A Rational Approach Approa ch to ME & CFS Recovery
Loz Evans Second Edition 2009
With thanks to Neal, Philippe and Brechtje
First published by Loz Evans 2008 Copyright © Loz Evans 2009 Loz Evans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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Contents Part One – The Beginning of the End of M.E. Chapter
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Page About the Author………………………………………………………………….08 Practical Stuff The Medical Diagnosis for M.E…………………………………………………..09 Medical Research and Treatments……………………………………………….10 Your Misunderstood Condition An Overview of What Causes M.E………………………………………………11 The Development of My Methods………………………………………………..13 How Hearing About The Lightning Process Encouraged Me Experimenting
Part Two – Getting to The Root of the Problem Chapter
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Page The Emotional Brain and The Thinking Brain…………………………………16 Sensory Messages The Brain Stem (The Reptilian Brain) The Limbic System (The Emotional Brain) Core Emotions The Amygdala (Emergency Fight or Flight Response Unit) Flight or Fight The Neocortex (The Thinking Brain) Sensory Message Pathways and The Thalamus (Air Traffic Controller) More on The Amygdala Hijacking of The Amygdala The Start of M.E.…………………………………………………………………23 The Continuation of M.E. What’s in a Name The Hippocampus and Memory ………………………………………….………27 Emotional Memories……………………………………………………….……...29 Creating New Emotional Memories Fun – The Important Ingredient The Selfish Inner Child How Emotional Memories Work What the Amygdala Will Respond to…………………………………….……..33 Real or Imagined…It’s All the Same to Your Emotional Brain
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Part Three - The Stop Method Chapter
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Page A Round Up of What’s to Come…………………………………………………36 Introduction to The Stop Method……………………………………………..…37 Neural Pathways Get Straight to the Point – ‘Stop’ The Stop Method - Saying ‘Stop’……………………………………………...…40 Triggers Thoughts and Daydreams M.E. Based Thoughts Ifs and Buts… Symptomatic Triggers Sensations in Your Body Emotional Triggers Sensory Triggers Things You See, Hear, Smell, Taste or Touch What Next The Stop Method - Using Opposing Positive Words……………………….…..44 What Words to Use and How to Choose Them The Stop Method - Saying Thank You! …………………………………….…..47 The Stop Method - How You Should Say Stop …………………………….…...48 Put Trust in What You Say Be Aware of What You Say Stop Method and Amygdala Metaphors…………………………………….….50 The Dog – An Amygdala Metaphor The Stop Method - Distraction……………………………………………….….51 The Stop Method - Visualisation……………………………………………..….54 The Nervous Little Man Visualisation The Thermometer Visualisation Using Negative Visualisation – Don’t! Tinitus Visualisation The Stop Method - Using Positive Actions………………………………………57 The Stop Method - Confronting Symptoms…………………………………..…58 The Stop method - Forget M.E. ………………………………………………….60 Friends and Family The Stop Method - Other Treatments………………………………………...…63 Methods That Work Well With This Book
Part Four – Emotions and People Chapter
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Page Healthy Emotional Energy……………………………………………………….66 An Emotional Balance
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Beating Yourself Up………………………………………………………………68 Give Your Thinking Mind a Name Voice of Reason? Beliefs and Perceptions………………………………………………………....…70 A Certain ‘Type’ of Person………………………………………………….……73 Recognising Emotions Hidden by M.E. …………………………………………75 Feeling Everyday Emotions Compared With M.E. Symptoms Physically Recognising Emotions in a Healthy Body……………………….…..78 The Over-Protective Body……………………………………………………..…79 Being on the Same ‘Level’ as Others…………………………………………..…80 The Difference Between Letting Go and Suppressing………………………..…82 If You Let Go You’ll Stop Falling Yoga and M.E. Think Better……………………………………………………………………….85 Dream Ways of Releasing Emotional Energy…………………………..………………88 Writing Deep Relaxation Role-Playing a Conversation
Part Five – Reclaim Yourself and Related Techniques Chapter
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Page The Subconscious Mind…………………………………………………………..91 Reclaim Yourself .....................................................................................................93 Preparation What Happens in the CD Stage One Stage two Role-Playing a Conversation Further Advice The Racing Mind…………………………………………………………….……97 When the Body and Mind are ‘Out of Sync’ Meditation…………………………………………………………………………99 Why I Began Meditation Being Mindful Instructions for Meditation The Little Things That Help…………………………………….………………104 Posture Smiling Correct Breathing Neck Roles and Shoulder Stretches Massage Relaxing Diet
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Part Six – You Can Stop M.E. Chapter
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Page Mind and Personal Discipline………………………………….…………..……112 Sleep Problems Upset Stomach Mind Discipline With M.E. Keeping Your Spirits Up A Doorway Change Will Come With Persistence Down to You Strength Getting Back to Normal………………………………………………..….….…117 Got and Had Thoughts and Symptoms Are You Ready? ……………………………………………………………...…119 Levels of Illness Letting Go of the Desire to discuss M.E. Desire Re-Cap……………………………………………………………………………122 The Fundamentals in My Methods…
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Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "One can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." – Lewis Carroll. ‘ Alice in Wonderland.’
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Part One
The Beginning of the End of M.E. About the Author - Practical Stuff
The Medical Diagnosis for M.E Medical Research and Treatments - Your Misunderstood Condition
An Overview of What Causes M.E The Development of My Methods - How Hearing About The Lightning Process Encouraged Me - Experimenting
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Chapter 1
About the Author I’m twenty-nine years old and originally from Leamington Spa. I’m not a doctor and currently I’m not any other kind of practitioner. I became very ill with M.E. in November 2005. I had the usual tests such as a brain scan, a nerve conduction test, blood tests, and I saw many doctors before my diagnosis of M.E. was confirmed. I experienced severe classic M.E. symptoms for prolonged periods of time. I was bed bound for three months when I was unable to sit up for long and I was housebound for another five months. It took me a year to recover fully. The realness or severity of my illness could be questioned because it only lasted for one year, but I’m hoping people will instead ask why and how it only lasted for one year. My M.E. didn’t just go away by itself. There are certain methods that I used and developed to make it go away. These methods are focused around amygdala re-education, proper relaxation and being happy. The methods I will describe are simple, down to earth, logical, and I hope easy to understand. I have called my main two methods ‘The Stop Method’ and ‘ Reclaim Yourself .’
Practical Stuff ‘The Stop Method’ is contained in this book. ‘Reclaim Yourself’ is explained in this book, but the method itself comes as an accompanying audio CD. If you do not have ‘Reclaim Yourself,’ please email me. My email address is:
[email protected] This book and the accompanying CD go together, so it's important that you do have both. ‘Reclaim Yourself’ is an essential part of the recovery process and should be listened to after reading this book. (Please note: Some people reported they did not listen to ‘Reclaim Yourself’ for some time after reading this book, but once they did they realised just how useful it was and they wished they’d listened to it earlier!). If you find that this book helps you and you have acquired it for free, please consider making a donation to support my efforts. Any contribution is appreciated as I can only afford to do this work in my spare time. How to donate: 1. Please email me for an address to send a cheque or postal order to. Cheques should be made payable to ‘L. Evans.’ Or... 2. Pay with Paypal. Log into your Paypal account and click the ‘send money’ tab at the top. Fill in the amount you wish to pay and to which email:
[email protected] Clicking the ‘personal’ tab allows you to send money as a gift. Whether you can afford to donate or not, the most important i ssue is your recovery. So, if after reading this book you feel the methods in it are right for you, but you are still having trouble putting them into practice, you are welcome to email me at the above address. I am happy to do telephone consultations. It doesn’t matter whether you have donated or not, (and I won’t ask you if you have!) I will do the best I can to help you. Please note that I will try to reply as quickly as possible, but reply time depends on the volume of emails I receive.
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Chapter 2
The Medical Diagnosis for M.E I’m sure you’re familiar with the long list of symptoms associated with M.E. I will briefly mention them now however as this is the only method by which one can classify the condition. Please note that when I use the term ‘ M.E.,’ I am also referring to ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.’ There are currently over sixty reported symptoms for M.E. Here are the most common: •
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Extreme fatigue. Literally feeling as though the plug has been pulled out and energy drained from the body. There is often an urgent need to sit or lie down, feelings of total exhaustion and near collapse. This fatigue is not the same as normal tiredness, nor is it the same as the type of exhaustion healthy people refer to. Headaches, leg pain, muscular pain and twitching. For some pain is chronic. Other sufferers hardly get any pain. Many sufferers report skin crawling and tingling sensations. Extreme weakness. Sinking feelings, as if melting through the floor were possible. Paralysis in certain parts of the body or all over, (paralysis can last for days). Un-refreshing sleep, insomnia and nocturnal behaviour, inability to wake in the mornings, feeling like ten hours sleep was only ten minutes. Very severe throat pain, sore throat, recurring flu-like symptoms. Poor short-term memory and brain fog causing speech problems, difficulty in finding words and forming sentences, confusion, lack of concentration and comprehension. Clumsiness, dizziness, balance problems, feelings of disequilibria likened to ‘walking on rubber,’ or being on a boat. Problems with nervous system control causing palpitations, unusual sweating and low blood pressure symptoms such as hypotension. Bad skin condition, spots, pale and puffy skin. Temperature disturbances. Feeling cold when it’s hot and hot when it’s cold, very cold hands and feet. Disassociation syndrome. Mental disturbances, mood swings, anxiety and depression (mostly due to illness). Sensitivity to noise and light to the point where they can be painful. Nausea, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, weight gain or weight loss. Food, chemical and drug sensitivities. Intolerance to alcohol.
This list by no means covers every symptom. For a much more detailed list you can consult this website: www.ahummingbirdsguide.com/themesymptomlist.htm Until recently positive ideas about actively curing M.E. were scarce. Most of the advice given was based on taking care not to aggravate the illness. On being diagnosed with M.E. most are told to try methods such as pacing, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), or to avoid overexertion and avoid certain food groups. Some sufferers are also advised they should try and learn to live with the condition. The methods I will tell you about are different because they’re based on actively confronting the illness. They are simple and logical and because of this they take a lot of determination and commitment to put into practice. The more you use them however, the easier they get.
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Chapter 3
Medical Research and Treatments Whilst ill I looked into current medical treatments for M.E. such as magnesium injections and vitamin supplements and I read a lot about scientific research into M.E. The research was all very good but it seemed that most of it examined the symptoms of M.E. and not the root cause. What baffled me was that as medical science has such a strong repertoire for conquering some very powerful diseases such as Cancer, Leprosy and Polio, why could it not put a finger on M.E.? If M.E. were a neurological illness or some kind of prolonged virus, you would’ve expected medical science to have come up with a solution by now given its past achievements, but it hasn’t. Of course it can tell us about what the symptoms are and it can provide treatments to help with some of those symptoms, but it’s when we question what the root of M.E. actually is and how that can be dealt with, that medical science fails. This suggests that perhaps M.E. originates from problems that can’t and shouldn’t be treated with drug-based regimes. Just as counselling would be no good to mend a broken leg, medical science and drug-based regimes may not be a good option for attempting to resolve M.E.
Your Misunderstood Condition Until recently M.E. has been very misunderstood. Research into curing M.E. has become so complex that sufferers are often led to believe it is a very impossible condition to treat. M.E. is a very serious condition but that doesn’t mean the cure has to be complicated. Take the name ‘M.E,’ which stands for ‘Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.’ This also adds to the misunderstanding of what M.E. actually is. ‘Myalgic’ means muscular pain or tenderness, which can be a symptom. ‘Encephalomyelitis’ means inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, which is not a symptom. So this name does not properly represent the condition and it basically makes M.E. seem more mysterious and misunderstood. Unfortunately when we cannot understand an illness or problem properly, we often imagine the worst. That is human nature. So you have perhaps thought that you have a severe medical condition likened to Multiple Sclerosis or Lyme disease, but I don’t think you have such a condition. M.E. isn’t a persistent virus and it isn’t a disease. M.E. is a physical condition that can be cured using mental processes, relaxation and body and mind t echniques. It can be corrected without drugs and medical treatment. Please do not read my book and also read M.E. forums that discuss the barriers with M.E. recovery because there’s no scientific cure. The cure is not scientific, it’s personal, straightforward and down to you. Don’t let others bring you down and get in your way of your recovery. As the following nicely puts: ‘People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.’ - George Bernard Shaw
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Chapter 4
An Overview of What Causes M.E. We usually have emotional energy of one form or another travelling through our bodies. Because of this energy we know when we don’t like something, we know when we are happy and we know when we love somebody. Humans understand emotional energy and know how it feels in the body. For example a ‘butterflies in the stomach’ feeling tells us we’re nervous. Our emotional energy helps us to make decisions in life that will be beneficial for us. We can refer to the healthiness of emotional energy as our ‘well-being.’ M.E. occurs when a person’s emotional well-being becomes so low that they are physically affected by it. It is healthy to act on emotional energy. For example someone is angry, they shout and then they feel better. The emotional energy served its purpose and the anger is gone. A person’s emotional well-being can become low when they don’t act on emotional sensations or feelings. This often happens because we feel it’s not appropriate or we are not comfortable with expressing an emotion. If we ignore emotional energy, the brain can turn up its communication of the neglected emotion and make the sensation of it feel even stronger in the body. So if you are working on a project because you feel you must, even though you don’t want to finish it, headaches, stiffness or feelings of being a little rundown may occur because you are neglecting the feeling that you’ve had enough of that project. If after such warnings a person continues to neglect an important emotional sensation, the brain can again step up the communication of that emotion until the emotional energy becomes so intense that the reason behind it is lost. It then becomes unrecognisable as an emotional sensation and instead is understood to be a symptom of something. If prolonged a person’s survival instinct will pick up on these symptoms or physical effects and because a person may have no explanation for those effects, their survival instinct will label them as a threat and put the body into a heightened state of alert. People then often come to the conclusion that they have some incurable illness because the s ymptoms have no apparent reason for existing. There is no infection and no disease. As an M.E. sufferer there are three things you can do that will work together for your recovery: 1. 2. 3.
Resolve the factors in your life that are causing your emotional well-being to be low Ensure you maintain a healthy emotional well-being. Bring your body out of the heightened state of alert that it’s in.
To do these you must rebuild your confidence and trust in yourself, physically and mentally. I’m not going to talk about CBT or Psychotherapy. The methods I will explain are different because they are precisely aimed at the root cause of M.E. The root cause of M.E. lies in a part of the brain called the ‘Amygdala.’ Recovery lies in reeducating this part of the brain and weakening the neural pathways that it has been using to generate your symptoms. So far these neural pathways have been constantly strengthened. This is because it’s natural to evaluate symptoms to establish what’s wrong with us. It’s also natural to take great care not to
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irritate symptoms. These natural responses mean we pay attention to the symptoms constantly and we are always aware of them. And paying attention to the symptoms in such ways means that the neural pathways the amygdala uses to generate them are constantly being exercised, so they become strong. In other words, a sufferer can empower their symptoms and make them worse just through having thoughts and an awareness of them. Of course the catch is that when you have M.E. it is very hard to ignore the symptoms. Your attention subconsciously or consciously is generally on them and you therefore will be exercising the brains ability to produce them. This i s why people get stuck with M.E. for so long, it’s a catch twenty-two situation. For now please put aside theories of what M.E. is or how it should be treated. Forget about all the M.E. medical articles you’ve read. There are a few treatments I will mention in this book that are good for helping with M.E. Aside from those, please discard old ideas and start with a clean slate. I hope the following story will help you understand what I mean. Two Buddhist monks were on a long journey when they came to a river. On the bank sat a young woman. “I beg you,” she asked, “Could you carry me across? The current is strong and I’m afraid I might be swept away.” The first monk remembered his vows never to look at or touch a woman, so he ignored her and crossed the heavily flowing river. The other monk bent down so that the woman could climb upon his back. When they reached the other side, he let her down and went on his way. After some hours the first monk could no longer contain his anger at the second for breaking their vows. “How could you even look at that woman, let alone carry her across the river?” The first monk looked at his companion and smiled, “I put the woman down way back there on the riverbank. You’re still carrying her.” ‘You’re Still Carrying Her’ - A Zen Buddhist story
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Chapter 5
The Development of My Methods There are two main methods that I developed to overcome M.E. These methods partly originate from a mixture of treatments that I’ve either read about or experienced. They are: Reverse Therapy, Mickel Therapy, The Lightning Process, Meditation, Relaxation, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and The Linden Method. ‘The Linden Method’ is a cure for anxiety. ‘The Lighting Process’ is a cure for M.E., anxiety and other conditions. Judging by their websites and recovery stories, The Linden Method and The Lighting Process are very successful. They are also aimed at re-educating the amygdala. You only have to look at websites, forums and articles about M.E. or anxiety to soon come across a mention of them and how they have worked. On the M.E. forums that I used, there were many people who had recovered through taking Lightning Process training. The only thing was that they often didn’t come back to the forums to talk about their recovery and that confused continuing sufferers. But what I didn’t realise then when I used to question why all these people didn’t come back to the forum and tell us about how they’d recovered in order to give us hope, is that part of their recovery process would probably involve completely putting M.E. behind them, which means staying away from the M.E. forums and groups. I know this because once you understand the nature of M.E, it becomes obvious that you need to stay away from reminders of it. You’ll understand the point of this once you’ve read this book.
How Hearing About The Lightning Process Encouraged Me Over the last few years you may have heard of The Lightning Process. It was developed by Phil Parker in 2000 and is a training course that teaches people how to cure their M.E. I never took The Lightning Process (LP), and I don’t know much about it as you can’t really know much until you pay for it. But I have been told by a sufferer who did take LP and who also read my book that one of my methods is very similar to LP, practically the same in fact. So this is good for us to know as LP has become very well known in M.E. circles, because it works. Anyway, on The Lightning Process website I noticed that Phil Parker had said that he found there was a pattern in the way people with M.E. think. This interested me and I paid more attention to my thoughts from then on. Basically I noticed that whenever I decided I’d need LP to get better or any other treatment; my symptoms worsened. Also when I was at the doctors my symptoms worsened. Whenever I wasn’t thinking about needing treatments and when I thought to myself, ‘ I’m going to be better by the end of the year, I can sort this out myself,’ my symptoms died down, just a little. This small realisation was a breakthrough in understanding M.E. I knew then that my thinking was going to play a part in my recovery. So I experimented.
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Experimenting I first experimented with my thoughts by literally tr ying to see how long I could go without thinking from the moment I woke up. I would keep a song in my head, anything to stop my regular thoughts rolling in. I managed to keep this up through breakfast and then I’d revert back to my usual state of mind. I noticed that thought blocking did make me feel marginally better, but of course it’s not possible to go round without thinking all day. So I decided to try something a little more unusual. I liked the theory behind the treatment called Reverse Therapy and as this is based on resolving inflammation of the hypothalamus, a small part in the brain related to adrenalin release, I based my initial experiments on resolving this. Although my health improved a surprising amount over two days, I lacked confidence in my method. With no professional body to reassure me, I worried that my M.E. would catch up with me in the form of a big relapse. So for a while I stopped working on my thoughts. That was until I read about the work of a neuroscientist called Joseph LeDoux. His work suggested to me that the part of the brain responsible for M.E. is the amygdala, not the hypothalamus. The amygdala produces the symptoms of M.E. through unconsciously stored negative emotions. I will describe the role of the amygdala in a moment. Encouraged by these findings I started using my methods again whilst focusing on the amygdala instead of the hypothalamus. My M.E. symptoms again decreased quickly and I soon felt completely free of M.E., which was quite an amazing feeling. So now I aim to present the methods I used in simple detail so that you can try them out and hopefully find them as useful as I did.
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Part Two
Getting to The Root of the Problem The Emotional Brain and The Thinking Brain - Sensory Messages - The Brain Stem (The Reptilian Brain) - The Limbic System (The Emotional Brain) - Core Emotions - The Amygdala (Emergency Fight or Flight Response Unit) - Flight or Fight - The Neocortex (The Thinking Brain) - Sensory Message Pathways and The Thalamus (Air Traffic Controller) - More on The Amygdala - Hijacking of The Amygdala
The Start of M.E. - The Continuation of M.E. - What’s in a Name
The Hippocampus and Memory Emotional Memories - Creating New Emotional Memories - Fun – The Important Ingredient - The Selfish Inner Child - How Emotional Memories Work
What the Amygdala Will Respond to - Real or Imagined…It’s All the Same to Your Emotional Brain
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Chapter 6
The Emotional Brain and The Thinking Brain Although there is a lot of technical information now on the amygdala and brain, I have included it so that you can understand in detail the parts of the brain that are involved in M.E. and the processes that they use. Having an understanding of this empowers us to think that what is going on is not some great mystery beyond our control, but boils down to simple processes that we can alter ourselves to help get better.
Sensory Messages Every moment your five senses: sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, are sending messages to your brain about your environment. Your brain decides how you should react to them and instructs your body to carry out that reaction. When you smell lovely food your brain processes that smell and decides how you should react. Reaction commands are sent to the relevant parts of your body: Your mouth waters, you lick your lips and say, ‘That smells good!’ When you touch a hot plate your brain processes the danger of burning your finger and instructs your hand to immediately stop touching the plate. In order to understand how to stop M.E, you will need to know a little about how your brain receives and processes these sensory messages. The parts of the brain you need to know about are explained next…
The Brain Stem (The Reptilian Brain) Just above the back of the neck is the brain stem. It is responsible for controlling many life support mechanisms such as heart rate, breathing, digestion and circulation. It is the least evolved part of the brain and is no more advanced than a reptile brain. With only the brain stem responses to sensory messages would be very primitive like the reactions of a snake. Reactions would be based only on survival. The brain stem cannot learn what reaction is best in what situation because it has no capacity to memorise.
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For your recovery it’s not essential that you remember this information about the brain stem.
The Limbic System (The Emotional Brain) We refer to the limbic system as the ‘Emotional Brain.’ It uses the word ‘limbic’ which is Latin for ‘ring,’ because it sits like a ring on top of the brain stem. Unlike the primitive brain stem, the emotional brain can learn, because it is able to store core emotions you’ve experienced as memories. The emotional brain stores core emotional memories as stagnant energy in the amygdala. So the amygdala will store an instinctual emotional memory that touching a hot plate is painful. Then unlike a snake you’ll know not to touch a hot plate again. The emotional brain is not capable of thought or rationalising. We feel core emotions like fear without the need to think about them, they are instinctual. For your recovery it’s good to understand more about the core emotions that occur instinctually, before we have chance to think about them.
Core Emotions Many experts say that our ‘core’ emotions are joy, anger, disgust, fear and sadness. The amygdala is responsible for triggering the negative of these emotions, so not joy. (Joy or happiness occurs when there’s an absence of negative emotion along with activity in the brains’ ventromedial cortex. The ventromedial cortex is where meaning is given to our perceptions giving a feeling of cohesiveness. Things can seem pointless and fragmented without it.) For your recovery you don’t need to remember anything about the ventromedial cortex, I just found it interesting.
Core emotions triggered by the amygdala are negative – fear, disgust, anger, and sadness because for our survival it is compulsory that we recognise possible negative threats quickly as there is not always time to think. If a sensory message (something you hear or see for example) triggers a core negative emotion, the amygdala in the emotional brain will cause you to give an instinctual response. So if an emotional memory of fear is triggered, the amygdala will tell the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up, your palms to sweat, your heart to pump faster and your pupils to dilate. That instinctual response would make you more alert to any danger. The amygdala is responsible for generating negative emotions, so to prevent them ( negative emotions) from flooding the brain this part of the limbic system must be quiet. Working hard on non-emotional mental tasks inhibits the amygdala, which is why keeping busy is often said to be the source of happiness. - ‘Mapping the Mind’ by Rita Carter (1)
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The previous extract from ‘Mapping the Mind’ is very relevant when it comes to M.E. recovery as it basically explains part of the recovery process in a nutshell! Your symptoms are emotional responses that have gone out of control, responses such as when blood is sent to the muscles or the pupils dilate when the amygdala senses a threat. By not allowing activity in the amygdala to occur (which you can do by using other parts of the brain that aren’t related to emotions, so by doing non-emotional distractions or tasks such as maths) you can stop the amygdala from being able to trigger symptoms and you can give it much needed resting time so that it can recover.
The Amygdala (Emergency Fight or Flight Response Unit) The ‘amygdala,’ is an almond-shaped cluster located in the emotional brain. Amygdala comes from the Greek for ‘almond.’ ‘Amygdale,’ is the plural version as in the limbic system, you have one on the left and one on the right. The amygdala acts as the central control station for your core emotional circuitry. When the amygdala senses fear or danger, it sends out alarm calls via neural pathways to every major part of the brain. (In the case of M.E., it’s constantly sending out alarm calls and causing the sufferer to be on permanent red alert). The amygdala can quickly activate reflexes, facial expressions of fear and the release of hormones used in fight or flight activity. This can affect the body in many ways including changes in temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and even hearing. The amygdala is responsible for what is called the ‘fight or flight’ response. It links a learned sensory message (man with knife) to an adaptive response (run/fight or flight). It can make split second decisions that can save your life. If you remember only one word about the amygdala, that word is FEAR. The amygdala is responsible for the lurch you feel in your stomach when you turn around in a dark alley and notice someone is following you.
Flight or Fight When we are faced with a threat, the body produces substances in order to raise our levels of anxiety. This helps us become better equipped to deal with the threat. This reaction is what we know as the ‘flight or fight’ response. You sense danger and the brain orders the adrenal glands (at the top of your kidneys) to release adrenalin into your blood stream. It travels round you body to the heart, lungs and muscles and causes your body to make changes so that it can deal with the danger and be ready to run or fight. So your muscles might need more oxygen in order to run or fi ght, therefore your breathing becomes faster and deeper. Your heart may beat faster so that this extra oxygen can get where it needs to go quickly. Then in the digestive system, which isn’t important for running or fi ghting, you may get butterflies due to blood vessels contracting as they stop oxygen entering.
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So at the sign of danger you experience specific bodily changes. These changes are all very positive if you do have to face danger. So if a wild dog is about to attack you, these changes will assist you in running to safety or fighting the dog off. The changes made by the fight or flight responses are then used up and the body returns to normal. If however, there was no real threat and your fight or flight response had been triggered, perhaps because you had got all worked up about having to have an injection at the doctors, then the body would take longer to return t o normal. This is because the chemical changes wouldn’t have been used up, for example by running or fighting. So your body would remain aroused and anxious for longer needing more time to normalise. The longer you spend in this aroused fight or flight state, perhaps because you have a stressful situation in your life, the more you will effectively be ‘running on full throttle.’ This is when you can get symptoms caused by the ongoing fight or flight response state. These symptoms may be headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, dry mouth, difficulty, neckache, backache, breathing problems, palpitations, tightness in the chest, nausea, indigestion, sweating too much and needing to urinate more often. Signals exiting the amygdala have been precisely identified as those that control the bodily reactions associated with fear. When heightened and prolonged, the bodily reactions associated with fear can cause some of the symptoms felt in M.E. Looking at the list of fight or flight response symptoms, you can see how they are a milder form of symptoms that can develop into more severe M.E. symptoms.
The Neocortex (The Thinking Brain) In contrast to the emotional brain is the thinking brain, which is called the ‘neocortex.’ It’s located above the limbic system. The thinking brain took millions of years to evolve into what it is today. The thinking brain is responsible for language, conscious thought, ideas and creativity. It is because of this part of the brain that we have art, culture and intellectual evolution. The thinking brain is also responsible for the formation of complex noninstinctual emotions. For example, if you have the thoughts that you’ve done something wrong, you will feel guilty. In stark contrast to the fast acting amygdala in the emotional brain, the thinking brain processes so much more information based on previous life experience and knowledge, that it needs much more time to recall and decide on a response to a sensory message. A decision to react is made by your amygdala in the emotional brain, whilst the thinking brain (or neocortex), is still deciding what to do. It is as though you have a wise old man and a child working together to make decisions about how you react in life. Like a child, the amygdala decides quick responses using core emotions; whilst like an old man, the neocortex takes some time in carefully deciding what’s best through drawing on knowledge, experience and wisdom.
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‘Quick, I want to do this!’
‘Hmmm…I don’t know about that, let me consider the consequences…’
Sensory Message Pathways and The Thalamus (Air Traffic Controller) In this diagram, you can see that there are two routes that a sensory message will take: The long pathway and the short pathway. In the brain the first port of call for sensory input is the thalamus. The thalamus translates sensory messages into the language of the brain and then acts like an air traffic controller, distributing it to the correct parts for processing. The longer route goes to the thinking brain where the message is thought about. The shorter route goes directly to the amygdala in the emotional brain where it can trigger an instant instinctual response. For example; a man is in a safe, busy shop and hears a nearby gunshot sound, his amygdala quickly respond with fear and cause him to duck down to avoid being shot. This happens whilst his thinking brain is still analysing what the sound could have been; ‘hmm…a car misfire, a firework…maybe a gunshot?’ By the time it decides, he could have already been shot because he didn’t duck. So, the upside to the shorter thalamusamygdala pathway is that it can trigger instant emotion based reactions that can save your life. The downside is that you can feel emotional energy about things you see or hear without thinking about it, so your emotions can seem irrational. Previously, neurologists thought that the whole message went only to the neocortex. The
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neocortex would then decide how to respond; if emotions were necessary in that response, it would send some of the message on to the amygdala, to activate that emotional response. This out of date idea would mean that we would not be capable of acting on our instinctual core emotions without first thinking about them, thus they would not be instinctual and our emergency fight or fl ight response system would be non-existent. But, at the Centre for Neural Science at New York University, Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist working with new methods and technologies discovered that there is a shorter neural pathway directly from the thalamus to the amygdala. This shorter thalamus-amygdala pathway means that the amygdala can receive and indeed act on a sensory message whilst the neocortex is still carefully thinking about what to do. For your recovery, it’s not essential to remember that sensory messages go to the thalamus first, it’s just important to remember that sensory messages that pose a threat wil l trigger physical responses through the amygdala before you even have time to think about how you should respond.
More on The Amygdala If you were to surgically remove the amygdala from a person’s brain, they would no l onger be capable of having feelings. Not only that, it would also not be possible to understand emotions and emotional expressions. Growling, screams, anger, joy, fear, sorrow and every other emotional method of communication would be redundant, it just wouldn’t be understood. Tears are triggered by the amygdala. Without the amygdala the personality would be dry and systematic, social awareness would disappear, as would the ability to remember and learn from things that have an emotional attachment. There would therefore be no survival instinct or fight or flight mechanism. Protecting yourself from danger would be difficult because you would not experience any fear in order to warn you that there is any danger. I read a story about a young man who had his amygdala removed to control seizures. Without his amygdala, he seemed to have lost all recognition of feelings and the ability to have any feelings, but he could still converse. To the despair of his friends and relatives, he was void of emotion when faced with their anguished expressions. He was unable to recognise any close friends or relatives like the face of his aunt or mother, and he preferred to be alone in isolation. It’s interesting that Autism - a condition whereby sufferers show very little emotion - has been linked to low neural activity in the amygdala. At the opposite end of t he spectrum people with M.E. have a very high level of neural activity in the amygdala. Their instinctual emotional responses are being pushed to the limits as they’re being bombarded with fear warnings.
Hijacking of The Amygdala The amygdala can react so quickly it cannot only save your life, it can also cause problems because we can end up doing things without thinking. Dan Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ uses the term, ‘Hijacking of the amygdala’ to describe when very strong emotional memories are triggered and cause us to do things we might regret. When a message from the senses triggers a strong emotional memory in the amygdala, electro-chemicals flood the brain and this is when you do things without thinking about them. Things like lashing out in violence, losing your temper, saying things you don’t mean or simply
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shrieking at the sight of a spider in a quiet library. It takes three to six seconds for these electrochemicals to clear. In order to not over react in a hijacked manner by losing your temper or getting overly scared, it is necessary to use another part of the brain, the thinking brain or neocortex, during those three to six seconds. You can do this by simply occupying your thinking brain with non-emotional thought, a puzzle or mathematical problem for example. This takes neural activity away from the amygdala in the emotional brain and places it in the thinking brain. If the emotional brain is starved of neural activity and input, emotional reactions triggered by the amygdala cannot happen. Have you ever been told to count to ten when you’re angry? This is because maths, analytical thought, learning languages and doing puzzles are all good distr actions that require no emotion and so can fully immerse all neural activity in the thinking brain. In much the same way, distraction is going to play a major role in your recovery and it’s going to be important that you find ways of distracting your amygdala from causing irrational emotional responses. When you have M.E., you must be constantly on the ball and alert in order to direct neural activity away from the amygdala. If you allow the electro-chemicals to continue flooding the brain, the amygdala will continue triggering the emotional responses in your body and you will continue feeling ill. You must interrupt the hijacked state and keep the distraction going until your amygdala can become re-educated and realise that such irrational emotional responses aren’t required. This is hard work, but it doesn’t have to take that long. The brain is an amazing organ and it’s very good at learning new behaviours quickly. Of course you may be asking how your amygdala got into a hijacked state in the first place…
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Chapter 7
The Start of M.E. Most M.E. sufferers will say that they suddenly ‘crashed.’ This could be from a common cold, Glandular fever or an infection. The coincidence of crashing that most sufferers experience with another illness, often leads them to believe that their M.E. could be an ongoing re-occurrence of that illness, whereby their body has run out of energy and is simply unable to recover as usual. But didn’t you notice feelings of unusual tiredness before your big crash? Did your skin become paler? Did you get more spots? Find it harder to concentrate? Feel like you were rushing around and never had enough time? Did your hearing become sensitive or did you get Tinitus long before you got M.E.? Were there any other strange sensitivities creeping into your life unnoticed at the time? Perhaps you experienced some of these symptoms? They were clues to a gradual decline in your emotional well-being. And it is when we begin to have an unhealthy emotional well-being that the amygdala (which represents our survival instincts) can begin to pick up on things and cause more problems. Maybe you were working too hard and needed a break, were putting up with something you didn’t like, had too much responsibility or were being manipulated or pressured. Perhaps you’d suffered a serious accident or illness and never felt completely reassured that you’re safe again. Not giving yourself space to relax, let go and enjoy yourself can also chip away at your well-being. It has become so normal to suppress emotions in our society that we do not expect to become ill by doing so. So, we just push on regardless of feeling rundown or unhappy. At this stage we find ourselves not only in emotional turmoil, but also suffering unusual physical symptoms because of it. In our weak emotional state we notice the activities, which make us feel unusually tired and give us little odd sensations related to M.E. Though at the t ime, we do not understand these odd little sensations to be M.E. related. Our thinking brain, (neocortex based) then starts to relate a wide range of activiti es, which would normally be no problem to us, as ‘harmful.’ Our amygdala then starts to form an emotional memory related to all these activities, which leads us to subconsciously believe that they will all make us ill. This overwhelming state in itself starts to generate its own emotional memory. We then may feel we are able to cope with very little, most things in fact, and soon this feeling becomes permanent. We begin continually feeling the symptoms of M.E. as the emotional memories associated with those symptoms are continually triggered in the amygdala.
The Continuation of M.E. All of the concerns and everyday reminders about M.E. cause the amygdala to t rigger your symptoms. The amygdala places you in high alert to ensure your survival through the ordeal. M.E. works the sufferer’s survival instincts so hard in fact, that sometimes having M.E. can make you feel as though every day actually is a fight for survival. M.E. based emotional memories generated by the amygdala therefore create a catch twentytwo situation whereby the amygdala is responding to the symptoms it’s creating. As a result, the M.E. once established can go on for a long time.
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Take a look at the following example:
A man is at home in his living room. There is a loud ‘crash’ sound from the kitchen next door. The ‘crash’ sound travels through the air to the man’s ear, where it enters into his brain as an auditory sensory message. The thalamus translates the sensory message into the l anguage of the brain. It then dispatches the message via two separate pathways to the relevant parts of the brain for processing. The short pathway goes directly to the amygdala in the limbic system or ‘emotional brain,’ the other longer pathway goes to the neocortex or ‘thinking brain.’ The amygdala receive the message in half the time it takes the neocortex to receive it. The crash sound message triggers an emotional response in the amygdala based on other crash sounds the amygdala has memories of. The man instantly feels this emotion and his body goes into a mild state of alert. Just moments later the neocortex is ready to step in with an opinion of what the crash sound was and how the man should react. But, the thinking brain is unsure of what the crash sound was. It could have been something falling off the draining board, but it could also have been a burglar breaking and entering. As the neocortex has not been able to satisfy the amygdala with a calming answer as to what the crash sound was, the amygdala moves the body onto the next stage of alert. The man’s hearing becomes sharper as his attention focuses on identifying the sound. His heart rate increases and blood travels to his muscles in case he must fight. The sound happens again. He considers going to have a look, but feels unsure… ’what if the burglar’s armed?’ thinks his neocortex. With that thought, his amygdala step him up to the next level of alert. A surge of anxiety races through him and he feels goose pimples all over. The man’s neocortex butts in and overrides the feelings caused by the amygdala, as he remembers he had left two wine glasses precariously poised on the draining board. His amygdala respond to this thought and let him relax a bit. His heart slows a little, but he still feels nervous as he goes to take a look in the kitchen. In the kitchen, he sees that there are indeed two smashed wine glasses on the floor. The man immediately calms down and feels relaxed as his neocortex and amygdala both agree on the source of the sound; and that there is no danger. Now, let’s replace the ‘ crash’ sound with a strange sensation associated with M.E. and let’s say the man, called Joe, is a person who is about to get full blown M.E.
Joe is generally a helpful man who would do anything for anybody. He has led the same kind of life as anyone else, had his fair share of problems and difficulties, which he generally doesn’t like to off load onto others, because he doesn’t like to burden other people. He has had a lot on his mind lately, to do with family and work responsibilities and has been finding life increasingly difficult. Joe looks tired and often gets little headaches, lately he has developed Tinitus, but he doesn’t notice these small changes in health creeping in on him, as he has much more important things to worry about. Joe is walking home after a long hard day at work. He f eels a little odd, as if he’s ‘walking on rubber,’ and his legs are little numb. He also feels unusually tired. He thinks that there is perhaps something wrong with him and starts to feel that his everyday activities are now becoming too much. He gets home and the odd sensations subside a little. He goes to bed early so that he can get a good rest for work the next day.
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Joe wakes up the next day and goes to work. He struggles to manage at work because he feels so tired. But, he does manage and walks home at 6pm. Again he gets the odd sensations of walking on rubber and a lack of feeling in his legs. This is a bit worrying for Joe. As he walks home, he thinks, ‘What on earth is wrong with me? Why do I have numb legs?’ Joe’s amygdala picks up on his worry and triggers emotional responses associated with fear and anxiety. In Joe’s weak state, these emotional responses physically feel quite powerful and cause Joe’s legs to go even number, so numb that he must sit down on the curb because he just can’t walk anymore. This makes Joe feel scared that there really is something terribly wrong with him. Again his amygdala triggers the emotional response for fear and his legs carry on being numb. As the ground beneath him seems to sway, he feels like he is on a boat too. Joe’s strange sensations continue as he carries on thinking about what on earth could be causing them. His amygdala responds to his thoughts and fear, and so the cycle continues. He considers going to hospital, but then calls his wife to pick him up. The next day Joe goes to the doctor. The doctor tells him t hat there is nothing obviously wrong with him, but he’ll put him in for some tests. Joe goes back to work and struggles on for a day or so, but soon finds he is simply unable to stand up anymore. He goes to see the doctor again, who says he is still unsure, but suggests ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.’ On hearing ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,’ Joe worries as he once had a friend with that condition. He suddenly feels very alone, as he knows CFS is a bad condition to have. His neocortex cannot come up with an answer to calm his amygdala, the doctor has no answer and all Joe knows is that CFS is a terrible condition to have. Joe’s worrying thoughts persistently trigger fear and anxiety in him, and he has to adjust his life because of his symptoms. Thus, Joe’s cycle of M.E. thinking and negative triggered emotions establishes its-self, and he becomes stuck in a loop. If it had been caught in time, Joe would have realised that he must take a holiday or resolve whatever the problem was that was causing him to feel tired and unwell. But, he stuck with the situation that was making him feel unwell, and with the growing subconscious awareness and conscious worries of tiredness and strange sensations, he developed M.E. People find horror films enjoyable because they can escalate the watcher into a mild state of alert. It’s just enough to get the adrenalin pumping and set the heart beating a little faster; a state similar to how the man would have felt on hearing that initial ‘crash’ sound in the kitchen. A film can take us to the edge of fear without causing us any major distress, and that’s exciting. It can do this because a voice in the back of our mind tells us the things in the film aren’t real. With M.E., the voice in the back of your mind plays an opposite role by saying, ‘I don’t understand this, so yes, be scared and worry about it.’ So there is nothing to stop you escalating into a greater state of alert.
What’s in a Name A major problem with M.E. is that it has such a bad press. It’s viewed as a very severe illness with no proper cure that can go on for years and re-occur. This of course, makes people scared of it and so if you are unlucky enough to get it, that fear created by the bad image actually contributes to the illness by panicking the amygdala. It becomes as another thought to mull over in your mind and worry about, it gets blown out of proportion because the term ‘ M.E.’ can sound so daunting. Just keep in mind that the general population’s opinion about M.E. is not correct. There is so much mystery surrounding it for a reason, because many doctors (through no fault of their own) do not know what causes it. Now that you do know however, you can disregard
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all those other ideas about M.E., forget worrying about whether or not you have high or low blood pressure, muscle wastage and who knows what else, because you don’t have those problems. All those problems have come from the amygdala overreacting. That is the only problem you have and all those other problems will vanish once you correct the amygdala. Some people worry that ‘M.E.’ is just an umbrella term used for many things that the doctors cannot fathom out. I would tend to agree with this suggestion and personally I see it as a reassurance that there is no need to worry about M.E. symptoms. If the doctors can’t fathom them out with all the amazing tests that can be done these days, then it helps demonstrate that there is no physical need for the symptoms to exist, just an emotional one due to an overworked amygdala and an overwhelming amount of unreleased emotional energy. When you get M.E., in order to be diagnosed it seems you have to be t ested for everything, you get a real good going over! I feel safe that in this day and age we can generally rely on what the doctors tell us when they say they can find nothing wrong…so why carry on looking for something wrong? The thing to remember with M.E. is that strange things do happen in the body and this is because the body isn’t working properly because it is stressed, it’s in a state of dis-ease, that’s the only reason. So there’s no need to get wrapped up in one of t he pains or sensations you may be experiencing. You may feel as though your chest is very painful or you may feel something that feels very threatening to your health, but don’t focus on it, don’t let it capture your fear and panic you further. Take a step back from your symptom, remain calm and do as I describe in chapter three, ‘The Stop Method.’
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Chapter 8
The Hippocampus and Memory As well as the amygdala, the limbic system or emotional brain also includes the hippocampus. The hippocampus lays down memories related to emotion. We can all see how emotion and memory are very closely related. When you go to a party and meet new people, who do you remember most the next day? It will be the people that had an emotional impact on you, that man who made you angry, that man who made you laugh or that woman who made you smile and feel embarrassed. It is therefore not surprising that a part of the emotional brain is responsible for memory. There are three types of memory: 1. Working memory which enables you to remember the last sentence of a conversation or perform mathematics in your head. This memory is like the RAM of a computer and does not link to emotion, so is not related to the Hippocampus. 2. Procedural memory which enables you to remember how to play an instrument, solve a puzzle, play badminton and perform other skills and habits that are learned through repetition. The hippocampus is not involved with this either. 3. And finally there’s declarative memory which is involved with the hippocampus. Declarative memory is our capacity to recall everyday facts, names, figures and events. Although it is not known where all the declarative memories are stored, the hippocampus is where the amygdala pulls them from.
The amygdala can learn because it has access to these memories. This means we can learn and remember that fire is dangerous, that our mother is a sweet l ady or that jumping off the edge of a cliff is fatal. The amygdala associates each memory with an emotion. So when we look down off a cliff edge and sense fear or a lurch in our stomach, this is the amygdala telling us that to jump off it would be fatal. When we see the face of our sweet mother, the amygdala accesses the hippocampus to get the memory of who she is and then triggers a feeling of love. This feeling tells us our mother is a sweet lady and that she’s important to us. Emotional memories also create more general bodily responses that we do subconsciously. So we smile at our sweet mother and we blush when we see that person we have a crush on. The hippocampus holds a memory of those two people and the amygdala holds the memory of the emotion that goes with them and so we get the physical response of smiling and blushing. This is how the relationship of emotion and memory works and it’s how w e learn to protect ourselves. When a boy curiously puts his finger in his pet mouse’s mouth, the hippocampus helps record the image of the mouse and the amygdala stores the memory of how much it hurt when the boy’s finger got bitten. Then the next time he goes to put his finger in the mouse’s mouth, his amygdala recall the mouse’s image from the hippocampus, makes the emotional association and triggers fear so that the boy does not make the same mistake again. ‘If the amygdala is FEAR , then the hippocampus is MEMORY .’
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In the case of someone who has M.E., their amygdala has learned to trigger some very over the top emotional responses when recalling a memory through the hippocampus. Let’s call our M.E. sufferer Joe again. So for example, Joe steps out of his front door and looks down to the end of his street. His amygdala recall the image of the street from his hippocampus and link that image with the last emotion Joe felt on that street. It was fear because Joe has M.E. and he could hardly manage to walk home the last time he went out. So his amygdala trigger fear again as this is the emotional response they’ve linked with the street. This not only stops Joe from walking down the street because he feels scared by it, it also stops him walking down the street because he is physically incapable due to the strong sensations of fear that literally render him too weak. Joe’s amygdala is only doing its’ job of course, it’s protecting him f rom walking down the street. The only problem is that Joe doesn’t need to be protected from walking down the street because the only thing that hurts him when he does so is the fear t riggered by his amygdala. So in order to get out of this tricky situation, Joe must make a new emotional memory for his amygdala to associate with the street. It is such new emotional memories that you need to create in order to reeducate the amygdala.
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Chapter 9
Emotional Memories Creating New Emotional Memories The best way to make a new emotional memory is to use emotion because you remember things most because of how they made you feel. So you’re not likely to remember meeting an emotionless bus driver, but you are likely to remember a bus driver that smiled at you and was very jolly. This is why I’ve emphasised so frequently the importance of generating positive emotional energy in order to dissolve the M.E. memories. So to go back to our example with Joe, in order for him to strengthen the making of his new emotional memory, he could quietly sing to himself as he walks down the street or li sten to a song he likes on his walk-man. Doing this will also help Joe generate good feelings and raise his confidence that he’s able to walk because music can be very uplifting and encouraging. This will also make the walk more memorable and his amygdala will be more likely to refer to this happy memory the next time Joe goes for a walk. I used to listen to my favourite album when I was building up my walking distance, it was a very positive album with positive l yrics and it helped me to gear my mind away from M.E. and remain focused on enjoying the walk. Incidentally, it was a Badly Drawn Boy album.
Fun – The Important Ingredient In order to bring your confidence and emotional well-being back up to a healthy level you need to do distracting activities that you enjoy doing and that will give you confidence. The more fun you have, the stronger the memories will be and the easier it will be to ignore and override M.E. This is very important - think about it. Your body is at the end of its tether because it has been bogged down with negative emotional energy created by M.E. and negative thought patterns. Your body needs to feel alive again and cared for. It needs to know t hat you are going to start listening to and acting on your emotional sensations. Your body needs to stop feeling pushed into doing things it doesn’t emotionally feel like doing. It is like a spoilt child that can’t take any more pushing and wants to have things their way now, they don’t want to listen to ‘You should do this or that,’ it just wants to be happy and put it’s feelings first from now on. The thing about emotions is that they can be very subtle or very obvious. You know when you’re in a stinking mood for example, but you don’t always notice when you feel a li ttle stressed…or a little relaxed and happy. Now though, you should try tuning into your emotions more and notice the little things in life that do make you feel good. Stop looking for big answers to your M.E. and start listening to and acting on your emotions. You can take a drug for a problem and you know you’ve taken it, the effects can be quite obvious…and the side effects sometime! But when you re acting to resolve an issue like M.E. yourself, you should allow yourself to become more sensitive to the changes in your body. If something makes you feel good, don’t ignore it, allow yourself to explore that thing. Don’t think to yourself ‘oh that’s a waste of time, how can doing an hour or two of this activity that I really enjoy help me?’ Well, of course it can help you, it will make you feel better and as M.E. is stemming from an unhealthy emotional well-being, anything relaxing or enjoyable is going to help and it will help permanently the more you do enjoy yourself, because
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each time your body will learn that you care about your emotions and are no longer going to override them with your thinking brain. So, going back to fun and making sure you listen to your emotions, here is a relevant story about when I started to listen to my emotional energy when riding my bike…
The Selfish Inner Child I hadn’t ridden my bike for six months due to having M.E. I didn’t feel that I would be able to balance and I felt that it would exhaust me and make my weak feeling heart race too much. One sunny day however, my housemate was home and so I decided to give it a try with him there. I managed to ride my bike fifteen metres down to the end of t he street and back and it felt fantastic, I had no symptoms whilst riding and I loved it. The moment I slowed down to stop however, my M.E. symptoms came back and I felt too weak to carry on. So I gave my bike to my housemate and went in and lay down for a while. It annoyed me that I had enjoyed riding the bike so much but sti ll my symptoms had stopped me from continuing. At the time I had been going to Reverse Therapy (RT) sessions (of which I had three). MY RT therapist pointed out to me that my body would have been happy whilst riding the bike and that was why I’d felt no symptoms. It was when my ‘headmind’ stepped in and started worrying, that I felt symptoms return. So this helped me realise what I had done wrong and why my symptoms had stopped me. Basically, whilst I had been riding the bike, my mind had been focused on enjoying myself. I had not been allowing my M.E. thoughts to say to me ‘Don’t do this, you’re going to fall off or make yourself weak and tired.’ Instead I’d been focused on the great feelings of excitement I was getting from actually being able to ride the bike after six months! My mind had been empty of thought and was one with my body, doing what felt good for m y body – the cycling. When I slowed down to stop however, I started thinking about whether I dare ride up and down the street again. My rationalising thinking brain jumped in with its M.E. thoughts like ‘I haven’t cycled for so long, maybe it will be too much,’ and ruined it…bang, my amygdala picked up on my concern, sensed a threat and triggered my M.E. symptoms to stop me from doing anymore in case I hurt myself. Then I started worrying because I was feeling symptoms, which again caused my amygdala to panic and trigger more symptoms and again…bang, before I knew it I felt too weak to try cycling again and had to go in. The time it takes to have an M.E. thought is next to nothing and the problem with them is that they come without your permission. You don’t think about whether or not you’re going to worry that ridding the bike will exhaust you, you just think it, the worrying thought pops into your head naturally because it’s natural to worry about your health when you’re ill. The amygdala then reacts to the worrying thoughts and instantly triggers a symptom. The amygdala also subconsciously reacts to emotional memories it’s pulled from previous M.E. experiences and so again creates trouble as it sees you are outside and can panic because you might not be able to make it back to the house. (Though of course you can make it back to the house if the amygdala doesn’t panic and trigger symptoms!) So with all that in mind, the next time I attempted to ride my bike I was much more successful. I treated myself like a spoilt child who must get their way and I used ‘The Stop Method,’ (which I will explain soon) in order to stop my amygdala from panicking. Basically I cleared my mind and focused on how my body felt. I cycled down to the end of the street and asked myself if I wanted to carry on to the next street. If my gut reaction was one of fear, then I didn’t continue further, if my gut reaction was still happy excitement however, I would continue onto the next street. I rode around near my house like this carefully listening to m y gut reactions about
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which road I should turn down and how far I could cycle from my house. I imagined that my emotional well-being was represented by a child sat on my crossbar, my inner child if you like and they had grown selfish because they was fed up of being ignored, fed up of me not listening to my emotions. This child’s wishes were represented in my gut feelings and I had to adhere to every one in order to recover and get my emotional well-being to t rust me again. So don’t push or pressure yourself with responsibilities no matter how big or small they are. Be selfish and become addicted to making yourself happy. It’s most likely that you’ve got M.E. through spreading yourself too thinly and looking out for others more than yourself, now it’s time to turn the tables and let your body know that you want it to have fun and you care that it’s happy. Take up new things that you enjoy, dance round the house, most bodies love to dance, go for walks, ride a bike, go for a swim, whatever your body will enjoy. Keep your body and mind satisfied. Exercise more, enjoy more, never forget that life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, laugh uncontrollably, love truly and be kind to yourself. - Unknown
It may be that you have responsibilities in your life such as children or loved ones, and it may be your duty to care for them. But through your recovery period you must be selfish and concentrate on yourself. Explain this to people and make them understand that if you get yourself well first, you will be a much better person for them too. What we so often do with M.E. is reserve our energy so that we can at least get the main jobs done. Forget that, let someone else do the main jobs, you need to be free to do what you want. In the long run you will end up not being selfish as you will be of more help to those around you if you are M.E. free. So it’s in everybody’s best interest. Give yourself time whereby you just concentrate on doing things for your own development and self confidence.
How Emotional Memories Work When an emotional memory is triggered it is always felt in the present, as if happening now. Unlike thinking brain (neocortex) based memories, an emotional memor y has no correct details attached and cannot inform you what time or where you had previously felt an emotion. This is why emotions can seem irrational at times. If a person has had a bad experience or shock, the emotional memory of that will be stored at the top of the pile in their amygdala, in case it’s urgently needed. This is what can cause a person to become nervous and jumpy as a strong emotional memory can then be triggered unnecessarily. For you, emotional memories regarding M.E. are at the top of your pile whilst all of the memories of being able to for e.g. walk down the street or deal with life easily are stuck somewhere at the bottom, long forgotten by your amygdala. It is these forgotten memories that you must revive. If we go back to the example of the man in the shop who heard a gunshot sound and ducked, perhaps he ducked because his instincts have learned that gunfire sounds are a threat to his survival, because he once fought in a war. The body can even display the same physical reactions that were felt when the memory was created. I imagine in the war his stomach may have knotted up, his palms grown clammy and heart rate quickened. These sensations might also occur when he ducked in the shop.
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But, when the man’s thinking brain established that there is no danger, because the war is over, his thinking brain would send signals to his amygdala to relax. He would stand up a li ttle embarrassed and shaky, whilst slowly his pulse normalised and his stomach settled. The people in the shop would giggle at him, because actually, the gunshot sound was just kids outside, with firecrackers. It is likely that some people in the shop initially jumped too when they heard the firecrackers. But, as they have never experienced real gunfire situations, emotional memories of the sound simply trigger a small response from their amygdala, based only on past firecracker or car misfiring sounds. The key element to notice in this example is that the man’s thinking brain or neocortex did manage to stop the amygdala from triggering the emotions of fear. He may have been scared of the firecrackers at first and he may have literally ‘frozen with fear,’ but the thinking part of his brain helped him overcome that fear by making him realise he was safe. You can conquer M.E. in the same way, with your thinking brain. When you try to walk too far or do anything that is limited by b y your M.E., an M.E. based emotional memory is triggered in the amygdala, so that you don’t go beyond your limits. It’s often fear, and you feel this fear as a symptom s ymptom or as the worsening of a symptom. This fear stops you from doing what you want to. This is how survival instincts work. Throughout your illness, your amygdala in the emotional brain has been running the show, now it’s up to your neocortex based thinking brain to resolve the problem. Fear is a strong emotion to override and deal with and it can make us unable to move, freezing us to the spot. With this in mind, think of how other emotional energy can affect us. •
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Catatonia bought on by emotional stress can leave l eave a person rigid and unresponsive to outside stimuli Stuttering and an inability to get words out can also occur in times of severe emotional upset or trauma Even giggling fits bought on by things immensely funny, show that emotional happiness can physically incapacitate us (as we can’t stop laughing) in some way.
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Chapter 10
What the Amygdala Will Respond to The amygdala is a basic instinctual mechanism for your survival. It will respond to anything that threatens your well-being or survival. The amygdala will respond to: • Thoughts Feelings, symptoms or sensations in the body • Things you see, hear, smell, taste or touch • The amygdala is not aware of context and details about time and the amygdala does not know the difference between thoughts and reality.
There will be all sorts of things triggering M.E. based emotional memories in your amygdala. Some of these things will be conscious and some will be subconscious. The emotional and thinking brains are completely interconnected by millions of neural pathways, so what happens in one affects the other. In other words not only does what we think effect how we feel, but how we feel affects what we think.
Real or Imagined…It’s All the Same to Your Emotional Brain You may have noticed that in order to imagine or picture something happening it is best t o close your eyes. This is because the brain processes any images, whether you’re seeing them for real or imagining them, in the visual cortex. So you cannot see the real field of poppies you’re standing in and an imagined image of your dream home at the same time, because to see something real uses your visual cortex as does to see something imagined. The brain will always show you what is real first as opposed to what is not. This is because it is more important for us to see reality. If for example we were walking down the street (with our eyes open) but imagining we were walking through a field of poppies, we would be unable to see that in fact we were about to walk into an open manhole (and possible break a limb through doing so)! This is because our visual cortex can only deal with seeing one thing at a t ime and if it allows that to be something you’re imaging rather than what your eyes are actually looking at, well thin gs can get a bit complicated because how do you know if what you are seeing is actually real or imagined and isn’t it just much more important to be able to see where you’re going!? The point of explaining this is that the imagined i magined scenario scenario and real scenario are processed in the same part of the brain, for example the visual and auditory cortex. This means that when signals about those images or sounds (real or imagined) travel to the emotional in order to get a reaction, the emotional brain will treat a real or imagined event the same and will give a response to match the event. So whether you imagine falling in love or really do f all in love, you can still feel the emotions related to falling in love. (Until you come out of your daydream)
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Here’s an example of how the amygdala can respond to thought:
Imagine an actress forcing herself to cry for a sad scene. She thinks of an unhappy scenario. Her amygdala receive messages about those thoughts and trigger the relevant emotional feeling. She is then able to cry and give a realistic performance. So, if you’re thinking about something that made you very happy, you’ll feel happy, if you’re thinking about a sad occurrence, you’ll feel f eel sad, and if you’re scared about something, you’ll feel scared. Your amygdala will trigger these feelings whether they are connected to what you are doing in the present moment or not. So if your symptoms are emotional responses from an overreacting amygdala that has gone too far, you will be able to control those emotional responses through through what you think. Try the following exercises: 1. Imagine that you’re never going to get better, choose a symptom that you’re experiencing right now and begin to worry about it, worry that you will have that symptom forever. Focus on it and make yourself feel sad about it. Do this properly because if you’re not really worried or sad, your body will know and the emotional memories will not be triggered and the experiment won’t work. So, let yourself sink into the negative thoughts of being ill, imagining that nobody can help you. 2. Now forget about Exercise one, because you are going to get better, you are not alone and there are many people who are going to get better in exactly the same way as you. Tell yourself that you are going to recover for good. Don’t question that you can’t beat M.E., you can. Stop worrying and really concentrate on thinking about your bright future, what you want to do. Allow the happy emotional memories to be triggered as you think about something you really love doing. Don’t think about how you’ve been unable to do it because of being ill, M.E. has no place here. Let yourself become completely absorbed in this t his daydream.
Spend five to fifteen minutes on each exercise and allow yourself to fully experience the negative and positive daydreams. Did you notice a difference between the two in how strong your symptoms were? It may only have been been very slight; you may have not noticed any change. change. But, hopefully you noticed that when you had the t he positive daydream, your symptoms were not as bad as usual, and when you thought negatively your symptoms s ymptoms worsened. worsened. You may think that it’s obvious you’ll feel better or worse. And yes, it is obvious; it’s it ’s a very simple technique, so simple that we may overlook it as being anything credible. But, if a research chemist had found a drug that could do the same thing, they would not be writ ing it off so hastily. hastil y. It is not that M.E. is created through negative thoughts. It is that a sufferer wil l naturally have an awareness of what their limitations are and they will naturally be concerned about their symptoms because they are very scary sensations to have. The problem is also that even if you don’t consciously think about being ill, there are many ways in which you’ll have adjusted your life to fit around your illness, because you’ve had to. Without being able to stop your symptoms, you’ve had no choice. Maybe you’ve had to use walking aids, leave work, take more rest, stay at home a lot, eat special diets or wear sunglasses. Everyday these adjustments and your symptoms unconsciously unconsciously remind you that you’re ill and this will trigger M.E. based emotional memories stored in the amygdala. am ygdala.
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Part Three
The Stop Method A Round Up of What’s to Come
The Stop Method - How You Should Say Stop
Introduction to The Stop Method
- Put Trust in What You Say - Be Aware of What You Say
- Neural Pathways - Get Straight to the Point – ‘Stop’
Stop Method and Amygdala Metaphors
The Stop Method- Saying ‘Stop’
- The Dog – An Amygdala Metaphor
- Triggers - Thoughts and Daydreams - M.E. Based Thoughts - Ifs and Buts… - Symptomatic Triggers - Sensations in Your Body - Emotional Triggers - Sensory Triggers - Things You See, Hear, Smell, Taste or Touch - What Next
The Stop Method - Distraction The Stop Method Visualisation - The Nervous Little Man Visualisation - The Thermometer Visualisation - Using Negative Visualisation – Don’t! - Tinitus Visualisation
The Stop Method - Using Positive Actions
The Stop Method - Using Positive Words - What Words to Use and How to Choose Them
The Stop Method - Confronting Symptoms
The Stop Method - Saying Thank You!
The Stop Method - Forget M.E. - Friends and Family
The Stop Method - Other Treatments - Methods That Work Well With This Book
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Chapter 11
A Round Up of What’s to Come Among other things in this book you will find the following ahead: • • • •
The Stop Method and all its Elements Reclaim Yourself Meditation The Little Things that Help
Whilst they can all work individually to help you recover, their strength li es in working together. It is important to read all four and the entirety of this book, before attempting to put any of them into practice, this will give you a full impression of what M.E. is all about. In order to combat your symptoms effectively, it is essential for you to get a rounded and balanced view of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. With regards to the following chapters on ‘The Stop Method,’ you will find that even though the core idea behind the method is simple, there are many elements to it that must be considered. These elements such as distraction, visualisation, using opposing words, confronting your symptoms and clearing your life of any M.E. reminders whatsoever are all explained in this section (Part Three) of the book.
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Chapter 12
Introduction to The Stop Method The main method I have devised to recover from M.E. is called ‘The Stop Method.’ Fundamentally it involves stopping your M.E. outright and not allowing it to have any chance of restarting. You stop the symptoms quite simply by politely telling, not asking the amygdala to stop triggering them. You also tell any unwarranted sensations thoughts or feeling to stop, anything in fact that triggers your M.E. must be stopped. Because we are essentially in control of what we think and can actually change how we feel, we all have the power to stop our amygdala from overreacting. We have the power to bring about a sense of calm in an un-calm mind. People do this everyday, just not perhaps on the same level as M.E! Here are two examples of how you may override the amygdala on an everyday basis: 1. Imagine your favourite seafood has made you extremely ill. The next time you are presented with that seafood, you are repulsed by it and can’t even stomach looking at it. Your amygdala recalls the emotional memory of disgust so that you won’t eat the seafood and be ill again. Your amygdala have learned you should be disgusted by t hat seafood to stop you getting ill. But this time the seafood has been cooked properly and will actually taste very nice. You can overcome the disgusted feelings triggered by your amygdala by closing your eyes, occupying your thoughts with something completely unrelated, and then trying the seafood anyway. Once you have eaten some of the seafood and tasted that it is cooked properly, your amygdala will be re-educated and will not respond with so much disgust on the next mouthful. Soon the amygdala will not react and trigger disgust when presented with that seafood at all.
You can also override the amygdala by encouraging yourself with words. These words should be the opposite meaning to the negative emotions the amygdala is triggering. So with the seafood, you’d fight the disgust triggered by the amygdala through saying ‘Umm…this is good nourishing food, good nourishing food…good nourishing food!’ If your amygdala is causing you to feel scared, you instead say ‘I feel brave…brave…brave…I’m brave.’ If you’re worried about giving a speech, tell yourself how fantastic your speech will be. People use such confidence building techniques everyday, because they work. You literally fight the negative energy triggered by the amygdala with positive energy produced by your (neocortex) thinking brain. 2. Imagine giving a speech in front of thousands of people. Perhaps that sort of thing doesn’t bother you, but let’s imagine it makes you extremely nervous. You wait at the edge of t he stage, palms sweating, shaking a little, heart racing; then you walk onto the stage and look at your audience. Perhaps momentarily you clam up and your mind goes blank because you want to be anywhere but on that stage in front of all those people. Why does this happen? You know exactly what you have to say and are confident about your subject matter, so why should you be nervous about it? This is an anxious over-reaction to the situation. A litt le nervousness before going on stage is fine, it keeps you on your toes but if it goes too far it ruins your speech as you can’t think clearly. What’s happening is that you’ve allowed that initial nervousness to get out of control and you need to knock it on the head straight away. Whilst waiting at t he edge of the stage you can say to yourself ‘I know exactly what I’ve got to say, the audience are interested, that’s why they’re here and I am able to give my speech in a clear manner.’ You talk yourself up to give yourself confidence. If you didn’t think that you were capable of giving the speech of course, you’re right to be nervous, but in
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this case you are capable of giving a good speech on your subject matter. So you go onto the stage. At first you feel a wave of anxiety go through you but you take a few deep breaths and ground yourself, then with a clear mind you give a perfect speech. Then the next time you give a speech the anxiety is less and you feel more confident about talking in front of an audience. The only way out is through; if you hadn’t gone through with the speech the first time and had to do it again at a later date it would have been much harder. The same situation is happening with M.E. Every time we think we are incapable of walking to the shop or going out with fri ends, we are strengthening the M.E. pattern to be nervous and scared about those things, we are strengthening the belief that we can’t do them. In the same way that a person can give you encouragement about your ability to do something, you must give yourself encouragement about your own strength and ability to get better. It will take a lot of focus and determination to re-educate your amygdala, this is because M.E. based emotional memories are so ingrained. The feelings and sensations M.E. gives are very powerful because your amygdala is triggering them to maintain your survival and well-being. Trying to get your survival instincts to stop doing something they’re doing to protect you will not be easy. Suppose you were trying to teach your amygdala that it’s ok for you to touch a boiling hot kettle. It’ll be a tough job because it has a memory that boiling hot things damage you, it’ll tri gger emotions to stop you again and again. This is the kind of persistence you’ll be dealing with. Overriding that persistence won’t be easy - until you have a small breakthrough and realise that you can. Your amygdala only wants to protect you and you have to let it know that it’s being a little too overprotective! Your amygdala is not only trying to protect you by forcing ph ysical limitations upon you, it’s also saying to you ‘Hey, will you please start acting on your emotions or I’m going to make them feel so strong that you’ll regret it!’ And hence, once we’re in the state we know as M.E., we do feel those neglected emotions so strongly that they can paralyse and cause us physical pain.
Neural Pathways Imagine that your brain has many pathways that link the different areas together. There are pathways from your amygdala that go to the parts of your brain that trigger emotional sensations such as fear, anxiety and anger. So there is a pathway from the amygdala and the part of your brain responsible for making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and there is a p athway between the amygdala and the part of the brain that can make you cry. Now like any pathway, the more you use it the more established it becomes. Like if hikers follow t he same path up a mountain, that path becomes more permanent as the grass wears away and the earth becomes more compact as more people walk on it. Then it is more likely that future hikers will stick to that path rather than creating a new one in the same area. This is of course good for the preservation of the mountain! But only if the pathway is in the right place! If say the pathway was through a field of rare flowers, that would not be very beneficial to the nature on the mountain and perhaps the hikers should consider establishing a new pathway. The point I am getting at here is that your amygdala has been using pathways that are not very beneficial to your health. It has been using all of t he negative pathways that trigger fear and anxiety far too much. And, because it’s been using these pathways so much it is hard for you to stop using them because they have been so established and your brain is using them as if it’s normal to. Really however, these pathways should only be used in emergencies when you sense a threat. Presently your amygdala has created very strong neural pathways to the parts of your brain that are responsible for your symptoms happening. This is because your amygdala is constantly using those neural pathways by instructing your brain to give strong sensations in your body in order to alert you to there being something wrong. The amygdala is saying ‘We’ve got danger here,
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release the panic and scared emotions so that this person knows there’s danger’ …over and over and over again. You need to weaken these neural pathways by stopping the neural activity in its tracks, that is by stopping the amygdala sending out it’s panic signals to the other parts of the brain.
Get Straight to the Point – ‘Stop’ Because the amygdala makes decisions using simple core emotions, the best method to use in order to stop this neural activity is repetition and correction, much in the same way that you might train a dog. So, the simple order ‘Stop’ is going to be the basis for this recovery method. This may sound daft, but if you make the instruction complex and long the amygdala won’t process it instantly, but it is this instant response that we need. A long message requiring thought will not interrupt the amygdala as the amygdala does not listen to thoughts, thought is processed in a different part of the brain (the neocortex). The very process of saying ‘ stop’ requires neural activity to occur elsewhere in the brain, only for that miniscule moment. So by telling your amygdala to ‘Stop’ overreacting or by saying ‘Stop’ to an M.E. based thought, you will be interrupting t he catch twenty-two loop by drawing neural activity away from the amygdala. This will momentarily put the amygdala out of action. And the more you stop the amygdala from overreacting the more natural it wil l become for the amygdala to stop overreacting without your instruction. You should stop the amygdala in its tracks every time it is about to do something wrong, and then quickly show it what’s real (i.e. that there is no danger) or show it that you don’t care that it’s panicking, that is that you aren’t panicking yourself and it stands alone in it’s silly web of despair. Then it will create new memories to base your survival on and become healthy again. It will realise that it’s being over the top and worrying too much. So the command ‘ stop’ is to interrupt the amygdala, then what you do after saying ‘Stop’ is designed to keep the amygdala from overreacting and to keep it calm. There are a couple of techniques that involve either distraction or changing the emotion that triggers the panicky amygdala so that there is no longer an emotion present for the amygdala to panic about.
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Chapter 13
The Stop Method - Saying ‘Stop’ First thing first, you need to have the right attitude when using ‘The Stop Method.’ Our emotions are a dead give away when it comes to lying! It is your core instinctual emotional centre you are saying stop to, you cannot be impatient or flippant as your amygdala will pick up on your flippancy or impatience and view them as a problem. Instead you should show confidence and compassion in yourself. You need to be aware of how to address your amygdala and what will make it trust you and relax for you. I will explain more about the right attitude after I’ve explained the practical side to ‘The Stop Method.’ Please don’t be put off by how simple the practical side my first appear. It doesn’t work like magic and you need to read the whole of part three to understand how and why it works.
Triggers As we know the amygdala responds to: • • •
Thoughts and daydreams. Feelings, symptoms or sensations in the body. Things you see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Let’s take a look at each area and identify the problems or M.E. triggers.
Thoughts and Daydreams In the same way that an actress can make herself cry through thinking sad thoughts, you can make yourself feel ill (because of the emotional link with your symptoms) through thinking unsettling thoughts about M.E. or having M.E. based daydreams. I previously mentioned more on how the brain gives a real emotional reaction to daydreaming or imagined thoughts in chapter ten – ‘What The Amygdala Will Respond to.’ We play out scenarios in our heads because through doing so we can feel the emotions associated with them. We can close our eyes, imagine we’ve achieved something brilliant and then feel the satisfaction that gives. But as well as daydreaming about positive scenarios such as meeting prince (or princess) charming or winning the lottery, sometimes we play out negative scenarios in our heads, in which something terrible or upsetting happens. We then feel the associated negative emotions. So if you play out situations in your mind whereby your illness gets the better of you or if you replay situations from when you’ve been very ill, it will only give your amygdala (which doesn’t know that the situation isn’t real) cause for concern. For example, if you imagine collapsing in a heap at the supermarket, you will be strengthening the reality of that happening because the amygdala will form a memory from your daydream. Then when you really go to the supermarket the amygdala could trigger fear emotions because of that memory. If you have M.E, those emotions may be felt as symptoms that actually do cause you to collapse. You could of course imagine that your prince (or princess) charming comes to your rescue after you’ve collapsed in a heap from M.E. You could then argue that the daydream is positive! But
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it’s not because you still would have set your amygdala up into believing you might have trouble physically coping in a supermarket. Even if you just have regular negative daydreams that bring about negative emotions, i f you have M.E., those negative emotions may be felt as symptoms because your emotional well-being will be low, so generally it’s best to stay on a positive thinking track and focus on happiness and enjoyment, not hopelessness and vulnerability. Obviously it can be hard to imagine doing things without having M.E. because it affects you so much, but what you can do is start imagining for example, that your trip to the supermarket will be successful and it won’t be scary or make you tired. Play out the scenario in your head that you will get round the supermarket very easily and then feel very satisfied with yourself for doing so. (You could still fit prince (or princess) charming into your daydream somewhere!)
M.E. Based Thoughts You’ll need to identify your M.E. based thoughts and stop them as soon as you have an awareness that you’re about to think them. A good thing to do is to label your M.E. based thoughts as just that, M.E. thoughts. Don’t worry about their content or meaning, that isn’t important. They are basically bad things that you don’t want and that’s all that matters. Many M.E. based thoughts tend to be recollections of what has happened, like you did the vacuuming and it made you tired for the rest of the day or they might be predictions of what may happen if you ‘take on too much.’ But what is always relevant is the present moment and how you feel in the present, right now and what you’re thinking right now. So all thoughts based on past and future events can go. There’s no point worrying about the future and there’s no point worrying about things that have passed, that won’t help you. Unfortunately we humans love to worry, as it seems to comfort us i n a way. Perhaps because to worry about something demonstrates that we care so it shows us that we care about ourselves. But it’s when you let go of the worry that you become strong in yourself and truly feel comforted by your own inner strength and ability. That’s when you start to trust yourself and not just your thoughts. Some M.E. based thoughts are based in the present, for example you might think to yourself that you’re stupid and slow (because you have brain fog). Those thoughts are also not going to help you. Any thoughts that make you feel bad about yourself bring down your emotional well-being further, so they are basically food for your M.E. Here are some examples of M.E. thoughts that you will need to stop: • • •
•
•
•
‘If I go out tonight, I’ll be stuck in bed for the next few days.’ ’I’ve used up too much energy.’ ‘I wish this symptom would just go away’ (This thought will only cause anxiety, frustration which will be felt as a symptom.) ‘What does this symptom mean?’ (Analysing or thinking about your symptoms will only cause your amygdala to panic. Symptoms are not the root problem; they mean nothing.) ‘I can’t walk that far.’ (For now it doesn’t matter if you can or can’t, just don’t go on thinking or worrying that you can’t). ‘It’s only me that seems to get this symptom.’ Thinking your M.E. is different to everybody else’s and allowing yourself to believe it could be something else is a classic M.E. thought trap.
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It’s important to remember to catch yourself before you go ‘But my case is different, my M.E. is related to X, Y or Z’ (X, Y and Z being Glandular fever, abnormal blood tests or whatever). It is so easy to fall into the circular logic of justifying your M.E.’s existence with the myriad of potential medical explanations. I’m no doctor and so I can’t advise people about their symptoms if their symptoms are not M.E. related, but what I do believe is that if medical science has tested you and found nothing, no virus, no infection, no reason for your symptoms to exist, then I believe you can focus on the amygdala being the problem and stop worrying about everything else. We must remember that M.E. does create a huge range of symptoms. Imbalances due to not expressing emotions and having a panicky amygdala do create huge problems physically. Look at what happens when people receive shocking news, they may be unable to talk, they can be shaky, they may not be able to stand as their legs have gone to jelly. Such things are related to emotions, there is nothing physically wrong with them. The reason for them being unable to talk i s not that their vocal chords are physically damaged; they are simply in shock. You should always come back to the root of the problem – the amygdala – everything else can go. Thoughts about why your symptoms exist and what terrible things could be wrong with you should now be discarded. Remember that symptoms are reinforced and perpetuated through simply t hinking about them, thinking about their possible medical explanations will not help you. If you let yourself be wrapped up in medical research, you are having M.E. based thoughts because you’re not allowing your amygdala to calm and take a break from M.E. You’re panicking it and so triggering your symptoms. If you’ve been justifying your M.E. and believing a symptom exists because you have X, Y or Z, then now is the time to stop as you’ll only encourage it to stay. As hard as it sounds, try not to worry if it feels like your symptoms are smothering you, this only sets alarm bells ringing in the amygdala. To think ‘but these symptoms are all I can feel,’ is an M.E. thought. Label it as an M.E. based thought, as something you don’t want and say ‘ Stop’ as soon as you feel you’re going to think anything like that. You may also have thoughts such as ‘This method is rubbish,’ and you may question what you’re doing by using this method (I did when I first used it). But such a thought will only make you lose faith in yourself and your ability to re-educate the amygdala, so it will keep panicking. Think of it as a total mental clearout. Get rid of all the worries and accept that they’re not needed (even if you do feel ill, there’s no need to concentrate on it!). Allow yourself to let go and feel relieved that you don’t have to have these thoughts anymore.
Ifs and Buts… They’ll be plenty of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that will emerge from your mind, but you must block them out on the very first syllable. As soon as the ‘But…’ begins, say ‘Stop’ to that thought, don’t allow it to exist in your mind. As soon as they pop into your head, you must say something like: • • • •
‘Stop, that thought is rubbish.’ ‘Stop, that’s an out of date memory.’ ‘Stop, it’s ok, I’m fine. Or just simply, ‘Stop.’
Your thoughts and concerns about M.E. may seem very important to you especially as you’ve been having them for so long. But actually, they mean nothing and to let t hem go will be like you’ve had a massive problem you’ve had to cope with lifted off of your shoulders. Once the thoughts are gone, all the negative emotions that they trigger will also go and t hus symptoms that are triggered by those negative emotions will cease.
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Symptomatic Triggers - Sensations in Your Body Your symptoms are another trigger for M.E. based emotional memories. Symptoms can be very scary, but try to think of them as annoying sensations that are following you around, not as an illness that is part of your physical structure. Remember that the amygdala is only causing them because it thinks you are in danger. When I ask you to say ‘Stop’ to your symptoms, I am really asking you to tell your amygdala to stop overreacting and to allow you to relax instead. Choose a symptom you are experiencing and calmly ask your amygdala to stop triggering it It’s not really necessary to say anything other than ‘ stop’ and ‘ thank you.’ It can often be best to only say stop and thank you as it keeps the instructions short and to the point. Inside you know what you’re saying stop to, you’ll be directing the word stop at your amygdala, or a symptom or a thought or a feeling, so there’s not always need to reiterate it your instruction with more words. It just depends on the individual and what you feel works best. If you want be more verbal then that’s fine, you can say ‘Stop, you don’t need to do that anymore.’ o r ‘Stop overreacting.’ Whatever wording you feel is right for you.
Emotional Triggers You should also say stop to negative feelings such as worthlessness or doubt. You may not be thinking about whether you feel miserable or unconfident, but your amygdala will still be responding to those feelings, so it’s best to try and turn them around. (Though I don’t expect you to be like a robot and turn off unhappy emotions at the flick of a switch! It’s just that positive emotions will help with recovery and negative will hinder).
Sensory Triggers -Things You See, Hear, Smell, Taste or Touch You can limit the amount of sensory triggers in your life. For example you can stop looking at articles to do with M.E. and you can stop listening to programmes about it on the radio. You can get away from things that remind you of illness, for example a change of scenery and not being stuck at home will take away the sight of your house and so get you out of that mentality that you’re stuck at home ill. Removing M.E. triggers from your life in a practical way is explained further in chapter twenty-two – ‘Forget M.E.’
What Next Of course saying ‘stop’ alone will not do much to stop your amygdala overreacting in the long-term. So immediately after saying stop, meaning absolutely straight away, don’t pause for breath, immediately you must then gear your mind to one of the following: • •
Distraction (explained further in chapter eighteen) Opposing positive words (explained next in chapter fourteen)
You must do this immediately as there is only a small window of time before the interruption you created in the amygdala’s M.E. cycle will pass, and the amygdala will continue to flood the brain with chemicals in a hi-jacked manner.
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Chapter 14
The Stop Method – Using Opposing Positive Words You can use positive words to combat feelings and symptoms. A symptom will be caused by an overload of emotional energy and because it’s basis is emotion, you can combat it with words that emotionally empower you to dissolve the symptom. As we know, positive words promote positive emotions. Remember the actress who can make herself cry by thinking unhappy thoughts? And also think about how you feel when someone tells you you’re a great person; it makes you feel great. This is because the amygdala is connected to the neocortex (where words will be coming from) via millions of neural pathways. So if someone tells you you’re ugly and stupid, you’ll feel ugly and stupid. If someone tells you you’re beautiful and talented, you’ll feel beautiful and talented. To the amygdala, it doesn’t matter if t hese insults or compliments come from someone else or from your own thoughts, if you believe them you will still feel the affects of them. Through concentrating on emotions that are the opposite of those your amygdala has been triggering, you can bring about real emotional change and thus stop symptoms. So if the amygdala has been triggering fear, concentrate on having faith that there’s nothing to be afraid of. The more you exercise those neural pathways associated with having the emotion of faith, the weaker the opposing neural pathways associated with fear will become. Other major core emotions that your amygdala will be triggering are anger and sadness. It’s normal to get angry and frustrated at being stuck in bed, but unfortunately it’s exactly that triggered anger or sadness which has manifested into a symptom that helps to keep a sufferer in bed. Catch twenty-two. Plus a sufferer may not know they’re experiencing angry or sad emotional energy because it will just feel like a symptom. So sometimes it can be hard to judge exactly what you’re feeling and in these cases we must oppose the symptom itself and not the emotion behind it. So if you have frustration causing you to feel weak, you say opposing words to the weakness like strong or powerful. You have to do it this way, as you might not know that you’re feeling frustrated. If you can stop your attention being on the weakness, you can stop yourself being frustrated by it. As M.E. symptoms are caused by a large amount of negative emotional energy, which is constantly going to try to make you think and feel negatively, you will have t o work hard at bringing that negative energy down through chipping away at it with positive words. You have to take a step above any negative thoughts or feelings and dissolve them with opposing thoughts and feelings promoted through repeating certain words. Remember, the amygdala in your limbic s ystem (emotional brain) only function by using the core emotions: sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust. Notice again how these emotions are negative. This is for our primitive survival, so that we may respond quickly to threats. Many of our positive emotions come from the neocortex, the modern brain. This is where you’ll find confidence. But you must exercise emotions like confidence in order for them to grow and feel natural. Unlike core emotions, they are not inbuilt, they are learned and the ability to feel these emotions only comes naturally with experience of them.
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What Words to Use and How to Choose Them You will need to choose the best opposing words to use for each situation. Your thinking mind’s voice will probably be blabbering away with thoughts and worries that are not mindful of your feelings or your heath all the time, so don’t let that voice pick your wording. Let your inner voice choose words that feel right, words that feel right in the pit of your stomach, ones that you instantly know are going to be good opposing words to the symptom or negative emotion that you’re experiencing. Do not mindlessly choose words that you simply think are right. Keep what you say simple. Don’t make things complicated. You could just say, ‘Strong, strong, strong,’ over and over. It’s all about triggering the feeling of the word, that’s all. Also, keep in mind that it’s not a race. Saying the word as many times as possible will not make it more effective. If you start racing and repeating a word as quickly as you can, then your thinking brain is most likely impatiently rushing you to get it done so that it can say ‘See, what a waste of time this is!’ But it isn’t a waste of time and you must take your time, let the words fill you up with their positive meaning. As you say these words be aware of what feeling you want them to create in you. As you say or think each word, try to keep you mind free of any negativity. Here’s a list of words I’ve used to combat various symptoms: Clearheaded – Strong – Stable – Confident – Healthy – Happy – Solid – Grounded – Calm – Peaceful – Energised – Refreshed - Relaxed – Vibrant - Warm • • • •
If you are feeling weak, say ‘I feel strong.’ If you have a tense, foggy headache, say ‘I have a relaxed and clear mind.’ If you have pain in your back, say ‘My back feels warm and relaxed.’ If you’re generally feeling fluey, say ‘I feel healthy, clear-headed and vibrant.’
There’s no regimented style to it so don’t pressure yourself that it won’t work unless you get the wording absolutely correct in the right order. It’s not that you must repeat the whole phrase and say: ‘Stop, thank you, I feel happy. Stop, thank you, I feel happy. Stop, thank…’ All you’re doing is simply repeating an opposing word or words so that they have chance to become real emotions or sensations. And they will become so as you repeat them. If you concentrate on one emotion or feeling then it becomes real. What we think about we can become, especially on a basic level such as this. You could also direct the focus of the word to the relevant part of your body. So for example, if you were walking along and felt as though your legs weren’t there or were very weak, you may say (whilst directing the focus of the words towards your legs): ‘Stop, thank you. Stable, solid, strong, stable, solid, strong, stable, solid, strong, stable, solid, strong…(You then might decide to drop a word if it doesn’t feel very effective)… stable and solid, stable and solid.’ (You could even introduce a new word) ‘Stable, solid and grounded, stable, solid and grounded…I feel so solid and grounded today, yippee! (Be light-hearted about it, seriousness indicates worry or concern. You should be happily optimistic and confident) I’m solid and grounded, solid and grounded, solid and grounded…’ You would continue repeating your word or words for as long as it takes. When they have an affect it might be that you stop. It may then happen that ten minutes later t he negative sensation or feeling will creep back, so just attack it again with your opposing words. Imagine it like this, you’re just directing your amygdala away from the negative memories, your just reminding it that you’re ok until it gets to grips with the fact that it no longer needs to panic. You have to help it to make new positive emotional memories, which will happen naturally through beating a negative emotion or symptom.
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As silly as it may sound, it may even help to sing these words to yourself in your head. Singing can promote positive emotional energy (of course it helps if you sing about positive things!) and will help the associated feelings arise more quickly. I used to sing to m yself as if I were mocking the symptom, as if I didn’t care whether it was there or not. Not caring or fussing about the symptom in this way helped to undermine it. Please bear in mind that using positive words will not work l ike magic, you need to give them a bit of time to trigger the emotions. It’s as if you must coax the feelings to rise up inside you. These triggered emotions need to gain strength, so you have to stick with the process until you physically start feeling the related emotion for the words you are saying. Once you start to mentally believe you can feel a certain way, the physical changes will follow. It could take five minutes or an hour, but if you stick to it and believe it, it will work. Any lingering doubts can take you back to square one; so don’t let those doubtful thoughts happen. And most importantly don’t rush, stay grounded and in the moment, let your body be the judge of what you say and what speed you say it. (Yes I know I’m repeating myself but it is important!)
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Chapter 15
Saying Thank You! Even though this is a small chapter, I believe this element of ‘The Stop Method’ required its own chapter as it is an important part. Generally we expect a conversation has ended when we say thank you. So you say ‘Stop,’ then whatever other wording you’ve chosen if any, (for example, ‘I feel strong’) then ‘Thank you.’ You should say thank you as if you are thanking your amygdala for remaining calm and not triggering the symptom(s) anymore. Confidently saying ‘ thank you’ to your amygdala gives mental closure and demonstrates that you expect your amygdala to do what you’ve asked without you having to ask it again. (Though of course to begin with you will have to ask your amygdala to stop again and again and again until the negative emotional memories weaken). Immediately after saying ‘ thank you,’ you must do something, anything, absolutely anything to draw neural activity away from your amygdala. Your attention must be drawn away from your symptoms and M.E. If you are waiting to see if the symptom will go away it won’t. It’s a bit like watching for a kettle to boil, it won’t if you keep on watching it. You can also say ‘ thank you’ to your emotions. For example you may be feeling unconfident that you’ll get better. So you could say to your unconfident feeling, ‘Stop that, I’m stronger than this silly M.E. thank you. I’m strong, I’m strong, strong, strong…’ Again it emotionally gives you confidence to say thank you as saying thank you gives a conclusive end to your instruction.
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Chapter 16
The Stop Method – How You Should Say Stop You should say stop, whatever it is you want to say if an ything and thank you with calmness, certainty and strength. You will need compassion, confidence and patience to re-educate your amygdala. Talk to this part of your brain like it’s a scared, panicky child and remember that this child needs to have trust in what you are saying in order to stop being scared. Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow. - Philip Gulley
Imagine a scared boy at night convinced that there is something hiding in the shadows of his bedroom. He hides under the duvet afraid to look. The longer he hides, the more frightened he becomes as his imagination creates a scarier picture of the ‘shadow monster.’ He builds up the courage to get out of bed and he runs to his parents room. His father very impatiently yells at him saying there’s nothing in the shadows. The boy doesn’t believe his father and stands still, afraid to leave his parents room. The father shouts at his son again that there’s nothing in the shadows. The boy remains scared and still doesn’t believe his father. Then the boy’s mother gently and sincerely says, ‘It’s okay son, there really is nothing in the shadows, monsters don’t exist. I know this, because mothers know all about these kind of things.’ Because of the boy’s absolute trust in his mother, he smiles and goes back to bed, confident that monsters don’t exist. You need to have compassion, patience and trust for yourself. You are like the child’s mother telling him that shadow monsters don’t exist, only you must tell your amygdala in the same reassuring voice that it doesn’t need to panic. If you are like the father, and speak to yourself or amygdala impatiently or flippantly, you will not be very successful. You need to be confident and calm. If you don’t feel confident about the words you use to combat symptoms, say them anyway and the emotional memories will slowly start to trigger in the amygdala because you will be thinking the positive words in the connected neocortex. Remember, the thinking and emotional brains are linked. What happens in one affects the other. If your neocortex is thinking positive things, the amygdala will pick up on those thoughts and trigger their related emotion. Then your confidence will come as the positive energy is gradually generated. So at first you may not feel the emotion or sensation behind a positive opposing word. For example you may start saying ‘Clearheaded and relaxed,’ to your tense foggy headedness. At first these words may seem pointless because they are the last things you’re feeling. But what you must do is be confident and calm in your ability to arouse the meaning of these words. If your amygdala senses fear or doubt in what you’re doing, (and it will if fear or doubt are there because it’s your core emotional control centre, so you can’t fool it!) the words will be clouded by that fear or doubt and will not be able to grow into real feelings and sensations. Also if you’re fearful of a sensation or symptom and the amygdala picks up on that fear, it will only make the sensation worse. So try to rise above any fear, disconnect yourself from it and just look upon it as an M.E. related aspect. And all M.E. related things are meaningless, they are just mistakes made by your amygdala.
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Put Trust in What You Say As you sit there saying ‘Stop, thank you, I feel strong and happy, strong and happy…’ the amygdala will know if your trust is in these words or not. As I said, it’s not just a case of saying the words and expecting them to work like magic, you have to allow yourself to feel them or let their feelings grow in you. You have to meditate on them, put your focus on them and nothing else. If you don’t feel them to begin with, keep on saying them until they begin to mean something to you, or exchange them for other words that feel more appropriate. It is the same with distraction, if you do not distract attention fully into the neocortex or t hinking brain and move neural activity away from the emotional brain, the amygdala will be free to pick up on any M.E. doubts or negative feelings still lingering. An animal may sense fear and know if you are lying, this i s also the case with the amygdala. It is as though you must take your fear by the hand and say look, there’s nothing to be scared of. Reassure yourself the way you would reassure the scared child. Your amygdala will better react to this attitude because it will react to the calm and the confidence in what you are saying. If it picks up on any fear in you, it will not be able to relax. If it picks up on calmness and confidence however, it will have reason to relax.
Be Aware of What You Say Another important thing is that you are mindful and aware of what you are saying; try to feel the words you voice, be aware of them and considerate of what they mean. Again, don’t just say these words as quickly as possible for the sake of saying them in the hope that they will work like magic. It is the difference between someone who babbles on mindlessly and someone that always thinks before they speak that we need to associate with. Like someone who babbles on regardless to whether they are extremely boring or offensive, your M.E. thoughts are mindless and inconsiderate of your well-being. The sort of thinking that you need to promote is in opposition to that mindless babble. You must be considerate and aware of what you say; tapping into your gut feeling as to how positively opposing words make you feel inside.
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Chapter 17
Stop Method and Amygdala Metaphors One metaphor for ‘The Stop Method’ could be to view M.E. as a bad behaviour that your brain has learned. You have to re-educate the amygdala out of this bad behaviour. I once saw a TV show about a nanny who helped a mum and dad learn how to correct the behaviour of their unruly and naughty child. He was the kind of child that screams in supermarkets and throws two-hour tantrums. This nanny taught the parents that they must always be calm, caring and fair with their son, that they must never get angry with him and that they should show him that they are in control. When he sees that they’re in control and that they care about him, he stops throwing tantrums and overreacting emotionally because he knows it’s pointless as it will only get him put in a quiet corner and won’t get him the attention he wants. He l earns to get what he wants through behaving and being nice back to his parents. It takes him time however to realise that his tantrums are pointless. As I mentioned before, the amygdala or emotional brain can be viewed to be like a child. In the case of M.E. you need to treat the amygdala in the same way that you would treat the naughty child. Remain calm and collected and be caring towards it. Every time the amygdala triggers a symptom, calmly tell it to stop. And also your thinking brain, every time it has an M.E. based thought, calmly tell it not to. The parents had to show their child that they were strong and could cope with his bad behaviour, they showed him that the behaviour was wrong by not exhibiting it themselves. You must show your amygdala overreacting and panicking is wrong through not panicking yourself when you feel a symptom. If you don’t feel concerned about a symptom, the amygdala will go ‘Oh, well, you don’t seem too bothered, so maybe I’m overacting here.’
The Dog – An Amygdala Metaphor You are walking in a field and see someone nearby walking their dog. The dog stops and looks at you, it is a rough looking dog. Many people at this point may think ‘Oh blimey, I hope that dog isn’t going to attack me.’ You think this to yourself and carry on walking hoping that the dog i sn’t still looking at you and hoping that it isn’t going to go for you. You glance and see that it is staring at you. You feel more worried that it will attack you. The dog picks up on your worry and wonders what you have to worry about. This gives the dog reason to attack you as it thinks it may have to protect itself from whatever you are worrying about. Why would you worry if you had nothing to hide from the dog? And so a catch twenty-two situation occurs. You are scared of the dog because you think it wants to attack you and the dog is scared of you because it doesn’t understand why you’re giving off nervous energy. The amygdala is the same, if you give off nervousness or show a lack of confidence that you’re ok, it will go into a state of alert.
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Chapter 18
The Stop Method - Distraction It is the amygdala that you must distract. If the amygdala is distracted from triggering symptoms, you’ll find you can do activities you’ve previously been unable to. You’ll then create new memories about those activities and then your amygdala will begin learning that it doesn’t need to overreact to you doing them. If you remember, I explained what ‘hi-jacking of the amygdala’ is in chapter six. I described the solution to this problem lay in distracting neural activity away from the am ygdala by using another part of the brain - the thinking brain (the neocortex.) This gives the amygdala a chance to neutralise itself and rest, as it has nothing to respond to. Then a h ealthy balance can be struck between a calmer emotional brain and the rational thinking brain. You will find you actually can do things while you remain distracted from M.E., and as you gradually begin to do more things, your amygdala will not see them as a threat anymore. The key to distracting yourself properly lies in finding an activity that you really enjoy, find relaxing and that interests you. Counting sheep rarel y works for someone who can’t sleep because counting sheep is boring. If you choose an activity you find boring, it won’t manage to distract you either! It is a good idea to get a hobby, something that you can enjoy and become absorbed in, obsessed with even. If you’re stuck for ideas, here is a list of potential hobbies: Photography, drawing, sculpture, painting, wood carving, suduko, singing, learning a language, mathematics, puzzles, knitting, sewing, learning an instrument, playing board games (not computer) or writing. I discovered that role-play games are also beneficial as they take you into a fantasy world where you can do anything. If you can really imagine yourself doing things that M.E. stopped you from doing, your amygdala might not know the difference and be fooled into creating some new memories about those things. (You will of course have to work at establishing these memories in real life!) You also play with a group of people, which is good if you’ve been isolated through illness. On the whole things that take you away from your awareness of M.E., things that will help you forget about it and occupy your mind with something else, are what you’re looking for. Don’t concern yourself with becoming an expert at what you choose to do either, just do it for the fun of it. Also, don’t worry that a hobby has to be a life long hobby, you can have a hobby for a few hours or a few days. If you’re not interested in doing anything on m y list have a brainstorm, just write down everything that you can remember that you’ve ever enjoyed doing, then go back and look at it a few hours later or the next day and you’ll find something. Or better still go with what feels right in the moment. Do what you feel like doing right now. Get into the habit of not trying to work out what you will enjoy doing, but instead just being spontaneous and doing things as and when you feel like them. Let your emotions guide you. If you want to try riding your bike, go out and do it now. Don’t sit around and think about it because that’s when all the negative thoughts will creep in and tell you that you can’t. If you want to play some music and dance around
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the living room, do it now, don’t let your negative thoughts or excuses for laziness creep in and stop you. Remember that quote I used in chapter six? Well here it is again… The amygdala is responsible for generating negative emotions, so to prevent them (negative emotions) from flooding the brain this part of the limbic system must be quiet. Working hard on non-emotional mental tasks inhibits the amygdala, which is why keeping busy is often said to be the source of happiness. - ‘Mapping the Mind’ by Rita Carter (2)
Fun and relaxation are very important for your emotional well-being. Go with the fl ow and what feels right in the moment. If you sit for hours thinking about what you should do, you won’t get round to doing anything! Twenty- Four Crowded Hours If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his child, growing double dahlias or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator, striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty four crowded hours of each day. - W. Beran Wolfe
It can be quite tiring to constantly have to find something to do with your thinking brain, something that doesn’t involve any emotional input. It may be that you just want to have a conversation about topics that aren’t related to being ill! If you have a good friend who talks a lot about interesting things, hang out with them more. They could take the pressure off of you a li ttle when you become tired of making distractions for yourself. If you try and think too big and that you must accomplish something other than feeling better by going out, you could de-motivate yourself because you may be pressurizing yourself. It’s easy to sit in the safety of your house and think of a million reasons why not to go out, but then the symptoms take over and establish themselves as the norm again, which is not good. By going out you can build your confidence through the day. It’s the actual journey of going out and interacting with society and distracting yourself that helps you to build your confidence and realise that you’re fine. Your aim is only to make yourself feel better, it doesn’t matter where you go out and what you do when you get there. Just a walk can change your emotional energy for the better. It’s not about the destination. This may sound completely and utterly exhausting, especially to an M.E. sufferer. And to be honest it will be bit of a shock at first. But you will find it becomes easier. I began painting a mural at my local community centre and I got an allotment. I remember when I was mixing paint for the mural; I was completely absorbed in getting the right colour. As I stirred the paint, I suddenly became aware of how normal I felt, how healthy and content, I hadn’t been thinking about M.E. all morning – it was great. I carried on mixing my paints and knew that the M.E. was fading away because I wasn’t allowing it to exist in my thoughts anymore. I also learned a bit of French, I started drawing, I tried suduko, drumming and photography and sometimes I simply kept saying times tables in my head or made up songs or I’d count the number of windows as I walked along the street - just anything to keep my attention away from M.E. Keep it simple and don’t place any pressure on yourself to become an expect in a new hobby. Just enjoy yourself and enjoy the simplicity of the things you may do to distract yourself. Waste time, stop worrying and have fun. The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. – Bertrand Russell
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Above all if you do get tired, go to sleep or meditate, certainly don’t worry about being tired. It’s natural to get tired, everybody does. If your tiredness is accompanied by M.E. sensations, don’t start thinking about them; tell them to stop. If they don’t stop, mediate and centre yourself for a bit and then tackle them again. Don’t put off using ‘The Stop Method.’ If you put it off now, you’re not being strict enough. It’s up to you to make it work for you.
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Chapter 19
The Stop Method - Visualisation Another method you can use to stop the amygdala overreacting is visualisation. The good thing about visualisation it is that you create an image of the p roblem and that makes the problem easier to manage. This is because it distances or separates you from the problem. So rather than have you feeling as though it is something out of your control, you can visualise and see the problem and then you are able to deal with it. The way you interact with your image of the problem will actually occur in reality giving you the power t o control and override your amygdala’s responses through talking to it in an emotionally beneficial way. (E.g. with confidence and compassion instead of fear) For a more general visualisation, you could even think about a time from before you had M.E., a time when you felt particularly strong and visualise yourself to be like that again.
The Nervous Little Man Visualisation Imagine a small man lives in the amygdala in your brain. He r epresents your amygdala’s choices to send out panic signals or remain calm. He is in charge of your fight or flight response unit and has a big brass control lever next to him, a bit like you might find on a large ship. The lever has two settings, ‘normal’ and ‘red alert.’ Normal is for when your amygdala detects no threat and red alert is for when it detects a threat. This small man is so panicky and nervous that he can’t hold a cup and saucer steady without them rattling terribly. He has a comfortable chair next to him but never sits down as he’s always anxiously on guard by the lever. Whenever this man feels there’s danger about, if something makes him feel uneasy, he puts the lever onto ‘red alert,’ which in turn causes you to be on red alert. This system normally keeps you safe because you’re then ready to take on whatever dangers face you. And the little man usually does a very good job at controlling your red alert lever, using it only when necessary. But unfortunately he has grown to be so anxious and agitated that he‘s started to believe many things are dangerous. And so just to be sure that you are definitely safe, he has swit ched the big lever to ‘red alert’ permanently. The problem was this is that it’s exhausting and very taxing on you to be on ‘red alert’ all the time and it’s making you ill. But the little man doesn’t know that. He thinks something else is making you ill and so he keeps the lever on ‘red alert’ to protect you from that something else. He doesn’t realise there isn’t any danger and that actually he is the one hurting you. So he keeps the lever on ‘red alert’ day after day, whilst he stands next to it wide-eyed and anxious. What you should do is imagine that you can talk to this man and that it’s your responsibility to calm him down and soothe his nerves. When you feel the symptoms of M.E., say to him in a reassuring tone, ‘Stop, relax, it’s OK, everything’s fine, ’ (or something you feel is reassuring and along those lines). Imagine him listening to you and switching the lever back to ‘normal.’ Then speak to him again saying, ‘See, it’s all fine, you can relax and sit down, take a rest.’ Visualise him sitting down and looking relieved with the lever next to him set to ‘normal.’ If symptoms arise again, visualise him and see that he has got up and put the lever on ‘red alert.’ If you make the association that he puts the lever onto ‘red alert’ when your symptoms arise, you can make the association that him sitting down and relaxing will cause your symptoms to stop, because he is calm. And again tell him
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it’s ok and he can put the lever to ‘normal.’ Talk to the man in this manner until he feels much calmer and confident that you’re safe. When he feels sure you’re safe and that he can sit down and relax, and that the lever can stay in the ‘normal’ setting, you too should feel better as your symptoms should have stopped because the man will have stopped triggering them. It may take some time to get the man to listen to you and to get him away from the lever, but be persistent and remain calm, compassionate and confident when you talk to him. This method can help because it helps you to see your symptoms as something separate to you, something that should be stopped. If you choose to use visualisation, don’t race through it like it’s a film on fast-forward. Allow your body and mind to work together on the visualisation so that the little man moves when you feel he is ready to. He will feel ready when you begin to calm him, you must be patient with him and patient with the visualisation.
The Thermometer Visualisation This is a very simple visualisation whereby you simply imagine a thermometer. The upper part of the thermometer where the reading is hot is your ‘red alert’ area. Whenever the temperature level rises and hits this red alert area, it means your symptom level has risen and your amygdala is overreacting. So, when you feel a s ymptom worsening, you imagine that the thermometer level is quickly rising into the red. When the level rises, you have to t ell it to stop and you must reassure yourself that everything’s ok. Then try to visualise bringing that thermometer level back down to normal whilst you tell yourself that it doesn’t need to go into the red because your symptoms are not a danger and they will go if the thermometer level reads normal. I sometimes associated the rising of the thermometer level with the tensing of m y scalp, the aching of a limb or with a headache. So if I had a pain or my head throbbed or started to feel tense, I would visualise this to happen in synchronisation with the thermometer level rising. In this way I could relax my head from tensing up or control the on come of a headache or an ache through visualising the thermometer level coming back down t o normal.
Using Negative Visualisation – Don’t! When you are ill with something such as M.E., it is natural to think about what exactly is going wrong with your body. For example, I used to think that maybe the top of my spinal chord was inflamed because I’d get pain there, or I’d think that my blood was having trouble circulating to all of my limbs when I couldn’t feel them. Sometimes, I’d end up visualising all kinds of problems. Visualising your symptoms is harmful however and will only agitate them. The mind and body have a very strong connection. In the same way that the actress can make herself cry through thinking sad thoughts, negative visualisation can create negative emotional energy in t he body and can so bring on a symptom. If you do sometimes visualise what’s wrong in your body, tr y not to allow yourself to do it anymore. It’s easy to make a headache or stomach cramp worse through worrying about it, visualising it being bad will have exactly the same negative effect.
Tinitus Visualisation The following visualisation is a personal experience. It is not part of ‘The Stop Method’ and it is not necessary for you to try it. I have included it as I wanted to give you an idea of how powerful visualisation can be. To take a problem from the real world, place it in an imaginary world
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and then conquer it that imaginary world is surprisingly effective. In a wa y this kind of visualisation is related to self-hypnosis. This kind of visualisation is similar to that used by the growing trend of dental hypnotists in order to stop patients feeling pain whilst undergoing dental treatment. They do it through taking the patients mind out of the dentist’s room and away to some other place. After I had recovered from M.E. I would still get Tinitus (a constant ringing in the ears) occasionally. I think it was one of the first symptoms I developed and was the last to go. What I usually did if it bothered me was to lay down somewhere, make myself comfortable, close my eyes, stick some earplugs in and then visualise the Tinitus away. I’d start by using positive words; usually calm, peaceful and relaxed did the trick. I’d repeat them over and over and wouldn’t let my mind wander. I didn’t allow doubt or negative feelings to creep into m y thoughts. I maintained the feeling that what I was doing would be effective on the Tinit us. As time passed, the Tinitus would soften and go down a tone, it stopped sounding so high pitched and harsh. Then I knew that I was beating it. I’d then carry on and sometimes and begin to visualise something in order to help me get rid of the Tinitus. Often I’d visualise that I was a child standing outside the door of our old library in my hometown. I want to enter the library but the librarian keeps telling me I can’t come in unless I’m quiet (meaning that the Tinitus is still too loud). I tell her I am quiet and gently try the door. The door may not open at first and the librarian may again tell me to be quiet. I carry on saying peaceful and relaxed to myself and every now and then try to enter the librar y again. While stood at the door and saying the words, I distract m yself from the Tinitus by looking in through the window at what’s in the library. Soon my Tinitus goes down to an even gentler tone and the librarian lets me in telling me I must remain quiet. I wander round the library and imagine that the remaining softer Tinitus I have is a quiet alarm going off somewhere in the library. I see that some librarians are trying to fix this alarm and turn it off. It isn’t very loud anyway as my Tinitus is no longer very loud, but I feel that I want this alarm to stop in order for my Tinitus to go. I sit down and read a book. I use to visualise the book in my hands, it may have pictures or I may visualise the words from books I’ve already read. (which aren’t of course word for word perfect as I wouldn’t be able to remember) but I let myself become immersed in the imaginary library and through doing so become distracted form the Tinitus and the alarm. Every now and then I see if the librarians are having any success in stopping the alarm. Sometimes they managed to stop the alarm and thus my Tinitus would go away and sometimes I would decide to go to a different part of the library without an alarm going off. Through walking away from the alarm, m y Tinitus would also sometimes go away, but sometimes I ended up walking to a different part of the library that also has an alarm in it! So the Tinitus remained. If it remained I would continue looking for a quite part of the library where there was no alarm to be heard. W hen I found that, the Tinitus stopped.
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Chapter 20
The Stop Method - Using Positive Actions You can also use positive and caring actions such as gentle massage to alleviate symptoms and pain. As with the other symptoms of M.E., what’s causing the symptom or pain will be the unresolved negative emotional energy behind it. That emotion behind t he symptom or pain may even simply be caused by your attention being on the pain; perhaps you’re worrying about the pain or comparing it with how it was a while ago, and so you’re triggering anxious emotions about it. It’s good to offer the pain or symptom a different kind of attention rather than the worrying or assessing attention it’s been receiving subconsciously and consciously. Massaging the area with a compassionate and confident attitude is going to help resolve it by bringing different positive emotions to the area. Once the anxiety behind the pain is gone, it is most likely that the area will relax and stop hurting. In the way a parent might comfort their child. A child can cry a lot about things they don’t understand or think are massive problems, but a parent will know that the problems aren’t a big deal and can comfort their child with that knowledge. You can use that same caring attitude when you massage an ache or pain, because you know that it doesn’t need to be there, you know that there’s nothing wrong with you and it’s just your amygdala overreacting. Whilst doing this you do not want your attention to be completely on the pain. It’s best to massage the area and also occupy your mind with something completely non M.E. related. By distracting yourself from the pain and also giving it positive attention, you will remove its source; you’ll remove the negative attention that causes it.
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Chapter 21
The Stop Method - Confronting Symptoms M.E. is unknown, irregular, the fear about it creates emotional memories that if you do not overcome, will carry on ruling your life. You now have to face them. This may seem daunting for you, but once you begin the methods in this book, you will soon realise that there is no way you can go back to being ill again. When we overcome a fear of something unknown, it is like we are evolving. The amygdala resets it’s association of what is safe. If we were to stop taking on the unknown, it can’t learn from anything, so we would stay scared and ignorant, we would never come out of our cave. Normally, emotions are recognisable feelings and sensations in the body t hat you can understand and act upon. But your emotional sensations have spiralled out of control and have become symptoms. As well as saying ‘Stop’ to them in order to re-train the amygdala, another way to stop them is to confront them head on. Once you get past the initial confrontation, you’ll be surprised at how easy it can be to confront your symptoms and see that actually, they’re not that scary because they are only meaningless sensations that can be stopped. You are in control of your thoughts and feelings and you can bring about good feelings in yourself through the methods I’ve described. It’s like looking a nightmare in the face and saying, ‘You’re not real so I’m not going to feel scared, I’m going to laugh at you instead.’ When you laugh at fear, it dissolves. Because through laughing, you are using positive emotional energy, and that will cancel out the negative emotional energy of the fear. When we face our fears head on, we can more easily see them for what they actually are:
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real.
When we do not face our fears head on and hide from them, we can only imagine them to be worse than they really are. We build up a picture of them in our minds. (Like the little boy did wit the shadow monster) But to allow yourself to experience a symptom or emotion and then talk yourself calmly through it shows you that it is indeed false and does not need to be there. Imagine you are in a busy shopping precinct (or situation you normally wouldn’t be in due to having M.E.). You can’t breath, can’t stand any longer, everything confuses you. What’s the worst that can happen? You are not going to die, you will not be permanently damaged. Nothing can harm you. The absolute worst is that you collapse in a heap and someone will have to help you get home. (Of course your M.E. thoughts will be telling you that the worst part is that you will need weeks to recover from this excursion, in which case you should tell them to stop) Nobody is going to think badly of you and if you explain what’s going on, there will certainly be nothing to be embarrassed about. If anything you should be proud of your own bravery in taking this thing on! If you’re worried you might not be able to explain your problem to people, should you collapse, you could even have a pre-written letter in your pocket explaining your situation. The problems that M.E. sufferers experience when they are in busy or public environments are very similar to panic attacks. And again, it is only the panic and worry that causes the symptoms.
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Let’s look at some M.E thoughts in this case: • • • • • • •
‘I’m not going to make it to the end of the road.’ ‘I wish I could be like everybody else.’ ‘There’s too much going on.’ ‘I feel weak, I can’t think straight, I can’t handle it,’ ‘I can’t breath, I feel numb.’ ‘I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack’ ‘I feel like I’m going to collapse and fade into nothing’
The amygdala understand these thoughts to be a threat to your survival and spark the M.E. based emotional memories, which in turn causes you to feel your symptoms. If you allow yourself to think about how different you are to all the ‘healthy people,’ then you are separating yourself from them; you’re separating yourself from healthiness and that will panic the amygdala. Don’t get fooled by those symptomatic sensations and don’t let yourself be taken in by them. Remain strong and positive that you can beat them, because you can. All you have to do is ignore those worrying thoughts and stop focusing on your symptoms, don’t place your attention on them, think about other things around you. You have to push through the symptoms and realise they are fake, and the only thing spurring them on is the anxiety that they create. Next time you find yourself in this type of situation remember to use The Stop Method: • • • •
•
•
•
Stop the negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. Laugh at your symptoms or tell yourself they’re stupid. Distract your attention from your symptoms. Use opposing words to your symptoms. If you feel weak, tell yourself you feel strong. If you feel nervous, tell yourself you feel calm and grounded. Distract your attention from your symptoms: Look around you and think about the people who work in the buildings you see, or think about what your favourite car is that you can see. Think about anything at all that is around you. Try not to think about the past or the future, stay in the present, thinking about things in your environment. Do not start comparing yourself with others. Doing this will remind you again that you have been ill. If you start thinking things like, ‘Oh, all these people are so lucky not to be ill,’ that’s going to be another M.E. trigger. Just appreciate the good in everyone around you. You are not alone and I’m sure many of them would come over and help you if need be – but there won’t be a need for that, because you will be fine. Think positively of people around you and get involved in what’s going on. Even thinking about what kind of person the guy across the street is helps to ground you. It helps you to feel part of society because it makes you feel more normal and not like some alien who has had some weird disease lately and been stuck in bed for ages.
If you don’t push through the scary or seemingly impossible situations, it becomes the norm for those situations to be impossible and scary. It is wrong for you to go on living under such false normalities and beliefs. Become an onlooker to your symptoms, not a prisoner trapped by them. When you feel yourself being swamped by a symptom, no matter how strong it feels, just remember, it’s onl y an emotional sensation. Step outside of it and try to calm the am ygdala and stop it from generating that emotion by concentrating on positive emotions instead.
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Chapter 22
The Stop Method - Forget M.E. It’s not simply a case of distracting your mind from your symptoms, you must gear your life totally away from M.E. You have to try and forget that you’ve been ill and that M.E. even exists at all. To do this you will need to get anything whatsoever associated with M.E. out of your life. If you go on internet forums and interact with other people who have M.E., if you compare your symptoms with each other, if you keep on researching other ways to get better, if you go to M.E. support groups or whatever it is that you may do, if you stay involved with M.E., your amygdala is still going to keep the emotional memories of it active and thus send the messages that instruct your body to have symptoms. At the moment your amygdala is on such a high level of alert, that if you even whisper ‘M.E.’ to it, it’s going to overreact and trigger a symptom. It is as though your amygdala is a big hypochondriac or excessive worrier. You give it something to worry about and it will panic. I sometimes imagined my amygdala to be like a nervous nagging old lady (no offence to elderly ladies!). But I mean the sort of person who never actually listens to what people have to say with regards to how safe something might be. They just rush t heir decisions deciding that nothing is safe or good enough. If they have kids, they don’t let them go out and play because it might be dangerous. So like your amygdala, you just want to take this person and force them to sit down and relax, you want to tell them that they don’t need to rush everything and that their kids should be allowed to go out and play a little because this will in fact be good for their children. You want them to stop fussing and tidying everything and sit sown and have a cup of tea, read a nice book and put their feet up. But to get them to relax you have to first take away all of the triggers that make them all uptight. It’s the same with your amygdala. When you’re better it’ll be ok to think and talk about the time you were ill as by then the M.E. based memories in your amygdala will have dissolved, and your survival instincts will have come off red alert. But until then just wipe M.E. out of your life, because you are not strong enough to talk about M.E. until you no longer have it. Even with this book, once you’ve read and learned the methods, put it away and focus on using those methods…not just reading about them. There are many things that you will have to change about your everyday life in order to remove those M.E. triggers and reminders: • • • • •
•
Avoid Internet forums and websites about M.E. Stop researching about M.E. Don’t talk about your symptoms. Just ignore them, they mean nothing. Don’t check for symptoms and monitor them. Don’t look in the mirror. Throughout your illness you may have checked your skin pallor for spots and any other signs of ill health. I used to look in the mirror to see if my pupils were rapidly changing size, (as they used to) but this is just another way to trigger an M.E. based emotional memory, your amygdala will pick up on it so don’t do it! Get out of the house more. People usually stay at home all da y if they’re ill, so being at home may make you subconsciously aware that you’re ill.
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Make new emotional memories for your amygdala; try to go to different places. This will help take away any reminders of your everyday M.E. life and routine. Get a change of scenery; get out in the country for the day. If this isn’t easy, don’t be afraid to ask for help. If getting help don’t put pressure on yourself to be brilliant company to those who are helping you. Just say to people not to expect too much from you and that you just need to get out for the day as it will help your recovery. You come first. Also, don’t get people who drain you to take you out; you’re better off achieving what you can by yourself than with draining people. REMEMBER! Different environments affect your energy differently. If you are at home alone, you will feel differently to when you are in a room full of people at a community centre. If you are in a supermarket, you will feel differently to how you would feel if you were stood in a field or wood. Go to places that are vitalising for you energy. Being in nature and amongst good people in a relaxing and friendly environment is good for you because of being stress free. This will take your mind off being ill by externalising your attention and relaxing you.
A change of environment can be extremely beneficial as it does take you away from your regular life, the life where you’ve had M.E. It helps you forget the things around you, the things that are subtle M.E. reminders for your amygdala. I have heard of many people who have recovered form M.E. through simply moving to a warmer country or j ust going fishing for a few days. That break of a few days was enough for their amygdala to be fr ee from the physical reminders around the house and it gave their mind chance to clear and calm. If you can get away for a short break, just into the countryside, you don’t have to go far, then this wil l most likely help you use ‘The Stop Method’ as many things that the amygdala reacts to will be gone. Introduce new things to your life, try and spend more time wit h people in situations where you can relax. If you’ve lost touch with a lot of people, which does happen with illness; join a group, any group. You don’t have to become a lifelong member. Just do it for one hour even, go and do anything to be around people. Don’t view this as desperation. It’s part of your journey to recovering your emotional confidence and comfort zone around people. Think about working in a charity shop. You could explain your situation and say you may only do a few hours a week and it may only be that you do it once or for a month. People will help you, even if you don’t know them. Just being out with t he public in this way will help to build your confidence and make you feel more normal. Go to your local community centre, they could have activities there which you can become involved in. It is true that any M.E. reminders whatsoever will make recovery harder for you, but the good thing is that every time you overcome symptoms through the methods in this book or t hrough other methods, your confidence in your ability to recover will grow.
Friends and Family Tell all your friends and family not to talk to you as if you’ve been ill. For example, ‘You look well today, feeling better?’ Just imagine it this way: Your amygdala is paranoid about anything that might suggest you’re ill, so whilst it’s very nice of people to care how you are, if they ask you in that concerned...how ill are you today manner, it’s just another trigger for your amygdala. It’s comparing the present day with bad M.E. days. Comparing yourself to times when you’ve felt worse is only going to make you think about M.E.
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Perhaps tell family and friends the following: ‘I’m using a technique which is going to put a stop to my M.E. In order for the technique to work best, you will need to understand a bit about it so that you too can adhere to it. With M.E, my survival instincts have been on constant red alert causing me to be exhausted and ill. Basically my fight or flight response mechanism has been on overdrive. I must re-educate the part of my brain responsible for the fight or flight response and bring it down to a normal level. This part of the brain is called the amygdala. It’s the part of the brain that triggers fear and does so in order to protect us. Of course fear is normally good as it tells us to run from danger or makes us more alert when danger is present, but with M.E. my amygdala has become very easily panicked and so it’s triggering so much fear that I’m physically unable to do things like walk down the street (or whatever example you may wish to use) or get out of be because it thinks these things pose a threat to my survival. So I need to remove the things that panic my amygdala. I need to remove all the reminders about M.E. from my life and from my mind. I’ll have to constantly be on guard with my thoughts and make sure I don’t think about M.E. and I’ll have to keep my m ind distracted with nonemotional activities to keep my mind occupied. Then the things triggering the M.E. based survival instincts in my amygdala will be gone, so I won’t get any symptoms. It’s going to be a bit like getting a catchy song out of my head except I must get any thought whatsoever of M.E. out of my head. I basically need to be spoken to like any normal healthy person so that I can feel like a normal healthy person. I will need you to talk to me as if I never did have and don’t have M.E. It’s important to me that you stick to this, as any reminders about M.E. make the process much harder for me. Any reminders will only alert my panicky amygdala and then trigger a symptom.’
If someone does talk to you like you’re ill, if they worry and say that you’re doing too much, just politely remind them not to say such things. It’s up t o you to decide how much you can do and the pace you’ll recover at. It’s also up to you to use the methods available and put all you can into them, they do require commitment and willpower in order to be effective.
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Chapter 23
The Stop Method - Other Treatments In order to use ‘The Stop Method’ properly, you should refrain from having any other treatments to do with M.E. The reason for this is quite simple. If you go and have a treatment, the amygdala will panic because to go for a treatment for M.E. is to say ‘Hey, I have M.E. and that’s why I need this treatment.’ You need to be strong enough to completely block any notion that you have M.E. out of your mind. The M.E. must psychologically be gone in order for it to physically go. This is why when you go to the doctors you perhaps feel pretty bad whilst sat in the waiting room. I did. Because being at the doctors aroused my anxiety more about having M.E. I made me more aware that there was something wrong with me. It’s a tricky situation really, because when you’re really ill, you may feel like you really need some medical help and in a way to be in hospital can be comforting, but it can also bring your awareness to your illness more. When I first developed ‘The Stop Method’ I was having (five element) acupuncture, but I stopped the acupuncture because to go to the clinic, sit in the waiting room and to receive treatment made me feel that there was something still wrong with me. It kept the M.E. based emotional memories active. Incidentally Five-element acupuncture did help. I found that twice it made me feel very good the next day, but then the M.E. would return. This is because Five-element acupuncture works by correcting emotional energy and as M.E. symptoms actually are emotional energy that’s become too strong, the acupuncture can relieve them. The vital aspect that this acupuncture misses of course is that it does not change the M.E. based emotional memories in the amygdala. So it is treating the symptoms and not the root cause of M.E. So even though some treatments may be beneficial for a short period because they make you emotionally feel more balanced, in the long term it is the amygdala and the reasons that make you feel emotionally low that need to be addressed.
Methods That Work Well With This Book I fully believe that the methods alone in this book can completely cure you of M.E., but I also know that there are other helpful treatments and therapies out there. As we are all different, I think that it’s good to have a few methods to turn to so that you can see what works best for you. Sometimes you can also get a little disheartened with one method and you just feel you need a boost from something else to get you back on the right tracks. It’s all up to what works for you. Personally I found that I only needed the methods in this book t o recover, and I occasionally used the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) mentioned below, to boost my confidence with regards to my ability to recover through using this book. Five-element acupuncture might help in order to give you a headstart at emotionally feeling balanced. It would then be up to you to complete the M.E. recovery by using ‘The Stop Method.’ I recommend EFT, which is a self-administered treatment that you would use for normal emotional problems, phobias and addictions. You wouldn’t use EFT to specifically treat M.E. as a whole, instead it’s best to focus on one emotional problem or one symptom at a ti me. You could use it to boost your confidence or emotional strength. If you wish to look into EFT, you can download a free e-book from this site: www.emofree.com
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The interesting factor about EFT is that it works through saying affirmations such as ‘Even though I feel unhappy about my weight, I deeply and completely accept myself.’ The nature of the affirmation is to get you to stop caring about whatever the issue or problem you have actually is…because you are saying that you accept yourself and who you are even though you have this problem. Whilst saying your affirmation you tap on certain Chinese acupressure points on the body which helps clear emotional energy, in particular emotional energy related to your problem. So like my methods, it is as though you must mentally relax and let go of a problem in order to let your body relax and resolve it. I also recommend Reverse therapy or Mickel therapy as they can help you get to the root of any unresolved emotional issues and help you to understand how t o look after your emotional wellbeing in the future. Some people have recovered from M.E. completely through only using these methods, some find they need further help after being helped a little by these methods (in particular this is when this book might come in handy). Even though I have mentioned these other methods, please do not be concerned and feel you must read about them or that you must experience them. I have only mentioned these other methods because because I believe they are very good and I do not wish to advise people against them, especially if they are already using them. I’m not suggesting that you need these other methods or that they’re essential to your recovery, so please don’t worry about them. If you worry that you must use another method in order to get better; that will be another M.E. thought! See the catch? Some of you may be taking vitamin supplements or tablets to do with M.E. Again these will be M.E. reminders and will panic the amygdala. But it’s up to your discretion to decide what you wish to continue taking or not taking. Just remember that if you are reliant on some super supplement that gives you a bit more energy, that reliance will not go away until you trust in your ability to have a normal energy level without that supplement. If you believe you need the supplement to help your energy levels, then you’re believing you have M.E. If you can manage to take a useful supplement however and just think about it differently without relying on it, t hen maybe it will stop acting as a reminder to t o your amygdala. I don’t like to advise people to stop taking things that are good for them!
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Part Four
Emotions and People Healthy Emotional Energy
The Over-Protective Body
- An Emotional Balance
Being on the Same ‘Level’ as Others
Beating Yourself Up - Give Your Thinking Mind a Name - Voice of Reason?
The Difference Between Letting Go and Suppressing
Beliefs and Perceptions A Certain ‘Type’ of Person
-
If You Let Go You’ll Stop Falling - Yoga and M.E.
Think Better
Recognising Emotions Hidden by M.E.
- Dream
- Feeling Everyday Emotions Compared With M.E. Symptoms
Ways of Releasing Emotional Energy - Writing - Deep Relaxation - Role-Playing a Conversation
Physically Recognising Emotions in a Healthy Body
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Chapter 24
Healthy Emotional Energy ‘The Stop Method’ is Method’ is designed to re-educate the amygdala and stop it from overreacting and triggering negative emotions. So if you’re walking and feel a physical symptom that you feel fearful Method’ to override that fear, because the fear and symptom of, you can use ‘The Stop Method’ to s ymptom are only a product of the amygdala overreacting. The emotional energy of the fear is an overreaction. Of course if emotional energy has a real purpose for being there, you shouldn’t just t ell it to stop, you need to answer it. So if a friend tells you that they’ve shot your dog because they didn’t like it urinating on their front fr ont lawn, don’t say stop to your anger and grief. Express it. Get angry at your friend and let them know you’re upset. This emotional energy is real and justified. If you don’t express it, it will only grow as you fume and fester. Now that we’ve looked at the practical side of calming and resetting the amygdala, we need to look into the emotional aspects that made you feel ill and rundown in the first place. As well as identifying blocked emotional energy from when you haven’t dealt with a problem or got over a trauma fully, this may mean examining your character and realising what changes you need to make in yourself in order for you to be more happy, confident, assertive, content and emotionally balanced. Expressing Expressing emotions should be a matter of course as and when you feel an emotion. You need to identify which emotions you need to express more and how you can do that on a daily basis in a way that doesn’t seem daunting. It may be that you need to learn to say no when people ask you to do favours that you feel are too much for you. It may be that you have to tell someone if you feel they are domineering you or treating you badly. It may be that you avoid certain people that you’ve previously felt you shouldn’t because you you have a history together. It may be that you decide to follow your heart more instead of always doing what you think should be done to prove you’re a good person. You may start doing what you want to do more and stop allowing yourself to take on missions or projects and being the hero all the time. You may need to stop being the one one that everyone else leans on (and (and perhaps takes advantage advantage of). Or it may be that you simply allow yourself to enjoy life more and not feel guilty about doing so.
An Emotional Balance All emotions should be expressed and not trapped. If one emotion is trapped, it’s likely you won’t feel the others fully, because they’ll be tainted by it. Imagine a roomful of voices in your mind, each voice represents one of your emotional characteristics. There is a voice for joy, anger, jealousy, guilt, lust, anxiety etc. The more one of these voices speaks, speaks, the stronger it becomes and the more inclined you are t o believe what it’s telling you. But it is not healthy when one voice is domineering others as this can taint your judgement. For For example if jealousy became too strong you you could begin to feel feel jealous about people people without good cause. If one voice is domineering in your mind, there is no fairness to your attitude and beliefs. If your embarrassed voice is always saying things like, ‘I can’t dance in public, people might laugh at me,’ or ‘I can’t tell that person they’re upsetting me, they’ll just think I’m pathetic,’ then your self-esteem voice may give up trying to tell you any different. It may give up on telling you that you can dance and that nobody will ridicule you anyway even if you’re not that good, and it may give up telling you that you’d be right and strong to tell someone they’re being unkind. The
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embarrassed voice can take over and stop you from doing many things that you are perfectly capable of doing, as being embarrassed and unconfident slowly becomes part of your nature. When one voice is too strong others will be weak and so you won’t l isten to them. One enemy of emotional expression is strength. We believe we have grown strong when as adults, we can hold back tears, anger or what we really want to say in order to be polite or accepted. But, this scenario would mean that the self-conscious voice is speaking louder than others and stopping you from expressing emotions. Real strength lies in not being too self-conscious, embarrassed or unconfident to say what you feel or to cry if you need to. Real strength comes not from when one voice is strong in your mind, but fr om when all voices are equally strong. You then have an open mind and can be a better judge of things, without having one overly strong emotion tainting your opinion.
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Chapter 25
Beating Yourself Up When something bad happens to you, no matter how small, there then can be an underlying awareness about it that causes you to feel like everything is going badly. The negative voice in your mind can keep verbally beating you up. The old saying ‘It’s going to be one of those days,’ sums up what I mean. Through saying ‘It’s going to be one of those days,’ you set yourself a negative outlook for the day whereby you expect lots of things to go wrong. If you set your sights on negativity, negative things usually occur. Here’s an example:
You have been having some pretty bad luck lately; you messed up a job at work and said something mean to a friend. You regret this and your self-esteem is low because of it. On the way home from work in your car, you go to overtake a bus but it is not clear to. At the last moment you see a car coming towards you. You swerve to avoid it. You narrowly escape a fatal accident. Nobody is hurt, but the driver of the other car is very shook up. You apologise, console her and swap details. Everyone goes home. At home you feel terrible about this accident, it was your fault and you curse yourself for being so reckless and not paying attention properly. You keep thinking about how mindlessly you were driving. Instead of thinking , ‘At least I didn’t hurt anybody or myself in that accident and did manage to swerve in time,’ you carry on telling yourself off. Then you get into thinking about how mean you were to your friend at work and how you messed up that job. Instead of keeping in mind that tomorrow is another day with which you can make a fresh start, you think to yourself, ‘I’m just a walking disaster.’ You allow such degrading thoughts about yourself to go on and on, even though they are only making you feel worse. Then instead of looking at other things with a fresh and clear view, your negative feelings from these three events taint everything and make you feel rubbish. Your negative thinking forms a belief about yourself that you are a walking disaster and this lowers your confidence. As a result of this, the next day you do not concentrate properly on your work, you don’t mend things with your friend and you therefore do not do things as well as you could because you carry on feeling rubbish. This only results in your self-esteem getting lower. Sometimes we are too hard on ourselves and allow our thoughts to batter our spirits down. You shouldn’t think things to yourself that you wouldn’t say to someone else in a consoling situation. If it was your friend who had had caused that car accident, you wouldn’t say to them, ‘You’re a walking disaster! You can’t get anything right lately, what’s wrong with you?’ as this would not help them feel better or help them put the accident behind them. If you were a good friend you would console them, let them talk about the accident and say things to help them move on in life. If you are being a decent friend to yourself, you should also console yourself in this manner and not put yourself down. Whether a negative voice in your head is telling you that you can’t dance or t hat you’re a walking disaster, don’t listen to it and don’t follow that thought pattern. Accept your mistakes and faults; you’re human. Learn from mistakes and move on. If you had a cigarette and were meant to have quit, if you ate too much and were supposed to be dieting, if you said something daft to someone or if you did anything you later regret, just accept that you did it and say to yourself, ‘I’ll try and do better next time, it’s not a big deal.’ You can always apologise to people. Dwelling on mistakes or failures will only make you feel worse and then you’ll be less able to correct things or improve. Don’t beat yourself up over anything. Always
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look for the positive route out. Your thoughts and actions should all be geared towards your good health and happiness. If anything you think or do stops that from being the case, don’t do it and don’t think it. Don’t ever say or think things to yourself that you wouldn’t say to a friend if telling them how they should feel.
Give Your Thinking Mind a Name If you wanted to you could give your thinking brain a nickname like ‘Smeghead’ or ‘Thickhead.’ I personally prefer ‘Smeghead’ and I call my thinking mind this whenever I catch it ‘going off on one.’ That is, whenever it gets carried away with M.E. thoughts or any thoughts that are inconsiderate of my feelings, my time or the truth. Whenever I catch it worrying about something it doesn’t need to worry about, whenever I catch it putting me down and making me feel bad or whenever I catch it making problems out of nothing because it’s just considering too many things that could (but probably won’t) go wrong. I don’t call my thinking mind names in a particularly nasty way, more in a compassionately ‘Oi, you’re being an idiot, there’s no need for that, stop it,‘ kind of way. It’s good if you can take on this joking attitude with your negative thoughts as it can help you to deal with them better instead of being carried away by them. It makes me laugh when I catch m y thoughts out and point out to my thinking mind that it’s being silly. Then I get a sense of relief because I’ve realised those negative thoughts aren’t necessary and I don’t need to be feeling the emotions associated with them.
Voice of Reason? We sometimes refer to the voice in our head as the ‘voice of reason.’ This voice tells us not to do something potentially stupid, it may tell us what is good for us or what we like, we believe it protects and guides us through life. But the problem with the voice of reason i s that it is often not very reasonable when it comes to considering our feelings. For example, the voice of reason may tell us not to write a love poem to someone in case we make a fool of ourselves, but our heart may tell us to write the poem. The voice of reason may tell us not to climb a tree in case we fall, but our heart may be screaming out to climb the tree because it looks l ike fun. Whilst the voice of reason is important, it’s also just as important to follow your heart and not let the voice of reason take over. It is your inner calm voice that you must nurture and listen to. The voice of inner calm does not panic and worry, it does not tell you that you must do things, it does not hassle you, it merely makes you feel confident in what you do and loved. The inner calm voice comes from your heart or soul if you like. It does not come from the thinking mind. If you do not distinguish between your inner voice and you so called ‘voice of reason,’ if you continue to follow your ‘voice of reason’ and don’t tell it to shut up from time to time, it will get you carried away with things that don’t concern your emotional well being. A major k ey to beating M.E. is listening to your inner voice, your calm voice, and allowing it to be kind towards you.
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Chapter 26
Beliefs and Perceptions Perceptions about yourself derive from all kinds of experiences and interactions in your life. For example, if you are encouraged and complimented about what you do, you may have more confidence and self esteem. Unfortunately experiences and interactions can also cause you to believe negative things about yourself. People are very inclined to set moral standards for others. - Elizabeth Drew
If someone you trust tells you you’re worthless everyday, you’ll soon start believing that. If someone is always badly criticising what you do, you’re going to worry about what you do and when you make mistakes will feel them all the more. If you get no compliments or positive feedback for things you’ve done, things that perhaps you cared about, you will feel like it was a waste of time and may lose confidence in yourself. Such things as low self-esteem, jealousy, shyness and being unconfident can creep into your life gradually and then become established as the norm. It can become part of your nature to be shy or unconfident. It is up to the individual to except knowledge about themselves from those around them. If someone is trying to make you feel bad about yourself, you don’t have to take his or her opinion as true. Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Negative emotional energy can also arise from bad situations in your life, from un-calmed fears caused by past accidents or illness’s, or from what you may have come to believe about yourself, for example, that you’re not good enough or that you must achieve a great deal in order t o be loved and appreciated. The problem many people have is that they do not believe they are a good person to begin with. They do not start off by thinking, ‘Well I’m a great person that can achieve what I want to if I put my mind to it.’ Instead we often think, ‘I must prove myself in order to be a great person.’ The truth is that we are all fantastic people if we act from our heart and it doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful we are. The most successful people in life are those who live by their heart, allowing themselves to be happy and caring of others; those who don’t let negative thoughts and beliefs take over and hold them back. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. - Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist
We may have grown up not being able to speak our mind or voice our f eelings because to do so wasn’t viewed as acceptable by peers and friends. Some of us may have been ridiculed for showing emotion and so decided it best not to. We may have learned that showing emotion was a weakness that should be controlled and that to gain respect of others we should be strong like iron, never shedding a tear. If you have learnt that it’s not acceptable to get angry or upset, then you won’t allow yourself to be angry or upset because you will feel embarrassed by such emotions or that you’re being hysterical or pathetic. It is however being able to express emotions without getting embarrassed that shows real strength, not hiding them. It is only when we bottle up our feelings and
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then one day express our anger or unhappiness all at once that we can seem hysterical, weak or unstable. Of course it’s good to consider what you say before you open your mouth as you don’t want to say the wrong thing, but if we go away and think for too long, we can stew in our anger or grow more upset because we tend to add other thoughts from separate events into the equation and then build them all up into one much bigger problem. Expressing pure emotional energy as and when it arises, means that feelings are not tainted by over-thinking, negative attitudes or beliefs. Emotions are then more easily released, which is healthier for everyone concerned. If you do believe you have a negative quality such as shyness or uselessness, ask yourself how much truth is there in those beliefs? Nobody is worthless; everybody can make mistakes. Mistakes are a good way to learn. Doing something you care about isn’t a waste of time and getting angry or upset is only human – it’s inhuman to not show such emotions. Be careful about what you believe about yourself. If you have formed negative beliefs and attitudes that do not help you, you should change them today. We should also take care what beliefs we inflict on ourselves, it’s not onl y other people that can cause us to hold false beliefs about ourselves, (as I mentioned in the previous chapter - ‘Beating Yourself Up.’ We can get carried away with our thoughts and turn molehills i nto mountains. We can make ourselves feel so guilty or stupid about something that we can begin to label ourselves as nasty or useless in some way. Thinking too much can also lead us to being obsessed with why we feel a negative emotion. Because emotional pain can feel so strong, it is quite easy to misunderstand it. Depression often occurs when we experience emotional pain and begin to think that the emotional pain is abnormal. It is important to not let yourself think there is something wrong with you for being unhappy. Emotional pain is a normal and healthy part of life. Focus should not fall on examining the emotional pain and worrying about it, instead focus should be on resolving emotional pain by doing something to cheer you up, such as calling a friend or doing something you enjoy, or on releasing the negative emotion through expression. For example: through crying, shouting, apologising or righting a wrong. Negative emotional cycles can continue if you do not act on your emotions. This is when people can become known as ‘moody,’ or ‘miserable.’ True authentic feelings move through in waves, and most don't last more than a few minutes. If you're experiencing feelings that persist for hours or days, you’re probably over thinking about a problem and circling negative thoughts around in your head or you’re avoiding dealing with it. Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body. - Martin Luther
It’s ok to think about the reason why you feel bad, because then you can gear your energy towards sorting it out; but too much thinking beyond that can cause you to feel unnecessarily worse. For example, in the case of a divorce, a person could think ‘It’s because I’m a bad person that my partner doesn’t want to be with me, nobody will ever want to be with me.’ The person may think about everything they’ve done wrong. Thinking that you’re a bad person is not going to help you progress in life and is probably not true anyway. Unfortunately, once we begin thinking such thoughts, it can be hard to turn them around. We can start living our lives by such beliefs of who we think we are and grow further apart from our real selves.
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Many negative thoughts will stem from having M.E. For example, you could be slow at conversation because your mind is foggy-headed, so you perhaps remain quiet or say things that don’t make perfect sense to everyone else. It’s then very easy to begin thinking ‘I’m such an idiot, why didn’t I understand what they were talking about’ or ‘I’m so boring to talk to, I can never think of anything to say and I never make people laugh.’ In a state of illness, you feel the emotions brought on by such thoughts as symptoms. So it may be that you’re sat amongst your friends and you suddenly feel your symptoms worsen, then you decide it’s best to go home. What you must do is identify such negative thought processes and stop them from happening, as you can do with the M.E. based thoughts. You can tell the negative thoughts to take get lost and replace them with positive thoughts like ‘ I am interesting and clever, thank you.’ Or instead of thinking ‘I’m stupid because I can’t keep up with the conversation,’ think, ‘It’s good to not be talking all the time, it’s terrible when someone rambles on and bores you senseless!’ Sometimes with M.E. it’s hard to cope with a lot of people and activity, but is that the real truth or are your thoughts just falsely leading you on? Perhaps if you can stop worrying that you can’t cope, you’ll find you can cope perfectly well. Think positively about yourself and those around you, whether they’re friends or people in the supermarket. Trips to the supermarket are a nightmare for many M.E. sufferers. The bright strip lights, the noise, and the masses of shoppers. But in such situations, you’ve got to stop any negative thought processes. Stop yourself thinking about the bright light hurting your eyes, do something to draw your attention away from that symptom, absolutely anything. Stop the thoughts that people are rushing past you and could knock you over in your weak state. Instead think about how strong you are to be out and about and how lucky you are that there are so many people around you that could help you out if you got into trouble. Don’t look upon the other shoppers as threats, but as people who could help you if you needed it. There is often a misconception about society that nobody will help anyone else and that we’re all out for ourselves. But most people will respond to a request for help because we all want to be part of a community, it pleases us to help others. In order to be happy ourselves, one golden rule has always been to make others happy.
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Chapter 27
A Certain ‘Type’ of Person Most M.E. sufferers I’ve met are a certain ‘type’ of person, myself included. (It’s a good person type, so please don’t get offended!) Of course I’m sure many M.E. sufferers do not fall under this person type, but I’m sure most M.E. sufferers are sensitive and caring people. Therefore you should be wary of having characteristics of this person t ype, characteristics that mean you do not properly look after your well-being. This type of person is normally full of energy and they get lots of fulfilment out of helping others and taking on meaningful projects. They put themselves last and others first. They may take on the majority of work alone and so may be taken advantage of. They see their sacrifice as normal, because they feel responsible for everything. To sum it up this type of person is the sort that ‘wants to save the world.’ Not literally of course, but they definitely want to play their part in changing the world for the better. This type of person may sound good, but the problem is the pressure they put on themselves and the sacrifice they make with regards to their own emotional needs. Fun can go out of the window and an awareness of self-compassion can be lost. Instead they can carry on regardless telling themselves to do more and that they can have a rest when the current project they’re working on comes to an end. But because they keep taking on things and helping people, their work never comes to an end. So eventually their emotional well-being can’t take anymore and forces them to stop by making them ill or physically incapable of working. One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. – Bertrand Russell. Author of ‘Conquest of Happiness’
The best thing you can do for others is to look after yourself properly and live your life so that you’re happy. If you are happy in what you do and how you live your life, it will make the people you come into contact with happy. This is the best gift of all. The airplane safety instructions put it best: Please place your oxygen mask on first, before attempting to help anyone else. If you can not breath and are struggling, you will not be able to help anyone else.
The dilemma that most helpful people overlook is that they can compromise their own health and happiness through always thinking of others and never putting their own happiness first. When we are busy we often tell ourselves that we don’t have time for relaxing and fun. But we daily need to have times of relaxation and enjoyment in order to wind down and be ready for what’s coming next. I remember when I went for my first session of Reverse Therapy. I sat down in the room and started chatting with the therapist. In the middle of our introductions, she excused herself to go and get her cup of tea that she’d left in another room. She went and got it (I had been offered one and declined earlier) and when she returned she said to me ‘I bet you would never get up in the middle of a session because you wanted your up of tea.’ She was right; my thinking would have stopped me. I would have thought it impolite or unprofessional. But it isn’t really. She was just listening to what her body wanted. I then realised that I had often neglected to l isten to what my body wanted, I never said if I felt bored, cold or unhappy about something. As small as one of these things may
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seem, like not saying if you’re thirsty, they are all indications for your body that it cannot rely on you to get it what it wants or needs. The brain makes you feel tired if you’re bored or makes your mouth dry if you’re thirsty. If you continually ignore these messages from your body, it stands to reason that the brain will eventually begin to worry that you are in danger from yourself. Actually, even as I sit here typing this, I know I’ve been working on this book all day and I’d li ke to stop now and do something relaxing. My thinking brain is telling me to carry on so I can get closer to finishing it whilst my body is telling me to relax. Before I had M.E. I would have carried on working, but now, well now I listen to what my body wants…so I’m going to switch off the computer and go see some friends… …We need to empty our minds of clutter so that we feel refreshed. If we don’t do this it can actually result in us doing poorer work and being less productive anyway, because all the thoughts about people, things we have to do and our responsibilities pile up and become a mountain of clutter through which we an not see clearly. For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe. - Author Unknown
It takes strength to admit when you’ve taken on too much. Sometimes we can carry on in a job that we’re unhappy with because we think we should be capable of doing it and it’s the kind of job we should have. We don’t want to admit that we would feel happier working in a different field or on a lesser wage. But, life is short and your happiness and the happiness of those around you is much more important than a job or anything else. The happiness of those around you will come if you are happy, not if you are miserable and forcing yourself to do things you don’t want to. Just like teenagers who look at size six supermodels and believe that they too should be a size six, don’t let yourself be fooled by society into thinking you have to be a certain way or achieve certain things. Society can place many ideas on us that don’t feel right. We should never feel pressured in life, discipline is good but going against your feelings can result in l eading an untrue existence. It is better to follow your own life’s mission however imperfectly, than to assume the life mission of another person, however successfully. – The Bhagavad Gita
Another quality that only a few M.E. sufferers I’ve met possess, is that they can be controlling. I don’t mean to judge this quality in p eople, but it is only a concern that people who have a tendency to control will be more likely to take on too much (as they don’t trust others to do the job properly) and they may also find it harder to follow a method such as the ones I’ve written about in this book. This is not a quality that goes well with letting go of your beliefs. Controlling people tend to separate themselves from the rest perhaps as they feel they can’t rely on others. They also tend to let their heads rule them rather than their heart. This tendency means they will be less likely to let go of their controlling M.E. thoughts and of all the knowledge they’ve accumulated about M.E. They also may find it harder to identify with other M.E. sufferers and recognise that everybody has an M.E. story and has experienced completely mind-blowing symptoms and that all M.E. sufferers will have had friends that they felt did not understand how weird and strong their M.E. symptoms were. Controlling people may find it hard to let go of everything they’ve been through and allow themselves to forget it, but unfortunately this is what m ust be done in order to recover. The past must be left behind and bad emotions resolved. It’s no good to be clinging onto personal M.E. stories or allowing yourself to become absorbed in how a symptom feels and it’s no use thinking that your M.E. is different to anyone else’s and that you can’t get better, because you can.
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Chapter 28
Recognising Emotions Hidden by M.E. Feelings are movements of emotional energy which if allowed to flow naturally help us to act appropriately in our lives. This can be likened to a river flowing freely and unimpeded down a mountainside. The flow of the river can be halted by damming it, but the water that builds up weighs heavily on the dam walls which must exert a huge force to contain it. Similarly, blocking our own feelings and emotions requires energy and force, which is why it makes us so tired. Emotions should wash over us like waves, the feelings bubbling out into nothing. If they are ignored with no reaction or response, they can grow and cause a blockage. Such blockages can make you unwell. Sometimes we do not allow our feelings to flow and be expressed, because we feel embarrassed by them or we think they’ll be taken badly. If however you go through life allowing your thinking brain to tell you that emotions are inappropriate and then you don’t act on them, you are ignoring a basic bodily function, the function of emotional expression. Imagine if you suppressed or ignored any other bodily function, if you tried not to go to the toilet! Emotions are energy and energy needs to move or be released.
Feeling Everyday Emotions Compared With M.E. Symptoms Your symptoms are constantly screaming for your attention and they’re very good at getting it! They’re so strong and overwhelming that they capture you and fool you into thinking they’re something more than basic emotional energy that’s gone haywire. They make you panic and fearful because they feel so strong. You may not feel like you’re panicking or scared but subconsciously your amygdala will be triggering these emotions in response to your symptoms. Remember that you do not feel emotional energy normally, that is why you may think ‘But I don’t feel scared, I feel perfectly fine emotionally.’ The fear is not presenting itself as a sensation you can recognize such as a knot in the stomach or a slight shiver down your spine, instead it’s making your legs feel numb, giving you digestion problems or causing another of your M.E. symptoms. It is the same with stress. We do not always notice when we are stressed because it starts manifesting into symptoms that we do not recognise as stress related. We get tight shoulders and necks, we find it hard to concentrate or we get bad digestion. We learn to live with such problems and carry on doing the very things that stress us because we do not realise how much they stress us. We just assume that we have bad digestion or we assume are stiff because…that’s just how we are. We are not very good at listening to what our body wants emotionally and we are not always good at noticing when we are stressed. This is because we often listen to our thinking mind too much when it tells us to carry on working and pushing ourselves, when it keeps saying ‘A holiday is just round the corner...just finish off this one last thing…’ but the holiday never comes and so we keep on pushing ourselves. And so eventually, our needs get silenced as we ignore them more and more, as we ignore our want for some time out or something fun. It’s then that we get out of touch with our emotions, our need to have fun and relax, our inner voice and…our real selves. When we feel pressured we may say, ‘It was like the weight of the world on my shoulders.’ We are referring to a physical sensation in the body, caused by having too much responsibility. You literally do feel pressured. You walk about with slumped shoulders feeling weighed down. When the responsibility goes, the weight on your shoulders lifts, you feel free and your posture improves. We also have sayings like, ‘I froze with fear,’ ‘I had butterflies in my stomach’ or ‘my heart sank.’
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These all describe the physical sensations in the body when experiencing emotions of fear, anxiety and sadness. We can all understand what these sensations mean in relation to the emotion they represent. Because M.E. makes emotions very powerful sensations however, their meaning is lost. With M.E. you cannot recognise these powerful sensations or symptoms for what they are which is very, very strong emotions. The amygdala is in a permanent state of red alert as it ’s constantly responding to these very strong negative emotions, and because the amygdala’s response is only to do things like release more adrenalin and to keep on pumping blood to the muscles, their response is exactly what’s causing the symptoms in the first place. The amygdala gets stuck in a loop whereby it’s constantly panicking about the symptoms that it’s creating anyway. It creates muscle tension, fatigue, weakness, irritable bowel syndrome, palpitations and all of the many other symptoms you’re experiencing. Many of your symptoms are caused by the core emotions of fear, anger and sadness. You are scared by your illness, you are frustrated at not being able to li ve a normal and full life and you are sad because of this. As it’s not usual to feel these emotions as symptoms, you cannot recognise them for what they are and you therefore can not deal with them. You may be angry at being stuck in bed, but as that anger may be appearing to you in the form of exhaustion and headaches, you cannot recognise it. So the anger continues; the emotion gets triggered over and over again as you fail to resolve it because you physically can’t get out of bed, and you therefore won’t stop feeling angry about being stuck in bed. Even though we can’t recognise some emotions behind symptoms, it doesn’t mean we have to be unaware of our emotional needs. If we are alone at home all day because we can’t physically leave the house, we will be lonely. If we are stuck in bed, we will be frustrated, if we get feelings of severe weakness, we will feel scared. These feelings stand to reason and you usually can feel them a bit anyway, even if they are also manifesting as a symptom. So it can be quite easy to figure out what feeling is behind a symptom. Your first thought is usually the right one as it generally relays what your ‘sixth sense’ believes. Your sixth sense is your subconscious, what you know to be true before your thoughts come racing along with other suggestions and ideas; it’s your intuition if you like. There is actually a very good book called ‘Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking’ by Malcolm Gladwell. It is all about the sixth sense and how our initial interpretations of a situation, in those moments before our thinking mind has chance to register what’s going on, are practically always correct. I found it useful because it taught me that over-thinking is pretty pointless and rarely produces correct outcomes. So if you’re wandering why you feel unhappy or feeling a symptom, just remember not to think about it too much or your thoughts may lead you off on a wild goose chase! The first answer that comes to mind is usually the right one so it’s pointless to think past this and analyse whether or not you are feeling upset by something else. The usefulness in realising what emotion is causing your symptom lies in knowing that you shouldn’t put more negative energy into that emotion. So for example, you shouldn’t cultivate the emotions of loneliness, frustration and fear any further. Instead of following those emotional paths do things that will make you feel happy, liberated and confident. In such a case as being stuck in bed you can take small steps. Put your foot out of bed if you can or if there’s a window nearby, stick your head out i n the fresh air. Then concentrate on feeling the liberation and excitement of doing these small movements. Later try sticking your whole leg out of bed and reaching to the floor or tr y lifting your torso out the window. Gradually with small steps, let positive emotions you feel become more so that they can cancel out the fear, sadness and frustration.
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Whilst doing this keep using ‘The Stop Method’ and block out M.E. based thoughts that may be telling you you’ll feel weaker if you put your leg out of bed or stick your head out the window. That’s rubbish. Tiredness or weakness will only come if you allow the amygdala to panic. So block the thoughts that make it panic and instead have confident and compassionate thoughts. Tell yourself you can do this and that it doesn’t matter how quickly you do it. Take your time but don’t plan too far ahead so that you result in putting it off, act in the present or when it feels right. If you keep worrying about it, it will never feel right because you’ll feel worried about it. You’ve just got to do it without worrying. Likewise if you feel you can’t walk to the end of the street, agree with yourself that you’ll only walk a few metres to start. Don’t push yourself. Gradually increase the distance and cancel out your fear through allowing your confidence to grow as you walk further each time. Listen to your gut feeling and if it’s still screaming ‘No! No! I can’t walk a few metres!’ agree to take it down to a step out the door. If your gut feeling is happy with this, then take a step out and then come back. Never change your mind and decide to go further as this will show your body that it can’t trust you as you’ve not done what you agreed. You have to build up trust between your body-mind and your thinking mind. Next time you can agree to go that bit further. Be compassionate with yourself and don’t ever force it. The M.E. thoughts are a lie created by a panicking amygdala and when you can stop believing and following them, you’ll be on the right tracks. If you fear the M.E., it will exist. If you can think bigger than the M.E. and look upon it as something separate to you that has no power over you, it will become possible to be free of it. Your strength and willpower is bigger than M.E. It’s a good idea to listen to music that makes you feel good. I used to listen to motivating happy music on my walkman when I was building up my walking distance. Music can build positive emotions without much effort from you. (As long as it’s not depressing music!) Throughout history song has been used to get people through war and difficult times. Positive songs keep hope alive and build confidence. Imagine if soldiers sang war songs about getting hurt or captured or not seeing their families again. They would destroy their spirits and there would be no motivation. This scenario is the same in every one of us; if we want to achieve something but keep telling ourselves it’s pointless to batter ourselves down with negative thoughts, how can we ever expect to get anywhere or be happy? Fighting negative emotions is hard. Because you are ph ysically feeling the negative emotions, the reasons for them feel very real and solid. But once you’ve experienced such a state of dis-ease and discontentment (as you do with M.E.), at least you can really understand how precious it is to be happy and healthy and that will help you fight the M.E, it will help to drive you. It’s hard to start building confidence and joy out of a battered soul. But, a battered soul will feel confidence and joy all the more when it does again feel them. – Author unknown
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Chapter 29
Physically Recognising Emotions in a Healthy Body As you may have trouble recognising core emotions such as fear, anger and sadness, it may help you to know how you normally would physically feel them in the body. Different emotions travel through different body zones. Fear usually emerges in the gut and will travel up through the body. You may be familiar with having butterflies in your stomach or the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. Fear helps by protecting us from doing things that could harm us. If you ignore it or remain in the scary situation, the fear will stay in your gut. This could give you Nausea, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Indigestion or Ulcers. Anger is felt in the back, between the shoulder blades, and across the back of the neck and round to the sides of the jaw. You can feel stiff, sore or tight in these places if you don’t express anger. If you are angry with someone, and you never say or try to resolve the situation, your anger builds. Each negative experience of this person piles up on top of the last. Eventually they do something very little and harmless, mildly annoying, but it makes you explode, you ‘hit the roof’ as the saying goes. This is because all the anger from previous experiences with the person has been stored in your body and in your memories. When you explode at the person, this anger is released all at once. Anger is a very powerful emotion to keep unexpressed. Sadness can develop in the heart, lungs or eyes. ‘He died of a broken heart’ – this saying expresses sadness and grief. The sadness is felt in the heart, almost as an ache. From the chest, it can travel up through the throat. It’s quite common to get a sore throat when you’re feeling a bit down. Sadness can then travel up to the eyes, at which point we may cry. Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘Oh, I had a good cry about it and then felt a lot better.’ Crying does help you feel better as it disperses the sadness that has moved through you, taking it out through the eyes. This can be a very renewing and cleansing experience; it also expels chemicals that are responsible for the feeling. It may also be useful to know how we feel joy… Joy can be felt in the chest and sometimes across the whole torso. ‘My heart lifted’ is a perfect saying to describe joy. It’s a feeling of content lightness and is very pleasurable and relaxing. Smiling and laughing are main forms of releasing this type of energy and sometimes if we have too much of it, we laugh till we cry.
With every thought of worry, concern, anger, fear or pain there is a muscular contraction somewhere in the body. With every positive thought, the body is bought closer to relaxation. Deep relaxation allows energy to become flowing and soft. When energy is flowing smoothly the body can begin to heal emotionally, physically and mentall y. The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself given the right stress free conditions. If you continue to struggle and wallow in M.E. thought and negative thought patterns, you are placing stress on the body. Your body is an amazing piece of engineering, but like with any machine, stress causes injury.
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Chapter 30
The Over-Protective Body Many people believe that M.E. comes from having Glandular Fever or Pneumonia. This is partly true as M.E. can come about through a shock to the system. In the same way that we can suffer emotional trauma from a bad occurrence in life or suffer shock from an accident, we can suffer physical trauma through having a disease like Glandular Fever. The body can hold onto a memory of the disease and so a person will not believe the disease has cleared as they may still get the odd twang or discomfort where the problem used to be. Areas that have been affected by disease can still ache and give the impression that the disease is still present. The body holds onto a memory of them in order to be aware of them should they occur again, the body overprotects. So the misconception is that diseases like Glandular Fever and Pneumonia are still in the body and the immune system is unable to recover from them. If you believe that you have not recovered from a disease then the worry about it can cause your body to hold onto tension related to the disease. If your lungs have been inflamed or something like that, it’s very easy to hold onto that feeling because as with M.E. symptoms you may be subconsciously checking to see if the inflammation is still there, you may be monitoring how your lungs feel in different environments or worrying if you have any slight pain. This checking brings tension to the lung area and that can cause pain or tightness. So as with M.E. symptoms you then get a catch twenty-two situation whereby your worrying and awareness of a problem is creating the problem. So if you had Glandular Fever and then got M.E., the M.E. would onl y psychologically be related to the Glandular Fever. The M.E. is still only there because the amygdala is on red alert and one reason it’s on red alert is because you are scared that you can’t shake the Glandular Fever. The body is very good at holding onto tension and remembering things that hurt it. It’s very easy to demonstrate how the suggestion of pain can give a real sensation. To do this you can stand in front of your bathroom mirror. Have a small sewing pin or needle in one hand and in your reflection bring the sharp tip of that pin so it looks as though it’s going to poke you right in the pupil. Doing this might cause a slight sensation in the pupil because there is a suggestion of putting something sharp in your eye even though the pin is actually pointed at the mirror.
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Chapter 31
Being on the Same ‘Level’ as Others Many M.E. sufferers find it hard to talk or be around some people for long, if at all and this is not because these people are really annoying or insufferable, it’s just that when you have M.E. you are much more sensitive to the energy or vibe that people give off. So it’s not only with food, drugs, light and sound that an M.E. sufferer may be sensitive, they can be more sensitive or tuned i n to energies. This also means that they could find walking in the countryside easier than walking in the city - because a city is naturally more draining and t he countryside is naturally more invigorating - whereas a healthy person might not notice the difference in their energy level. The dilemma of finding people hard to be with can occur with family members or even partners. An M.E. sufferer may then worry that this means they no longer l ove these people or that deep down they don’t really like them. They may over-think about how they feel about someone and come to the wrong conclusion anyway, because the thinking brain shouldn’t be used for working out how you feel emotionally - it’s no good at it! One M.E. sufferer told me that whenever they held hands with their partner for a few minutes, their hand would actually start to ache. This is the M.E. sufferer’s body signal to say that it doesn’t want to be in close contact with that person. This might not be because they don’t like them; it could simply be an energy clash. For some reason the partner of th e M.E. sufferer makes them feel emotionally negative. This could be because the partner dominates the M.E. sufferer or makes them feel inferior in some way. For instance, let’s say your friend is very intelligent, rational, calm, reliable and strong. These are all good traits. But if for example you are feeling unconfident or a little depressed, you may get frustrated with this friend and not want t o be around them. This is because they have such a positively strong character that you find it hard to be yourself and deal with your lack of confidence or depression when with them. This is partly your own fault because perhaps you’re being jealous. All the same, it is still a clash of energy that holds one person back. It is the same situation as when you get one person who talks more t han another. When I worked in a school, there were two girls in m y class. One was extremely shy and the other talked a lot. The talkative one always tried to look after the shy one but only ended up domineering her. The shy one was eventually moved to another class where there were two other girls. She came out of her shell instantly and now walks around the school smiling all the time and speaking a lot more whereas before she hardly spoke at all. The point is that once the shy girl was taken away form the kind but domineering girl, the shy girl was able to blossom and be her happy self. With M.E., though people may not mean to domineer you or impose parts of their personality onto you, they do. This is maybe because M.E. sufferers find it hard enough to relax as it is and to feel that they have to live up to someone else’s character only makes it harder for them. It’s ok to not want to be around someone or talk to them; it’s normal that you should be affected by the energy given off by others if your emotional well-being is low. For example, if someone is very full of energy and always bustling about, it’s only going to subconsciously remind you of how lacking in energy you are and thus trigger your amygdala to be on the alert about your energy problems. Many people including myself experienced symptoms just from being in the same room as someone else. I had a friend who was very anxious and as my own energy was low, I found it hard
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to juxtapose that person’s anxiety. I also had a friend who was always very energetic and creative and as I couldn’t keep up with them, it brought my awareness back to how tired I was. We affect each other even on normal healthy levels. If you get on a bus and are in a bad mood but the driver smiles at you kindly and says something pleasant, that small interaction can help to change your mood a little and make you realise that what you’re moping about isn’t that bad. It’s just perhaps something to be aware of, that you may be more sensitive to other people’s energy and emotions than usual if you have M.E. and it isn’t only food, sound and light t hat you can be sensitive to. Hopefully being aware of this means you will not waste your time worrying about why a friend brings on your symptoms, I’ve just mentioned it t o maybe save you from overthinking about it because over-thinking about things like was sometimes a problem for me and it always bought on mammoth head flu symptoms. Since my recovery, I’ve realised that where I felt I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as some people because they increased my symptom level, I do still like them and am not affected by them anymore
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Chapter 32
The Difference Between Letting Go and Suppressing We can say that there are two types of emotion: • •
Genuine emotion, which is primarily based on initial feelings. Phantom emotion that primarily stems from your thoughts and beliefs.
Genuine emotion can be hard to suppress as you body wishes to express it. For example if you received news that a friend had died, you would most likely want to cry. You also might feel angry and well, pretty devastated. Now if for some reason you were in a situation whereby you couldn’t express your emotion about your friend’s death, because perhaps you were in a position whereby you had to hold it together and not show you were upset, then it would take a lot of effort for you to maintain your composure and suppress those feelings. It takes energy to suppress anger, tears or any kind of genuine emotion. Even joy is hard to suppress, for example if you can’t laugh at someone who appears comical to you in case you hurt their feelings. With phantom emotions however, the reason behind them are not based on a solid reason such as a friend dying or you being unjustly criticised. Phantom emotion is based on thoughts and beliefs that might not be true, for example you may think somebody thinks badly of you when really they quite like you. It is therefore possible to let go of phantom emotions simply by changing your belief, by stopping thinking that the person thinks of you badly and by beginning to notice the things they do that show they like you. Letting go of phantom emotions can actually give you a sense of freedom and a sense of relief, like having a weight lifted off of your shoulders. For example you may have a feeling that you can’t walk down the street because of your M.E. symptoms. This feeling may press on you and bother you. To let go of it however would be like having a weight lifted off of your shoulders. To stop caring and stop believing it (even though it may have been the case that you can’t walk down your street for quite a while) will be a relief. My point is that you will not be suppressing the negative M.E. based emotions, you will not be squashing them down so that you can express them later, as you would if your friend had died. Instead you will be stopping them and trying to let go of them, to dissolve them so that you don’t have to express them or continue feeling them. Because the reasons that those feelings are there for are not valid. Negative M.E. emotions are caused by the symptoms of M.E. or by negative thought patterns and M.E. symptoms and negative thought patterns do not have to exist, they can be changed if you apply yourself to changing them. When I was using ‘The Stop Method’ to stop my M.E. based thoughts, thoughts that instigated M.E. based feelings in me such as fear and anger, it felt ver y relieving to say right that’s it I’m not going to allow those feelings to envelop me anymore, it wasn’t hard as it is with suppressing emotions, it was like a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. When I excepted that I didn’t need to have those thoughts and feelings and I opened my mind up to the possibility that I could actually let go of the M.E. thoughts and just tell them to politely ‘get lost,’ it took no effort to stop them. Even though I was still stuck with the M.E. limitations imposed by my symptoms, so I couldn’t do very much, it was a relief to know I didn’t need to worry anymore about whether I was
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too weak to do this or that, or too exhausted to get out of bed. And it’s that relief that you want, that ‘I don’t care about my symptoms’ and ‘I don’t care if I feel like I can’t cope, what does it matter, I’m just going to enjoy myself and ignore that gloomy felling.’ feeling. Because it’s then that you stop giving them the fuel that they need to keep being tri ggered, that fuel being negative emotional energy caused by you worries and fears. If you can let go, you’re practically recovered. Allow yourself to feel happy that the symptom or feeling has gone before it even has. It’s like the relief must come before the problem ends, then the bad feeling or symptom will go away. We get down to what Buddha said was the job we have been born for, knowing that letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. - Stephen Levine, Buddhist teacher
It will take effort to let go of M.E. thoughts and feelings and it may seem tiring to constantly have to say stop. So in a way yes, it does take energy and it’s not only about feeling relieved, but it’s not the same kind of energy it takes to suppress genuine emotion. You will be letting go of M.E. based emotions with your willpower and perseverance and the effort you put into that is not the same as the energy you would put into suppressing a genuine emotion. So don’t let a thought such as ‘It’s too tiring to stop these M.E. thoughts,’ happen. Block it, laugh at yourself for thinking it, just stop it anyway you can and then your energy will come effortlessly. It’s like any kind of exercise, at first it is hard as you build up your strength from a weaker state, but it becomes easier the more you do it. ‘The Stop Method’ will be difficult as it will require a great deal of determination from you. But at least it’s not complicated and at least it work’s fast. It will be hard to find the reserves and the confidence within yourself to fight the feelings and beliefs created by M.E. and an overreacting amygdala. It may often feel like you just want to curl up and wish the M.E. would all go away, but that won’t work. You have to face it head on. If you allow yourself to be mentally defeated, you will be physically defeated too and the M.E. will win so don’t let that happen. You know you have the power to suppress emotions because you’ve been doing it all your life. If you have the ability to suppress genuine emotional energy then you have the ability t o let go of false phantom emotional energy. Perhaps it is because you’ve been so good at suppressing emotional energy in the past that you ended up with an unhealthy emotional well-being. And that is not an accusation, it’s just how society is, we learn to suppress our emotions but some of us are more sensitive than others and just can not go on doing that. Now it’s time to learn to let go of emotions we don’t need to be feeling.
If You Let Go You’ll Stop Falling I used to have a symptom that felt as though I could just fall through the floor and keep falling. It was as though I was so weak that my body could just disintegrate. I remember when I first tried using ‘The Stop Method’ on this symptom, I let go of all my fear about falling through the floor by telling the symptom and fear to stop and then continuously telling myself that I was solid and stable. I distracted myself from the symptom by potting some plants on the living room table. I carried on repeating the words solid and stable to myself until I felt them emotionally and began to genuinely feel that I was growing solid and stable. I let myself be absorbed by what I was doing and didn’t allow myself to think about the symptom or being scared. Eventually my body began to feel normal and it felt like magic had happened. Through focusing on how I wanted to feel, I had caused it to become reality. Because of this experience I was going to call this book ‘If you let go, you’ll stop falling,’ as I felt this title metaphorically explained what must be done in order to be free from M.E. I had to mentally let go of the symptom in order for it to go away. I had to stop being aware of it and scared by it.
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M.E. is fear generated by the amygdala. You say goodbye to the fear and you say goodbye to M.E. Finding the courage to let go of all the fears and beliefs about M.E. allows us to see it for what it really is; nothing.
Yoga and M.E. My yoga teacher said to us once that we have to ‘breathe into the pain.’ If you can imagine being in a posture such as the one shown here, you don’t only stretch your hamstrings, you also push into the floor with your thighs to strengthen them. So yoga isn’t only about stretching, it’s also about strengthening. Like anyone an experienced yogi will experience pain in this posture as the muscles are stretched and pushed to their limits. But it is this pain that we must breathe into in yoga. Yoga is about letting go and it’s when we let go t hat we can really progress. What happens is that your muscles tense up and so you find it painful t o stretch them, the body says ‘No, I can’t do it, no!’ and this is when you are likely to cause injury by pulling a muscle. What you must do i s relax into the pain by breathing into it. Then as you relax, you find that you can go further into the posture, stretching and using your muscles a little bit more. Then again your muscles may tense up as you reach your current limit and it becomes painful, but again you must relax and breath into that pain, then with relaxation, the muscles stop being tense and so you can go further without injuring yourself. The point is that tension stops us from doing proper yoga. Tension makes muscles less flexible. This relates to my methods because tension and stress stop us from combating M.E., because M.E. is all about tension and stress and it’s recovery is all about letting go and relaxing! It is when we let go of the fear of our symptoms and relax that we can progress. If you imagine the amygdala being all tensed up, it is when we stop giving it reason to be tense that it relaxes and let’s us in turn relax and be calm.
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Chapter 33
Think Better As well as stopping the overreacting amygdala with its symptoms and M.E. based thoughts, ‘The Stop Method’ is also designed to stop you from following negative thought patterns that only contribute to a decline in your emotional well-being. Thoughts too can be an overreaction and they can hold you back just like symptoms do. In the same way that a person can be described to ‘overreact’ and do something like tell someone off too much and in the same way that your amygdala is overreacting, personal thoughts can also be an overreaction and they can hold you back just like M.E. based thoughts do. M.E. based thoughts mostly trigger fear, anger and anxiety, but other negative thoughts can cause you to feel a lack of confidence in yourself and in your ability to recover, low self-esteem, guilt and shame etc, and these feelings will also be felt by you as symptoms. So whilst it’s really annoying to hear people go on about ‘positive thinking’ and it can be infuriating to hear people say that positive thinking contributes greatly towards recovery, in the case of M.E. it’s kind of true. It’s not so much that you have to be positively thinking all the time and falsely going round saying ‘Everything’s lovely and rosy…la-di-da…how wonderful, ’ but more that you shouldn’t let yourself think negatively. You shouldn’t let yourself feel put down or unable to achieve recovery. You need to keep your morale up because M.E. is all to do with your emotional energy. If your morale is low, you will feel it in your symptoms, so you need to keep pessimism out. You don’t have to pretend that everything’s alright, but as an M.E. sufferer your emotional well-being is so l ow, you must treat yourself with total care and compassion and stay optimistic. If you revert to pessimism, then you’re your own worst enemy. It’s not the positive thinking alone that will make you recover, it’s a combination of things, but this combination will not be very successful without the positive thinking factor. Don’t stop and think about things – keep moving. Confidence is a hard thing to build if you think about it too much as when we think we begin to question, to question our reasons and abilities. Don’t dwell on negative thoughts; spontaneity is the key. If there’s a problem, listen to what your emotions want and come up with a solution. ‘Reclaim Yourself’ (described in chapter thirty-six), talking to friends, family and asking for support will help you uncover any unresolved emotional energy. If there’s no problem apart from one that’s being created by negative thoughts, identify that thought pattern, label it as worthless and put a stop to it. Negative emotions can pull the wool over your eyes and make you feel very lost. But underneath the negative emotion you are still you. You can still change and control the emotional energy you feel. Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. - Glenn Turner
Worry generates many negative emotions like doubt, fear and suspicion. Unfortunately worry is a big pre-occupation for a lot of people. It can be completely debilitating if it gets out of hand and is often associated with anxiety and fear. To allay peoples’ fears, it is often said ‘don’t worry about it’, which is usually of little help to the sufferer. However, if we analyse worry we will see that it is little more than a creation or fantasy in our own minds. Worry is a fear related to what may happen in the future. For example, I am worried about taking an exam, or a visit to the doctor. The worry associated with these things is that no future outcome can be completely known and human nature is often to imagine the worst outcome coming true. Our mind imagines all sorts of possible problems, maybe as a result of similar things happening in the past. If we have experienced
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difficulties in our lives it is easy to develop a pessimistic attitude, where we expect the worst and create a habit of worry, often unnecessarily. Of course a bad outcome of any future event may occur, in the same way that a very good one might as well. Whether we worry about it or not is not going to change this outcome. The ironic thing about worry is that through worrying about something, we generally tend to make it worse because we are not clear headed and able to think calmly. So whilst it is because we care that we worry, this is a double-edged sword because we can worry ourselves sick and then be of no use at all. However, if we realise that it is illogical to worry excessively about future events, we will have a much better time of things, whatever the outcome may be. Also the f act that we are able to remain calm and allow events to unfold naturally means that we will have a much more stable and balanced mind to deal with any problems that do occur along the way. Through taking charge of what you think you can have better control over your emotional energy, ensuring that it is more positive. This will help you to enjoy yourself and progress in life. If nothing is holding you back, that is, if no negative thoughts are telling you not to try new things or telling you you’re a bad person and if you aren’t allowing others to put you down, then you will be free to do as you wish and live your life to the full. Once you can allow yourself to dream, the reality of those dreams can begin to occur. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind. – Bob Marley. Redemption Song
Dream As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big. - Donald Trump
If you focus your attention on your life’s hopes and dreams, they are more li kely to happen. The more you think about something, the more real it becomes in your mind and the more likely you are to take actions that contribute towards the thought becoming actual reality. Focusing on positive outcomes gives us something to strive for and a direction. To focus on the negative side of your dreams will only create negative emotions. Negative emotions stop us from following our dreams. They cause our minds to focus on the things that can make us fail, they distract and hold us up from living our lives how we wish, they stop us from being ourselves. In the work world, it may be a fear of no financial security that holds us up, in the world of M.E, it is a fear of symptoms worsening and persisting. Our dreams are important. If you don’t allow yourself to dream about things you want, how can you expect to motivate yourself towards getting what you want from life and making yourself happy? Dreams are illustrations…from the book your soul is writing about you. - Marsha Norman. Pultizer Prize winner in 1983
So think big. Thinking big will help you progress nearer to your goals. No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it. - Richard Bach. Author of ‘One’
Sometimes we need to make big changes in order to follow our dreams. It could be t hat a lifestyle change is required, for example, maybe you quit your current job, maybe you decide to follow a less stressful career path so that you have more get up and go for other areas in your life.
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Don’t be scared to actually make those changes and decisions that you may have been thinking about. We have stifled our natural self and our spirit through the conditioning that we have absorbed throughout our lives. Our conditioning is the beliefs, attitudes and opinions that others have invited us to take on, which we may have mistaken as facts. We are called to i dentify, examine and discard beliefs that are not useful and are not true for us, and t o continue the emotional healing that is required. – Nick Williams. Author of ‘The work we were born to do’
It is often our conditioning that falsely leads us to believe we must give more than we have or that we must give up joy and happiness if we want to have money and security. From the beginning at school, we learn how to make our place by doing what we ought to do, by getting the right qualifications and doing what’s expected of us. But sometimes all of this conditioning can lead us to neglect doing the things we actually want to do. Lack of money, the fear of failure or the thought of being frowned upon holds us back from following our dreams. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain
When I recovered from M.E., I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do next. A friend lent me a book called ‘The work we were born to do,’ by Nick Williams. I would recommend this book to anyone who is feeling trapped by work or feeling stuck in a place where they do not feel satisfied. As much as I would like to carry on writing about the fruitlessness of negative thinking, worrying and indecisiveness, that would be another book, and I don’t believe the world needs another book on that subject when there are very good ones out there already. I do highly recommend Nick Williams’ book and most definitely ‘The Ten Questions,’ by Phillip Parker (creator of The lightning Process), if you wish to read further into these areas.
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Chapter 34
Ways of Releasing Emotional Energy Even though it may seem hard at times, expressing and releasing emotional energy doesn’t always have to be a big deal. It is only our thinking that can build it up into a big deal. There are many ways that you can express and release emotional energy. For example, you can write letters to people that you don’t actually have to post. Just getting your feelings out onto paper can be a form of emotional release.
Writing a letter or diary helps you get things out onto paper. The good thing about writing is that it doesn’t need to involve real life interaction or confrontation that you may want to avoid. One quick way to get to the core of how you really feel about something is to write about it. Just pick up a pencil and paper and write down everything you wish to say on t he subject, completely get everything about it off of your chest and onto the paper. The trick is not to think about what you're going to write, if you start thinking and procrastinating about what to write it becomes a chore. It’s not a chore, it’s a way of making you feel better. So don’t think, just write! Empty your mind as far as possible and then just let your pen write the words one by one as they come. You need to bypass your thoughts, as they will only tell you that you feel this way or that way about a problem and they may not be telling you the truth. Thoughts very often cover up how we really feel and tell us that we shouldn’t feel a certain way. If you find yourself planning the next sentence, just empty your mind again and let the pen act as a conduit between you inner self or subconscious, and the paper. Try not to let the racing mind interrupt. This is a good way to release any pent up feelings without either having to get angry with someone for real or having to put yourself in an awkward situation. If you decide to write a letter about something that’s bothering you, don’t worry about doing it immediately, write it when you feel like writing it not when you think you should write it. Don’t let your thoughts make decisions about when you want to release pent up energy, let you emotions decide when. You may not write the letter for a few days after you’ve decided to or you may write it straight away. Whenever you do it act from your heart, don’t let your thoughts pressure you. You may also not want to write it all at once as there may be a lot of negative emotional energy you wish to release, so you can write it in stages if you want to. You should just do this exercise as and when you feel like it.
Deep Relaxation can help you to access deeper areas that can’t be accessed when you’re conscious. Hypnotists guide people into deep relaxation so they can help them. It’s about getting into a state of relaxation so that the brain operates on a slower wavelength, and then you can communicate more deeply with yourself and the energy in your body to investigate any blockages or problems. You can communicate more deeply because you haven’t got the thinking brain rambling on at you! Hypnosis is a state of mind in which a person's conscious critical thinking mind is bypassed and communication with the subconscious mind is established. - The English dictionary (3)
When you are in deep relaxation the brain slows down going from beta-waves in the fully awake state, to alpha-waves, which is the state you enter when you close your eyes and begin to relax before sleep. If you became more relaxed the brain could slow down further, but you would
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still be in control and able to wake up. If a fire alarm went off, you could get up and leave the building. It’s not like the circus act that hypnotism is sometimes so badly portrayed as. It’s actually a very natural, calm, healing and renewing state to reach. People who do yoga try to reach such a deep level of relaxation through their practice. For people who over think or have M.E. it’s great to reach that very deep level of relaxation whereby you can bypass your conscious critical thinking mind and communicate with your subconscious. You can do this quite easily by yourself. Some people can do it through meditation, but if you can’t do that, just listen to a relaxation tape in order to be guided down into a deep level of relaxation. Once relaxed you don’t have to listen to the whole tape, you can switch it off (it’s best to have your finger on the stop button so you don’t have to move or disturb yourself to switch it off) and instead go where you wish in your body. You should let your subconscious guide you, let yourself travel through your body and investigate and aches, and tightness or tension. You should let yourself see your body from the inside, picture the muscles, bone and tissue. As I mentioned earlier, visualisation can help you to see a problem that might not be accessible in any other way. So by looking at a tightness in your shoulder, you could imagine that you are a little person inside you who is massaging that tightness away or rubbing down the soreness. You could simply picture your shoulder muscles to be a healthy pink colour and relax the area in that way or you could imagine a white light is hovering over the area and healing it. Visualisation i s a personal exercise and it’s up to you to visualise things as feels natural.
Role-Playing a Conversation As well as physically travelling through the body and relaxing and healing areas of pain or tension, you can bring in a psychological aspect to your deep relaxation and talk to people in your life who may be responsible for causing you tension or upset. As with writing, deep relaxation can give you the opportunity to talk to people without actually having to talk to them in real life. Whilst I was ill I read a book called ‘The Journey’ written by Brandon Bays. It helped me tremendously as it gave me a fantastic way to release negative emotional energy without having to speak to people in my past or deal with anyone I didn’t want to. Basically Brandon Bays is a lady who managed to cure herself of cancer through taking it on herself to address the emotional cause of her tumour. She declined medical treatment and went on her own journey to find the source of the cancer and resolve it. Her belief was that cancer stems from negative unresolved emotional energy which manifests in the cells to become what we know as cancer. I’m not suggesting that someone with cancer should decline treatment, I’m just telling you her story. Personally I agree with her in that I think may illnesses stem from unresolved emotional energy that manifests in the body and causes problems. But whether you believe that or not, her book is very useful and it explains a very good way to release emotional energy through role-playing conversations with people whilst in a relaxed state. In chapter thirty-six, I explain about what happens in ‘ Reclaim Yourself,’ which is simply a relaxation CD focused on resolving M.E. I explain about how you can role-play a conversation and what you hope to gain through doing so. Part of my r elaxation CD may involve you role-playing a conversation as this can be so beneficial in helping you get emotions out of your system.
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Part Five
Reclaim Yourself and Related Techniques The Subconscious Mind Reclaim Yourself - Preparation - What Happens in the CD - Stage One - Stage two - Role-Playing a Conversation - Further Advice
The Racing Mind - When the Body and Mind are ‘Out of Sync’
Meditation - Why I Began Meditation - Being Mindful - Instructions for Meditation
The Little Things That Help - Posture - Smiling - Correct Breathing - Neck Roles and Shoulder Stretches - Massage - Relaxing - Diet
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Chapter 35
The Subconscious Mind A large amount of activity occurs in the subconscious mind. By this, I mean parts of the mind that are below our level of conscious thought. For example, there is no conscious thought involved in breathing, pulse rate or immune system control. The subconscious mind knows what’s going on in your body every moment. It knows how to look after you, how to control any body function, it knows you inside and out. Therefore it is t he best doctor in the world; you are your best doctor. Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient . – Aristotle
This reminds me of a true story about a woman who had breast cancer. She felt that there was something weird about her breasts and so went to her doctor to be examined. After the examination, her doctor said that her breasts were fine and she had nothing to worry about. But the woman insisted that she felt something unusual about them. Again her doctor told her that there was nothing wrong with them and that she should just forget about it. Unhappy with her doctor’s decision, the woman went to another doctor to get a second opinion and it turned out that she had a small breast cancer growing. Her original doctor had missed it because it was so small. The moral of the story is that nobody knows your own body better than you and if you feel that there is something wrong with your body, you should foll ow your instincts. Emotions also happen at a subconscious level, this is why they can seem so irrational at times to our conscious mind. Because they can seem irrational it’s easy to sometimes believe that emotions are inappropriate or that they’re wrong. For example, we can get upset and feel pressured because we have too much responsibility, but our conscious mind can tell us that we do not have too much responsibility and that we’re being silly and babyish. So we carry on doing too much until we become ill or start taking our unhappiness out on others. By exploring the subconscious you can investigate problems within the body that, in your waking state would not be so obvious. You can better investigate how you really feel without your thinking mind interrupting. This way you can find out if t here are any trapped emotions regarding things you’ve experienced or done which need to be dealt with. You can then establish solutions as to how these trapped emotions can be expressed and released. You may think that you have no unexpressed emotions or that it’s silly to be worrying about things that happened a few years ago or more, because they don’t affect you now. But unfortunately your thinking mind is not that clever when it comes to dealing with emotions, because as I said emotions happen at a subconscious level and are triggered in the emotional brain. So you should not view your thinking brain as something you can rely on when it comes to looking out for what you really feel or want. It’ll be telling you that you can’t do this or that and holding you back by making you worry and over-analyse. So in order to understand your true emotions, it is best to access the subconscious. The subconscious represents your soul, the real you, not your chattering mind, and we can access it through deep relaxation. Tension is who we think we should be. Relaxation is who we are. – Chinese proverb
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So relaxation is about letting go. When I say ‘let go,’ I am referring to the process of entering complete relaxation whereby you let go of your tension, your worries, anxieties, fears, feelings and thoughts. If we take all this away, you are what’s left, just you without any of life’s gobbledygook. The brain wants to feed the mind with thoughts and it can be very hard to stop this. You can either go with the thought or choose not to. As soon as you succeed in letting go of one thought however, another one is waiting in the thought queue to take its place. Letting go of thought means not having this queue, which means the brain can take a rest and be still. Being able to let go is not easy without practice. Some people practice yoga or tai chi in order to achieve it, some do other forms of exercise, some listen to calming music and some practice meditation. There are different ways to consciously get into a relaxed state, but however you get there, once there it feels like bliss. Some people find it hard to relax however and so need a little help. Massage is good, but the best thing in m y view is listening to relaxation tapes. A good relaxation tape can guide you down into your subconscious and help you to let go of everything. Our bodies naturally want to hold onto tension. The areas that primarily suffer from this dilemma are our neck, shoulders and upper back. (Funnily enough the amygdala is located very closely to the neck!) The body stores tension all over however and hides different memories of events and feelings in our muscles, bones and tissue causing us to have aches and pains. When you’re relaxed enough you can access these areas of tension and work on freeing them. You can visualize travelling through your body and see yourself mending these areas. We are always looking at everybody else and at what is going on outside of ourselves. It’s good to sometimes close your eyes and with your inner eye and look at what’s going on inside ourselves. You can travel through your body with your mind’s eye, stretch different parts, massage different areas and visualise them healing. You can visualise making adjustments so that joints move properly again or tight tendons become free from their tightness. You can visualize fixing an area and making it healthy through massaging it or cleaning away any diseased cells. Travelling through the body is a good way to come across areas of tension caused by anxiety like when you are anxious about a pain you keep feeling in a limb.
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Chapter 36
Reclaim Yourself ‘Reclaim Yourself’ is the CD accompanying this book. Please listen to it after you have read this book fully. Please read the following before listening to the CD. If you leave it a while before listening to the CD, you may wish to read this chapter again to refresh your mind about it.
‘Reclaim Yourself’ helps you realise when emotional energy isn’t justified as it’s only been created by negative thoughts and beliefs. (This includes beliefs that there is something terribly wrong with you because M.E. symptoms have caused you to believe so). ‘Reclaim Yourself’ then helps you to change those thoughts and beliefs. The relaxation CD lasts for just over twenty minutes. Usually a regular rel axation tape will be about ten to twenty minutes long. However, this isn’t a regular relaxation tape, it’s geared specifically at people with M.E., so please bear with it and just allow yourself to go with where the CD leads you.
Preparation In order to enter a state of deep relaxation, you have to want to. If you have negative feelings about it and really don’t want to relax because perhaps you think it will mean losing control, then it may be hard for the CD to work for you. Please bear this in mind if you find the CD fails to relax you. It must have your consent in order to work. It is the same as when trying to sleep. If you fight sleep with thoughts that keep you awake and stressed because you feel it’s important to have those thoughts right there and then, if you do that and don’t allow yourself to relax and calm, then sleep will find it hard to come. In the same way, relaxation will find it hard to come if you fight it too much. Incidentally, you are more in control than ever when relaxed because this is when you can make good decisions without an out of control racing mind getting in the way. Like ‘The Stop Method,’ this CD is not a magic wand. This CD will work best if you dedicate yourself to it properly. And you can believe in this CD because it’s all about believing in yourself and letting go of things that have been holding you back. Try to make sure you have nothing pressing on your mind before you listen to the CD. If you have to phone someone or fill in a form and it’s bothering you, try and get it out if the way (although I know that’s easier said than done when you have M.E.). But basically you want your mind to be as free as possible so that you can focus your attention fully on the CD. You will t hen be able to get more out of listening to it. Make sure that you are easily able to pause the CD if need be, have the control in your hand so you don’t need to move or disturb yourself. The CD requires some participation from you and you need to make sure you will have sufficient time to explore everything you want to.
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What Happens in the CD The aim of the CD is to lead you into a deep state of relaxation at which you can communicate with your subconscious. The CD asks you to imagine your own garden, and after guiding you down into a relaxed and comfortable state, it takes you through two phases. To help you through these two phases the CD asks you to visualise a confident version of you, an M.E. free version of you. This other you will be healthy, happy, confident, compassionate, strong and wise. They will represent all that you dream you want to be when you are well.
Stage One The first stage is to help you let go of all the worries and beliefs that trigger your symptoms, all those M.E. thoughts. Whilst you are in a relaxed state, you may find it’s easier to notice how any worries or anxieties about being ill can bring on symptoms and how they really are not needed. The CD will encourage you to share all your concerns about your life, M.E. and your recovery. You should allow the confident you to reassure you that M.E. is only caused by an overreacting amygdala and negative emotional memories. Let the confident you tell you to let go of concerns about M.E. and to let go of any previous beliefs about what might be causing your symptoms. Tell yourself that you now have the answer and strength to recover. Your subconscious will let the confident you tell you what M.E. is because if you’ve read this book and agreed with it, your subconscious will know, because deep down the body always knows and tells the truth. Our fears can immobilise us, make us feel alone and unprotected, lost and confused, unable to see the many trails leading out of the woods. And there is always a way out. The way out is within. There is a sacred place within us where wisdom and clarity dwell. - Susan L. Taylor. Author of ‘Lessons in Living.’
Stage Two The second stage of the CD focuses on identifying the things that are causing your emotional well-being to be low. You will be asked to t ell the confident you about anything that has been bothering you. You must then let the confident tell you whether each problem is only caused by your worries or beliefs or whether it’s a real problem that you practically need to resolve. If it ’s a problem caused by beliefs and worries that you’ve formed about yourself, then the confident version of you can help you work on changing those worries and beliefs. For example if you believe that nobody likes you, let the confident you tell you that you’re a good person who is likeable. If you believe you have a fault, that you’re boring or insufficient in some way, let the confident you tell you’re an interesting person who has a lot to offer. It’s not the case that you will be lying to yourself, it’s a case of understanding that if you just be yourself and don’t get carried away with thoughts about how you should be or how you are different, there will never be anything negative about you, so why believe there is? It’s about getting back to who you really and letting go of all the beliefs you may have built up about not being good enough. We are all good enough. If you always act with your heart, people will like you and you will be happy in what you do. There will then never be a need to try and push yourself too far or take on too much to prove that you’re a good person. You probably will have some unexpressed emotions, to do with situations in the past, present or future. It may be that you find you still feel quite badly about something or insecure for some reason. In these situations you will have to talk with the confident you about what the best way is to resolve the negative emotions.
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For example, the following may happen… You decide that you should ask for help with a certain area of your life or you realise that you have been doing something that doesn’t suit you, perhaps a job that you don’t feel happy in at all. You may decide that you are going to do something completely different when you get better. You may realise that you’ve been strung along by other peoples’ opinions of what you should do or your own beliefs of what you should be and that actually, you’re not very happy with that. You may find that you’ve been neglecting something you really want to do because your thoughts have been telling you it isn’t suitable. Perhaps you’ll realise that it is suitable however because it will make you happy. You may decide to follow a dream or ambition you’ve always had it doesn’t have to be a big dream. You may find that you’d like to correct a relationship with a family member or friend, because that relationship is not currently healthy. You may realise you’ve been putting too much pressure on yourself and make a pledge to stop doing so. You can talk with the confident you about ways of releasing negative emotional energy when you awake. There are methods for releasing emotional energy such as writing a letter or deciding to change something in your life. You may decide that you will talk wit h someone else when you’re awake to look at how you can practically release any negative emotions or solve any problems.
Role-Playing a Conversation If there’s a problem that you feel you need to resolve, a problem that is creating negative emotional energy in you, you should discuss with your confident self how you can resolve it and release that emotional energy. As you may not be able to express your emotions about a problem in real life, for example, by telling someone you don’t like him or her as this will upset them, you can always release emotional energy in other ways. One way of releasing emotional energy about someone is to invite that person into your subconscious and talk to them there. Whilst in a deep state of relaxation you can invite anyone into your space or subconscious to talk about a problem. In this case, the space will be represented by the garden that I ask you to visualise. The point of inviting a person who perhaps has wronged you in some way, into your garden is to help you be able to see the situation from their point of view and to understand what kind of feelings they might have had, which caused them to do what they did. You must then tell them how you feel about their reasons for doing what they did and how it effected you. You should both keep talking and listening to each other until you feel that you’ve both explained all of the feelings you had (and they quite possibly had) that caused the problem to occur. By looking at things from their point of view whilst in a relaxed state, you will be able to understand why they did certain things and if you feel angry at them, you can say so when it’s your turn to talk. It’s important to take turns and let them speak as well as you. Don’t allow your thoughts to intervene and make up things that you don’t feel are right, let them speak freely as you would if you were them. This helps you be able to forgive them, recognise if you were in the wrong at all, see why they did something (e.g. because perhaps because they were jealous of you), and move on. It is the rule in the garden, that whoever is there with you is talking from their heart, so conversations will not be tainted with negative thoughts or unnecessary negative energy. You must let any guest talk freely and consider how they feel or i f they have regrets. For example, perhaps they ended up hurting you in the past because they felt insecure or frightened about something, maybe they are very ashamed of what they did to you and wish they had the strength to apologise or admit they were wrong. Consider these things and try to be accepting of your own faults and other peoples.
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The aim is always to go through all of the emotions until you feel free and able to forgive or until you can forgive and accept yourself (if that’s the kind of forgiving needed).
Further Advice You may find that whilst you are voicing each problem that you feel strong emotions rising and this may cause you to feel symptoms or more strongly feel the s ymptoms you have. Whatever happens, don’t focus on symptoms and don’t dwell on negative emotions. Just let any emotions or symptoms wash over you as you carry on talking. Don’t let them pull your attention away from the task at hand, let the confident you keep you focused and comforted. Let the dialogue between yourself and the confident you flow from within. Don’t force it to come or start making it up with your thinking brain. Allow yourself to be completely honest; there is no need for pretending. This will be your space that only you can go to, a place where you can evaluate your situation and really conclude what’s best for you. Most importantly (and yes I know I mentioned this just a moment ago but it is important!), when the confident you speaks to you or when you speak to them, or indeed if someone else that you’ve invited into your garden speaks, allow the voices to come from within you, it may feel like they’re coming from within your central chest area or your gut. Whatever is said should not be made up by your thoughts because then you are not truly relaxing and allowing your subconscious and the way you really feel come through. It should come from your heart. If you feel at any point that the voices are just coming from your racing mind, stop, take a deep breath and try to centre yourself again. Basically the rule is, speak from your heart, not with your head.
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Chapter 37
The Racing Mind A mind to active is no mind at all. –Theodore Roethke
In chapter thirty-eight, I will talk about meditation. Before that however (so people don’t feel tempted to skip the meditation chapter!), I just want to explain a little about how meditation links in with my other methods and calming the amygdala. Through using ‘The Stop Method,’ ‘Reclaim Yourself’ and meditation techniques, the aim is to achieve an ongoing awareness of yourself and of whatever you may be doing in each moment of your life, so that your mind is focused on the present and not worrying about the past or future. You should be able to recognise when your neocortex based thinking mind tries to go racing off with thoughts that disregard what your body really wants or feels. The racing mind is what keeps us from full health. A racing mind can interrupt sleep, cause anxiety and panic, cause M.E., paranoia and many other problems. It is when we learn to calm the racing mind and relax it so that it doesn’t feel inclined to burden us with over-thinking, that we can be ourselves and feel that our thinking mind and body-mind are connected. There will be signals to tell you when your thinking mind is racing inconsiderately ahead without considering your well-being. When it does, you can end up doing things like a mindless robot, without any real awareness of what you’re doing because your mind is elsewhere thinking about something in the future or past. The thinking mind can often become out of touch with the body and that can continue for some time if you are not careful. It’s good to be able to spot it quickly so that you can regain control. Being out of sync won’t generally do you any major harm, but it can lead to illness eventually as it stops you from living in the moment and thus acting on the emotions you feel in the present. For example you may really want to go on a bike ride, but your thoughts may be telling you that you have all this work to do first. If you keep putting off the things you enjoy, you might become a bit unhappy. So another reason to ensure you’re not out of sync and that you live in t he present is that you’ll enjoy your life much more if your mind and body are working together, and once you’ve allowed yourself to enjoy something, you’ll feel more refreshed to do some work.
When the Body and Mind are ‘Out of Sync’ One example would be taking a bath when it’s too hot. The thinking mind ignores the uncomfortable heat and you just clamber in impatiently. Perhaps you wanted the bath to relax you as you’re busy, but it doesn’t end up being relaxing because you don’t give it a chance as it’s t oo hot to enjoy. Your thinking mind is too concerned with how you will feel after the bath to actually appreciate it when you’re in it. So instead of making it right by adding a little cold water, you take your bath and are as un-relaxed when you get out as you were when you got in. Meditation helps you to spend more time with yourself at a ver y basic and pure level. The more time you spend with yourself without thoughts or distractions, the better your awareness of your own self will be and the more easily you can notice when you are ‘out of sync.’ It is good to practice meditation as and when you need it and don’t only view it as something to help you recover from M.E. It is a valuable and ongoing tool that will enhance your life the more you practice it. You can sit down for just a few minutes or however long you wish.
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In 1968 Dr. Benson, author of ‘The Relaxation Response,’ conducted experiments on various well known meditation techniques. His research established that these techniques did indeed have a very real effect on reducing stress and controlling the fight or fli ght response. They slowed the heartbeat, slowed the breathing, reduced oxygen intake and increased skin resistance. All of the methods in this book link together and help you to achieve a balance between your thinking mind and your body-mind. It is this balance that makes us healthy.
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Your Body’s Mind
Your Thinking Mind
Subconscious Amygdala / Emotional brain Emotional decisions Instinctive / Fast Always tells the truth about how you feel. Always lets you know what you want.
Conscious Neocortex / Thinking brain Rational decisions Procrastinating / Slow Can conceal how you really feel Talks you into doing things you don’t want to
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Chapter 38
Meditation Meditation is a very powerful tool for developing self-awareness, calmness and clarity of mind. You may have noticed that having M.E. means you find it very hard or nigh on i mpossible to be calm and clear-headed! Therefore mediation is one of the best things you can do. It isn’t simpl y about sitting quietly still. It’s about training your thinking mind to not race ahead of you. I once heard a man describe the mind to be like a ferret, darting around quickly and wildly. Meditation will help you to tame it. Sometimes it can be hard to get your mind to be still or concentrating on whatever you’re doing at the time. For instance you can be reading a page in a book whilst thinking about the bills you have to pay. So by the ti me you’ve reached the end of the page, you have no idea what you’ve just read. You can find yourself feeling out of sync because of a lack of concentration and focus on the present. Meditation is simply about making a connection with yourself and getting to know who you are. Because you are not your job or your list of qualifications, you are not your thoughts about the past or future and you are not classified by what you have or do. You are you, and it’s very easy to go through life without even realising who you are and without ever getting to know yourself. In the same way that you may embrace with a partner or cradle a child and feel their energy or love and simply enjoy the presence of being with them; to sit and be with you, yourself, and to feel your own energy, without thoughts and distraction is very special. And by the way, you should never say ‘I could never meditate and calm my mind.’ That would only be an M.E. thought holding you back. Of course you can meditate; we are all capable of doing so. Give it time and be patient with yourself, you deserve that. Unfortunately, meditation doesn’t get the credit it deserves. This is perhaps because: • We rely so strongly on western medicine and so neglect our inner ability to help ourselves. • People often have negative connotations about it, for example, that it’s a ‘hippy’ pursuit, it’s religious or that it has no place in our society. But actually, meditation has been around for five thousand years and it’s still going strong and it’s becoming increasingly popular in western society. I think something that’s been around for that long and is still going strong must have some very beneficial attributes! The measurement of brain waves in meditation is a relatively recent development, as scientists strive to discover how this ancient practice of meditation can reduce stress, increase feelings of well-being, and benefit overall health, among other advantages. It specifically helps us have increased alertness and a relaxed temperament, even in our fully awake state. In normal consciousness our brain waves are of the beta type. The most common brain waves in meditation are alpha waves, (although there are other types of brainwave that occur in more practiced and deeper meditation). Because they instigate changes during meditation, alpha brain waves calm the autonomic nervous system. Regular meditation reverses t he roles of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems so that the normally dominant sympathetic nervous system takes a back seat to the normally secondary parasympathetic nervous system. This lowers blood pressure and heart rate and lowers the amount of stress hormones in the body, as well as calming the mind.
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Our society has become so distracting with advertisements, consumerism, gadgets, technology, entertainment and convenience that we are basically being led further and further away from our true selves. This is why we find it easier to cope in the countryside or by the sea. It’s easier for an M.E. sufferer to relax when out in nature. This demonstrates that M.E. stems from over-stimulation of the amygdala. Without things like supermarkets, bright strip lights and traffic noise to bother you, it’s much easier for the amygdala to stop panicking. When I was building up my walking distance before realising what the cause of M.E. was, I found it much easier to walk in a quiet park than by the side of a busy road. Meditation cuts you off from outside influences in your environment. Whereas normally the amygdala can be overloading on thoughts and sensory messages about your environment, if you close your eyes to stop visual messages entering your brain, find a quiet place to reduce auditory messages, and make yourself warm and comfortable to reduce touch and sensation messages; this takes away a large amount of stimulation your brain is having to respond to and consider. If you then concentrate on drawing your attention away from your thoughts, nearly all the stimulation that your brain has to deal with is removed. Your brain is then relaxed enough to engage your awareness on a deeper level and on the energy in your body. The break that meditation brings from continuous input of sensory messages and thought, can give your brain and amygdala a welcome rest in which it can reset it self to a normal level of neural activity. If the amygdala has nothing to react to, it has time to calm down and neutralise. Meditation is like a spring clean for the mind. Imagine if we didn’t clean the kitchen. The bin would overflow and take over the floor, dirty plates would stack up and we’d never have a clean surface to prepare a fresh meal on. So we’d start eating take-away food all the time, become incredibly unhealthy and add to the mess with junk food packaging! Your mind needs clean surfaces too or you become unhealthy because of too many ‘junk’ thoughts bothering you all the time. All the thoughts we have throughout each day build up emotional energy, some of it gets released as we express it and some of it doesn’t. The unexpressed emotional energy stays in our bodies affecting how we think and feel about things and it taints our j udgement. Meditating brings us back to square one and helps us to recognise the true thoughts from the junk thoughts stemming from unexpressed emotional energy. In the same way work breaks, school playtimes or holidays help us to clear our minds from all the clutter created by work or school. We are able to apply our minds better when we return after breaks or holidays, as we feel refreshed. Whilst on holiday or having a break, you let go of all the clutter as you’re not thinking about it. You unwind. Meditation is simply a more direct and effective method for un-cluttering the mind.
Why I Began Meditation Before having M.E., I had never tried meditation. It was sheer desperation that led me to try it. My head often felt as though it might explode, as if my brain had swollen up; leaving me feeling foggy headed, tense and flu-like. I’m sure you may be familiar with that feeling as it’s very common in M.E. At times I was unable to sleep, but felt exhausted, I needed to do something. So I read the most basic meditation book I could find and gave it a go. It took a long time to get it right, but with a lot of patience it worked and the benefits I felt were astonishing. It felt as though a huge bubble was slowly deflating in my head. Then I felt a peaceful and contented, and my head symptoms went down to a level so that I could get a decent nights sleep. Meditation is an ongoing medication for all of our ailments
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Being Mindful The past is history, the future is a mystery, the present is a gift, gift , that’s why it’s called the present. – Chinese proverb proverb
To be mindful is to live li ve your life fully experiencing everything you do. So if you’re washing up, your attention is on the washing up, if you’re eating an orange, your focus is on eating the orange and enjoying each juicy segment; segment; not stuffing it down your throat as quickly as possible! We are always being pulled away from being mindful by distractions from work or our responsibilities, pressure, power and pleasures. We rush past opportunities and are not aware of ourselves acting out our lives. We think of the future and the past when really we should be focusing our thoughts on the present fully experiencing what we are doing and on what’s happening in the t he moment, appreciating the good in whatever that may be. Life is a succession succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed. succeed. - Corita Kent
Instead of living in the moment, some people tend to busy themselves all the time, believing that happiness and contentment contentment are not possible just yet, and won’t be until unti l sometime in the future when they have been earned. You either can put all your energy into earning happiness and security and then look back and wander where your life went, or you can live day b y day enjoying every second and following your dreams, and then look back and see what a wonderful time you’ve had and be proud of what you’ve achieved...even if it’s only that you enjoyed your life. With M.E., it is hard to live in the moment because symptoms constantly remind you that you must take care not to overexert yourself. Symptoms trigger thoughts in your mind based on the past and future, you get stuck in a loop l oop whereby you’re constantly comparing your symptom level to how it was before and what it might be if you do something like walk to the shops. The M.E. thoughts become unstoppable and time flies on by b y with your body and mind on totally separate wavelengths. So what you need to do is stop those un-mindful thoughts, concentrate on feeling Method.’ Live in the moment. good and distract yourself as described in ‘The Stop Method.’ Live The Buddha addressed this issue very clearly. He said – Don’t get caught caught in the past, because because the past is gone. gone. Don’t get upset upset about the future, because because the future is not yet here. here. There is only one moment moment for you to be alive, and that is the present present moment. Go back to the present moment and live this moment deeply, and you’ll be free.
Of course, problems do crop up in life, but worrying worr ying about them will only breed more worry and agitation. If you learn to relax and stop worrying, worr ying, you will better be able to deal with a problem with efficiency and care when it does arise, because you will feel fresher and more energised. If a man has been been at war, he does does not want to come come home to fight another another battle, because because he will be tired. Keep your soul full of joy, good things and the good times in life; then you will feel ready to face all that life throws at at you when bad bad times come. - Author unknown
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If there’s something on your mind, e.g.: that you must post a letter today, attend to it before you meditate. You want your mind to be as free of external endeavours as possible. possible. Find a quite & warm place and make yourself comfortable. Sit up if you can, you do not need to sit cross-legged, just be comfortable with no unnecessary pressure against your
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body. If you can’t sit up, don’t worry; worr y; sitting up is only a preventative measure against falling asleep. The main thing is that you are comfortable. You can lie on your back with legs uncrossed and arms either side of you. Close your eyes to minimise external distractions; ideally, you don’t want anything to disturb you. If there’s lots of noise earplugs may help. Take some deep breaths before you start, breathing right into your belly so you don’t worry about having enough air. You’ll probably find you need to do this again after a few minutes, just as and when when you feel like it. Notice the air on you fingers or lips, or where your clothes touch your legs or arms. Let your awareness move around around your body. Do not talk to yourself about what you’re doing; let it happen without thought. Let your body guide you. When you are mediating, if you do become involved with your thoughts, and you will, do not maintain involvement in them; let them dissolve like soluble asprin in water. Remember, if your thoughts distract you, it does not mean you are failing at the mediation, it is part of the journey that you will overcome, no matter how long it takes. Just keep letting the thoughts dissolve. When you first start meditating, be aware of your brow and forehead and make sure they are not creased or tensed. Keep your forehead and brow smooth and relaxed. Also notice which direction your eyes are looking. Your eyes will be closed, but they should be looking straight ahead and down at roughly a forty-five-degree angle. They will then be relaxed. If your eyes are looking straight ahead at a level ninety-degree angle, they will be being drawn towards your upper head area and your thoughts, therefore you will not be relaxing and allowing yourself to sink into i nto the thoughtless mediation properly. So keep your eyes relaxed. The idea of meditation is to draw your mind away from its’ everyday problems and distractions and to let it become relaxed and peaceful. This sounds simple, but is often difficult to achieve. It takes persistence and patience. Once you are in your comfortable meditation posture, the first thing to do is to notice what your mind is doing. Is it worrying worr ying about this or that, thinking different thoughts or darting about? When we do this, we realise just how over active our minds are, and it ’s no surprise that we often wear ourselves out mentally. If we can stop all this activity for a while, our minds will start to relax and become peaceful, and it follows that we will gain these qualities too. The way to achieve this is to draw the mind mi nd away from its’ usual distractions and focus on just one simple and and peaceful function, function, the breathing. Rather Rather than allowing our mind to wander here and there, we turn all of our attention to our breathing. You can do this by counting each in breath or out breath. So each in breath may be a count of two, three or five depending on how long it is and then repeating the counting process for a while. Attention can also be drawn to the breathing through just being aware of the rising and falling of each breath. We should not make any efforts to control the breathing, b reathing, which occurs naturally anyway. Just mentally observe it, and nothing else. In the beginning it is common that you get distracted from ‘breath watching,’ by some other mental activity. Do not get disheartened. When you notice that has happened, just return to the breath and carry on as before. With practice, your ability to concentrate single-pointedly will increase. Then, deeper peace and stability can be found, and you will find that you can use these mind calming skills more in your daily life as well.
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As you become more used to meditation and less distracted, you may find that you are able to relax your attention and awareness away even from the breath, and rest in what feels like your own ‘energy.’ This is a feeling of deep and great satisfying relaxation, which often leaves you feeling peaceful and contented for some time ti me after the meditation.
If and when you begin to get acquainted with resting in your own energy, you can try letting your awareness rest on problem areas in the body, For example, if you have a headache or pain somewhere, you could focus your awareness awareness on it and try relaxing into that area, thus relaxing and dissolving the pain. Or if for example if your head is aching and it feels like there is a lot of unwanted energy in your head, you could tr y moving that energy down through your body (and maybe through the soles of your feet) so that it may be released. This can be done through imagining the energy to be melting away like butter, melting down through your body and dissolving out into nothing. This takes a bit of practice and whilst some people may find it ’s easier than others we are all capable of doing it…as long as we don’t insist that we can’t! It may be that you don’t get far enough with mediation to even find yourself resting in your own energy. If you don’t that’s ok, it will still help you relax and calm your amygdala. In order to help you meditate, if you’re having trouble, you can count whilst breathing in and out, this brings your attention to your breath and occupies your mind so that i t can’t go off on trails of thought. Just count as you breathe in…one…two…three, in…one…two…three, (or to four or five)…and as you breathe out. If you catch your mind straying from the counting it will be easier to bring it back to it as you are bringing it back to focusing on something.
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Chapter 39
The Little Things That Help The little things, the little moments; they aren’t little. - John Zabat-Zinn
Posture Even though I am addressing the issue of posture in this chapter: ‘The Little Things That Help,’ as John Zabat-Zinn instigated: The little things aren’t LITTLE! And so the issue of posture is very important, as is every section of this chapter, so please don’t disregard any of it. The way we stand and hold ourselves sends a message to our psyche about how we feel. If you have a friend who often feels low or lacking in confidence, you can probably see that they have bad posture. They might have rounded shoulders and a rounding back, their ears may be forward of their shoulders causing their neck and head to lean forward. If however you have a friend who is perhaps more bubbly, happy and on the go, you can probably see that they have better posture. Of course it won’t always be the case that a person with rounded shoulders suffers from depression! But I hope you get my drift. As you read this try rounding your shoulders and upper back as if you’re slightly hunchbacked. Notice how you feel whilst doing this. Do you feel full of joy, as though you’ve a song in your heart and are ready to sing it out from the rooftops!? Probably not, I’m guessing you more likely feel repressed and perhaps saddened or lacking in will to do anything. Now try doing the opposite, imagine a silver chord is pulling your spine straight up and coming out from the crown of your head so that your neck is long (but relaxed) with your ears above your shoulders and your chin tucking in slightly. Draw your shoulder blades down you back and make sure that your shoulders are back and open, (i.e. don’t squash your shoulders or elbows into your torso). Now breath long slow and full breaths that t ravel; from your abdomen into your heart and really open out your chest ensuring that your chest and shoulders are relaxed. How do you feel now? Perhaps you feel more confident, joyful and strong within yourself? Thinking of negative things will surely be harder when you are holding yourself with this better posture; this is because it signals positivity to your mind. The pelvis too is an area to be aware of. Often people get into a habit of tilting the pelvis forward or back, so that they can look as though their bottom i s sticking out (if tilting pelvis back) or their belly is sticking out (if tilting pelvis forward). Slumping through the pelvis in this manner means you are not standing tall and if you’re not standing tall i t brings feelings or inertia or sluggishness. So posture really does matter. From now on perhaps, try being more aware of your posture. If you feel your shoulders rounding, imagine anchoring your shoulder blades down and into your back in order to open out the chest. But always remember not to tense up whilst correcting posture. Good posture is not about standing like a soldier; rigid and stiff, it’s about feeling open and tall. Wiki-How has a good and simple article on posture, here are some extracts from i t: Know what good posture is believed to be. Most people think that to "stand up straight" means tensing your back to heave your chest 'in and up', and pulling your head back in to your chest. This
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is not so. The spine has two natural curves that you need to maintain called the 'double C' or 'S' curves, these are the curves found from the base of your head to your shoulders and the curve from the upper back to the base of the spine. When standing straight up, make sure that your weight is evenly distributed on your feet. You might feel like you are leaning forward, and look stupid, but you don't. Using a mirror, align your ears, shoulders, and hips. Proper alignment places your ears loosely above your shoulders, above your hips. Again, these points make a straight line, but the spine itself curves in a slight 'S'. You'll find that this doesn't hurt at all. If you do experience pain, look at your side view in a mirror to see if you're forcing your back into an unnatural position. If so, stop it! A great side benefit of keeping your head straight, and your ears/shoulders/hips aligned is an improvement in your self-esteem and attitude. If you walk with your head up, you appear more confident, and feel more confident, which improves your attitude and mood, making it easier to walk with your head up. - www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Posture (4)
Smiling Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Smiling is the opposite of frowning. Whilst smiling, the forehead is relaxed or pulled upwards, eyebrows go up, the mouth is broad, the edges of the mouth pull up and cheeks go up; the face is open. Whilst frowning, the forehead downwardly scrunches together; eyebrows tensely go down, the edges of the mouth curl down, the face is compressed and closed. Smile, and notice the muscles that you use in your face; then frown, notice how the frowning muscles are in opposition. When you smile, it sends a signal to your brain that you are happy. Smiling is good for you and it relieves tension. If you smile, your brain recognises that you’re smiling. The smiling action will trigger emotional memories of times when you’ve smiled in the past; and then you will feel the good emotions connected to those memories. Studies have shown that smiling releases endorphins, natural pain killers and serotonin. Together these make us feel good. Smiling is a natural drug. There is also a measurable reduction in blood pressure. Also, when you smile, immune function improves because you are more relaxed. Flu and colds can help to be prevented by smiling. Laughter is also very beneficial for your health. Pull a big smile for a minute and notice how hard it is to have any negative thoughts whilst smiling. You should find that you have to stop smiling in order to have unhappy thoughts. Of course, this is a very subtle technique, but, every ounce of good emotion you feel is going to help towards a change in your well-being. It can be beneficial to even lay still for a bit in the dark and just smile as much as you can. Simply allow your smile to fill you up with good feelings. You don’t need to smile about anything in particular, but if you do want something to smile about, you can smile because you are going to get better.
Correct Breathing Do you breathe fully? Breathing forms a major connection between the body and mind, if your breathing is off, it will be hard for your body and mind to be properly in sync. Whenever I feel the need to calm my mind I sit and breathe deeply whilst focusing on my breath moving through my body, this grounds me and stops my mind racing.
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Try the following exercises: Find a quiet place to sit still for a few minutes and close your eyes. Put you hand on your stomach, over your belly button. Without trying to influence your breath, breath, observe how your tummy moves. Your tummy should move out as you breath in and go in as you breath out. If you are breathing properly, you should find that the hand over your tummy moves slightly as your tummy pushes it out and draws it in with your breathing. If your chest alone is moving in and out as you breath, you are not breathing correctly, you are breathing shallowly. Keeping your hand on your tummy and your eyes closed, take a long breath in through your nose to the count of five. If you do not feel your tummy going out, push your tummy out by pushing your hand away with it. Hold that breath for a count of five. Now, to the count of five, slowly exhale that breath out through your mouth. If your tummy does not go in naturally, push it in gently using the hand on your tummy. Doing this a few times should help your body learn the actions for correct breathing. If you feel it’s necessary, do this exercise for five minutes each day. You shouldn’t be angry with yourself if you can’t get this exercise right str aight away. It takes time, especially if you’ve been used to breathing incorrectly for a long time. If the exercise causes you to panic, you can stop doing it. You are in control.
Breathing exercises should never be done to the point of tiredness or exhaustion, nor should they be repeated too often. They should always be done patiently and calmly without haste or rushing.
Neck Roles and Shoulder Stretches As we know, a lot of stress and tension is stored in the neck, shoulders and upper back. Stretching these areas is very beneficial to releasing that stress. Whilst doing the following exercises, you should keep your mind free of any other thoughts and just focus on fully receiving the benefits that each exercise will give you. Try to relax into the stretches and release any tight muscles.
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For the neck roles: Allow your chin to touch your chest and your head to fall fully forward. Feel the stretch down your spine. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Then, slowly let you head fall back and look up to the ceiling. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Slowly bring your head to centre and let it fall fully to the right. Feel the stretch across the left side of your neck. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Bring the head to centre and let it fall fully to the left. Feel the stretch across the right side of your neck. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Now let your head slowly fall to the right again and begin to roll the head slowly anticlockwise. Try not to hunch your shoulders, so that they support your head. You should relax the shoulders and let your neck fall heavy. Slowly do three anti-clockwise neck roles, and then do three clockwise, relaxing the shoulders more and more. Allow yourself to feel the stretching down your spine, neck and shoulders as you do this exercise.
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Don’t allow your thoughts to rush you; if you have any thoughts like: ‘Just get on with it, I’ll do the neck roll and then it’s done.’ Or ‘This is a waste of time, I’ll just stretch my head quickly from side to side and that’ll do.’ Ignore those thoughts. Tell them to go away as you’re busy. Focus on the neck stretch and be fully aware of it, let your body guide you. Take good, solid breaths, in and out through your nose, breathe into your abdomen and into the stretch to help relax the area. Feel the stretching down your spine, feel the stretch in your neck and shoulders muscles and be aware of the tension being released. If it takes some time, then allow yourself time. Don’t let any impatient thoughts interrupt you.
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For the shoulder stretches: Stand by a wall and place your left hand at shoulder height against that wall. Keeping your arm straight and left hand flat against the wall, walk and turn your body round as far to the right (clockwise) as you can. You should feel the stretch opening up your left shoulder. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Now, still keeping your arm straight and left hand flat against the wall, walk and turn your body as far to the left (anti-clockwise) as you can. You may place your right hand on the outside of your left elbow to keep the left arm straight. Feel the stretch along the outside of your left upper arm and top of your left shoulder. Hold this position for a count of ten seconds. Now do the same with your right arm. When you’ve finished, stand in a place that will give you space to fully rot ate your arms, so that they will touch your ears. Do ten rotations each backwards and forwards with both arms. This will help loosen up any remaining stiffness.
When you reach a better level of health, the benefits of these exercises will become more apparent. When you are ill, you are so burdened with symptoms that it can be hard to notice any benefits at all so you may think there’s no point. But remember, what you think and what your body wants are often two different things.
Massage Do you remember I wrote tears are triggered by the amygdala? They are an uncontrollable core emotional response to sadness. When we are unhappy a friend may give us a hug and stroke or rub our head, neck back or shoulder area. These caring moves help to soothe us and they assure us that someone cares when we are sad. If you think about it this is very logical as the back of your next is physically very near to your amygdala. Physically, being stroked, rubbed, or to have someone massage the back of your neck will help to calm your amygdala and related parts of the brain, parts of the brain that have been under your panicky amygdala’s bossy instruction for too long! When all the emotion has been expressed, it is useful to continue soothing the amygdala to help it regain a calm state and feel safe. With M.E. you might not be or feel like crying your eyes out much, but your amygdala is still in a heightened state of alert because it’s dealing with a lot of unexpressed and new emotional energy created by your symptoms, your condition and related t houghts about M.E. If you have someone around who can massage your neck and the back of your head, shoulders and upper back, then get them to do it as often as they can! Tell them it helps you relax and can bring your symptom level down or help calm you when you’re feeling panicky that a symptom is creeping back. It honestly can.
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If you don’t have someone to give you a massage in this way, just massage yourself. This can sometimes be better anyway as you can sense the areas that benefit more from your massage and address them with the right pressure. Whilst giving yourself or receiving a massage, allow the massage to relax you, don’t fight it. Talk to yourself as you might if you were soothing a scared child (you can talk silently in your mind of course). Tell yourself you’re going to be fine and that there’s no need to worry. Think about good things, nice things that you’d like to and maybe are going to do, li ke going for a walk in the park, listening to relaxing music or sailing the ocean! Relax into the massage and let it release any tension.
Relaxing We often do not realise when we are tense, stressed or neglecting our emotions. We may have little sensations that warn us, but as time goes on we begin to accept these sensations as normal. They creep into our behaviour and lifestyle unnoticed as we slowly become accustomed to living in an un-relaxed tense state of dis-ease. The more relaxed we are, the better our minds will work, leaving us much more capable to deal with life in a positive way. And the more we do things that relax us, the more easy it will be to notice instantly little signs of tension and be able to control unconscious activity made by the autonomic nervous system, like adrenalin release into the bloodstream, muscle tension and heart rate. There are many ways to relax and we will each have our favourite. Exercise is a fantastic method, because the mind and body are ultimately connected, what you do to one will affect the other. I recall, one day when I wasn’t feeling very good and felt as though my body and mind were on different planets. My friends took me mountain biking on a BMX track wit h lots of jumps. Generally I’d always been a little nervous of that kind of thing, but just went for it on this occasion. My mind and body soon fell back in line and I felt great. This is because my body and mind were forced to work together so that I didn’t come off the bike whilst jumping. If you let go of your tension and anxiety and trust in your body, it will not let you down…within reason! That is that you don’t go for the really high BMX jumps until you’ve practiced the smaller ones because you have to introduce your body to the concept of jumping. If you relax the mind in meditation or through music for example, the body also relaxes. If you exercise the body, the mind will naturally turn it’s focus to your body and the exercise, and so become empty of other thoughts. It can help to just do a bit of exercise each day, whether it is ten or twenty push-ups, two minutes on a mini-trampoline or a walk. Dancing around the house to one of your favourite songs is also good exercise and can be invigorating. I particularly enjoy doing yoga in order to relax and just make myself feel good. Yoga is not just a physical exercise, it focuses deeply on breathing and you can go as slow or fast as you like, that’s the good thing about it…taking it at your own pace. I also find yoga helps keep me calm, positive and grounded. I do highly recommend and I have read quite a few articles about people who have had M.E or some other problem and have found that yoga has helped them. The body and mind are in a state of constant interaction. Yogic science does not demarcate (outline) where the body ends and the mind begins, but approaches both as a single, integrated entity. The turmoil of daily life brings stress to the body and the mind. This causes anxiety, depression, restlessness and rage. Yoga asanas (postures), while appearing to deal with the
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physical body alone, actually influence the chemical balance of the brain, which in turn improves one’s mental state of being. - ‘Yoga The Path to Holistic Health.’ B.K.S. Iyengar (5)
The major ingredient to help you be able to relax of course is to have lots of fun and make sure that you actually enjoy activities and hobbies that you do. Don’t just do them because you think they are right. So if you really can’t stand exercise, find other ways to relax, turn out the lights, have a bath and play some nice music, pamper yourself.
Diet When you have M.E., it’s important to stick to the foods that don’t affect your symptoms, the general rule being: don’t eat sugar, caffeine, wheat, dairy products, spices, processed foods and artificial additives. I also found I couldn’t take many medications such as; painkillers, antidepressants or vitamin supplements. I’m sure most of us will have worked out through trial and error which foods have negative effects on us. When our emotional well-being is easily tipped, we are much more sensitive to food. For example, we are more likely to feel negative after eating a biscuit. I don’t mean that in a way that we will regret eating the biscuit because it means we may put weight on. What I mean is that the sugar perhaps affects us psychologically and may cause us to momentarily lack in confidence or feel unhappy. We should therefore be careful about what we eat, and should not eat those foods that make us feel bad or raise our symptom level. There is a lot of information out there that suggests sugar and processed foods are not good for a healthy emotional balance. It gives you a little high first and then, you crash and feel unconfident or depressed. When you reach better levels of health you may notice the negative emotions associated with eating sugary foods, such as a lack of confidence, rather than only experiencing physical sensations, such as numbness or dizziness. This is because the healthier you get, the easier it wil l be to feel your emotions and recognise them rather than just feeling emotional energy as symptoms. What usually sparks an M.E. symptom is the ‘sugar-rush’ feeling whereby you feel that the sugar is causing your body to go out of control. With dairy products and other foods, it’s obviously a slightly different sensation that sparks the M.E. But, particularly with the sugar-rush sensation, just remember that lots of healthy people have sugar-rushes too and lots of people get caffeinebuzzes and that kind of thing. So, the next time you feel odd after eating sugar, don’t start to think of yourself as ill, just say to yourself, ‘OK, there’s no need to overreact. I enjoyed my chocolate bar and I don’t mind a little buzz or sugar-rush, there’s no need for me to have full blown M.E. symptoms about it!’ Just use ‘The Stop Method’ and tell your amygdala to calm down and relax. It’s just the panicky overreaction of the amygdala that escalates the sugar rush into something it need not become – a full blown symptom. Incidentally, the main thing I now avoid is caffeine. I know I can overcome it if I wish, but to be honest I’m happier without it as are many people. Wheat makes me feel a bit sluggish and certain spices like paprika make me feel strange, so I avoid them if I can too. But to be honest, many people have food sensitivities and we’re not really designed to eat some of the things we eat today. Just because you can buy all these different foods, doesn’t mean that they are ok for us. A good example of this can be seen in China’s lactose and alcohol intolerance. Alcohol effects Chinese people more causing them to be more intoxicated than a western person might. This is because the Chinese used to purify their water by drinking it in tea form whilst European cultures used to purify their water by drinking it as beer or wine. It’s funny that they could not drink fresh water back then because of all the disease that lived in it, instead they had to kill off the disease by
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boiling or fermentation. This has resulted in European cultures developing a tolerance for alcohol over the centuries and Asian cultures like the Chinese being rather intolerant to it. With regards to lactose intolerance, for millennia the Chinese did not raised cattle and so they didn’t get used to milk products. Today you don’t really find milk products in Chinese cooking and they are still notoriously intolerant to lactose foods. Generally, M.E. seems to show us the things that are bad for us, our s ymptoms worsen when we eat too much sugar and artificial additives or drink too much caffeine. Take note of this and in the future only consume such things in moderation. Even though you may make a full recovery from M.E., it may be the case that people h get M.E. in the first place are just sensitive souls and it might just be best to not go back to drinking three cups of coffee a day and eating processed foods. Some people just are more sensitive than others. Modern society and advertising have led us to believe that it’s ok for our bodies to eat massive tubs of ice cream in one sitting or have a junk food diet. Really we know this is untrue and we know that t hese foods are not good for us. If you are partial to junk food or sugary foods, just lower your intake of them and try to include more fresh fruit and vegetables in your diet. Also make sure you drink enough water every day, two litres being a bare minimum, it makes a difference to your concentration for one thing. Remember, what you eat is what you are. If you fill yourself with sugar and junk, you can’t expect to be very balanced.
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Part Six
You Can Stop M.E. Mind and Personal Discipline - Sleep Problems - Upset Stomach - Mind Discipline With M.E. - Keeping Your Spirits Up - A Doorway - Change Will Come With Persistence - Down to You - Strength
Getting Back to Normal - Got and Had - Thoughts and Symptoms
Are You Ready for This Method? - Levels of Illness - Letting Go of the Desire to discuss M.E. - Desire
Re-Cap - The Fundamentals in My Methods…
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Chapter 40
Mind and Personal Discipline So ‘The Stop Method’ is about controlling and bringing discipline to where the minds attention lays. Is the mind relaxed and focused on the present or is it running away with thoughts that seem vitally important? Even though these thoughts may get you nothing except a headache and nowhere but overwhelmed and tense. Earlier in this book, the mind was described to be a bit like a ferret. You have to stop it running away, learn to control it and keep it steady. I t hink this is a perfect analogy. You must pull the mind away from checking the body for symptoms, having negative thoughts and creating trouble! An undisciplined mind could be bombarding you with M.E. thoughts like ‘I don’t know how to make this weak feeling stop’ or ‘How is it possible to feel like this, there must be something terribly wrong with me!’ Or simply bombarding you with everyday thoughts like ‘I wish I could decide what I wanted to do with my life,’ or ‘I’m worried about what Mr Smith thinks of me.’ It’s important to remember to not get carried away by thoughts, the thinking brain wants to chase them and wants to engage your attention in them because that’s the job of the thinking brain…to think. But it’s important to tell it to have time off sometimes and to tell it to stop worrying about the past or future. Imagine how productive your mind could be if it could stay focused on the present, how calm you would be and able to deal with things as they come, instead of having an anxious mind that is not settled and calm, because whilst it deals with the present, it’s also concerning itself with other problems. The thinking mind often doesn’t know when to shut up and it can cause real physical problems (just look at M.E.!) and really hold us back if it wants to. It may help to look at some common problems like being unable to sleep, where the thinking mind causes trouble and ‘The Stop Method’ style mind discipline can also be helpful…
Sleep Problems I remember reading an advert for ‘Nytol,’ in the paper once. It went something like this: You can’t sleep, so you worry that you can’t sleep. So you can’t sleep.
So the awareness and concern about the sleep problem causes the sleep problem. Catch 22, just like M.E. For some reason, a person just can’t seem to drift off. They become aware that they can’t sleep and then find it hard to stop being aware of that. Then as soon as they do start to drift off a little they realise ‘Oh, I’m falling asleep, great!’ But that very thought wakes them up again! This will happen with your symptoms too, you’ll suddenly realise that a symptom has disappeared for a bit, then that realisation will make it spring back as your attention is drawn to it once more. This shouldn’t dishearten you. It is natural and you just need to be persistent. It’s j ust like when you’re attention gets drawn to a loud noise, your attention gets drawn to your symptoms (or sudden lack of them). You need to pull your attention away. You may feel this will be impossible as it’s pretty hard to ignore M.E. when it can seem as though it’s completely smothering you, but it is possible by using distraction and ‘The Stop Method.’ It is over-activity of the mind whereby the brain has not slowed down enough that keeps people from sleeping. (If it’s not pain that is). A sleeping tablet relaxes the mind and stops it from
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racing. If we stop thoughts, this will have the same effect. But sometimes thoughts can seem vitally important. It can seem that if you don’t think about a certain thing there and then, that it will never get resolved. Actually you’ll get nowhere through staying up all night and thinking about something, you’ll just feel tired the next day and be even less able to cope with the thing you were thinking about. So you have to stop those so called vitally important thoughts which are keeping you up. The ones that matter will still be there in the morning. If you’re worried about forgetting what you were thinking about, write thoughts down so you remember them the next day. In your awake and refreshed state you will be able to see if those thoughts were a waste of time anyway and if you actually needed to be thinking about them or not. Keep a pen and paper by your bed so you can do this. Some people with sleep problems say ‘It’s useless, I just can never get to sleep, I can’t stop thinking about stuff.’ In that statement however, they demonstrate a complete lack of confidence in their ability to get to sleep. If they believe they can’t sleep then they will be worried about it and will thus draw their minds attention to it. Ninety-nine percent of the problem vanishes as soon as a person can start believing they can recover or get to sleep because that’s when the worry goes and relaxation can come. Sleep problems becomes worse when you start asking yourself the question ‘What’s wrong with me?’ By asking this question you start to evaluate yourself and look for a problem and so give the sleep problem MORE attention! More fuel for the insomnia fire. If you have a sleep problem you could try repeating two or thr ee of the following words, relaxed, calm, happy, peaceful, sleepy, content, heavy or whatever words feel right. It’s important that words feel right and you’re not just letting your thinking mind blurt out whatever it believes to be suitable. Repeating the chosen words on every out breath will also help sleep come. Saying the words on the out breath not only induces more focus on the words through having to co-ordinate them with the breath, it also brings attention to the breath. Focusing on the breath helps to calm the mind and is a common technique used in meditation.
Upset Stomach It is also the same with when you have a funny tummy that is not caused by a stomach bug, pregnancy or food intolerance. Sometimes our stomachs can become upset through worr y, perhaps about something we have to do or face. The problem with anxiety stomach upsets is that you worry about them and so increase the anxiety which makes the stomach knot up even more as you grow tenser. Tension causes pain and upset in the body. Again it is confidence that you need, confidence in knowing that the stomach upset is only caused by anxiety. You can take away anxiety by comforting yourself, telling yourself it’s ok and by believing it’s ok.
Mind Discipline With M.E. Recovering from any severe illness is extremely renewing and can give you a new lease for life. You feel like you’ve achieved something amazing and getting your life back is amazing. But such amazing things don’t happen without discipline. It’s extremely important to understand the kind of discipline you’ll need to have if ‘The Stop Method’ is going to work. Every single M.E. based thought must be stopped. Every single one. The mind must be allowed to forget about M.E. If you let one thought seep through, if you neglect to stop it on the first syllable, then your recovery will drag on and take longer.
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In order to see more clearly how your thoughts affect the amygdala, we can imagine a drama whereby the amygdala play one character and your thoughts play another… Your thoughts: Right, I’m off to meet Jane. I feel a little weak; hope I can handle this. Your amygdala: What’s that? Feeling weak? Why! Your thoughts: Oh I feel so rubbish, why do I feel so weak? I’ve slept enough; I’ve eaten. Your amygdala: You must be terribly ill then! You’d better get into bed. Your thoughts: Whoa, now I feel tired. Maybe I’m allergic to what I had for breakfast. I don’t know…but I eat that all the time…but I could be...did it have this effect on me before? Your amygdala: What do you mean it has a bad effect on you? Why did you eat it then, Let me see if I can get you to throw up and get it out of your system. And we’d better keep a close eye on what you eat from now on. You could be allergic to anything…anything! Your thoughts: Best cancel meeting Jane, I feel sick and my body fees like it could melt through the floor. I wouldn’t even make it down the street. Your amygdala: You can’t walk down the street…best make sure you never do that then, don’t want you to hurt yourself. Go to bed, be safe. Always remember that you have control, because you do. How can thoughts occur unless you allow them to? It’s your mind and if it feels like you’re not in control of it then you must take control. Sure it may take a lot of determination and vigilance from you, you can’t let your guard down for a second, but to be free from M.E. will make it worthwhile. Every reminder of M.E. must be removed from your life. If not, the amygdala will say, ‘hey the reason I have that in my life is because of M.E…Oh no, I have M.E!…panic stations! I’d better not allow you to walk anywhere or you might run out of energy!’ Don’t give up saying stop and applying the method. Expect to be saying stop to thoughts, negative feelings and symptoms constantly to begin with. And I mean constantly.
Keeping Your Spirits Up The problem you have of course is that the amygdala has some very powerful ways of making you think that it’s right. The sensations it triggers are very real, but you have to stand up to them and say enough is enough. This is when your strength and willpower really come into play. Think of all the people who have fought in battles over the centuries. Soldiers can go through such a tough and unimaginable time that it can seem unbelievable that they didn’t just give up and allow themselves to be shot. But there are things that keeps people going in such tough times and that is spirit, a belief in what they are doing and a hope that they will one day be back with their loved ones. If they give up on their spirit, beliefs and hope, they will not have the will to keep going and avoid being shot or captured. So they must keep their spirit, beliefs and hope going. With so much against them this can be hard, but it is what they must do. I mention this because recovering from M.E. can feel a bit l ike a battle, like there’s an internal war going on between you and the M.E. and you too will have to keep your spirit, beliefs and hope going.
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In the same way that you’d lose a battle through lying down and giving up, if you allow yourself to give into all the fear and doubt that M.E. brings, you might relapse. Giving up and thinking it’s all hopeless and unbeatable will not get you anywhere. Step above it all, as real as M.E. may seem, it’s all a farce spurred on by fear. Don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes. Don’t budge an inch. You have to be strong from your heart and not give into the M.E. thoughts coming from your inconsiderate mind. Instead you must get in touch with your true self and let that voice guide you with compassion. Your symptoms will generate emotions of fear an they’ll cause you to believe that they are very serious…because they do feel physically very serious! But you must not let yourself think about them or worry about them, ignore them and don’t fall into believing that they are serious or that there is something wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you, it’s just as I’ve explained. The amygdala is on red alert and that is what is real. You have not acted on emotions in the past and that is what is real. You can change your emotional energy by what you think, that is true. You can calm your amygdala by gently telling it that everything’s ok, and by talking to yourself with compassion from your heart. Get in touch with yourself again and stop letting your head rule your heart, you are stronger than that. With M.E., it’s a bit like having an annoying sidekick following you around saying, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, that’ll make you ill…oh, no, you can’t go there, too many people.’ And you’ve been listening to and agreeing with them all this time. But now you can just tell them to go away, then do what you want to do. Don’t let this annoying sidekick come back, don’t listen to them, not even for a moment. If you give them any attention at all, any at all, they won’t understand that they’re not wanted. Once they learn that you’re changing your ways and not listening to them anymore, they will go.
A Doorway When using ‘The Stop Method,’ start with a sensation and first work on trying to bring that sensation down a bit. So if you feel like you’re whole body is constantly rocking on a boat, try to make the boat feeling less. Or if you feel a pain in your leg or if you feel weak, try to make that less. What you’re looking for at first is basically a change for the better in symptom severity. This will show you that what you are doing with ‘The Stop Method’ works. Then you can carry on using ‘The Stop Method’ and get free of the symptom completely. When you start you may only notice a change in symptom severity for a moment at first, but you should view that moment as a doorway opening, a doorway allowing you to access the loop that you’re brain has been stuck on. Once that doorway opens, you can persist with it further to open it fully and gain control over your symptoms.
Change Will Come With Persistence When starting ‘The Stop Method,’ you will find yourself saying ‘Stop,’ continuously throughout the first and second day. You’ll be saying stop to such an extent that you may feel it’s ridiculous, but don’t give up because it’s not ridiculous and it makes sense. You really, really do need to be persistent! What may happen at first is that you feel no change in symptom level for a little while, maybe a few minutes, an hour or a few hours if you have trouble distracting your mind from the M.E. But you must stick to the method, keep telling the thoughts and symptoms to stop and then distract yourself. Soon you will have a little breakthrough whereby a symptom will go away. This may only be for a moment at first and you will probably be so shocked that your attention turns right back to the symptom again, but that’s ok, j ust keep on with the method and soon that little moment in which the symptom went away will become longer and longer. If done
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correctly the methods in this book should take effect in a matter of days. The majority of effort from you will come in those first two days when you must keep your mind away from M.E. completely and be very strict at telling your amygdala to stop overreacting. Of course this same rule applies for the next day and the next few weeks, but it will all get much easier the more you do it. If you don’t do ‘The Stop Method’ properly and with total dedication, it will take longer to recover or notice a breakthrough because every M.E. reminder your amygdala gets and every reason it gets to think there’s danger will bring you back. And if you fall back towards M.E. and allow yourself to think you’re ill again, well you will be. To think you’re ill again is an M.E. thought that you must stop.
Down to You The methods in this book depend on you using them properly. They depend on you being honest with yourself. It’s no use spending half the day wallowing in M.E. thought or beating yourself up over something and then using ‘The Stop Method’ for the rest of the day, it doesn’t work like that. You have to use ‘The Stop Method’ and block out M.E. and negative thought patterns from your life totally. If you want new memories to form in your mind for your amygdala to relate to you have to be determined and work for those memories. You have to gain them by not worrying about how you will feel later, by allowing yourself to do things and enjoy them without M.E. thoughts going ‘Oh, be careful…you’ll make yourself tired!’ You must have the strength and belief to tell such thoughts to shut up. Once you’ve accomplished doing something you couldn’t previously do, you will have created a new memory that you can do it. It’s up to the amygdala to go with that new memory when you next come to do the activity. The amygdala may still need some persuasion and reassurance from you, but the realisation that you are safe to do that activity will have begun and it can then become permanent. It is up to you to apply the methods in your mind, it is a personal journey of recovery and nobody else can do it for you. But don’t be afraid to ask for help and be sure to surround yourself with supportive people who believe in what you’re doing. It’s no good if they support you but think that these methods are complete rubbish, because that may m ake you doubt these methods. You need to feel one hundred percent positive about your recovery.
Strength In this tarot card for ‘Strength,’ a lady is shown confidently closing the mouth of the lion. The card shows she has the spiritual strength to overcome any fear of the lion and demonstrates that spiritual or personal strength can overcome animal responses. The animalistic nature of the amygdala, its animalistic way of protecting you through keeping you scared can be overcome through your own personal strength. Call it your spiritual strength, willpower, call it what you will. It is your persistence, ability to be internally strong and overcome instinctual urges, your ability to calm your mind through remaining calm and not allowing the amygdala to fool you, it is your ability to develop selfawareness and recognise which thoughts are M.E. thoughts or negative thoughts and become aware of following your ‘gut’ feeling, it is your desire to begin to care about your emotional energy and act on it in the future, that will get you better. Currently you may think you care about yourself, but are you sure? Do you let your thoughts beat you up? Are you really compassionate in the manner that you talk to yourself?
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Getting Back to Normal Like a person who may have had a shock or been though a traumatic time, you should remember that the amygdala may still be a little sensitive, so when something occurs to question your safety, it’s quite probable that the amygdala will jump on top of it and start sending out the red alert signals again. It may over-compensate and give you a twinge of a symptom. In this case, just remember to keep your head and calmly tell your amygdala that it’s ok. With M.E., when you experience an ache or sensation the natural thing has always been to blame it on M.E. But as you use ‘The Stop Method’ and start to recover, you will have to stop putting things down to M.E. To say that you have an ache, problem or sensation because you have M.E., is to say that you still have M.E. and that goes against ‘The Stop Method’. The idea is to put M.E. behind you and by allowing your mind to forget about it so that your amygdala can relax. If you blame a headache on M.E., you will be having an M.E. thought and encouraging the amygdala to panic. You will have to get used to feeling tired as a normal person does and having the odd ache as a healthy person might without panicking that it’s M.E. You can use ‘The Stop Method’ to block those panicky thoughts. You’ll also have to get used to having a bit if a cold without panicking that it’s the dreaded M.E. fluey symptom. And you should remember that everyone is absent-minded sometimes and can mix their words up, so don’t panic if you do, it’s all part of being human. When you get a headache or something like that, just see it as a headache; it doesn’t have to be anything more. When you start believing you no longer have M.E., the amygdala will think the same and relax.
Got and Had Once you begin to feel better you may still have the odd symptom or bad moment. Don’t ever slip back to thinking you’ve got M.E. – you had M.E., even if you feel a bit funny, look upon it as a mistake made by your amygdala, use the methods in this book and correct it. Do not dwell on these mistakes.
Thoughts and Symptoms Your thoughts and symptoms are very closely connected. Sometimes a s ymptom may flare up and you’ll think, ‘Hang on, why’s that happening?’ and you may get lost in worrying about it, but you must not worry about it, treat the worrying thoughts and symptoms equally – they are simply something you don’t need to have in your life. It i s hard for your brain to forget completely how to do things, so it’s very natural for the odd M.E. symptom to occasionally be triggered, a bit like ‘deja vu’ or having a flashback. Just disregard it, it doesn’t mean you’re getting ill again. Sometimes however, it may be obvious as to why a symptom has flared up. For example I remember meeting a friend who was very ill and pale looking. When I first saw them I felt numb all over and had the old M.E. sensation of feeling as though I wasn’t there. For a moment I panicked thinking that my M.E. was coming back, but then I thought to m yself, ‘ No, hang on, it’s just because I’ve seen this very ill person and that’s awoken a memory of when I was ill, that’s all. I’m fine so please stop giving me these silly symptoms.’ I told myself a few times that I was fine and after about 20 seconds I was and I never experienced those symptoms again. So it is just l ike
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‘déjà vu.’ Don’t let symptoms fool you. A symptom will only flare up because your brain still holds a vague memory of it, not because there is something wrong with you. I can remember sitting in a pub with some friends when I was pretty much recovered from M.E. I was drinking a glass of lemonade and I noticed that it didn’t taste right. My friend tried it and agreed that there was something wrong with it. Immediately I began to feel weak and as though I was fading away. Before my amygdala got too far in it’s overreaction I realized what I had thought to contribute to the weakness sensation. I had thought that the lemonade could be chemically poisoned from cleaning fluid and that it might make me ill again. I told myself that that was a really dumb and silly thing to think and I told my amygdala to stop over reacting. After some gentle reassurance the symptom completely vanished. Incidentally the lemonade dispenser had just run out of mix and that’s why it tasted funny. Some days you’ll wake up and get those little M.E. sensations, perhaps a bit weak or something, but don’t let it ruin your day. Don’t start thinking that perhaps ‘The Stop Method’ isn’t strong enough to work and that it will take you a long time to recover. If you do, it will take longer to get better. The thing about the methods in this book is that they can’t hurt you. They don’t involve taking medicine and they do not involve forcing yourself to do things you don’t feel able to do. You only achieve doing things that you’ve previously been unable to when you block out the M.E. thoughts, listen to your ‘gut’ feeling and go with what your gut feeling feels comfortable with. So you can try it, if you allow yourself to think ‘Oh no, I’ve walked this far and now have to walk back,’ then you’re panicking and it’s your own fault if your symptoms kick in and prevent you from walking back. But remember – even if a panicky thought does creep in and catch you off guard, you can still tell it it’s wrong. You can tell it to stop and you can focus your mind on an opposing positive word or on a distraction. You can distract yourself with anything to calm the fear. I remember walking down the street and my legs went numb. Instead of starting to think about where I could sit down and who I could call to help me, I carried on walking and began repeating the words ‘solid, calm’ and ‘stable,’ over and over in my mind. I switched between doing this and counting the windows in the buildings across the street and then I began thinking about the people I saw and what kind of job they might do or whether they had a brother or sister. I occupied my mind with anything, but I didn’t let it become emotional and I didn’t allow myself to think about my problems. I didn’t started thinking ‘Oh I bet that woman has a really good job, she’s dressed well, I could never get a job and afford nice clothes because I’m too ill!’ That would have been very self-destructive! Comparing is another M.E. thought trap that we can fall into, so be aware of it! ‘The Stop Method’ is simple; you don’t have to concern yourself with using it in a precise order. It’s not the case that you must say ‘ stop’ for one minute and then use opposing positive word for five minutes and then distract yourself for fifteen mi nutes, you just go with what you feel you need to. Switch between the techniques and use whichever one suits you best at the time. But, above all, use the techniques properly and truly. Don’t cheat yourself and let the odd thought creep in. Don’t say the opposing positive words too quickly and let you thinking mind reel them off. Take you time, speak from your heart and tune into your emotions. If you feel like your thinking mind is rushing you, stop what you’re doing and take ten deep breaths. Stop every single thought. Become annoying addicted to being positive!
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Chapter 42
Are You Ready? I wrote this book to help people who are ready to recover from M.E. and CFS. In order to be ready you must agree with and understand what I have written in this section. Please don’t criticise my work if it is not for you. Not everyone is open to these ideas and that’s fine, it’s a personal choice. I know these methods work and I know that The Lighting Process and The Gupta Programme are also successful and are also aimed at re-training the amygdala. Even though I don’t know what The Lighting Process and The Gupta Programme teach, I’m sure they teach simple methods as I do, because re-training the amygdala is not complicated. As I said a moment ago (and I’ll repeat it because it’s important!) ‘The Stop Method’ is simple. Don’t make it complicated and don’t allow yourself to think there must be more to it than there is. To think there’s more to the method or there’s something you’re missing would be an M.E. thought. This methods strength is in its simplicity. Remember, the amygdala will not respond to long complicated rationalizing thoughts. The amygdala is instinctual. You must be stern and quick. Stop, Thank you. The only difficulty in using ‘The Stop Method’ lies in maintaining and showing an unwavering confidence in the method. The principles behind how ‘The Stop Method’ works are easy to understand, so now you just need to apply commitment and discipline to put it into practice. Commitment and discipline shouldn’t be too hard to muster as you’ve got so much to gain.
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You are ready to use The Stop Method if… You can put one hundred percent into saying stop to every single thought and symptom You accept that changes must be made so that you no longer suppress emotions in the future You accept that the body and mind do strongly affect each other You accept that by controlling the way you think you can calm the amygdala You accept that M.E. symptoms are caused by very strong emotional energy And it will not work very well or at all if… You consider that M.E. could be to do with something else and not the amygdala You are cynical about it or feel it could never work You do not follow it completely and with total commitment You allow yourself to let some M.E. thoughts occur or let yourself think about M.E. and negative things You hold onto old ideas about M.E. and what it is You cannot stop analysing your illness and simply let it go
It’s fine to be unsure of these methods at first, they are new, but you must not be totally against them, there must be some belief in you that they can work. If you are completely against them, they stand no chance of being successful. If you are a natural cynic who questions and analyses the validity of things, then perhaps you are analysing the validity of the methods in this book. As I’ve mentioned previously however, the thinking analysing mind is not that useful when it comes to dealing with emotional issues, so really it’s not that good to analyse these methods because they are all about dealing with emotional energy!
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‘The Stop Method’ requires you to have belief and confidence because the amygdala requires you to have belief and confidence. Without belief, confidence and trust in yourself and the method, the amygdala will not be convinced that it doesn’t need to trigger your symptoms. It takes belief and confidence to rise above the sensations and emotions you feel and identify them as overreactions from the amygdala. The amygdala must feel that it can trust you when you ask it to stop and try to calm it. Just how the boy trusted in his mother when she told him that monsters don’t exist in chapter sixteen, you can’t lie to your amygdala, it is your emotional control centre. If the boy had felt that his mother was lying when she said monster don’t exist, he would have remained scared of them. If the amygdala senses you are lying, if it senses a lack of confidence or pessimism in your feelings for ‘The Stop Method,’ it will remain scared and on red alert. It’s as though you have to rebuild your confidence, but you have little foundation to base it on because all of your recent experiences have been confidence destroying, they are memories of being ill or unable to cope with something. So you must start from scratch, you have to break through the lack of confidence created by those memories and do what feels good for you, become addicted to making yourself happy and enjoying life without worrying that what you’re doing is a waste of time or not important. Forget the past and live for the moment. The more convinced and confident you are in your ability to recover with ‘The Stop Method’ the more quickly your amygdala will be persuaded that it can calm down and thus the swifter your recovery will be. You should believe that the body and mind are very closely linked and can affect each other very strongly. If you are totally against this body-mind concept, them perhaps you shouldn’t have read this book.
Levels of Illness If you’re very ill with M.E., you might think that these techniques will not work for you, perhaps because they are simple, but you mustn’t think like that. These techniques will work for you no matter how ill you are. Levels of illness make no difference because the root problem is still the amygdala and no matter what level of alert it’s on, it can still be re-educated very quickly. Our brains are amazing and you should not doubt what they are capable of.
Letting Go of the Desire to discuss M.E. Another obstacle people have is that being ill can be such an adventure, the symptoms you get from M.E. can be so surreal and mind-boggling that you can’t get M.E. out of your mind, you feel you need to talk about it even though you’ll often feel nobody can understand. Of course it’s healthy to talk about it to some degree, it helps tremendously to share problems. But now is the time to get better, so you should stop talking about it because you need to put that part of your life behind you. If you talk about it, you aren’t letting it go and allowing the M.E. based emotional memories to dissolve, you aren’t helping yourself to get better. You must be so strict for your brain to forget M.E. You must completely ban M.E. from your life and thoughts, at least until you are completely free of it and your amygdala no longer panics when it receives information related to it.
Desire This may sound obvious but the desire to get better is very important when using the methods in this book. If you do not want to be well, you will find it hard to recover because you will have no willpower and willpower and dedication are essential to ‘The Stop Method.’ It may sound silly to suggest that a person may not want to recover from M.E., but the thought of living a full life can often seem scary to someone who hasn’t for some ti me. The idea of having to leave the smaller world that M.E. has forced you to create and be part o f a bigger community again with
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work, a social life and responsibilities can seem daunting. At least when you’re ill you have an excuse to avoid having to deal with life, there’s a reason for you to not place pressure on yourself and take on responsibilities or just do the everyday things that most people do. And this comment isn’t meant in a derogatory or condescending way at all, it’s just that when you have M.E., the thought of taking on a small job or having to go out with friends and act lively can be very frightening and an M.E. sufferer may feel that they just won’t be able to keep up. Maybe you feel that if you had your life back, it would be like you were always struggling to catch up, as though your life were a chase whereby you’ll never reach the finish line for a rest. But when you get better you do not have to take on things that you don’t want to, you do not have to lead your life in a rush and you do not have to prove anything. When you get better, you should start living your life for you, to make you happy, that is what’s important. How you make yourself happy...whether you work in a supermarket or are the manager of a big charity, whether you’re a milkman or an astronaut, it doesn’t matter one ounce. Self satisfaction comes from within. If there is something you really want to do you will be able to do it without effort. If there is nothing in particular (in work) that you really want to do, then don’t pressure yourself into a job you don’t like, just be happy, enjoy your friends and family, enjoy people around you, enjoy your own hobbies and talents and don’t make such a big deal out of what you think you should be. Being happy is all you should be. Ask yourself if you can swallow all of those concerns about being able to cope with a normal life again and just bite the bullet and trust in you ability to deal with life as it comes? It’s all about learning to trust your judgement again as you live life moment to moment. If you concern yourself with the future and let yourself worry that you won’t be able to cope, then you are not living in the present moment right now. You are living an M.E. lifestyle whereby your thoughts hold you back because they are always about the past of future.
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Chapter 43
Re-Cap Recovery fundamentally involves re-educating the amygdala. The amygdala is the fight or flight response unit at the centre of the emotional brain (limbic system) and it is responsible for triggering core emotions like fear and anger. These core emotions are used at a basic survival level. For example when looking down from a high-rise window you feel a rush of fear even though you know there’s no danger. So when you go to walk down the street and can’t because you are paralysed with fear of having M.E., the amygdala is triggering fear to stop you walking down the street because it thinks walking down the street will pose a threat to you. It is so panicky that this is how it’s reacting to the simplest of things. So how do you re-educate the amygdala? Well you have to bring it out of the state of alert that it’s in and get it to relax and calm down. You can do that through taking away the things that cause it to panic. You t ake away the thoughts about M.E. by stopping them as soon as you feel you’re about to think them and you can take away the memories by completely blocking any reference to M.E. from your life. So by not talking about it, researching it or dwelling on your symptoms, you can instead let yourself be distracted and so allow your brain to literally forget M.E. Once you have achieved this, you can begin calming the amygdala and getting it back to normal.
The Fundamentals in My Methods… •
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Say stop to symptoms and M.E. thoughts then remove your attention from those symptoms or thoughts by immediately distracting yourself. Stop negative thoughts and replace them with compassionate and positive thoughts. Tell negative emotions of doubt, fear, lack of confidence or general feelings of doom to stop. Remove every single M.E. reminder from your life. Stop researching about M.E. and using support groups, get completely away from it. Tell those around you not to talk about M.E. and to talk to you as if you are healthy Confront your FEAR. Meditate and take time to relax. Laugh and smile. ☺ Stretch and massage your neck and shoulders to relieve tension. Don’t allow yourself to be pressured into doing things you don’t want to. Put yourself first and realise that being happy is more important than anything else. Have fun, get out of the house, dance, sing, make yourself feel happy, love yourself.
It may feel like you’re jeopardising your health by going against what your survival instincts are telling you. But you must have faith in yourself and you must be strong. The principles behind these methods are so simple and they do work because M.E. and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are caused by disturbances in emotional energy; they are not like physical cuts and wounds. These methods work because of our ability to override the amygdala through using the thinking brain.
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Before closing this book, let’s just make sure we’ve abolished the worst M.E. thought of all, which is: ‘If I do this now, I’ll be tired later and really pay for it.’ No doctor can explain this strange phenomenon that happens with M.E; this is because it is only the thought that creates the problem. Use the methods in this book, do things that you haven’t done for ages and don’t be scared of doing them. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank
(Or their own life.) Start using these methods now, put M.E. behind you.
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