Planet Thrive

I was well on my way to healing myself from CFS long before I really had a diagnosis. This was after I was very ill for about 17 years. Because I was in the generation of people who became ill before CFS was a “real” disease and because I didn’t have any family to be an advocate for me I was very sick, alone, and bedridden much of the time even though there was “nothing wrong with me.” And even though I spent literally years trying to describe my illness to countless doctors all I got was medications for anxiety and depression and directed to do things like art therapy and other therapies that had little to do with my real problem.

I got to a point where my physical health was so bad that I realized even without the sanction or blessing of doctors (a diagnosis) I had to do something or I would end up dead. And because I was learning in a very painful way what they say is the definition of insanity or idiocy, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result really applied to my allowing doctors to continue to have their inept way with me, I decided to take over and heal myself.

I recall telling someone that I was reading Deepak Chopra’s Perfect Health and that I was going to get well, “I’m going to heal myself,” I said. My recovery from illness was a really unnecessarily long and painful journey that would have taken only 5 years initially but ended up taking 20. Because my focus initially was on getting a diagnosis and having someone else (a doctor) tell me what was wrong so I could go for the cure I spent so many years spending countless hours thinking, “What is wrong with me?” Instead I should have been thinking, “What can I do to heal myself and recover?”

That was my mistake from the get go and I learned a lot since then but I also realized that NOT KNOWING my diagnosis indirectly increased my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual abilities to recover. Unlike many I’ve met and talked to with CFS I wasn’t focused on getting a cure for my illness, and simply put I think that’s why so many people aren’t recovering. To focus on finding a cure only heightens our experience of disease!

I had been sick for many, many years before I actually met other people who were sick with the same illness. And I was astounded at their looking to medicine and searching for the magic bullet instead of taking personal responsibility for their own health, their own recovery, and finding their own strength to heal.

Your focus can be, “I have this incurable illness,” or, “I’m sick now but I want to heal and I’m willing to do anything it takes.” Make every effort to reduce and eliminate toxins in your life INCLUDING negativity. Toxins are all stressors that I have listed on my stressor checklist. I’ve heard people say things like, “I tried organic food and it didn’t work.” So what you give up and go back to eating toxic food and living a toxic lifestyle because you made an attempt but didn’t see the kind of results like you expect when you say, take a pill? Never give up striving for a toxin and stressor free life if you want to get well. If it took you 10 years of cumulative stress to get sick then you’re not going to recover in a month or two. Keep up the work for the rest of your life and you WILL have a better life and start to recoup your health – I guarantee it.