On my way home from a coffee with a friend the other day I got chatting to a lady with her lurcher as I passed her in the park. She had seen me on BBC South Today but not seen the whole piece so I told her what it was about. I had met her before in the doctors surgery reception where Amani was enclosed in her stroller. This lady said she was allergic to cats so sat on the opposite side of the room from me. During our chat in the park she said she could feel herself reacting to Amani who was in her stroller about 3 feet away.
It was a pleasant conversation and we could both see both sides to the argument but it got me thinking about how what we think and focus on can come to fruition.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I do believe this lady has a genuine allergy to cat fur and I am fully aware how many people, including me, have been told that the pain we experience from Fibromyalgia is all in our heads BUT as I have navigated learning how to manage my own symptoms I have started to learn a lot about neural pathways and how what we think and believe can have a profound effect on our physical bodies. And there is more and more research coming to the fore on the link between mental and physical health.
Bessel van der Kolk writes about how the body stores trauma in his book The Body Keeps the Score. I had a number of epiphany moments reading this book that helped to me to further understand some of the trauma I had experienced in childhood. Now, overall I consider myself to have had a good childhood but there are things that happened to me then that if they were to happen to a child today would be considered questionable and not the best practice of today. Understanding those things and how they impacted on my life has helped me to deal with it and put it in its rightful place as part of the story of my life rather than constantly reliving it every time a situation triggers me.
Susan David in her book Emotional Agility, talks about creating a space between the response and the reaction, learning how to unhook ourselves from the narrative that can flow from emotional reactions thereby breaking the cycle of the same consequences happening every time we find ourselves in a triggering situation i.e. self-fulfilling prophesies. Emotions come on a spectrum from anger to happiness and everything in between but this spectrum isn’t about good on one side and bad on the other. Rather, emotions are signals telling us there is something that needs attention. I am not saying that we should always be positive regardless because that is unhealthy too. But we do need to learn to put things in perspective, become curious about why we are feeling something and then put an action plan in place to help us to move toward our values and the people we want to be.
And, Dr Caroline Leaf, who has spent 30 plus years studying the mind/brain connection, helps to understand how to remap neural pathways in her book Cleaning up Your Mental Mess. And how neuroplasticity of the brain makes this rewiring possible.
The brain is a fascinating organ that there is still so much doctors don’t know about or understand. We have heard the stories of people learning to walk again or speak again after traumatic brain injuries and I know in my own work to manage my own mental health and fibromyalgia, that remapping my thought processes has been pivotal in my own healing. Understanding how my mental state/mood impacts on my physical health has been a game changer for me and as I have navigated this I have been able to reduce the impact. Do I still feel pain and experience other symptoms of fibromyalgia even when my mood is balanced? Yes I do. But I now know that stressing over that fact isn’t helpful.
My faith has also played a big part in it too. One of my favourite go to scriptures is Romans 8:28 – “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” So I choose in every situation to hold on to that. That no matter what happens – good, bad, ugly or indifferent – that it will work out for my good and God’s glory. There a numerous occasions when Jesus said to people that he healed that it was their faith that healed them (Matthew 9:22,29 as examples) and in Matthew 21:22 “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
I am not naive enough to think that just by having faith or thinking positive that life will be all rainbows and fluffy clouds. Jesus Christ himself told his disciples that they would have trouble in this world and I don’t profess to understand why there is so much war and strife and evil around. But I have been through enough of life to know that we can only do what we can do and that by focusing on what we can change and control (our own reactions to situations, our attitudes etc) that when the things we can’t control come around we are in a much stronger position to cope with them and offer empathy and support to those who are suffering.
