Monamorphosis: The Power of the MIND in HEALING YOURSELF

Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Power of the MIND in HEALING YOURSELF

When I was very sick, a friend sent me this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8.

The little boy's adorable advice not only made me laugh very hard (and we all know Lyme patients need more laughter in their lives), but his innocence and positivity reminded me try to find a place inside myself that could be INSPIRED, FEARLESS, and HOPEFUL the way a child is.

My next post will be out in a day or two - "Alternative/Holistic Options for Treating Lyme."

Until then, please remember that your mind is SUCH an important ally in your fight to wellness. Everyone asks me what one thing I think helped me beat Lyme Disease. There was no particular treatment or thing that did it. Some things helped more than others, certainly. But, without the work I did on my mind, I never would be where I am today - completely healthy and thriving.

The entire 8 years I spent ill, I printed up my favorite inspirational quotes and put them all over my bedroom. I listened to a particular CD over and over in the car when my parents or friends drove me to appointments. It was called "Secrets of Your Own Healing Power," by Wayne Dyer. If there is a person (Louise Hay, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer), ANYONE who inspires you with their words, ANYONE who can help you get out of the repetitive and destructive thoughts that come to us during any illness but ESPECIALLY during Lyme Disease because of the neurological effects of the disease, then by all means, LISTEN TO THEM. REPEATEDLY.

When I lived with my parents and was on IV meds and extremely disabled, I had no emotional support other than my incredible friends back in San Francisco and an EFT therapist I worked with. My family supported me financially but they were not emotionally supportive at all. I felt helpless and alone in cold, suburban Michigan every day, attached to an IV pole. Though my friends would call to check in on me, I just wanted to ignore their calls at times and go curl up into a depressing ball and feel sorry for myself. This existence was so hard to bear after so many years and then my self-sabotaging thoughts would recycle.

So, instead of SPINNING in those negative thoughts over and over ("I'm never going to get better," or "Didn't I say last year that I'd be doing 'x' this year, and I am still in the same place" or "What if I am like this forever?"), I recommend you read, watch, or listen to something to PULL YOU out. Reading was very difficult for me at times when I was sick, so I just listened to audios.

If it's not a friend or family member, watch a funny TV show or movie that will distract you. And as MUCH as you can, listen to inspirational lectures, CDs, music, etc. You can also google Wayne Dyer or Louise Hay (or whoever your most favorite inspirational speakers is) on youtube, and find free audios they have, and just play them while you are lying down, eating, or in the car.

I swear I must have listened to that Wayne Dyer CD 100 times. But I needed his reminders - his reminder that everything I heard in the Lyme world was not true. That I COULD heal myself completely of a disease. Though I had no idea HOW I would do it, I did. And I DID.

I attribute my complete healing of Lyme to my deep work in the emotional and spiritual realm. I worked on removing limiting beliefs. I worked on the unhealthy patterns I had before sick with Lyme Disease.

I wrote out precisely how I wanted to be feeling in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years. I envisioned it every day for 10 minutes before going to bed (or tried to anyway). There are many tools I can suggest, but these are just a few to start.

Proof in the Pudding: A study at Howard University showed that those who (1) wrote out their visions of what they would be doing with their lives and (2) were very CLEAR with their visions were earning 10x more money than their peers. Money is not everything, but this study illustrates the power of our beliefs.

Break the cycle of your destructive thoughts. They are just on repeat, and are living from an experience of not being healthy. But THERE IS A PART of you THAT WANTS TO BE AND CAN BE HEALTHY.

The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself--but that force is not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.

~ Norman Cousins

Disclaimer: Nothing in this post or site should be construed as medical advice. Each individual should consult with his/her practitioner or doctor to work out a treatment plan that is right for them.

1 comment:

UnknownMay 25, 2014 at 10:49 PM
Thank you for sharing your journey. I thus far have learned so much from you ♡
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

DEFINITIONS

Late-Stage Lyme Disease: An infectious bacterial tick borne disease that is transmitted through the bite of a tick, though many doctors believe it may now be transmitted through some infected fleas and mosquitoes. When first bitten, if a person develops a bulls-eye rash and is aware that they have been infected, the disease is easily treated with antibiotics. However, only 40-60% of patients develop the classic bulls-eye rash, called Erythema Migrans. Additionally, the rash is often invisible in people with darker skin, like me. When the tick bite is missed and a person goes months or even years without knowing that they have been infected, the disease enters its late disseminated stages, infecting many if not all systems of the body – limbic, neurological, physical, nervous, psychiatric, cardiac, and the list goes on. At this point, it is excruciatingly difficult, painful, and expensive to treat (note most Lyme treatment is not covered by insurance and highly controversial). Years of antimicrobials and complicated treatment plans (including many holistic methods of healing) are necessary to heal a late stage Lyme patient.

Herxheimer reaction ("Herx"): definition should be "torture." Can be used as a noun or verb as in "I herxed so bad I felt like I was run over by a truck and then dragged by a pack of wolves through hot dry sand." Scientifically speaking, a herxheimer reaction is what occurs during the treatment of Lyme disease and its co-infections. The common misconception is that when a patient is treated with meds, it should be all uphill from there. Medication should make you feel better, right? Very wrong. When spirochetal bacteria (like Lyme) is killed off, it releases a massive load of toxins in the body. These toxins are "neurotoxins" and "endotoxins", which putting it simply means that it is a toxin to the brain and the patients' organs. Typically the death of these bacteria and the associated release of endotoxins occurs faster than the body can remove the toxins via the natural detoxification process (hence the need for tons of detox supplements, herbs, and strict diet). Herxing can cause a whole host of symptoms, ranging from seizures, migraines, excruciating pain, dizziness, relentless hours of crying, anxiety, heart rate issues, pain, inability to breathe, insomnia, episodes of rage, confusion, memory loss, and much, much more. This, therefore makes Lyme treatment grueling, and very similar to cancer treatment with chemotherapy.

Co-infection: another Lyme-like infection transmitted by the tick that is tantamount to having another Lyme Disease, often with worse presenting symptoms for certain patients (like me). Because the late-stage Lyme patient (almost all of us have co-infections) has been so ill for years, the immune system is more compromised and unable to handle all three diseases (though they are all blanketed under one disease, Lyme). Treatment is also very complicated because the doctor has to be sure to address each co-infection and Lyme and do so in a very delicate balance so as not to Herx the crap out of the patient and on the flipside, to make sure Lyme or co-infection are treated aggressively enough so as not to experience a relapse or flare of symptoms. I have experienced both of these unpleasantries and let me just tell you, they are frickin' miserable.

Babesia: a co-infection of Lyme. Babesia is my worst co-infection, hardest to eradicate in the co-infection world (IMO), causing horrible vertigo, dizziness, crippling depression, sweats, nightmares, fevers, fatigue, air hunger (inability to breathe; that’s why I have an oxygen tank and take beta-blockers), heart palpitations/chest pain that make you think you're having a heart attack, severe cognitive impairments, and neurological difficulties.

Bartonella: another co-infection characterized by migraines, confusion, joint and muscle pain, spaciness, feeling disconnected from your body, cognitive impairments, bone-breaking chills, numbness and tingling in extremities, fatigue, depression, extreme agitation and anxiety. Note that all these symptoms overlap to some degree with each co-infection and with Lyme so it’s often difficult to determine what is the cause of what symptom and sometimes many infections are the culprit. My first 3 months of Bartonella treatment, I became so confused the first 2 weeks that I got LOST in a grocery store (no joke), and put the scissors in the freezer by accident. I also called people and forgot I was calling them and walked away from my dialing phone several times to come back and find someone talking. Truth is stranger than fiction.

LLMD: a Lyme-literate medical doctor. Lyme patients love them. We Lyme patients are very educated about our disease - we have to be; so few doctors know about the severity of late-stage Lyme, most have no idea what a ‘co-infection’ is when I tell them, and most don’t know how to diagnose or treat it. I had a doctor ask me if Lyme was hereditary!!!! wtf? There are so few LLMDs for the huge number of us and on average, most late-stage Lyme patients see 9-15 doctors (over a period of years) before they get properly diagnosed. Seeing a regular infectious disease doc would be suicide - he/she would put you on 28 days of drugs and if you were sick after that, tell you that you have chronic fatigue or what IDSA docs notoriously refer to as "post-Lyme fatigue." Ha! I was on an 8 month-wait list for my last LLMD, and flew to DC every 3 weeks to see him - one of the best LLMDs on the East Coast. Not to mention he costs a small fortune because no LLMDs can take insurance. This disease is a huge political controversy and I explain in detail in one of my posts, entitled: "The Great Lyme Controversy." The controversy is so great, in fact, that the Connecticut Attorney General brought an antitrust investigation against the IDSA (the enemy who writes insurance guidelines for treating Lyme and works with the CDC). The investigation “uncovered serious flaws in the IDSA’s process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines….The IDSA guidelines have sweeping and significant impacts on Lyme disease medical care. They are commonly applied by insurance companies in restricting coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment or other medical care and also strongly influence physician treatment decisions. Insurance companies have denied coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment relying on these guidelines as justification….My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.” See http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?a=2795&q=414284.

Monamorphosis

Pages

Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Power of the MIND in HEALING YOURSELF

1 comment:

SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL

Blog Archive

Click on pic for Old Mona slideshow

DEFINITIONS

Great Links on Lyme

All About Late-Stage Lyme: the Disease, the heated Controversy, and the Repeated Misdiagnoses

Other Lyme Blogs

Followers