"The quieter you get, the more you can hear." ~ Rumi
The quarantine felt strangely familiar. That's because I was home with a mysterious, virus-like illness for the most part for thirteen years. It even started with a cold on a flight back from Asia in 2005.
My nose was an open tap and my head felt like the cumulus clouds outside my window. When I returned to San Diego, I was so weak and exhausted that I could hardly get up. My brain and body were on fire.
I couldn't focus or remember names of employees. Although I was previously able to fall asleep in action films and moving vehicles, I suddenly had severe insomnia. I existed in a constant state of tiredness and wiring.
I tried desperately to return to my job as a radio journalist. But what good is a reporter who can't appear on the evening news? Eventually I lost a career and a life I loved and retired to my home.
Long before the word quarantine splashed across TV screens, I began to live in my four walls. I only went to the grocery store for trips, if that is the case.
Doctors diagnosed me with a chronic fatigue syndrome. Untreatable, incurable, hopeless. The labs showed high titers of Epstein-Barr and other obscure viruses.
Specialists dealt with faulty mitochondria or bad genetics. They also had secondary diagnoses: fibromyalgia, postviral syndrome, leaky gut syndrome, candida overgrowth, adrenal fatigue, interstitial cystitis. Etcetera.
They piled like weights on my shoulders. I collapsed into an unknowable self.
At thirty-five, in the prime of my career, I was emptied with the hope of having a family of my own. My minor strength was researching cures, combating medical denials, and saving my home from foreclosure.
My life as a television news reporter got into an endless commercial break. Then dead air. I was trapped in this quagmire for years, trying everything from antiviral infusions to energy healers.
I've seen the best specialists in CFS / ME. There are also Tibetan and Chinese doctors, shamans and therapists. I rewritten the trauma and tried to flush it out with enemas.
Nothing moved the needle too much for my symptoms – no diets, food supplements or medication. Some made it worse.
After more than a decade of disappointed hopes – and eventually a pipe smoking healer who charged $ 200 to tell me about her cat – I let go of hope that someone else could fix me and turned to simple and minor reliefs to. It's not that I've given up on healing. I stopped going to sterile doctor's offices and smoky dens.
This freed up long afternoons to watch ravens and snails, read poetry, and write my own poems. I would sink into the words of Rumi, Rilke or Eckhart Tolle. I meditated, sang Sanskrit, took short walks, and stretched in restorative yoga poses.
I reveled in simplicity and slowness as if there was nothing better on earth. I was looking for what was given rather than what was taken away. A quiet and content mind replaced my busy and accomplished life.
There was an intrinsic connection with the living world. From this chaotic, real, surrendered state, something magical happened: I recovered.
I met a woman who was cured of CFS through an online writing class. Kathy told me her story and heard my story. She explained how she did it and I had an immediate remission.
Tied up from bed, I started running around the block. Many times!
How can words make my symptoms go away on the spot? Kathy told me about the little known but groundbreaking work of Dr. John Sarno. The late doctor from New York University Medical Center helped tens of thousands of patients recover from chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, and other stress-related conditions by teaching them the source of their symptoms: the way the brain experiences stress due to overwhelming emotions processed
I had heard the only truth that made sense to my symptoms. They were physical manifestations of tension and trauma, not so different from PTSD.
I felt it in my body, but the cause was in my brain. This explained why the sensations moved, came and went, moving in intensity. Tissue damage doesn't work that way.
If you walk on a broken leg, it doesn't suddenly stop hurting. If you have a tumor, it won't grow and shrink.
My nervous system tried to warn me of dangers. It was stuck in fight, escape, or freeze mode. Like a broken record with a deep rut, my brain had learned patterns of pain and fatigue.
But brains are neuroplastic. I could rewire mine to be comfortable again! Hope filled me like a spoon of medicine.
Over the next year I trained my brain with enthusiasm. It had linked so many things to harm: food doctors told me not to eat, activities I was warned about, anything that reminded me of the initial trauma, and all of the dominoes to follow it up.
I began to curiously feel my body sensations while remembering that I was safe. I spoke to my brain like a scared child, with kindness and confidence.
"I know that you cause these symptoms, but they are not dangerous. There is nothing wrong with my body. I am not sick. I am resilient and strong!"
It may sound woo woo, but the imaging shows that self-affirmation activates the more logical prefrontal cortex above the reactive amygdala. You could say I became the adult in the room and not the hideous child or the disastrous parent.
Next, I started challenging my triggers and doing things that produced symptoms, that is, almost anything. I took small steps back into the world, regardless of fatigue, pain or brain fog. Slowly but surely they subsided.
It worked! I retrained my own brain.
I also began to sense my feelings instead of my habit of suppressing them. I mourned the loss of my career, the years of upbringing, the ability to climb a mountain or to feel all right in my body.
After years of being frozen, I started to thaw. That brought tears, sadness, shame and anger. I wrote angry letters (and didn't send them). I started telling myself that it's okay to feel what I'm feeling (and pause long enough for it to arise).
It was thirteen years before I realized that healing does not take place in a disempowered state. We have to take our strength back. We must believe in our resilience despite evidence to the contrary.
We need to connect with that part of us that is already good and focus our attention on it. It could be our little toe, the energy in our body, or a connection with something divine. We must not listen to those who tell us that we are sick and irreparably broken.
When someone says that there is no cure, we conclude that they have no answer for us and move on. We don't listen to those who make us fearful or small. We look for what makes us courageous and hopeful.
When we gain trust in ourselves and our inner wisdom, we feel safe and strengthened. This works wonders for our nervous system, which works wonders for every other system in our body.
Modern medicine offers life-saving therapy for acute diseases such as infections, tumors, blood diseases and diseases with tissue damage that can be repaired. My beloved mother lives 23 years after battling an advanced case of ovarian cancer thanks to the medicine extracted from the Pacific yew tree.
However, allopathy has little success with stress-related symptoms such as chronic back pain, pelvic pain, fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome. Dr. Sarno said that's because it doesn't yet recognize them as physical manifestations of emotional stress.
There is little scientific evidence that viruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome. I relied on doctors armed with small studies and their own guesswork. Of course, I would have been thrilled if her treatments had worked.
But then I would not have discovered the joy in healing, which I now see as an ability for life. It's a self-written recipe for a more authentic and powerful experience.
DISCLAIMER: This post represents a person's experiences and beliefs and a path to healing. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition or disease. Please consult a professional if this does not suit your personal experience.
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