Finally in the driver's seat... in more ways than one.
If you're still on the fence about healing lifelong autoimmune conditions or chronic health conditions please read on.
It’s the morning of July 31st, 2023. After thanking Dr. Chakrabati, I exit a small office on the 6th floor of Aintree Hospital, Fazakerly, feeling like I’ve just won the lottery. I bounce out onto the street below as it starts to rain, and I feel like, if I had an umbrella, I could open it up and fly high into the sky, Mary Poppins style, if I so chose.
I jump on a bus and pop my earphones in.
🎵I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending
I'm on my way, can't stop me now
And you can do the same, yeah
🎵
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
It's never too late to try
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
You could be so many people
If you make that break for freedom
What have you done today to make you feel proud.
🎵
Heather Small serenades me with her song about growth and expansion.
I’m feeling proud. I’ve just been told that I’m now discharged from the Narcolepsy clinic and free to apply for a driver’s license after 25 years.
The last time I attempted to drive a vehicle, I was around 19 years of age and I experienced a sleep attack during a driving lesson. Think of an occasion when someone’s F-bombs really came from a visceral place. Multiply it by 10, and that was my driving instructor's reaction. It wasn't pretty.
I hadn't yet been diagnosed with Narcolepsy Type 1, but I’d experienced so many symptoms related to sleepiness, hypnagogic hallucinations and nightmares, knees buckling and collapsing to the floor when laughing – all my muscles losing their tone (cataplexy). So many weird and wonderful symptoms since high school. But oh, the tiredness. The grueling fight-to-live-and-function exhaustion.
When I revoked my provisional driver’s license, it felt like another nail in the coffin. Yet another layer of freedom lost.
The natural question might be: Has the narcolepsy completely gone then?
I simply don’t associate with the illness. I’ve become adept at knowing when exhaustion or a sleep attack stems from my unconscious thoughts and fears. I "wake up" with speed. Where is this coming from? What have I been ruminating on?
The lyrics of Wake up l’il Suzy, Wake up, ain’t never been so true as I tune in over and over and over again to the unconscious mind.
I’m aware I get tired when I’ve started oscillating on the fear, shame, guilt carousel again. I get tired when I start listening to the extremely harsh judge sitting on my right shoulder. I get tired when I fall back into the learned helplessness that high-control religion imbues into the followers' psyche. I feel the exhaustion when I start to fear judgment from others. I feel the exhaustion when I stay stuck in anger over my past and over the life and choices that ought to be everyone's birthright but wasn’t mine. I feel the exhaustion when I start to fear the future and fret about finding financial freedom. I get tired when I’m seeking external validation or support or understanding.
Learned helplessness is a big one for me.
When you've been infantilized your whole life by the lack of freedom to express feelings without guilt, make no mistake, the toll, in one form or another, will be heavy.
“When we worry that you’re going to judge me, you’re going to take your love away from me, you’re going to take opportunities away from me… that’s what causes us to suppress our authenticity and it strikes at our belonging.” - Ritu Bhasin
And then there is the fear of exclusion. I had a memory surface just recently. I was around 7, perhaps even younger. And I remember thinking in a childlike way, "Well, if I’m going to lose my family and all of my community, my friends, if I get anything wrong, I’m going to make sure I never do anything wrong."
So, I lived my life with the stabilizing wheels still on my bike. Scared to make a wrong move. To mess up. To fall down. One learns to curb all natural impulses.
“The name for that defense against the angst of exclusion is guilt” - The Middle Passage, From Misery to Meaning in Mid-Life by James Hollis
No child should have to live with that level of pressure.
I’ll write a post about why I believe my former religion is one of the most energetically dense on the planet, and yet why, for the most part, the people within it are a beautiful people, but for now, suffice to say that my body took the hit.
As Vadim Zeland says in Reality Transurfing:
“People think they are acting according to their own free will, but in reality, they have no conception of true freedom because the configuration is created by the structure each individual plays their role with. The will they have been designated in a play that has been imposed upon them.
“It would appear that everyone is free to do what they want. We are declared to have this freedom; the only thing is that we can only want things that coincide with the structure. The structure teaches us to want things it needs us to want.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I believe the narcolepsy was my way out of existing. It was a trauma response in overdrive as I shut down multiple times a day.
And that’s why I had "Snoozy Suzy" emblazoned on my runner’s shirt at the London Marathon last year. It was a nod to my former self and all the ways she had survived. With that nod of thanks, I was able to let go more and more of the illness.
Last week, I enjoyed a 12-hour day with friends and not once did I feel the need to take a nap. There was no heavy, woeful moment where I felt desperate to just close my eyes and seek refuge.
The energy of the day, my alignment with life, my feeling of infinite possibilities, kept me alert and awake. The energy of the day enveloped me in a joyful embrace, like a field of sunflowers turning their faces towards the sun, filling me with a radiant glow that kept me wide awake, as if I had sipped from the cup of endless excitement.
This is magic. 🪄This is a novelty I will never ever tire of.
When you think of healing an autoimmune disease, what comes up in your body? What do you feel? Where do you feel it? Frustration? Anger? Sadness?
What colour would you attribute to the feeling? Where in your body is it? Place a hand on that spot, and thank it. Thank the feeling. It’s there to serve you.
“The body is filled with information. When that information is emotionally charged, it carries energy, and when that energy is not dispersed, when it cannot find an outlet, when it’s held within the cells of the body that were not designed to hold that particular energy, it can - and often does - cause problems.” - Rev. Victoria Pendragon, D.D.
I've come to see these undispersed energies as fragmented parts of ourselves - they are splintered parts of our inner child that have become hidden as we lost touch with our authentic, intuitive self in trying to fit in, people please, or feel safe.
Healing changes us. As we face each of those fragmented parts and love them - all the fear, all the insecurities, the shame, all of it - we no longer feel at the mercy of the hand that life has dealt us. We break away from hopelessness, have less judgment of ourselves (and therefore others), and come more and more to a place of neutrality and love.
Going deep within might well be the hardest journey of our life. Doing so takes the courage of a lion. It means self-responsibility. It literally means that even trivial things - like if someone is chomping on crisps next to us on the train and we’re feeling antsy - 😬 there’s some part of our interior self that needs love.
I read a great exercise this week by EFT Practitioner and Osteopath, Claire Turner. The exercise was for those grappling with money-related shadows, but equally, it can be done for health symptoms too. I’ve done many, many exercises like this, and more, this past few years:
“STEP ONE
Write down 3 things you don't like about your money reality right now.
STEP TWO
Realize that those 3 things are what your shadow actually wants to experience. It's creating them.
STEP THREE
Make friends with your shadow. In fact, let's do something crazy. CELEBRATE that crazy shadow coot and what they're trying to create. Take each one of the 3 things you wrote down and celebrate the tits off them! Jump about. Whoop. Punch the air like you've just won a date with Chris Hemsworth (other celebrities are available).
Go on.
I mean it.
And see how the energy shifts around how you feel about your current financial situation.
Because here's the deal. Be willing to master yourself as a whole - not just the "good" stuff.
And THIS is how you empower yourself to get the results (financial or otherwise) that you want.”
“If you don't create your own reality, it will be created for you.” Deepak Chopra
And the Journey continues…
PS. Many concepts and people that have helped enormously on this healing journey, here are seven:
All things Joe Dispenza
All things Reality Transurfing
All things Renee Garcia
Marie Taysom - MAP Practitioner and Intuitive.
All things Lee Harris
Avril Lobo - Trauma Informed Coach
Natalie Amos - Intuitive Life Coach, Reiki Master
And also congratulations! That must have felt so incredible.
Ah, very interesting read, thank you. Came to you via Emily Chalmers' share. I was looking pondering Joe Dispenza after hearing him on a couple of podcasts and then a friend said something, just in passing, not about him in particular, that put me off! I've been going down a route of exploration around trauma healing and accepting all of your parts, thanking them for what they are trying to do/tell you, listening to my body etc - so this was a great piece to read.