The Counterintuitive Realization That Has Fueled My Recovery

Hint: it has to do with acceptance

Friends,

It’s been a while since I thought about this topic, which speaks to my current level of stability! The first two weeks of January were personally peaceful, thanks to a month and a half off Instagram and getting my news in dribs and drabs from Dave. (It’s not that I don’t know or care about what’s happening in this country, but years of illness have taught me to take things as they come, and do what I can today.)

Last week, I went to acupuncture, did free qigong at the library, and took Sarah Jackson’s monthly class on releasing stress and trauma. The effects compounded and inspired other shifts. I made a conscious decision to start expressing my needs more kindly and directly, and to lean into the good in my life. I established a daily break for rest and embraced it willingly and gratefully.

Then the PMS gremlin arrived and all that went out the window.

The past couple of days, I’ve felt charged with anxiety and frustration. My bedtime has shifted back about four hours, in part because MCAS flares are causing adrenaline dumps when I usually go to sleep, but also because I can’t stop listening to Before We Were Strangers by Renee Carlino. My monkey brain is running absolutely rampant — I had Taylor Swift’s “Honey” playing in my head for HOURS last night.

This morning, I started to get annoyed about feeling annoyed. And not just that — 

Annoyed that my body has a countdown clock going while I make breakfast. Annoyed that every cell in my being is screaming to sit down. Annoyed that I can’t accept a standing hug from Dave and sway with him in the kitchen. Annoyed that my chest feels like it’s being compressed. (For the record, I’m wearing compression socks!)

I sit down to eat but the peanut-buttered toast I savored yesterday is unappetizing. Dave asks me how it is and I tell him as much. I tune out and force it down. I just want to take my meds and try to fix the way I’m feeling. I’m reminded of how things used to be on a daily basis, when I was housebound. I have a lot of lessons from that time, and one materializes to help me through what I’m experiencing today:

There is nothing inherently “good” about feeling good.

Wait, what the heck does that mean? Of course feeling good is good! When I feel good, my mornings are blissful. My relationship feels loving. My life feels precious.

But what if those things could be true regardless of how I feel? What if having a bad day (week, month) is not a barrier to feeling joy, gratitude, and love? Obviously, there are the neurotransmitters, hormones, pain, etc. to contend with. I’m not minimizing any of that. What I’m talking about is the suffering we add on top of it. The suffering that comes from the stories we tell ourselves, like assigning “good” or “bad” to our physical, mental, and emotional states.

This can be a hard pill to swallow after years, or decades of medical gaslighting, but beliefs play a role in recovery. They are not the primary cause of our physical state. They are not the direct cause of our crashes. That is to say, it’s not in our heads. Otherwise, we wouldn’t get hit by barometric pressure, and the weather. We have genetic differences and system imbalances (EDS, POTS, ME/CFS), period.

But beliefs cause the stress and discomfort that lead to coping behaviors, that intensify the imbalance, that leads to the crash.

My beliefs were so damaging that I never stopped to recover from anything — not my disordered eating, not my toxic marriage and divorce, not my years of increasingly heavy alcohol consumption, and definitely not the poor treatment I received not only from others, but myself. Things built and built until it all came crashing down. In healing from severe Long COVID and ME, I had to rewrite my whole system of beliefs. I had to change how I operated in the world, one micro behavior at a time, for years. The pain slowly transmuted into love. And now I get to say the following statements and actually mean them:

• Sickness and disability are not evidence of weakness.

• I’m not a worse person when I feel sick or disabled.

• I’m not a better person when I feel strong or productive.

• I can be grateful for life while grieving what I’ve lost today.

• Love goes both ways — I can receive help instead of giving it.

• I get to decide who has access to me, and when.

If any of these made you cringe or shrink, I would start there.

Regardless of whether we feel sick or well, bad or good, the day is going to happen. We get to choose whether we go with the flow or fight ourselves like hell. Acceptance is how we break the cycle that puts additional stress on our bodies and gets in the way of stabilizing and healing.

I finished drafting this post around 10am. I had a vague awareness that I was working against a self-imposed deadline, to hit send before heading to my second qigong class at 10:30. I considered skipping the class entirely so I wouldn’t have to break my train of thought, and also to avoid stressing my body with the 5-minute drive and 4-minute walk to the depths of the library. Then I thought about the message we send to ourselves when we show up (to safe things, please) regardless of how we feel. I matter. I went in my PJs without brushing my teeth. The teacher remembered me and grabbed me a chair.

There was a children’s class happening on the other side of the wall, and we could hear them singing. I smiled. Over the course of the class, my heart opened, my muscles loosened, my smile widened, and my receptivity to life expanded. When I got home, I gave Dave a long, standing hug.

As I used to say when I was recovering from severe — how I wake up in the morning is just a starting point. I have hope for the rest of today.

post-qigong selfie in front of a pretty wall <3

Wishing you all a bit of acceptance, hope, and joy today.

Hugs,
Lisa