I’ve recently been going to different chronic illness groups to give advice and it’s reminding me why I stopped doing so.
When I first got lyme I was really sick, and also triggered some trauma around the same time so I had alot of anxiety, and I lost alot of strength in myself, so things were affecting me alot more.
I’d read for countless hours just looking for something to help me get better, and I noticed if I read about symptoms i’d start taking them on.
Some of these groups are a black hole of hopelessness, with people not just posting their stories but getting lost in negativity and being stuck in it. Of course a bit of this is okay and it’s great to find others who understand and can give advice, but when I see things like someone posting a photo of a person getting in a noose because they had issues with their doctor and very long very negative rants it concerns me.
I understand, I was pretty bad at first and it was easy to get lost in the hopelessness, especially when your symptoms are really flaring up.
But going to groups where there are people who have basically given up and are throwing that onto everybody isn’t helpful for you. I’m much stronger in myself than I have been for a long time, and it even now makes me cringe a little bit and I don’t want to be surrounded by it too much. The problem is that’s combined with my wanting to help people.
I’ve mentioned before how important it is to find a deep part inside yourself that knows you can heal!
But also find positivity. You might find a group that specifically talks about people who have recovered and focus on that for some time so you can see it is possible. It’s also important to find ways to care for yourself, to relax and find ways to calm yourself down. That might be a warm bath, meditation, going on a biomat or similar devices, playing or sitting with your dog. Whatever it might be for you.
Of course you want to learn how to heal, and find information on good treatments. This is a needed step, but if you’re spending countless hours and hours a day just reading it without applying anything then it can take a negative toll on your mindset.
This is not what you need!
If you can find places that give good health and healing information without there being tons of people descending into hopelessness who have given up.. then that’s a much better place to be.
Imagine if you went and posted your story somewhere and all you got was replies of how horrible it was, how it’s impossible to recover, nothing can be done (this is the mindset of some people in these places) do you think that would be helpful?
Not at all, and besides.. THAT ISN’T TRUE.
You CAN heal.
You CAN recover.
You CAN improve your health.
It takes time and gradual improvement.
But if you go somewhere and anybody starts to tell you there’s no point, that you can’t heal… then find somewhere else!
This will likely upset some people, especially if they are the ones rationalizing their own issues by doing what I mention to others. But i’m hoping the right people will be open to it and question why they are doing this and shift to something different!
As a last point, I VERY strongly recommend that you completely avoid reddit. Others have confirmed this when I shared it with them, and I also found the same thing a few years ago. Reddit is by far the most massive black hole of hopelessness.
One or two are open to healing. But in general they take everything i’ve written here and ramp it up to 1000%. I have posted advice there that has been received positively everywhere else i’ve posted it, but on reddit people who are stuck in their own issues continually downvote and also some run in and needlessly attack and get abusive and have huge emotional outbursts yet never provide actual discussion or an argument of why they disagree.
If I look at it from the point of view that if I was still how I was when I first got sick, with how my emotional health was back then I would have got little help from there as anything positive and helpful seems to be ‘downvoted’ while people posting memes about hanging themselves and such gets ‘upvoted’ massively.
I’m pretty much going to leave them to their misery.
I only want people who are committed to their own healing, trying what i’m recommending and actually THINKING which seems to be in limited supply in recent times.