Plexus............. Definitely Does a Body Good

Let me tell you a story....

I was about 7 months pregnant with Connor when I first heard about Plexus. I looked into it more when a friend told me their TriPlex Combo products really helped people with Fibromyalgia. I was interested but skeptical as I had heard of other things that helped that didn't really help me. I've mentioned before that not everything works for everyone that has Fibro.

The more I looked into it, though, the more I was intrigued. From everything I saw it looked like it might actually work for me!

However, I was pregnant, and with other problems I had during this pregnancy I was hesitant to try something new on top of it. So, I waited.

Connor was born. I had issues with him and feeding after two weeks, and so found myself not having to worry about whether what I took affected him as he was only on formula now. At the time, though, we had to be careful with how much we spent. So, I waited more.

During this time events happened which I related in my last post. My fibro medication wasn't able to help me without hindering my effectiveness to take care of myself and my boys. I continued without it.

Finally, we were able to get the products from Plexus! Yes!!!

I ordered it, and in the meantime started birth control pills. Which proceeded to make me feel completely awful. I received my Plexus products the day after I called my doctor and he agreed I should stop taking the pills.

So, I had the Plexus products I had been waiting for, and I felt as bad as any of the worst times in my life.

In one way, this was one of the worst times to start taking them. Wouldn't it have been better if I felt pretty good and then could see if this helped me feel even better? On the other hand, I felt so completely awful that I needed something, anything, to help me feel even ok, let alone pretty good. So, this could have been the best possible time to try it.

In either case, this was the situation I found myself- Feeling completely awful and worse than I had in a long time, and hoping desperately that these products would do something to help.

After two weeks I felt better. I still didn't feel great, but I felt much better than before. I wasn't sure if it was taking the products or just stopping the pills though.

After three weeks on the pills, I still felt pretty tired but not bad. I was still wondering if it was really the products helping or just getting off of the pills. We were packing and leaving for an almost two week trip. I was going to run out about halfway through the trip and wouldn't get the next month's products till we got back. I didn't think it would be a problem, though.

My first indication that these products were really doing a lot to help was that we left on an 8 hour trip that turned to 10 with stops. Around hour 6 I realized that I felt a little stiff but relatively ok. This was a drastic difference to an hour trip I took to Philly towards the end of my pregnancy that put me in so much pain I could barely talk and could only close my eyes and pray for it to be over. Granted, I was pregnant which made my pain worse, but it still *shouldn't* have been that drastic of a difference because I had often had trouble traveling in the last few years (one of the reasons why I haven't gone many places either).

But, I felt pretty good. I could even turn in my seat to take care of Connor without too much pain. Still, I expected to be completely exhausted once I got where we were going as that's what usually happens after traveling. I always take days to recover. Not so much this time. I didn't have so much energy I wanted to go running around but then when do I ever? Still, after sleeping that night I was tired but ok. I could take care of the boys and play with them. I didn't feel like I couldn't even get out of bed like I so often do.

Even with realizing this, I didn't know how much better I was feeling until I ran out of the products later that week with travel still to go. I was much more tired. I was much stiffer. I was in more pain.

I got home and was thrilled to see that Plexus bag of products waiting! Taking them was one of the first things I did. Two days later I was feeling a lot better again.

Yeah, these Plexus products were definitely working! After that, I decided to become an ambassador so that I could get them at a discounted price as I was going to keep using them and hope they continued to work well.

Three months later, I decided I would try another product from Plexus- XFactor. Other people took it and it gave them more energy. Since my pain and stiffness was still greatly reduced but I was feeling fairly exhausted all the time, I decided to try it.

Within three days of starting it, I was feeling so much better! Again, I wasn't feeling so great I wanted to run around, but since I usually feel like only laying in bed or sitting on the couch, there was a lot of room in there for improvement. Instead of just getting through the day with the boys I felt more able to do things around the house and go out a couple times a week by myself or with the boys (Yes, that's how limiting I usually feel. Like I can't go anywhere or do anything as it takes too much energy and effort that I don't have).

That was in September. Now, in December, I ran out of X-Factor a few days ago and just ordered it again last night. I can tell a huge difference in my fatigue and energy levels. The fatigue is up, the energy is way down. I'm yawning all the time again. I feel like I have to push myself through the day again. I can function. I can do things. But, it's much harder than it was just a week ago.

So there's my story...

The products I've been taking have definitely been helping. They help people feel better even if they don't have Fibromyalgia!

If you want to look into them, please do! Check them out and see if it's something you could use yourself.

The Tri-Plex Combo is three products that help your body flux out fat, toxins, and other things that cause your body to slow down and feel bad, as well as help your body heal from the inside out. If you can only get one and you suffer from stiffness and pain, I would take Slim. 

X-Factor is a really good multivitamin that helps boost your energy and reduce stress. If you have limited money and can only try one with tiredness or energy being a problem, I would do this one.

To Med or Not To Med?

For me, that's always the question....

When you are in pain all the time, struggle with depression, and generally overall feel awful much of the time, it's something that has the potential to weigh on you.

With how bad I feel I could pop pain pills every day and still struggle, not to mention have the side affects of the meds. So, I just don't take pain pills. Not unless I've exhausted my other options and I'm in screaming pain, anyway!

When it comes to other meds it depends on the medication and the situation. From the time my oldest son was two months old till my youngest son was 4 months in my belly, I took an antidepressant and another medication that helped my fibromyalgia pain by blocking some of the pain receptors (there's a fancy medical word for it that I don't remember). I was struggling and I would have had a more difficult time without them. For the time I took them they were what I needed.

After I stopped taking them I felt worse, but I didn't think I should continue on them while I was pregnant. After our son was born I waited till my son was completely on a bottle. I was looking forward to taking them again so that I was not in as much pain anymore! The first night I took it again I was barely functional as a person, let alone a mom that needed to be awake to hold and feed her baby. I just couldn't continue to take it if it made my body too tired to even hold my baby, let alone take care of him!

[Sadly, this was not all that uncommon anyway during this time. It's much better now. :)]

So, that's what I decided to do. I would still be in pain, but I wouldn't have the side effect from the drug that made me super sleepy and tired and I could still take care of my baby.

That's as things were as of April earlier this year.

Sometime around early to mid May I started taking birth control pills. I had taken some before and been fine with them. Well, this time it wasn't so fine! I felt awful. I had been feeling relatively ok before this. Tired, but still able to do some things. In pain but not terrible. But, now I was dragging even more. I could hardly do anything during the day and at night my body kept overheating so that I kept waking up and getting restless sleep. And every day I took a new pill my body got worse and worse.

It only took a week to get to this point. I finally called my doctor and he had me stop it right away. The birth control pills, at this time, were not what my body needed.

Even after stopping them I was completely exhausted. I did not just bounce back to where I was before. I had a lingering malaise that was even worse than my normal exhaustion and pain. It was a struggle to get back to feeling any kind of normal, combined with discovering supplemental products that helped a LOT. More on that next post!

So, here's my answer to the question of, "To med or not to med?"

Sometimes your body and the situation requires it. And sometimes it's the last thing your body needs. You need to figure out which one it is for you for the time you are in. Sometimes you need meds, sometimes you need vitamins, sometimes you need supplements, and sometimes you just have to go without anything for a while till your body goes back to equilibrium.

The problem is that you won't always know until you take it, or go off of it. Every body doesn't respond the same way. Some things will help a lot of people and some things only help a handful. It's the way our bodies are, but even more pronounced with those that have Fibro. Perhaps because there hasn't seemed to be one cause for everyone yet. It's one of those weird things about Fibro that makes this process a little worse.

Don't just pop a pill though. Seriously consider if it's the right kind of medication or supplement for you to take. After you take them or stop taking them, then you can decide if it's helping, you don't notice much difference, or it affects you badly. It's good to talk about this with your doctor too! :)

Two Realizations as a Result of the Women of Faith Conference this Past Weekend

I went to the Women of Faith conference this weekend in Philly. It was awesome and amazing and sad. Sad because this is the last year they are having the conference as they have been doing it, with all the amazing speakers that have been a part of it.

It is always awesome and usually amazing. Every time I walk in there and sit down I take about 20 minutes to relax, to adjust to being there. Then I get this deep feeling inside that tells me, "Yes!! This is just what I needed!!"

[Two of my beautiful sisters and I at WOF this weekend (I'm on the right)]

I don't know why it continues to surprise me that there are still things that bowl me over about God, how his daughters share about God, and how we and life work, but it does. It often does. It doesn't happen with every speaker, but usually at least one or two will say something that just really sticks with me. Sometimes it's just a spark of an idea that a speaker shared which causes me to come through a lightning speed thought process to some form of enlightenment. This year it was the latter.

So, this year I realized two things about myself. And these two things are huge. So huge that I'm not sure why I never realized this about myself before now. Perhaps God needed me to get to the place where I am now to know how to be able to handle it. Maybe I will never know why it took this long. But, here I am.

When I was a girl I always wanted my superpower to be flying. I thought it would be the most awesome thing in the world! I dreamed about flying often. Sometimes in the daytime, but mostly at night. In my dreams I would soar anywhere and be able to feel the wind rushing by me. I loved it because I felt free and safe and happy. If any bad guys came into my dreams I just flew up and was safe away from them.

I've mentioned some of the issues I've had in previous posts (Feel free to read the back posts). Yet, I have really only scratched the surface and gone down a couple levels. Here, I'm going to share more that goes down into the core of who I have been and am now.

So, back to what I realized this weekend.

The first thing I realized this weekend is that my superpower isn't flying.

It's been a long time since I've been able have dreams at night that I can remember when I wake up (I can count the number on one hand for the same number of years), let alone have a dream of flying. But, even still...

No, my superpower isn't flying.

My super power is running way.

I am amazing at it. No, I excel at it! I can run so fast and far that no one can catch me. I leave them in the dust wondering what just happened.

Those that know me by now might be raising their eyebrows or laughing because I have always hated running. With a passion! But, I'm not talking about physically running away.

In regards to my fight or flight response, when it comes to people I love being hurt or mistreated in some way I will have an initial reaction of fight.

But in every other way, and especially when it comes to things about me, my immediate internal response is flight. Swiftly. Silently. Immediately.

It isn't always visible on the outside. On the outside I might seem fine. But inside I shut down. I run away inside. I run so far and fast into the core of myself that my heart can ache with the emptiness I'm leaving behind.

This affects every part of my life. It affects my relationships with my boys. It affects my relationship with my parents. It affects my relationship with my extended family. It affects my relationships with my friends. And it really affects my relationship with my husband (bet you thought I forgot him!).

Yes, running away is my super power.

But, if there is anything I excel at more than running away, it's hiding.

I am a champion hider. Always have been. I hide so well sometimes when my son Reilly is finding me that I have to give a couple clues before he figures out where I am. If people found me quickly it was because I wanted them to find me sooner.

When I hide inside it isn't a quick little jaunt. It can be days. It's more often weeks. Sometimes it's been months. And people never find me.

This is why I've been pretty silent this summer. I've been running and hiding inside.

You might make the correlation that if running inside affected my relationships that much, then hiding affects my relationships even more. And it does. With the only exception being that when things are good with me and Steve (which is most of the time) the place I feel the safest and best is in the arms of my husband. It's my favorite spot. If I had my way I'd never leave that spot, but life does insist on moving forward. And it wouldn't end up being good for me anyway because I would still be hiding.

That's how I have responded to much of life ever since I was a little girl. If you run away inside then it won't hurt as much. If you run away inside you won't feel as much. If you run away inside then you can pretend things are different than they really are. If you hide then no one can find you. If you hide then you are safe.

I'm not going to share all of how I learned to handle life this way and how it got to that point. Some of it is part of other stories that aren't mine to tell, and most of them would just take a long while to explain.

However, I can tell you how many times that this superpower backfired. Almost every time.

I still hurt, I just let myself bleed inside while I tried to ignore it. I still felt everything, but I fooled myself into thinking my emotions were gone or didn't matter. Things were never different than they really are and reality always crashed in. People may not have found me, but they also didn't know me and I desperately want to be known and accepted for me. And any illusion of safety I had was a lie.

They were ALL lies.

But the thing with lies is that they are sneaky. They often start little but gradually grow into something big.

I've been trying to be really honest with myself and others for the past 13 or so years ever since I realized how hurtful lies could be (another long story). I have thought I've been doing pretty well at it. So, you can imagine my shock and surprise at realizing that I've been telling myself big huge fat lies for most of my life and didn't recognize it!

So, the first thing I realized this weekend was that my super power isn't what I'd hoped it was, and I've been telling myself big fat lies for years.

The other thing I realized this weekend is that I've pretty much just been waiting for life to happen.

I have Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I have pain and achyness all the time (though better more recently which I'll share in another post soon). I have difficulty with normal every day things that other people hardly blink an eye at.

I am an introvert. On a scale of extroversion and introversion, with extroversion being 0 and the most introverted person ever being 10, I'm around 8.5. I might even be able to argue for 9.

I have a really active extroverted 5 and a half year old boy and a mellow but curious 6 month old boy. Most of the little energy I have is drained out of me just with taking care of them. I'm exhausted every second of the day in a deep-down-I'm-never-going-to-not-be-tired kind of way.

Since I can do little else, especially not do much of any work to earn money, I feel like I am just in a holding pattern of waiting.

I'm waiting to feel better. I'm waiting for my boys to grow older. I'm waiting to figure out more of what I want to do with my life. I'm waiting to be in a good mental space. I'm waiting to be in a good relational place. I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting.

I decided this weekend that I'm done with waiting.
I decided this weekend that I don't want to run away anymore.
I decided this weekend that I don't want to hide anymore.

I'm still trying to figure out the how. It might take a while.
Maybe I can get a new superpower some day.

Maybe some day I can fly.

Strength From Within, Part 5 - Reaffirming My Faith

This is the fifth post in my series on Strength From Within.

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us as an entirely new person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my different body- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.

In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses, letting myself feel all the negative emotions, and let the losses go so that my heart could have emotional freedom and the space to discover myself.

In the third post I describe a process I went through in how I decided to do something scary and face my fears, not letting them take over my life. This took courage, but it changed my life and let me teach my son Reilly about being brave like his name describes.

In the fourth post I walked through some of how I have had to recalibrate my thinking so that instead of focusing on the negative things of what I had lost, I needed to realize what I had gained through Fibromyalgia. I didn't want to at first, but I learned a great deal about myself and about focusing on what's really important.

In this post I will describe a little as to how I reaffirmed my faith and how my faith has helped me.

During my counseling classes we had what we called labs, where we practiced some of the skills we were learning. During one of the lab times in my first year I walked in and sat down to do the exercises. I don't remember what it was that I was upset about specifically, but I was so bothered by it that I couldn't stop crying and had a hard time even talking.

One of the lab leaders took me aside. I don't really remember what I said to her, but one of the things that bothered me must have been a topic that I struggled with often over that time period- that I had a hard time knowing God was there and with praying because my emotions felt like that nothingness that I later recognized was from exhaustion and depression. I had questions. I had doubts. When I prayed it was as if I could have been talking to the backside of a barn because it just felt like it was going nowhere and that God wasn't hearing me.

Now, if you don't believe in God or have never found anything you really had a lot of faith in, you might think, yeah, it wasn't going anywhere because there was nothing there to hear! I can't convince you to think otherwise, but I will tell you that I had previously felt God's presence in my life. It was awesome and wonderful. I know God protected me at various times in my life from physical and personal harm. I often just felt a sense of peace even if there was no circumstantial reason to feel that way.

At some point though, that feeling was gone, and it was gone around the time that I felt the fatigue and depression ramp up after I got married (No, I don't think those are related!) and felt worse around the time I was in the counseling program and classes. Regardless of my emotions feeling blank, I know I was experiencing doubt, discouragement, and depression. I kept wondering, What's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Is God angry with me? Do I even have faith? Have I just been fooling myself this whole time?

So, you may be wondering why I know roughly what I was upset about even though I don't remember what I said? That's because of the response from my lab leader, which I remember almost word for word.

"Sarah, I know it may not seem like it now, and it may take some time in coming, but I know there will be a day when your faith in God is so strong that nothing will be able to shake you from it." 

[This is a 1,300 year old monastery built on a single enormous rock in France. There is a passage 

in the Bible about a wise man building a house on a rock instead of shifting sand. 

I often thought this was referring to what teaching you followed and what you placed your faith in- 

if you placed your faith in God your foundation was strong and immovable.]

Wow.

I remember thinking things like, "That's nice for later but not so helpful for now."  However, as the days went by I heard her words play and replay in my head. If you've read my post about finding and holding onto your hope, you might understand what I mean as I tell you that this thought became something for me to hold onto when the days were dark and difficult.

This time period, that lasted a number of years, tested, sifted, measured, weighed, examined, filtered, and purified my faith. I didn't realize this at the time, because all I saw was the pain, but this was good for me. Actually, this was one of the best things to happen to me that I never would have wanted or asked for. This was another way that Fibromyalgia was a benefit to me in ways I wouldn't have thought before. I mention more of this in my post about recalibrating my thinking.

I've come across people that seem afraid of dark and difficult times partly because they can shake your faith. They seem afraid of questioning anything related to faith and how faith intersects life as we now live it because it's seen as shameful to have doubts and fears. It seems wrong to them to have any questions about God and faith because isn't that just a lack of faith, and doesn't it say somewhere that isn't a good thing?

Having been through this process I say, you can be afraid. You can't change how you feel right now. However, while it is a painful process, there is nothing to fear about having your faith tested, sifted, measured, weighed, and all the rest. There is nothing wrong with crying out to God, asking Him the hard questions, and beating your fists against anything you find (though, as we tell our son Reilly- not people!).

That might seem odd to you, but I think it's right. If you know something about the Bible you might be familiar with David. He did this all the time. He questioned, he yelled, he was discouraged and depressed, he made mistakes (and several really big ones!), he sobbed. And God called him a man after His own heart. Job, the man who went through almost every kind of misfortune on earth, had strong faith and still questioned God, at one point basically saying, "Why do I even exist?". God later blessed him and restored everything He took away.

Why would God do and say these things about men that had deep questions about Him, about their circumstances, and about their relationship with Him?

I think it is because even while doubting, even while being angry, discouraged, and afraid, they still turned towards God. They never turned their back on Him and said, "Forget you!". Their spiritual posture was still facing God. They still had faith even if they didn't realize it, even when it wasn't obvious to themselves. They recognized His hand, knew God was there and had their back, even when their feelings and their circumstances told them otherwise.

So, this is why a testing and sifting of faith is good for us, and me- because it ends up strong and purified. A faith that hasn't been through testing of some kind can't become strong- it's just an untested weak kind of faith.

So, after years of struggling with wondering what happened to my faith, I realized that faith in God was one of the very few things I was still holding on to. I was still turned to Him, I still searched for Him, I still found Him, even when my feelings and my circumstances kept telling me my life had a huge void with God's name on it.

I found pieces of who God is in seemingly random places that showed me I wasn't forgotten. I found Him in books (not just Christian books!), I found Him in movies (not just Christian movies), I found Him in nature (not just at church), I found Him in people (not just the seemingly uber spiritual ones!). Please don't mistake me saying these things as some sort of "there is divinity in all of us, etc." That is NOT what I am saying here!

I'm saying that I would go through my day and God would show me little bits of Himself, basically saying, "Hi Sarah, I'm still here. I'm not gone. I've been here the whole time. Just see me. I'm right here in front of you." At first it was a bit here, a piece there.

If you've ever had someone write little post it notes to you and put them in random places around the house for you to find as you go through your day, you might understand how this was. I saw the equivalent of little post its from God here and there, basically telling me He was thinking about me.

At first I was aware of very little. But, then I started noticing. Once I started noticing, I eventually started seeing. And once I started seeing, I saw Him everywhere.

God was here. He was with me. He had my hand. He had my back. He wasn't letting go. He wasn't leaving me. He had me. He holds me. He's got me. 

And once I realized that, I knew that my lab leader was right. It had happened. I was finally at the place where my faith in God is so strong that nothing will shake me from it - including Fibromylagia.

Strength From Within, Part 4 - Recalibrating My Thinking

This is the fourth post in my series on Strength From Within.

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us as an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.

In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses, letting myself feel all the negative emotions, and let the losses go so that my heart could have emotional freedom and the space to discover myself.

In the third post I describe a process I went through in how I decided to do something scary and face my fears, not letting them take over my life. This took courage, but it changed my life and let me teach my son Reilly about being brave like his name describes.

In this post I will walk through some of how I have had to recalibrate my thinking. I talk about some of this already in my post on the New Normal. I described how I struggled with coming to terms in having Fibro because of it being nebulous, relatively unknown, and invisible.

Some days were ok, and some days I was irritable and depressed. I go on to talk about an attitude adjustment I've had to make in my thinking about Fibro as I had to think of where I am at now as the new normal, and learn to be ok with it.

After living with that attitude adjustment for a while I realized that I still had some thought adjustments to make, and came to a startling conclusion that was almost a revelation.

Have you ever had your brain tell you something, and you just ignored it and kept going about your day? Or, after your brain told you something, you said, "No way, Brain!!" and rejected that thought? Or, it tells you something and you laugh about it, thinking your brain is just being funny? And your brain says, "No, I'm really serious!"

Or, it could just be me...

Anyway, what my brain was telling me now was this:

Rather than focusing so much on what I had lost through Fibromyalgia, I needed to see what I had gained. 

Wait, what??!?!?

Surely my brain was just being funny, right?!?

Nope... not being funny. 

So... here I am with this thing my brain is telling me. I didn't really want to think about it. However, while I really just want to ignore it (or reject it outright), I let it sit there. I realize that I already know my brain has a point.

All this time I've been thinking about all the negatives of Fibromyalgia. And when you focus on the negatives a lot, well, it's kind of a negative way to live. I also have been completely ignoring anything good that I might have gained (aka, looking for the silver lining).

So, I start thinking about it. And thinking. And more thinking (I think a lot, if you haven't picked that up by now!).

I think about how I was before I struggled with Fibromyalgia, and how I am now.

I have far more compassion now. Not that I didn't have any before, but I just didn't let myself think all that much about how difficult it must be for those that really struggled with illnesses, conditions, and diseases. Those that struggled with deeper emotions and inner conflict didn't move me deeply, I just was sad for them and that they were going through a difficult time. Now, it gives me pause. Now, I know how hard these kinds of things can be and hope they are able to work through it and get help if they need it. Now, I have a welling up of emotions when I think about everything they are going through. Compassion is part of the underlying reason I started this blog.

My priorities have shifted. Before, I did whatever I felt like doing and needed doing. Now I only have energy for a certain number of things throughout the day, so I do what I can to balance the needs of my family with being able to get enough rest for myself. I can only do one or two regular activities (like community groups or bible studies) a week so I need to make sure they are the best things for me to do each semester. This has simplified my life and helped me to focus on what's really important.
 
I think about the things I thought about before, and what I think about now. Before I looked externally to shape my internal world. Now I look internally to shape my external world. Before I was concerned about what other people would think about me. Now I'm more concerned with doing/saying what I think/believe is right.

I think about what I did before and what I do now. Before I had the energy to have everything clean the way I wanted it, organized, and have everything exactly where I wanted it. When I was a teen it would drive me crazy anytime someone changed something of mine, or got into my things. In college it would bug me anytime someone wanted to borrow something because I had my things exactly the way I wanted them (I still did it, but I didn't like it).

Now I don't have the energy to get everything clean and organized, or have the energy to care that it isn't done. I know if I had kids without having had to make shifts in my priorities and in what I do, I would have driven them crazy with trying to meet my idealist perfectionism. Now, I do what I have to do but I'm more focused on spending time with my husband and boys, and taking care of myself, rather than driving myself (and everyone else) crazy trying to get everything done the way I would rather have it.

This only scratches the surface of the ways my thinking has had to be recalibrated. It took some time in doing this but it was worth it. I now know I'm personally in a much better place as a result of having Fibromyalgia for these reasons I mention and more.

My brain really had something there when it told me I needed to change how I was thinking.

It's possible it wasn't just my brain but God speaking to me in a way I would hear it. Either way, recalibrating my thinking has helped me enormously! There are other shifts in how I've been thinking about things that I've realized and discovered which I will relate in my next post.

Read Strength From Within, Part 5: Reaffirming My Faith

Strength From Within, Part 3 - Facing My Fears

This is the third post in my series on Strength From Within.

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.

In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses and let myself feel all the negative emotions so that my heart could have emotional freedom and space to discover myself.

In order to discover more of who I am, I needed to get rid of things that were holding me back. The biggest of these is my fears. This post is all about facing my fears.

I have had fears running through my head for as long as I can remember but they were always controllable. However, around the time I was pregnant and after my first son was born these fears ramped up and almost took over my life. Post Partum Depression didn't help with this. I could see in my head, like a horrible dream or fantasy, every single possible bad outcome that my fears predicted.

They swirled around and around in my head over and over and over. It was like a repeating slideshow or movie of everything I never wanted to see happen. A lot of my mental energy was directed at trying not to see them and they kept coming anyway, so that wore me out. It was a really dark, depressing, and terrible time for me. I just wanted to run away and hide from life, and I often did that as much as possible (avoidance coping mechanism!).

After some counseling, adjustments, medication, and some longer periods of sleep (newborn, remember!?),  I realized I couldn't keep living with fear like this. It was hurting me. It was hurting my relationships, especially with my husband and my new son. It was keeping me from going out of the house and doing much of anything at all.

So, after a lot of reflecting and working my courage up, I decided to do something scary.

Seriously scary.

I told myself that for one minute I would let my fears and horrible fantasies about my fears just play out in my head till the end. All the fears about losing my husband and son in awful tragic ways, all the ways others might be hurt by painful things I caused, all the rejection I could feel from those around me, all the love I longed for and was afraid I wouldn't have... every single thing.

It was hard. One of the hardest things I've ever done. I wasn't sure I could do it without being sucked into a vortex of emotion that would just consume me. But, I knew I needed to try something. I couldn't keep living the way I was.

So, when a fear came over me and was too strong for me to ignore, I would let myself feel it, experience it, and live it out in my head. But, only for a minute.

When that minute was done I would stop that internal picture, the self flagellating monologue in my head, and just breathe.

And breathe.

And breathe.

Then I would tell myself, and show myself an internal picture, that even if the worst should happen with this fear I would still be ok. God has His hand around mine and will not let me be destroyed. I would be shaken, I would be hurt, I would be wounded, I would be saddened, but I would not be destroyed and ultimately I would be ok.

This took a lot of courage and some scary times over a several month period, but it changed my heart and my circumstances in ways I'm still feeling the effects of today. This also came hand in hand with working through my faith, which I will share in part five.

I no longer have the consuming fears that threaten to swallow me up. I still have fears that are hard, but most of the time I can push them aside because I know now that I will be ok without having to play it out in my head. I am in a much better place now after going through this step.

As we were in the process of choosing the name for our son I had just started to feel the wave of fears wash towards me. One of the reasons I was drawn to the name Reilly, spelled with the Irish spelling (has to be the Irish spelling!!), is because one translation stated that Reilly meant brave and courageous. 

I paused on it every time I read that because that was what I so wanted to be! Every so often along the way we have told him what his name means- brave, courageous, and what those words and ideas mean. He loves it. And, he lives it. When he gets scared sometimes he will shy away or say something about it being scary. But, then he tells himself and us, "It's ok! I'll be brave!".

 [This picture was from our trip to the beach last year. Previously he had been afraid of the water 

because it rose really high on him all of a sudden and knocked him down a couple years ago. This trip he 

played in the sand and kept looking at the water. Then he just stops and says, "Mommy, Daddy, I'm going
to be brave and go in the water!". He did. He went in the part that had almost no waves, and towards 
the end he went into the water with the normal waves. We were/are all proud of him and his bravery!]

I don't think I would have been able to tell or show Reilly effectively what it means to be brave if I hadn't decided to face my fears and be brave myself! It was and still is so hard to do, but it is definitely worth the effort!

Read Strength From Within, Part 4: Recalibrating My Thinking

Strength From Within, Part 2 - Grieving My Losses

This is the second post in my series on Strength From Within.
These steps are what I have had to do, and continue to do in some ways day after day. I hope you will be encouraged if you determine that you need to do some of these steps yourself!

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us as an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- find strength from within, learn how to deal with the changes, and find myself all over again.

In order to find strength within me I first had to realize what I have lost. This post is about grieving my losses. 

My body is different. My body is no longer a body that can easily move about. My body is no longer going to just be able to drop myself on the ground to take a picture any place I feel like without suffering intense pain. Even playing on the floor with my boys is a struggle. My body will not be able to handle traveling for long periods of time without suffering every mile in pain with days of recovery. Just walking can be painful at times. My body is now limited.

My brain is different. My brain will no longer be able to handle intense periods of concentration without feeling like I've worked all day. My brain can't handle stress and tense periods of time very well. My brain struggles to come up with simple words sometimes (Ask my husband how many times I ask him about the thing that goes with/in/on/from the thing!). My brain so often feels clouded over as if my brain is mushy, foggy, or empty. Just thinking is difficult at times. My brain is now limited.  

These things and so many more I have had to grieve the loss of. Loss of freedom, loss of movement, loss of impulsiveness, loss of free creativity, loss of normalcy. These losses are hard losses to bear when it's an ongoing struggle day after day.

If you've gone through a grief process for loss of a loved one or another type of loss, you may be aware of the common 5 stages of grief:
Denial: “This can’t be happening to me.”
Anger: “Why is this happening? Who is to blame?”
Bargaining: “Make this not happen, and in return I will ____.”
Depression: “I’m too sad to do anything.”
Acceptance: “I’m at peace with what happened.”

You may notice that these stages alternate a type of thinking with emotion: thought, emotion, thought, emotion, thought. However, not everyone goes through all of the stages or in this order. I never went through denial. The anger and depression kind of cycled back and forth. I didn't really bargain, but you can believe I prayed and prayed about it, asking God to take Fibro away, and desperately wished I could have some of these losses back. I accepted it as fact, but it took months for me to be at a place I would characterize as being at peace with having Fibromyalgia.

It's hard to let myself feel the emotions of these losses. Emotions are overwhelming to feel sometimes, and especially with these because anger and fear are two of the strongest more negative emotions. I have a post in mind just about emotions because they can be so much and so overwhelming, and (especially if you have an avoidance coping mechanism- Hello, books!!) so avoided in feeling them.

 But, I knew and know that not allowing myself to grieve these losses would just keep them bottled up and cause more emotional distress and overall stress. It is easy to only focus on the losses and become bitter or negative. It would be so easy to do that and justify it because of all the pain I am in and all the losses I've had.

It would be easy but it wouldn't be the best thing for me or my family. Being bitter and negative doesn't help me at all and only hurts me. Being bitter and negative would make me a person that would be difficult for my family to handle and they already have been impacted just by my limitations, let alone my attitude. It wouldn't let me remain a good friend to those I have, or be at all open to making new friendships when that is already difficult for me. I would pretty much just be bitchy, witchy, and twitchy all the time, and who wants to live with that?!?

Grieving these losses meant having emotional freedom and a lighter heart, a better attitude and a better life. I have needed this to move onto the next stages, have strength from within, and discover who I now am in my different body.

I do have a lighter heart after grieving these losses, but this is also an ongoing process. Every so often something will hit me again and needs to be grieved and let go. This happens less often as time goes on, but still happens. Letting go can also be difficult, but still very necessary. I will talk about this a little more in later posts!

Read Strength From Within, Part 3: Facing My Fears

Strength From Within, Part 1 - New Body, New Self

I once heard Dr. Oz give a commencement address. He was interesting to listen to and very engaging. I have a few vague ideas as to what else he said during the address (I was distracted trying to find a particular graduate amidst all the others!), but one section was very clear. He stated that everyone's cellular structure changes every seven years.

[Doesn't this look like a beautiful collection of various flowery and plant items? 

Nope! These are some of the cells in your body on a microscopic level!]

So, every seven years you are an entirely new person with new taste buds (ever find yourself suddenly liking or disliking how something tasted that you hadn't before?), new lungs, new heart, new eyes, and new ears, among the rest of you. There are some aspects about this that I'm not sure how it works, such as those needing transplants. However, as he's a widely renowned and respected doctor (and I'm not), I'm willing to trust he knows what he's talking about. :) Perhaps, rather than using the word new we should use the word different. We have an entirely different body.

During my teen years I had pretty bad asthma. Shortly after I went away to college, though, it went away enough where I could go places without feeling like leaving my inhaler in my room was a risk. I knew my body was different, but I didn't know why! This was my 21st year, though, so perhaps I now have an answer for that!

My mental, emotional, and physical states were also different than they had been. I thought about things differently, felt things a little differently, and felt physically better than I had in years (I have had back pain since my teen years but it wasn't as bad around this time and stayed mild until my Fibro flared up). So, you would think I would be used to having a body that changed. However, these are relatively normal life changes.

In my Fibro Story post I wrote, "There is nothing worse than waking up one day feeling awful and, as time goes on, realizing that your body has betrayed you. " And later, "I began feeling trapped in my body and wanted desperately to either have my body work properly and let me feel right, or to not be in my body anymore." I felt like my body was different and would never be the same again, but this wasn't a positive change. This was change in a really negative way.

I recently watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again with my husband. At the end of the last movie Frodo asks this... "How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold." He says this right before going on a trip that would redefine him and his place in the world as it now was- a new life.

I thought, How perfect is this?!? What came before is your old life. Everything that happened, that changed in your body, that changed in your heart and mind, has changed who you are... there is no going back. Frodo was physically, mentally, and emotionally damaged, and deeply changed in such a way that he would never be the same again. He had a hard time coming to terms with how these changes and damages affected him. It is the same for Fibromyalgia.

So, what do you do once you realize you now have a body that is so different than it had been before that there is no going back and everything will be different from now on? For me, I have had to learn how to deal with it, find strength from within me, and discover myself all over again.

Through the next several posts I will describe steps I've had to take, and areas in my life I've had to assess and change, in order to get to where I could start living my new life in my changed body rather than merely enduring and existing.

I warn you now that few of these steps are easier, and more of these steps are hard and scary. But, they have all been necessary to living a better life- one filled with hope and being able to enjoy my family and friends more than I've been able to in the past. It's not all sunflowers, puppies, and roses now (I still have all my symptoms of Fibro and still struggle with depression, after all! Besides, I'm allergic to puppies.), but that weight of depression, and the inner turmoil of Fibromyalgia has lessened through following these steps.

I won't phrase these steps in terms of what you can do, though you can certainly decide to follow these steps on your own. These are what I have had to do, and continue to do in some ways day after day. I hope you will be encouraged if you determine that you need to do some of these steps yourself!

Read Strength From Within, Part 2: Grieving My Losses

Q & A

A post in which I briefly interview myself.

Q: You have a lot of information on your blog about Fibromyalgia (Fibro) and Depression. Where did you learn this stuff? Are you a doctor?

A: No, I'm not a doctor! All of the things about Fibro, depression, and other related issues I have written about, I learned from searching the internet, talking to my doctors, reading books, my counseling classes for my degree, and from my own life experiences. If you want to know something for sure about a topic I write about I suggest that you do your own internet searching, or talk to your doctor.

Q: You have a lot of pictures of babies and little kids in your posts. What's that about?

A: Babies as a whole represent new life, hope, joy, and wonder. With the deeper topics I often tend to talk about, since Fibro tends to be difficult and complex, I try to remind myself and hopefully those reading it that there is more to life than what I'm feeling/thinking/doing right now. There is life outside of myself. Plus, babies are adorable, they have fun expressions, and make me smile! :)

Holding Onto Hope- Combating Depression and Fatigue

If you haven't read my first post on depression yet I hope you will read it first. I talk about zombies in it, so really, why wouldn't you want to read it?!?

Once you have, I want to tell you that if you suffer from depression and still want to try to live a full life, there are several steps I would urge you to take.

Step 1: Find Hope
In my previous post I stated that, "you want to believe there is hope for things to be different when you so often feel like there isn't any." When you suffer from depression, especially deep depression, hope is what you need to hold on to. You need a reason to hope. You need a reason to keep going even when you don't feel like it. Even when everything seems impossible, everything feels like blah blank boring empty nothingness, you think you can't possibly go another day the way you are...ness. You need to find something, or several somethings that give you a reason to get up day after day, to resist giving into the blahness, to continue to form and maintain relationships even if you keep thinking there isn't any point. You need a reason.

Allie's reason was kind of nebulous- she was able to laugh hysterically at something small (a piece of corn sitting all alone under the fridge), so maybe everything isn't hopeless. However, when everything seems hopeless, when you have no reason to keep going... A reason, however nebulous, is enough for a while.

 
After a long while I realized I had three reasons to hope, and things I hold onto to maintain hope: My God, my husband, and my child (now children). The more reasons you have, the more motivation you have for making yourself do things that seem impossible when you are lying in bed thinking everything seems too difficult.

I can't tell you how many days I woke up lying in bed thinking, "Why am I awake? Why should I even get out of bed? Why should I even care about getting up?" Once my first son was born, the answer always became, "Because Reilly needs me. I love him. I'm his mom and I need to take care of him because there isn't anyone else to do it when Steve is at work." Reilly gave me reasons to get out of bed, and often I got smiles which made a little pocket of happy in my day filled with zombie like foggy thinking.

Steve gave me reasons to care about other aspects of life and drew me more into being around other people, whether I wanted to or not. I wanted to because I wanted to see people, and to be and feel normal. However, it often seemed like a lot of effort and energy expended so I wasn't always sure I wanted to. Afterwards, I was always glad I did. Classic introversion made a lot worse with depression!

Steve, himself, is an amazing man, loves me unconditionally, and has often made me laugh or smile when I wasn't expecting it. At some point there will be a post all devoted to him as there are so many ways a spouse can help or hurt someone going through a chronic condition.

[Steve, Reilly, and I taken a few years ago by our friend

 Sarah at Sarah Zimmerman Photography]

My God is the underlying foundation beneath everything. I seriously think He's the reason I'm still able to show love when my emotions feel so much like nothing. He's the reason I push myself to care about and for Reilly and Steve, now Connor, and my other relationships when I could so easily just not care and let myself be isolated. He's the reason I even want to have hope, because life without God so easily seems hopeless. Holding onto my faith hasn't been easy, as I'll share in a later post, but it has been completely worth it.

If you don't believe in God, I would ask you to consider the reasons that keep you from it. I wouldn't be surprised if it had little to do with God and everything to do with people that gave you a reason to resist believing in Him. However, whether you believe in God or not, I urge you to find some reason, any reason, to have hope and hold onto it day after day.

As you go through each day find little reasons, little signs, that there is a reason for hope. It can be as little as a flower or sunset, and as big as someone showing you love in some way. Each person will have different things that give them hope throughout their day. I will tell you, though, that this can be difficult as it's easy to just ignore everything that could be a sign of hope as you continue in your depression. Still, please try. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Step 2- Find Ways to Ease Your Symptoms
Whether it's medication, supplements, exercise, relationships, dietary adjustments, or some form of meditation/spirituality, it is really important to find ways that help ease your symptoms. I won't list all the possible things of each you can do in this post as you can easily do a Google search and come up with a ton of information- although I may go into some of them in more detail later. I can tell you that the more you can do, the more it will help.

However, what works for some doesn't always work for others. Also, because there is a ton of information available, it can also be overwhelming to figure out where to start. Where I would start is with something that seems manageable that could help a lot- like taking a daily vitamin if you currently don't do that. A vitamin is such a little thing but I always feel better when I've taken them and always feel worse if I've skipped a few days. I don't always recognize it in the moment, but after I've started feeling bad I look back and realize I forgot to take them.

Another manageable thing is to just sit outside in the sun for 15-20 minutes every day with no sunscreen. Unless you have extremely sensitive skin you shouldn't burn during that amount of time. The reason you want to skip the sunscreen is that while sunscreen blocks UV rays, it also blocks the rays that carry vitamin D. Vitamin D can help your body feel better in general and most people are deficient. So, if you want to gain Vitamin D skip the sunscreen just for a little while.

A seminar I listened to said you can get all the Vitamin D you need for a day by being naked in the sun just for 5 minutes with no sunscreen. Now, I don't recommend that- don't want to scandalize the neighbors or cause issues with little kids running around (though if you have privacy areas, what you do in your home is your business)! However, with summer approaching, unless you are so deep into depression you can't get out of bed (in that case perhaps open the window and shades for a while?), it shouldn't be too difficult to sit in the sun with shorts and a t-shirt for even 10 minutes while you read or play games on your phone. Well, at least that's probably what I'd be doing (being honest)!

Step 3- Avoid Pity Parties
When you are in deep depression, and especially in that spiral of depression, it is soooo easy to throw yourself pity parties. Then, when you do get together with people you tend to invite them to your pity parties too. I could tell you some stories but they would just depress you. Just suffice it to say, Yeah... so easy!

Unfortunately, when your depression has a piece of it based on mood, internal and external factors, this just feeds your depression and makes it worse. It can sometimes feel like it's helping. After all, misery loves company! But, that's the thing... company in misery just makes more misery. It doesn't really help at all.

What helps with this is to replace pity parties with thinking something positive, even if it's little. When you realize you are in that place where you are entertaining your pity party, find one of your hopes and just embrace it. Immerse yourself in it, marinate in it, (insert favorite action verb that basically means to surround yourself with it here). Spend time/talk with that person, do that thing, look at that piece of beauty. Whatever your hope may be, just start feeling, thinking, and doing everything about that hope that you can so it blocks the feelings, thoughts, and actions of your pity party. This can take a while to get to where it's an auto shift in thinking, but you can do it.

Every time you shift your pity party to your hope it helps that much more. Any change takes a while to become automatic. First, it's completely hindsight- so it could be days in your pity party before you remember, and that's ok. The more you do it the better and sooner it will get. Then it becomes the same day, then hours, and minutes, until finally it's a pity party mode first with a quick shift to hope in almost the same instant. But, all this is a process. So, it will take a while. Give yourself grace in the meantime and don't give up on it.

[If you are a Doctor Who fan (because who wouldn't want to be!?!), you will immediately recognize 

David Tennant who plays the Tenth Doctor on the show. David Tennant did an excellent job at portraying 

the dichotomy of a deeply depressed individual who still managed to often find happy things in life 

and reasons to maintain hope, sometimes after indulging in a pity party. He's a favorite 

Doctor and actor for that alone.]

 
Step 4- Adjust Your Coping Mechanisms
A coping mechanism is anything you do to adjust to the effects of stress in the hopes of reducing the impact stress has on you. Coping mechanisms are most basically broken down into fight (e.g. learn more, attack the problem, seek help, blame others) and flight (e.g. avoidance, denial, distancing, humor).

Some of these are positive, and some not so positive. Learning more, attacking the problem, and seeking help are all positive coping mechanisms. Blaming others, denial, and avoidance (anything you use to keep from dealing with stress, such as substances, affairs, or overindulging in hobbies) are negative ones. You will notice I didn't mention humor as a positive thing even though you would think it was? I also didn't mention distancing in the two categories. Well, with these two it's not so cut and dried (ever wonder how we got sayings like that one?!?).

Sometimes distancing can help because it gives you space to look at stressors and the situation more objectively so you can handle it. However, you don't want to stay with that distance maintained. That is when it becomes a negative, and more like avoidance. At some point you will need to deal with the stress rather than keep it at arm's length. Humor is a form of distancing. It can be a stress reliever, but if you use it too often it can become annoying, unhelpful, and more stressful.

My go to coping mechanism is avoidance, and most often is with books. I tend to read a lot. No, I really mean a lot. Seriously, a LOT. If I had a physical book for each book I've read, including the multiple times I've read them, I think my entire house would be lined with books.

If you are a book lover of any kind this could seem like a dream come true! The only problem with my coping mechanism of reading is that I often read fiction... and when I read I tend to completely immerse myself in the story... so much that if it's a good book I can view what's happening in my head like a movie or as if I'm there. Book lovers won't see a whole lot of problem with this (I can totally hear you saying, "Of course not! Why is this a problem!?!").

Well, here's the problem... when I'm living immersed in the world of the current book I'm reading, I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world ("Well, yeah, that's half the point of reading!"). And, if I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world, while I am missing [read: avoiding] the stress, I'm also missing all the good stuff and memories that are happening with the people I love ("........*blink*.......But.....*blink*......").

Yeah, not a lot I can say back at that one...

Now, I'm not saying I don't read anymore. Far from it! I still have stress and have a hard time coping with stress sometimes. However, I try to limit it when I can. If that doesn't work during a high stress period, after a time I will have a book fast in which I don't read many books at all (I'm in one now and decided to start a blog- funny what can happen!). Sometimes this comes naturally after I've read all my favorite books again, and everything that I can find at the library, and am in a waiting spell for more books by my favorite authors to be published (sometimes with internal pouting... and lots of sighs...). However, usually I get to some sort of saturation point when I have gotten to a place where I've avoided for as long as I can mentally, emotionally, and physically take and just have to deal with the parts of life I've been avoiding.

So, how do you adjust your coping mechanisms? First, recognize the coping mechanisms you have in the list I mentioned above. If you are having trouble with figuring out your coping mechanisms, you are welcome to let me know and I will help you with this! Second, identify one or two coping mechanisms that you think would be good to do instead. Or, to do what I've mentioned, which is do what you can to keep it from taking over your life. With some things this will work. In other instances (substance abuse being a big one), you may need to abstain entirely and find another way to cope.

After these two things, you adjust similarly to the process I mentioned in the pity party section. It will take time, but you can adjust, you can do it, and it can become normal to have a positive coping mechanism that still lets you experience life in the midst of depression and stress. 

Hold onto Hope, even (especially!) when all you can feel right now is nothing. Feelings aren't facts and don't get to dictate your life. You can do it. Find your somethings to have hope and just hold on.