There can be alot of frustration when you’re healing from a chronic illness and you start at a pretty low place, this feeling can be strong for you. When you are really fatigued, barely have any energy or strength and can’t think straight then this will be big for you.
Initially I was so bad, and I couldn’t sleep at night so I would mainly just have the day when awake as a repreve, even if I did still feel horrible through the day and barely had any energy. Initially I didn’t go out much, and when I did i’d just walk around a little to some shops with a friend and then go home and be exhausted for the rest of the day.
I just wanted to get better! I was putting so much effort into it, taking all kinds of supplements and treatments, doing more than an hour of Qigong a day, which I could manage because it’s gentle. Just wishing that I could be better! The frustration was high because I had no energy or desire to do much else because of how bad I felt. I seemed to just spend almost all my energy on getting better.
The thing that can make this frustration worse is the fact that recovery can be slow, it happens gradually over time. Sometimes you might not even realize how far you’ve come until you look back.
We all want the healing to go faster!
What I want you to know is that as long as you’re going in the right direction, consistently applying treatments and moving towards healing that it WILL get better. I felt so hopeless at first that it seemed it never would. But i’ve got alot better, i’ve been able to go out to dinner with friends, stay out for like 6 hours and be relatively okay.
I’ve been able to do a trip 4 hours away to do a course over a few days and come back and I managed relatively okay. I was a bit tired for a few days, but I would have never been able to do that before.
In fact when I was really sick, I tried to drive to a tourist town about 30 minutes away from me and I got about 10 minutes away and I had to just pull over. I pulled over and I knew I literally couldn’t even make the drive the whole way and I ended up going home, I felt that horrible and my energy was so low.
Since then i’ve gone there many times, stayed there for a few hours, socialized and come back and been fine. It’s only when I look back over say 6 months or more than I see that yes I made definite progress!
Day to day it can seem like you aren’t making progress, some days you might have some symptoms flaring up and it seems like it’s hopeless, you might feel like it’s getting worse. Alot of the time that’s just your mindset in the moment. When I have symptoms flare up it also affects my mindset negatively.
If you’re not aware yet a bit part of this healing is also mental, emotional, psychological. Alot of your issues and traumas have contributed to the illness over the long term.
I’m not saying it’s all in your head or you’re making it up like some idiots tried to tell me. What i’m saying is that chronic stress and trauma you’re holding onto over the long term make your body more susceptible to illness, suppresses your immune system and such.
What’s important is to find a place in yourself where you know you ARE GOING TO HEAL!
That keeps you going even when it’s tough, a few times I actually felt like i’d rather die it was so bad, but something in the back of my head kept me going, consistently doing the right things and looking for answers! If I wasn’t able to do that then I wouldn’t’ have come this far, I wouldn’t have learnt everything i’ve learnt and I wouldn’t be writing this for you now.
How do you do this?
I can’t offer a guide or a step by step list on how to do this, it’s just something you have to find inside yourself when things are most intense.
I’m hoping that writing about it can help you start to find it somewhere! Knowing that you CAN heal! You CAN get better! You CAN improve! I’ve come so far from where I started, i’m still healing but i’ve learnt so much, come so far and in the end it’s really helped me develop as a person and discover alot about myself.
You might have already realized that going into groups, lyme groups for example that it’s like going down a rabbit hole of hopelessness, combined with reading about it all day desperate for a solution it can really make your mindset go downhill and make you depressed.
Sometimes you do need to look for information, but it’s not beneficial to spend hours and hours every day doing so. That’s what I was doing initially.
I found that I improved when I found some good things to consistently apply over time, and focused on doing those while also sometimes adding or changing other things and moving forward. Also working on myself doing Inner Child work, healing my trauma and such has helped alot. Eventually you want to make a switch to reading more positive things, stories about people who have healed, who have come a long way, instead of all the stuff from people who are in a hopeless place as it can drag you down with them.
It’s been similar with the corona lockdown, with fear all over the news. Originally I kept reading things, reading posts and watching things about it and it made me feel much worse, depressed, fearful.
Then I stopped watching and reading it, ignored the groups on facebook and have been focusing on myself, on what I can do and working on that instead i’ve been feeling much better.