All I Want For Christmas
Photo by Pshab, Flickr
This is an intense time of year. Intensely great for some. Intensely lonely for others. However it’s showing up for you, the holiday season most definitely amplifies the challenging contours of our lives.
Despite the fact that I like to think of myself as unique, I’m actually a cliche holiday emotional mess these days (because as many of you know this year has been, for me, um, challenging, all the way up until the last few days, it seems), and so as Christmas, Hannukah, and the New Year approach, I find myself experiencing mounting pressure to understand and process the events of 2011 and consider how to make 2012 better.
A few poignant thoughts from Ann Boroch in the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp we recently presented are proving helpful in this endeavor, so I want to share them with you.
“The emotional, mental, psychological, spiritual layers of us are the key in turning around a chronic health condition, and it certainly was in my case. I find the longer that I do my own practice, I realize that sometimes this is literally the answer that people, when they look for the magic fix – and I’m not saying this happens quickly – but this could be the angle that really unlocks and gets the body and cellular memory to start changing…
Stress and fear are the number one body breakers. By far, this will outweigh how bad your diet is, and if you’re not on a detoxification program, etc. I find that this is why when people are doing all that they need to be doing, they’re good soldiers, as I say, and they’re doing a Candida diet and they’re taking the supplements and they’re exercising, they may not see enough shift in moving forward because they’re not tackling the stress in their life, the toxic relationships and/or the fears that are consuming them.”
Ann’s thoughts here get at the heart of what many of us (myself included) may sometimes forget as we obsess about the details of our recovery plans. Which mayo can I eat, how many milligrams of vitamin D should I take, can I get away with eating five potato chips, etc. We miss the forest for the trees, as the saying goes (I thought I could throw that in there, since I’m busy being cliche anyway) and we forget the larger, deeper scope of issues that need addressing.
Murky Waters
The emotional stuff is messy. I find it a lot more challenging to implement change in this realm than in my diet and supplements. That’s the easy stuff. But revising how my 9-year-old inner child sees the world? Those are the murky waters. That’s the sticky, grimy, ugly, messy, damn-I-don’t-really-want-to-navigate-this stuff. But alas, the tough stuff seems to always be where the magic is to be found. And I’ve heard rumors that the holiday season is all about magic. So maybe getting it right (or at least seeing some improvement) in 2012 is gonna be about spending more time with the grime.
So I’ll put the questions to you…
How has this year measured up for you?
What were your successes?
Where are you seeing progress?
Where have you experienced setbacks?
What can you do about them?
And most importantly…
What is the elephant in the room that you haven’t been willing to look at? Does it fall into the bin of “body breakers” Ann referred to in her quote? And if so, I’m gonna be so bold as to say that maybe you should in fact eat a bag of chips while you draw up the nerve to go visit that elephant, and maybe even jump on his back, take a ride, and see what he has to show you.
P.S. I love Michael Buble and his cover of All I Want for Christmas is my holiday anthem this year, so I’m including it here just because it’s beautiful and I feel like it.
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Thank you Karen for your post! I was dx last October, 2010 and the elephant in the room is the first thing that I dealt with when I came home from my 5 day hospital stay- after being told for over two years that nothing was wrong with me.
I did NO research on MS- nothing. I only wanted to know and did search out anything and everthing that had to do with healing ms. I choose not to take the MD’s meds – after all, I did not have much faith in their ‘care’ of me and choose a different path- a path of taking responsibility for my actions and making new choices with my food, my supplements, and my stressful life. I have been seeing Ann Boroch for just about a year and I have not had an episode since the one that landed me in the hospital.
I am grateful to you and to Ann for spreading the alternate options and support of self healing. We are what we think and eat. Thank you!!
thank you elizabeth! your journey sounds similar to mine. i’m so glad you found ann, she’s made a huge impact on my life. wishing you continued health in the new year!