My Description & battle with my CFS - is it Anxious Depression? Is it my nature?
Hello. Thank you for taking the time to visit this thread.
I am creative, intelligent, passionately emotional, talented, intense person who has been struggling with fatigue since childhood. In terms of recognizing, treating and taking seriously the illness I have been my own worst enemy, my ambitious and self-starving nature digging me deeper and deeper into a series of intellectual fixed beliefs, lack of self care, and indeed, unrealistic ideas about my life that have embedded the condition in the most heavily compacted manner possible.
It is only through intensive, private Psycho Therapy with a specialise in M.E./CFS and VERY importantly in my case, Hypno Therapy – and the guidance of a close friend who has very similar symptoms and character traits, that I have been able to make any headway. With typical egocentricity, I grieve for myself; but also use this to acknowledge the appalling and bewildering torture I have been through, which I now believe has it's roots deep in a tortured and self loathing psychological deformity which was a reaction to an untenable childhood relationship with my father.
The most frightening thing about my battle with CFS – a condition that to date my GP's refuse to diagnose me with, despite the description of the illness most eloquently describing my symptoms- (so officially, I assume I'm an Hysteric) is it's Quicksand like nature. The act of trying to do things has become associated with an invasive, crushing, anxious feeling – that embeds me deeper in the sickly enveloping of the brain fog, the flu–like fatigue, and feeling of disconnection from the physical world around me. Deep within me, there is a trapped stick man Screaming vicously into a vacuum. I am best described by R.D. Laings' Schizoid model in the Divided Self. I am depressed, though regard this is as the least of my problems. I am a fighter, and yet cruelly this can be regarded as one of the greatest *causes* of my problems.
I have had to accept enormous humility, and grow more deeply spiritual and loving as a person to move on. I have had to learn to be forgiving, in the most true, rather than “Secular misunderstood version of Christianity” sense – I have made use of New Age practices and disciplines such as Reiki and The Law Of Attraction - and meditation. I have learned that the most potent cause of my illness lies within, and that through meditation, (post Hypno–therapy) I am able to free associate, and the little poisonous nuggets of psychological “untruths” - the ancient self-harming fixed ideas, aspirations, standards, snobberies and self-tortures I have been carrying since childhood or adolescence, float to the surface, can be experienced and let go. After these sessions, I always feel renewed. I go to my bed to meditate when I feel unwell, called there to process these evil self-lies.
My progress has helped me shake off life-long insomnia, to a great extend, though I am still troubled by food intolerances, and interestingly, the worst of which is caffeine – a drug I find life not worth living without. I have at times given up nicotine and alcohol – but caffeine seems impossible. Taking it causes digestive and psychological unrest.
I believe if I am not suffering from medically provable Chronic Fatigue Syndrome then I am suffering from a form of Anxious Depression, the severity of which is great enough that it creates these Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms.
I also speculate that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome IS severe Anxious Depression – but have no evidence or research to substantiate such an idea.
I am very thin. I look unusually youthful for someone my age, and am youthful in both mind and spirit, as though I never really grew up. I am without doubt, the most furiously angry person I know, and if I had been fit, would probably have been a violent man, despite my default gentle nature. I expressed this anger and violence through my work as an artistic person. This work in itself of course became obsessive and so, self harming. This is my pattern.
In relationships I have a tendency to be drawn to cruel, intolerant women - thoguh my most successful relationships have been with wonderful, nurturing, loving women.
I have come here to find how my story, and my progress relates to yours. I wish for this illness to be recognized, and be treated more adequately by the mainstream medical practitioners. If I have the power, I wish that this post will reach out to people like me, as lost as I once was, and those wiser than I who have mastered themselves and this condition and can mentor me further. I wish us all peace, humility, and enlightenment. If you are suffering when you read this, I wish to extend to you my deepest regards and love. Please feel free to acknowledge this post – I would appreciate it very much.
May God, in whatever form that power exists, bless us and help us all.
P.
Last edited by Passius; 04-27-2009 at 09:02 AM.
Reason: I got the size wrong
Re: My Description & battle with my CFS - is it Anxious Depression? Is it my nature?
I have an increasing suspicion that CFS generally affects the same type of person - this is why I went into such detail above - basically, very emotional people - possible evenly emotionaly unstable - certainly the "highly strung" type. Is this possible? I understand I might be shot down, I have done no research - and there must be people here who know a great deal more than I.
Re: My Description & battle with my CFS - is it Anxious Depression? Is it my nature?
hi < * > - as ever, I don't really expect you to give these missives much time, I'm just trying to mark the things I need to talk about, or sort of notch my progress.
it's really different - I'm living a really sedentry life, and I realize that while it seemed to have a purpose, all that "being busy" was just me making myself as miserable as I possibly could while I was "ill". I wanted to do those things, I got a lot out of it, and I was terrified of "doing nothing" - interestingly - but now I am "doing nothing" I realize that I'm not READY to go out and do things. My ability to handle the complex issues of personal relationships that I get into with people like, say, < * > and < * > at the pub, is no where near what it needs to be, and this is entirely due to the state I am in.
I'm not "clear" enough.
but then I realize - nobody else is clear either! They may not have "my" issues, but they have their own, and they're all roling around like mud wrestlers in the clay pit, desperatly trying to get it togeher to stand up, and keep slipping over, desperately lashing out or grabbing onto others as they try to get up, bringing them down with them. everybody wants to be superior, everybody feels desperately afraid that they are not important - or at last, those fears, those insecurities lie at best dormant within them, and can be tripped at a moments notice, triggering unwaranted defrensivness and aggression This is what ALL people are like, except of course me, who is already superior and wise and - oh perhaps not...
Well....... not ALL people are like that. Not at all. JUST THE ONES I AM ATTRACTING TO ME!!!!
as for me - what I really think is - I'm just starting to get my head out of the bushes.... I'm starting to get a new kind of sobrtiety...I'm not going back into life, at the moment, because I know I don't feel secure, or whole, or IN TOUCH with who I am. (yes, thas the best way of putting it).
I used to throw myself into life because there was no indication that things were ever going to change anyway. I thought it would change, if it ever changed, through pushing through MORE.
But you just push yourself deeper into the darkest corner of your prison cell, embedding, putting up with ambivalent motives within yourself and others....
What I'm really saying is - I've never felt this breeze of self - reliance before... this feeling of it beign down to me what happens... this couldn't have happened any sooner because I have had to clear so much. I feel like it's my responsiblity t look after me, no one else wil do it. I also feel I shoudl avoid "romantic" personal relationships until I've got this sorted out (although I worry about "missing out" <for god's sake!> ) until I get this sorted out. when I look round the house, and I see my untidiness, I now think that no one should be introduced to me like this. that it is wrong for me to think it will "work itself out" once I am loved and/or loving. I realize *I* have to figure it out. I belong to me, and I have to *be* what I am now, and right now that is a person in recovery. I'm not a potential rock star, potential husband, potential artists, potetial ANYTHING. I am *this* guy - this creative guy, who is sick, and wholooks after his mum - but who is really *here*, not virtualy *there*.
So I am living meekly... I go to the local pub with my friend from up the road on Friday and Sunday nights, I record with Andy on Wednesday [the album is startign to sound fantastic, by the way : ) ] I talk to my firend on the phone everyday, I look after my mum, and I don't fight it anymore. make this - what I would have feared was a "medicore" reality my default setting, and suddenly I see progress. I see my thoughts changing, my perception f things altering, my self possession taking hold. I feel rough in the mornings, but it doesn't scare me like it used to. Because I accept it now. And that stops it from lasting all day.
The only thing I have really noticed this week is - I don't know what to do with myself. caught between needing to preserve some weak hold and tranquility, and wanting to get on with house work, tidying an untidy house - I dare not get on. I dare nt "work". I dare not push myself. I know when I am in ful possession of my powers, my strength, my poteniallity for the day - to push myself when I do not have that - and it is still rare - is to feed back into the M.E. cycle. To feed back into an agitated, duty - bound, catholic mind set. So I avoid it. I try to find some small task that will occupy me in a fleeting, small way, and leave me feeling a little better. So I'm writing this to you for starters, to mark my progress, and hopefully be a good, sound platform from which to continue with my day.
It's a kind of monastic existence, this recovery mode, once you start to get it - don't worry, I still regularly totally f**k it up. Evry now and again I panic, like on Tuesday I got totally drunk, I got soaked - because I couldn't handle sobriety. I had to try and burst through the bubble. I just couldn't cope with being adult and sober. And I've spent all week recovering. BUt it needs time. I don't like being sober, adult, together. I want to break free of earth's gravity, it seems. I detest the responsibilities of sobriety. It is the flip side to illness. High and low. So I rebel, out of fear, out of panic, out of LACKING THE TOOLS to handle, care about myself, interact with other human beings wihout their moods, feelings and desires penetrating and affecting my own....
stuff like that.
hope that wasn't to much - I don't mind if you didn't read it all!
Re: My Description & battle with my CFS - is it Anxious Depression? Is it my nature?
I have a similar situation you. I've been researching extensively and the best explanation I can find for my severe fatigue/depression is mercury poisoning from my silver amalgam fillings. I was just wondering if perhaps you have a lot of fillings like I do?
Re: My Description & battle with my CFS - is it Anxious Depression? Is it my nature?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pos777
I have a similar situation you. I've been researching extensively and the best explanation I can find for my severe fatigue/depression is mercury poisoning from my silver amalgam fillings. I was just wondering if perhaps you have a lot of fillings like I do?
Hi. The answers no. In fact, I am a very good test case for this subject because I didn't have my first filling until I was in my thirties, and my illness was well in place by adolescence. I would lke ot ask you some questions about your formative years, your realtionship with your parents, and how everyday life is for you, but understand that you may not wish to discuss this on the forum. For my part, I am more than happy to disclose characteristics of my life. I would appreciate it if we could compare notes.
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