Hi
My name is Katie and I am a TMSer (also known as an Unconscious Symptom Creation Addict!).
I'm just waking up again to how pernicious this "special effect" of illness can be!
Here is the stressor: I just got back from England (where I was born - now live in USA for 35 years) where I was dealing with my very difficult family situation. There are 2 people left in my family - no one else except me! My mom is 91 with Alzheimers. And I have an older sister who has hated me since birth, and she is now dying of a one-in-a-million strain of cancer. She may not live long. I went over there even though I had to miss 2 weeks of work and am now facing rent-stress, because I wanted to see if I could help her, have some kind of healing. What actually happened is that I discovered that she is still up to her shenanigans (legal and financial, stuff done to hurt me). Don't want to go into it but it was intensely enraging.
I was also very scared of her, because somehow sis still triggers the feelings I had when I was a child and she was abusing me behind parents' back. I could go on and on.
It was SO extreme when I was there that I found myself having to be present to pretty much every breath I breathed just to survive. I was exhausted, jetlagged, money-stressed, staying in a very uncomfortable place, and so on. But I was more or less ok, physically. I told myself I just couldn't afford to be sick. I needed to get through it and not be sick in England.
I came home and was seemingly fairly ok for a few days - jetlag and tired, but in a pretty good place. Then on Sunday, I was dumped on by a client in a very side-swiping way, similar to sister. All of a sudden, all my old CFS and Fibro symptoms came on. Exhaustion, dizziness, fever, pains, weakness...
To make it worse, I went yesterday to my doc and she said I probably have Lyme's. She mentioned that it is very very prevalent in the county where I live, and especially among people who are healers and sensitive.
I was shocked that she was tossing me the Lyme's diagnosis and tried to bat it back, but I had gone to her for help and she was giving me 20 for free. I was saying "cancel, cancel" inside my mind. Especially confusing since she was also kind of saying it's TMS. I imagine her understanding is that it's both physical and emotional.
And I have to say that such is my understanding too. I am certainly open to physical help, and understand how these things can interweave themselves. The back pain thing is fairly simple, but those of us with the extreme versions of TMS like fibromyalgia (30+ years) need to be practical. There are definitely practices and some nutritional stuff and avoiding certain things that have helped me immensely, on an obvious, one-to-one causal basis, that aren't placebos (most things DON'T work, so I test scientifically).
On another level, it's ALL a placebo, and I can walk on water too - after all Jeez was a man.
I am now embarrassed to say that I spent a little time last night looking around the Internet to read about Lyme's. But I somehow managed to drag my carcass this morning to the TMS sites. Searched for Lyme's and found some great stuff which is waking me up again to this incredibly sneaky phenom of TMS.
What was even more embarrassing was to find that, on the TMSWiki, there are only two "recovery from CFS" success stories, and one of them is from ME, some time ago. Yikes!
Anyway, I don't need advice (about family or which doc to go to or anything). But I realize that I need some support from my enlightened TMS buds. Help!
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
I am not a Lyme-y!
Posted - 12/09/2010 : 07:22:11
