had ever been! Meanwhile, the rest of me was still adjusting to the start of this new phase in my life. After years of building towards this moment, the time had finally come to make the definitive switch from regular physiotherapy to holistic physiotherapy. And even though this was the moment I had been waiting for, I found myself struggling to really put myself to work. I felt split between parts of me that were still in "travel mode" and parts that wanted to get things done. For months, I felt creative energies brewing deep inside of me, but for some reason they couldn't quite make it to the surface.

Suddenly, I found myself with new, aggravated eczema spots on the sides of my fingers — a place I'd never had it before. After a few weeks of intense itching and asking myself what I had done to deserve this, it only seemed to get worse and worse. Until one night I was lying in bed, reaching some sort of breaking point, triggered by the extreme desperation that only the worst kind of itching can bring about. I felt myself screaming from within: "WHY ARE MY HANDS ITCHING?" After a brief silence, there was suddenly this piercing clarity in my mind — coming with the realization: "MIJN HANDEN JEUKEN" ... "MIJN HANDEN JEUKEN OM AAN DE SLAG TE GAAN." Literally translated, this means "my hands are itching... my hands are itching to get to work" — a common Dutch expression meaning: I can't wait to get started.

After many months of stagnation, my body was done. All this misused and misdirected creative energy was finally manifesting as eczema on my hands and fingers — telling me loud and clear: I'm ready. It's time to get to work.

That brief but intense moment of realization alone was powerful enough to completely shift the energy behind my physical symptoms, as well as the limiting pattern that was keeping me from becoming active and channelling my creativity in a useful way. The next morning, the eczema on my fingers had completely disappeared. And in the two weeks that followed, I had an extreme wave of creativity in which I managed to build 80% of the website that you are on right now.

This is just one example of how the body works as a mirror, constantly reflecting our inner experience back to us. Whether it's our skin, our muscles, or our joints — most of our symptoms are simply our body's way of communicating what is happening within.

Are you curious what your body is trying to communicate to you?

With Holistic Physiotherapy, we shift our awareness from the physical symptoms to the energy behind them — opening up a new way of working with the body, instead of against it.

Click below if you want to explore more about Holistic Physiotherapy.

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