*Originally published 2/27/20*
Gratefulness. Something I’ve been working on more recently.
I realized something not too long ago—my body is amazing. Now that may sound a bit conceited, but I don’t mean it that way. I mean my body is amazing in that here I am almost 8 years into my journey and this thing has not stopped fighting.
My body fought for me to wake up everyday and here I am. There were days when I didn’t want to wake up. Days when I woke up and it felt like I was trapped in a nightmare paralyzed, unable to move or ask for help. I had those moments and my body pushed on through. For that, I am grateful.
I’ve had anxiety and depression throughout this whole journey. My anxiety has been a HUGE issue in the last few years. In fact, they think that my anxiety may cause my paralysis. I have worked with therapists for years and am doing a lot better (I have been off anti-anxiety medication for over a year) but sometimes, the anxiety still wins.
I have anxiety for my future—will I ever be able to work a full-time job? Will I ever lead a “normal” life? I have anxiety for my symptoms—will I get paralyzed today? If I eat that will my stomach bloat? There’s the anxiety over money since treatment is expensive and the anxiety over the treatment itself—what if this doesn’t work?
So yeah, I have a lot of anxiety, and all of this anxiety often leads to my depressive episodes. I never really thought much about the physical impact this all could have on me, until a few weeks ago that is.
I was having a really rough day a couple of weeks ago and felt extremely lost in my next steps. Once again, I consulted my encyclopedia Jess and she introduced me to DNRS—Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems—which has to do with the limbic system and parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.
The gist of it all is that our bodies go into fight-or-flight—sympathetic nervous system—when they feel threatened and then rest-digest-recover—parasympathetic—when they are at ease. When you have a chronic illness, the body has a hard time getting out of fight-or-flight. This BLEW my mind. For years doctors have mentioned that I’m in fight-or-flight but no one ever explained it to me or how to fix that. So I asked my doctor brother about it and he explained it to me.
*disclaimer: he said he tried to explain this to me years ago but I was not in the right space to listen and accept this. That is the thing with this Lyme journey, you won’t be ready to accept some things until you are at “rock bottom.”
I am not a doctor but this is my understanding of how this all works. My body is constantly trying to survive—to fight. While it is fighting, all my energy is being spent on that flight and not being dispersed to the things they should be, like digestion. In fact, my acupuncturist told me that I didn’t have any energy to “move” because my body was so drained.
So I had to fix this. The key is doing something, every single day, that gives me complete relaxation. My brother asked what relaxed me and I said exercise. He said exercise may relax my mind, but it is still stress on my body. This has to be something that offers complete relaxation. So I started meditating.
Every night I do a guided meditation and I journal. Then when I wake up, I do another 5 minute meditation to start each day. I have to say I definitely have noticed a change. My irritability has gone down, along with my anxiety, and my digestion has gotten better.
Another thing I realized from the DNRS podcast and book is the vicious anxiety-driven cycle us spoonies live in. Every day, I think about my symptoms. I think about the “what ifs” that I stated above, but also, throughout my day, I do symptom check-ins as well—“does my stomach hurt yet?” or “are my hands shaking a lot?” I learned that this mindset is not good for healing. When you think of these things, it causes anxiety and negativity that is poisonous to the healing process.
I have tried to combat these thoughts as much as I could and that is helping me not be in much pain. Now I know this all sounds crazy, but the mind is a powerful, powerful thing. This is something I will have to work on for the rest of my life, but it is something I am willing to, and enjoy doing.
I am grateful to all of you for allowing me to share my—most likely—annoying thoughts, and providing me with this outlet throughout this journey.
Now say it with me: I am grateful.
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