I’ve been hiding something from you…
For my whole life.
I’ve been pretending to be normal… Pushing myself to succeed… Giving everything I have to achieve something…
Yet no matter what I do, how hard I’ve tried, how many times I’ve gotten back up, it just wasn’t fucking good enough. In the past. Or so it seemed.
That’s because I believed what people were telling me in the past...
First rule of communication: How you address someone and the language you use can reinforce – or install – negative programming or positive programming. That’s your choice.
Should you choose positive, avoid labels. Notice how I didn’t say “sufferer” in the title? I said people. Because we’re all people. Avoid language of personification or identification, like “you have” or “you are” with an associated condition, symptoms, and medical diagnoses.
The best way to help someone is to listen to them. Honestly listen. With no attachment to their story (even when it involves you). And no expectation of finding solutions or suggesting what they can do to fix it.
I’m a natural “fixer.” That’s a tough one for me, I admit. Only until I was on the other side of the equation did I finally get it. I can’t tell you how many friends I have that have told me that the best thing is to move my body. Exercise. Yoga. Fitness gurus, coaches, friends, family, all tell me the same damn thing.
And I never argued it… Because that’s all I wanted in the first place – to simply move without pain, and without my energy crashing again. Doesn’t it just make sense that someone who has trouble doing what everyone else considers normal would also want to do the things they physically can’t? So you’re just dangling an unobtainable goal in front of them to make them move? Who’s that really making feel better, them or you?
I’m confident that in this day and age, most of us would know better than to give advice to someone experiencing clinical depression that they “just need to get over it and be happy,” or “it’s all just in your head.” What if we treated more of life with compassion instead of forcing our answers onto others to make ourselves feel better?
You are probably getting the idea that I never spoke up about this because of how people would react. How I would be labeled. This is indeed the case. I just kept on going as best as I could and learned to keep my mouth shut. This led to sidetracking myself, my feelings, and my own growth. I thought helping others would help, and it has. But I was doing that at the expense of myself. And the interesting thing is, that’s common among many of us. And our friends. Our families. Even our children.
This is why I’m speaking up now. Chronic fatigue is a variety of symptoms, neurological and physical, that affects hundreds of thousands. But there’s no known cause or cure. It’s treated as a mental disorder. People have lost everything for speaking up about it. And our medical approach to chronic fatigue hasn’t really changed over time.
But our approach can change.
It starts with acceptance.
Accept that we’re all differently abled. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for all. We are each different, perfect in our own ways, and in such a way that is complementary to each other, our communities, and humanity as a whole.
A huge part of our social conditioning involves the need to homogenize to fit in. So people want to be like others. This creates a false separation of self to conform to an identity that is not your own. False separation creates the illusion now of different “sides.” Different versions of you. You put this self forward… But where’s the real you go then?
The answer for me: in hiding.
That’s a perfect recipe for not getting the gifts that are within you. For any emotional pain and trauma, the subconscious stores information for the time when you are ready to process it. When we push it back down, we’re ignoring the part of ourselves reaching out for help. But we may not even know it at the time. Because the emotions keep coming up in similar patterns but in different ways. With different people. In different places. This creates a cycle. The subconscious brings things up for you in all new experiences. Each is a chance to react… or respond differently this time.
This determines the path of sickness or the path of healing.
And if unchecked, emotional pain can lead to physical ailments…
So I say this: Encourage your children to be different. Encourage them to be exactly who they are. Even if you don’t understand. If your friends and family don’t understand. Let your children teach you. Acceptance opens doors to their wellbeing. All of our wellbeing.
When we are accepted, we are safe to express ourselves. That goes for parts of us stored away in our subconscious. In my case, emotions stored away were those of feeling unwanted or unloved. It’s very easy to go somewhere and hide it you feel unwanted. Now, this is a very important discernment for anyone who wishes to speak to me about what I have observed in my body physically and emotionally (or anyone else). The “fixers” give solutions to make it go away… Making it feel unwanted.
Subconsciously, when someone’s giving their best solutions, I’m going back into hiding, and the response you get from me is ’emotionally checked out.’ So that’s how I spent a majority of my life. Checked out.
The solution: Don’t treat symptoms as problems.
The fact is, they were an invited guest. Yes, you read that right. Pain is how the body signals. Whatever it is, it’s there to communicate something. In order to do that, they must first be safe to do so.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life this wasn’t the case. I took in negative programming from my environment resulting in me thinking I can be normal by living a normal life and achieving normal goals. I’m presenting some of this negative programming, and the limiting beliefs associated with it, not as a way to seek solutions, tell someone exactly what to say (because we all understand things differently), or to cast judgment in any way, but to show a general guideline of how our own programming (language) affects us.
Here are 6 ways we can improve our communication with others and ourselves as well.
1. Comparisons. I learned not to compare myself with others the hard way. Because people always compared me to others. “Why can’t you/don’t you want to be more like…?” I was compared to my big brother frequently in gym class and sports. Because he was good at everything. I pretty much sucked at everything. I still enjoyed sports, just not the negativity. I was the smart one. But it wasn’t cool to be smart. So I hid.
Another form of comparison that sounds innocent enough is “it could be worse.” It’s an attempt to stop someone from speaking up about their own experience in lieu of another’s that is apparently more severe. This will silence someone instantly after however much time and energy it took them to work up the courage to say something. And it has made exactly zero people feel better to date.
2. Encourage others. There’s positives and negative ways to encourage. Positive encouragement actually encourages. That’s how you know the difference.
Negative encouragement, on the other hand, will have the opposite effect and discourage people. Sure they might put up the illusion of conforming to your standards. But they’re doing so at the expense of themselves. In my case, that was just to make them think that their approach worked so they’d leave me alone. Because I felt singled out and picked on.
Negative encouragement is often done without knowledge of its harmful effects. People have to justify it to themselves sometimes. That’s a sign. “Tough love” isn’t love, it’s a projection of ones own internal struggle in an attempt to help “save” someone else from going through what they did. Dane thing with ‘protection.’
Pressuring me to do better constantly led to me feeling not good enough. When it didn’t work, the pressure increased. So I hid…
Even the innocent-sounding “I think you could do better if you’d just apply yourself more” line couldn’t have been debilitating for my growth at the time. Because I was trying. Goddammit I was! This reinforced feelings of not good enough and not fitting in. And took me down the rabbit hole of being singled out and picked on. It wasn’t bullying. Although, it can have a similar effect. Because this can reinforce beliefs of ‘not good enough.’ Even when you know you are good enough, imposter syndrome can show up as a result (feeling like I don’t deserve my successes).
3. Don’t judge or shame. I grew up in the south, and there wasn’t anywhere to hide from peoples’ judgments. Differences between people left misunderstood result in judgment. RTA. So being judged in and of itself isn’t as bad as doing the judging, in terms of what it’s going to your mental health. But it does program you. That’s where shame shows up.
One of the things I hid: I didn’t want people to think I’m smart. Because education was discriminated against by many. I was even told by a very close friend, when I began studying geology in college, that I was going to Hell for learning the history of planet Earth. So my entire profession became something I couldn’t talk about with everyone. It’s no wonder I moved away as fast as I could! Avoidance and self isolation were my answers to the challenges posed at the time.
4. Don’t feel sorry. Nothing makes someone feel worse about themselves than feeling sorry for them. It belittles. So don’t over apologize. It’s not your fault. Everybody goes through their own unique experience of life, and that’s what allows them to code how they understand and respond to the energy of their environment. That environment is just as unique to them as your environment is to you.
Acceptance goes infinitely farther than sorrow. By now you’re probably noticing how these hacks are shifting the vibration within your own language patterns, your internal belief systems, and your emotions. Everybody is perfect as they are, each with their own steps to walk. You wouldn’t pull the rug out from under them with pity, would you? So don’t apologize for their pain.
5. Recognize other associated symptoms and behaviors. Having a few extra pounds was a way it showed up for me throughout my whole life. This was a physical expression that I was storing energy in my body out of fear of running out of energy. And being even slightly fat as a kid was a big reason I was bullied a lot.
Ways to sequester more energy showed up later in life through addictions. Sugar. Caffeine. And ways to subdue chronic pain included alcohol addiction and overconsumption. I didn’t know it at the time, but my body was just dealing with this signaling of information in only the ways it knew best at the time. Not an excuse for drinking. But there is an underlying mechanism.
Having addictions – and the consequences with them – caused trouble in life. And with that, punishment. Things are too often punished when they could just be treated. Punishment meant I’d hide my behavior to avoid getting in trouble. Or worse, it would embolden me to get in trouble when I’m punished for what I didn’t even do. Every time my big brother got in trouble, so did I. What message was that sending to my cells? Not good enough. So what happened to the messages? Back into hiding…
Instead of punishing people for their addictions, what if we could tune into and listen to what their body’s really saying? That takes recognizing that there’s more than what’s just showing up in the surface of someone’s behaviors.
6. Be genuinely grateful. Gratitude grows far and beyond any one person’s limitations moreso than any amount of pressuring can do. Our society does tend to encourage pressuring people to “do better.” The problem is we think that it works. Until we become aware… Pressuring someone is like hammering a square peg into the round round hole. It may take some “rounding off the edges” to fit, and that gives us all an invitation to ask, where does the rest of me go? 🤔
Because that is where you find this ancient encoded information within you… Your secrets… Your gifts.
In this universe, everything is information. The energy of your environment is a field of ever-present energy. Information precedes all other forms of matter and translates directly to energy. So every subconscious program you have is first the machine code (information) then the emotional response on the timeline (energy) before it becomes expressed as something physical.
The language you speak becomes the energy someone else takes in.
That’s why I’ve been careful with my own self talk. I don’t label myself. I don’t say “I have” or “I am” this. I don’t judge myself or compare myself to others. Everybody does the best they can with the resources they have at the time. Being able to speak up about this wouldn’t have been possible for me without first investing in myself to find these buried treasures within. I’ve done extensive work for transformation using neurolinguistic programming and modalities of self healing. It was a crucial step in my journey. And interestingly, a chance for people to voice their disapproval of “self help” methods. Support would have been the higher choice.
That’s why we change. We innately find the people in our lives that support us, and we support them. And I am so grateful for everyone in my support network!
Without linguistic work, I don’t think I would have recognized that chronic pain and chronic fatigue had the emotional component of ‘unwanted.’ I probably would have just been like everyone else, taking pills to make it go away. Basically, keep ‘unwanting’ it. Now I’ve done the emotional work and released it. What’s left is a treatable physical condition.
And I may have just stumbled upon something huge for the field of study of chronic conditions…
Traditionally, CFS/ME is not considered to have a physical cause. Well, I just found a possible cause in my case, and it’s testable. This gives me confidence to say that chronic fatigue isn’t just in people’s heads. It’s real, it affects hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s both testable and treatable.
I happened to receive this gift in the form of a bad reaction to a vaccine. The booster did exactly what it was supposed to do – trigger my immune system. I was affected strongly because my immune system is already working in overdrive, as indicated by recent testing for rheumatoid factor. I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis. But the symptoms I’ve observed in my body for decades have felt like my body attacks itself, depleting my energy, and causing pain. Well after the RF+ tests, the vaccine gave me confirmation that my immune system unchecked is what’s caused this chain reaction effect in my body. It started emotionally. But I didn’t get it right away. And so it grew…
And like we said earlier, this was an invited guest. The immune system is our friend. Its signaling system is key to the body’s communication. Yes, just like how important the language you choose to use is, your body has many ways in which to communicate within. We all know pain is communication. Your body also uses an entire endocrine system to communicate within. And fine-tune your health. So given the time I’ve had on the couch for several days, I researched some topics that really deserve a lot more attention in science…
We all know the immune system responds to threats in the body. The cool thing is how. There’s a cellular and body-wide networked immune system. There’s both a central and non-central command station. Central is the outer sheath of your brain. Which interestingly, doesn’t communicate directly with the brain. It communicates through hormones signaling different parts of the body. So the immune brain works with your brain through interaction of the gut brain for a body-wide messaging system. Yes, you have more than one brain (and more than one level of consciousness).
So I think we can all agree, an immune system’s a good thing to have, right? It serves a good purpose. As does the energy underlying your emotions. Honor it with gratitude. All of it.
The question is, how do we improve our body’s communication in ways like our own language, for more positive growth?
Well, since the endocrine system is regulated by what you take in nutritionally (food), then restoring balance is attainable. To stop the immune system from spiraling out of control, steroids are often prescribed. But to look at the underlying cause, the balance of digestion-related hormones can indicate whether the gut-immune-brain is communicating optimally or not.
In the 1990s, a new hormone was discovered: leptin. It’s known as the obesity hormone. Insulin tells the body to store fat. Leptin balances energy by signaling that you’re full. If there’s not enough of it, you’re always hungry. Or if there’s too much, you can develop resistance to it, like with insulin. Besides just signaling you’re full, this little hormone is also a mediator for the immune system. So it’s a powerful messenger…
The question is, is the message being received?
If there’s no leptin resistance, then the answer is yes. If there’s imbalance, then we can further study how the foods we eat affect our health.
This is why communication is so important. It’s happening as much in you as it is around you. I invite you to experience your own introspection of your language to yourself as well as others. And to recognize that we are all connected.
Our thoughts, words, and actions influence countless others’.
That is either your gift or your damnation to the world around you and within you. It’s your choice.
=D
Ps the message I received from my body today is this: “the healing is happening.” So you see, there’s no need to tell me I just need to exercise more. A new me is emerging…
