21 years of ME & Fibro – “at my BEST I was mostly housebound”
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For 21 years I lived with the limitations of severe M.E. and Fibromyalgia. The symptoms were relentless and intense. In the two decades of living with this condition at my best I was mostly housebound, able to walk about 100 yards and able to sit up in a reclining chair. At my worst I was so weak that I needed full time care and just breathing or lifting my head off the pillow felt like a heroic effort.
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My approach to meeting this profound challenge was two fold: on the one hand to fully accept it and realize a deeper source of happiness and meaning than my physical existence, and on the other hand to stay determined to keep doing everything I can to support the possibility of recovery.
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Conventional medicine helped with symptoms such as sleep and pain, but offered no real path for recovery. As a result I tried many alternative treatments. I would usually give a treatment 6 months to a year, each time having the expectation that perhaps this will be the one that gets me over the hump. After 20 years of having healing as a focus, I knew quite a bit about this topic but was still quite ill. In fact, if anything I had been getting worse in the latter years of this journey.
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About 2 years prior to meeting Ian Cleary, I came across the Lightning Process, and similar approaches on the Internet. The testimonials were stunning. I read many of them again and again. Amazed that recovery was truly possible, and that it could happen so much faster than I had imagined to be realistic.
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There were no courses near where I lived at the time (South America), so I did the best I could with what I found online. I took DVD courses from people offering similar work to the LP, read blogs and forums, and became a student of the principles of retraining the brain to function normally. Having been a trainer in NLP, I used what I knew to keep nudging my brain in the right direction.
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With what I had learned online I was able to create one 6 week period when I was truly recovering. I could feel it happening. It was like catching a wave on a surfboard. I was riding the wave and it was amazing. However, after 6 weeks I got the courage up to try some “exercise” with some 3 kilo weights, and the next day I crashed. And despite my attempts to keep applying what I had learned, I had lost the wave and spiraled back into a severe relapse and return to my usual limitations.
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When I met Ian, about a year later, I explained what happened and he made it clear that it was not the exercise that caused the crash, but the state my brain was in when I was doing it. For me, doing any exercise at all (especially strong exertion) felt like a poison. I had developed strong beliefs and expectations about what would happen when I did it, based on past experience. This was an example of how I had learned to function within the “management” model of my condition, but needed to catch that wave all the way into the “retraining” model.
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When I finally had the opportunity to train with Ian, the missing pieces in my understanding were easily filled in. I appreciated his deep understanding of the brain and the principles of recovery, and I quickly had the feeling that I now understood everything I needed to in order to succeed.
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Part of what I got from Ian was beyond information, it was a transmission of confidence. I have used the metaphor of doing a fire walk to describe this. You can read a book on how to do a fire walk, but for most people this is not enough when the stakes are high. But to experience a fire walk in a ritual environment with a leader who has seen many many people successfully walk on hot coals is very different. Suddenly walking on coals is very doable.
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I trained with Ian in June 2013. I started recovering very quickly after that. All that summer I kept setting goals and achieving them. In fact, ever since then I continue to expand my boundaries while getting stronger and stronger. I can hike for as long as I want. Just this week I have hiked up a mountain on two mornings in a row. I have gone kayaking on rivers and lakes. I regularly go to the gym and lift heavy weights with very high intensity. And, it is easy for me to go all day without any rest whatsoever, if I desire. In fact this happened very fast. In the first couple weeks after training with Ian, I challenged myself to go all day with zero rests and I did it. This was one of many milestones I have achieved with the help of what I learned with Ian. Now I enjoy finding new goals that I can challenge myself with, and achieve.I still have days when I wake up feeling many of the old symptoms: deep exhaustion, burning pain throughout my body, brain in a fog etc. However, the context is completely different. I am undaunted by them. I know that I now have the understanding and tools to quickly interrupt the brain pathways that are firing with these symptoms, and turn on the pathways to calm, strong and consistent energy and well-being. While it will be wonderful when there are no more of these old symptoms at all, it truly doesn’t matter. I am doing and feeling great most of the time, and loving my life.
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This has been a miraculous recovery. A miracle not only for myself, but for those close to me to enjoy as well. And it is wonderful to know that this is a miracle that is reproducible for others. There is a science to it. When all the elements are in place, we discover our incredible capacity to profoundly influence our natural state of health to re-assert itself.
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After 21 years with many attempts but without success, the odds seemed stacked against me. But that was before I had the full picture. Once I had the full picture of what I was dealing with, the odds were suddenly stacked WAY in my favor.
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I am grateful for my persistence and determination to recover my health, so I can fully express my potential. And I am grateful to have met Ian, so that my determination could be pointed in the right direction.
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I wish you well on your journey in life.
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David (United States)
**Comment from Ian.
In the years that I have been working, not once has some one come to me as their first attempt at recovery. Every single person comes to me with a history of failed attempts at recovery, sometimes stretching over decades not years. Often they have been told recovery was not possible or that recovery was possible only to be disappointed. It would be so easy to just accept this fate and move into acceptance and management. David highlights what can be done with persistence and determination and a willingness to work with this model of ‘targeted neuroplastic training’. What a change and what an inspiration! Well done David.
