Where Terror Has No Home

Photo by Penny LamKK, Flickr

I’ve had the incomplete draft of a blog post open on my desktop for the last three weeks. I titled the post “You’re such a spaz,” a playful title about a not so playful event – my recent relapse, in which I suffered a severe full-body tonic spasm that happened every few minutes and lasted for several weeks (thus the reason for my long posting hiatus).

But I never finished writing that post. I can’t. Every time I sit down to work on it, the dark, cold hands of terror grip me and I find myself staring at my computer, frozen in fear. I don’t want to look at MS. I don’t want to think about MS. I don’t want to be in the same room with MS, much less the same body. The same blog? Forget it.

It’s been a long time since I had had a major exacerbation and my memory of the psychological fallout, not unlike birth, conveniently erased itself just enough that I could keep on keepin’ on.

But this flare-up, it shook me to the core. To the basement of my greatest dread.

I had never asked myself this question – in thirteen years with MS – until this relapse. But there the question was. Here it still is. Looming just below the surface. I almost can’t write it, but I know – from that place we all have where precognitive wisdom comes from – that write it I must:

What if I do everything I can do and it still doesn’t work? What if I just keep getting sicker?

There, I did it. I typed the most terrifying thought I have ever had about MS. I just published it for all of you to see. It’s out there now. No backsies, as my daughter likes to say. It’s cached on all of your computers. It’s archived in my blog. And now the only choice I have is to look at it.

Fuck.

What if I do everything I can do and it still doesn’t work? What if I just keep getting sicker?

*     *     *

What if I do. It’s a possibility. Not a likely one, given the evidence of those who have shown great discipline in revising their lifestyle – diet, exercise, attitude. But it’s possible. Just like it’s possible for your robustly healthy sister or mom or best friend to find out she has a malignant tumor in her breast tomorrow. We don’t know what the future will bring.

Here’s what I know: To spend my time wandering the haunted hallways of a fearfully imagined future is not useful. Beyond not useful, it’s dangerous. It creates stress and anxiety in this moment, here, now. And it feels awful.

So what can I do when the terror strikes?

When I work with private clients, the first question I ask is: What do you want? And invariably, the answer I get is some version of “I want to be symptom-free, I don’t want to have MS anymore, I want to be healthy.” And I get that. Boy do I get that. But here’s the thing – that’s not what you really want.

When I drill down deeper, when I get to the core with my clients (and with myself), what reveals itself is that what you really want, what I really want, what we all really want is to be okay in this moment no matter what is happening. To be in acceptance of what is simply because it’s what is. It’s perfect, because it is. Or as Michael Brown would put it, it’s happening because it’s required.

Now I know I just got your hackles up, so let me clarify: I’m not saying that being sick is fun and you should just do nothing and be ok with that. Being sick sucks. Like, really really. But what is worse than being sick is being in resistance to being sick. With the acceptance of what is comes a release. This is what’s happening. It just is. And that acceptance is magical.

Now, from here, having released the resistance, I’ve freed up a tremendous amount of energy tied up in fighting the truth of my situation and wishing it were some other way. And with that energy now flowing, and with my awareness anchored in the present moment, in this here now, the question becomes…what next?

Like this, I can begin to take the necessary steps to create the most conducive environment for my body to heal. But what’s most important is that I’m taking those steps from the state that is most conducive for my healing – a state of stable, centered, readiness.

This may seem like a subtle shift, but it’s huge. In one state, I’m making pictures of a future of disability, running fear throughout my body, and saying things to myself like “I hate this, I wish this wasn’t happening, why is this happening to me, I want out of my body, why do I have to be sick?”

In the other, I’m anchored in the present moment, and like this…what becomes available is a stillness…a sort of quiet…in which anything is possible, and terror has no home.

Want more inspiration? Read Are You Committed? or go to the main page to Get Inspired.

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Tags: flare-up, terror