I had a chat with one of my supervisors today, and she said something that resonated with me. I had been expressing my fears of the future to her, and how difficult it was to keep up hope these days. I also mentioned a self-help book I had been reading, titled “You Can Heal Your Life”. In the novel, the author expresses the belief that changing one’s patterns of thought can promote both mental and physical healing. She asked me what I thought of that belief, and I told her that while it was interesting in theory I wasn’t sure if that alone could promote any physical healing.
Her response gave me hope.
“I think we need to refocus on healing vs. curing. There may be no way for you to “cure” yourself of what’s going on, but you will always have the power and opportunity to heal. You will always have time to begin healing.”
It may seem trivial, but it really made me pause to think about what I’m trying to accomplish. There’s so much trauma and hurt and negativity that I’ve been holding for most of my life. Even if I miraculously recovered from my physical ailments, all the hurt inside of me is still there affecting how I think about life, my loved ones and myself.
I’m already hurting on the outside. I don’t want to give my demons any more power over how I feel on the inside either. I want to heal my heart.
Does anyone have any resources or ideas for how I can tackle this? I have therapy covered, but I’d like to give myself “homework” for practices/techniques I can develop between my therapy sessions. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!
I’ve been using meditation for a very long time as a way to handle whatever life throws at me, you could describe it as a sort of healing process. Its tricky to start with but stick with it. When I meditate my whole body calms, even the ever present MS pain doesn’t seem as bad, its still there but I don’t notice it as much.
Meditation doesn’t need any special equipment or clothing, and it can be done pretty much anywhere/anytime - I even have brief meditation sessions at work and when travelling as a passenger in a vehicle (cars, buses, trains, planes).
Also, I would suggest looking up videos of talks by Ajahn Brahm on Youtube; he is a British born Buddhist Monk, his talks cover all manner of subjects; letting go of anger is a particularly good one.
Clearly you are struggling a bit and have things to tackle. Not that I’m an expert in any way but without knowing what is covered by your therapy sessions, my thoughts are:
As @TheresaB suggests, try meditation/ mindfulness. I once went on a Tai Chi and Meditation retreat run by someone called Sue Weston. I think she now does some online meditation sessions and on her website has a CD/memory stick for sale. Years ago I bought the CD and amongst other things it includes ‘being kind to yourself’. Have a look at her website. I hope you find something useful: sueweston.com
Also look at Overcoming MS. They have sections on diet, exercise, etc and importantly, Meditation. The website includes quite a lot on stress and meditation and includes a number of meditation sessions including one to ‘support your healing’ and other similar ones.
As others have said Mindfulness and breathing techniques can help to clear some of the clutter so that we can consciously choose how we respond to stuff rather than go with the automatic responses.
All the best Mick