I knew in my gut this class was holding a huge missing piece in my 20 year Lyme healing journey.
I wasn’t sure it was the right time to do it, as it was starting while I was moving. And it cost almost 2 months of income for me. But I knew it would be profound for me. So I did it and am so glad I did.
For most of these 20 years, I kept thinking the “right treatment” would come along for me, so I tried everything, spent everything to get well in those years, including selling my house to pay for treatments. As the years went by, I started to suspect that I needed to change my approach. I knew I had more internal work to do, had been to therapists, unsuccessfully. I didn’t know what else to do. This program showed me how. And why.
I knew, that in addition to feeling sick, I somehow didn’t have the stamina I used to, I was burning out faster and faster in response to less and less stress. It was something I couldn’t really explain to my medical team, but I knew it was a problem. But I didn’t know how to stop “pushing through” to make things work/get things done, despite the burnout feeling. And I thought it was all Lyme.
I also knew I didn’t find it easy to feel things. I numb out and push thru it, I thought that was how everyone did it. I couldn’t “feel” my feelings. With this course, I learned how to “be with myself”. I learned that numbness and not being able to feel is common and normal for someone like me who has been through so much trauma. I learned that it’s essential for me to feel and experience my own anger, my own feelings… and I got a ton of help with learning to be in touch with that part of me and how to let it out.
In the last few years I started to suspect that some of my physical symptoms were not Lyme symptoms, but something else, but I couldn’t figure out what, or how to help myself. Understanding what Functional Freeze looks like (me), what the symptoms of trauma are, and what it means to have a dysregulated nervous system were eye-opening to me. Freeze! Conservation mode! I’m not always exhausted from Lyme, I’m in Conservation freeze! And it’s not a matter of just “changing my mind” to get out of it. That, is a game-changing understanding for me!
This program has a great FB page, and tons of people participated… talking about what they were learning, encouraging each other, from all over the world. It was remarkable to me, after being in varying support groups, to find such camaraderie and care. I have come to the place where I don’t feel alone in this, as I have for most of my life. I feel like I was on the Titanic, saw the iceberg, and this program helped me turn the ship away from a collision and towards connecting with myself on so many levels I didn’t know existed…. and that’s worth everything to me.
