I am not new to thinking about the role of the mind in recovery from CFS; in fact I would go as far as to say I am a strong advocate of the role of the mind in health. Not because I think CFS is a psychological illness but because I believe the mind and the body are inextricably linked. I think to assume otherwise is actually naive.
And whilst I am not fully better (hence the reason for starting the Chrysalis Effect Recovery Programme) I have improved my health significantly over the last couple of years and I truly believe part of this has been down to embracing the contribution my mind plays in keeping me ill.
So I was not at all surprised to see the second session of the Chrysalis Programme was called Raising Your Spirit. The session is about exploring whether or not your emotions, feelings and stress are in some way playing a part in your illness. Just take a moment to think about it. How are your symptoms affected if you are stressed? Or feeling low? Or someone does something to upset you? The body is clever – far cleverer than you or I! And even when you think you are in a calm state, what are you carrying around subconsciously? Yep, don’t be fooled. We can all improve our psychological well being. (Well, maybe apart from the Dalai Lama who seems to have it pretty sorted!)
One of the exercises in this session is to write 3 pages of A 4 in the morning on any emotional stuff (past or present) in your life. The goal is to be as honest as you can be: dump your most private thoughts, as everything you write is for your eyes only. Now this isn’t the first time I have worked on my emotions in recovery: I have done EFT, hypnotherapy and other NLP type treatments. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a powerful and enlightening exercise. (And I think if I hadn’t already done some work in this area it would have been even more so.)
And anyone who blogs or writes, clearly has a love affair with words and thinks they have a lot to say! So I guess it is no surprise that this exercise has suited me. Getting up, making my coffee and sitting down to a good half hour of writing about myself has turned out to be a rather perfect start to the day. It has also made me feel really free and light. My husband is away with work Monday to Friday so I spend quite a lot of time on my own. I think my journal has become the person I chat to in the mornings!
I have done a lot of hypnotherapy – which has delved deeply into my emotions – so I wasn’t necessarily expecting anything new to come up. But I did have a good dig around some of that stuff just to be sure. I also found just writing about any general day to day stress really powerful.
Then at night time, you are encouraged to celebrate any achievements of the day. This has also been a really positive experience. I am classic Type A; I only like celebrating BIG achievements, so anything that encourages me to celebrate baby steps is really good for me.
Other exercises focused on positive ways to deal with any stress and problems in your life, so that you can move up the emotional ladder towards joy. One of these exercises was to have a fun angel. How cool is that? I mean, who wouldn’t want a fun angel (or indeed to be a fun angel?!) The idea being, that fun and laughter are great medicine. (My best friend wanted to know if she would get wings for her new role!) And I also realised that I am pretty good at being my own fun angel too (wing free!) This exercise has made me reflect on how happy I actually am a lot of the time; I am often hanging out towards the top of the emotional ladder and I’m not sure I could have said that a couple of years ago. My biggest challenge is managing overwhelm; I can be a bit of a stress head. And although I am good at getting myself out of it, it would clearly be better for me if I didn’t go there in the first place and I think the exercises from this session will help me with that.
So as I reflect on my first month of the programme, I feel very positive about my progress. It is building beautifully on top of treatments I have already tried. So the universe might have got in the way on week one but I am rocking now. With my journal and my fun angel there is no stopping me.
Karen Cripps
