Back live
After nearly a year off line, I am going to open this blog up again.
Why was it down? Mind your own business. Oh wait, this is a blog, where I make my business your business for the self gratifying experience of maybe someone caring.
Well, frankly, I became a father, and until issues of child care were worked out, I was not really in the mood to be sharing intimate details on line.
What's been going on. Well, to tell the truth even before I went radio silent, I was not posting much. Looking back, I think, like my journalling, I find a greater desire to write when I am away from home, and my healing journey was bringing me back to home and the stories seemed less foreign, less frightening, less important.
These days, my interest has spiralled back to the events preceeding my illness in April of 1998 and viewing recovery from that point of view. It might be impossible, but would definitely be inaccurate, to explain how I reached the conclusion that the essence of my illness for so many years was a result of over-training/exhaustion.
But I will try. Why? Because you have paid your dimes and now you get to see the monkey dance.
As the symptoms have faced, one thing I have noticed is how they often fade in order, those arriving latest fading first, those arriving first, staying longest and being most resilient to my efforts to coax them into sleep.
Take for instance muscle twitches, which were early on the scene, dissapeared in about 2006, but made a reemergence as I am healing.
Starting about 9 or 10 months ago, I, a girl I was dating and who is still a wonderful presence in my life, started giving me acupuncture treatments. I was resistant at first, more from an exhaustion with new healing modalities. For the unwell, there exists a morass of options, well meaning most, if not all, but ultimate of questionable and varying degrees of efficacy. Dedicating time, energetic and financial resources to each is draining and counterproductive, yet there exists little guide between those that work, and those that don't as most refuse to be verified, and shriek indignantly when you ask them to verify their effectiveness. Accupuncture is, of course, one of the more widely accepted holistic healing modalities, but yet, even within that narrow group, there are so many as to swallow you whole. Acupressure, homeopathy, body work, yoga, pilates, vegetarianism, blood type diets, bio-metrics, Alexander, energy tapping, Ayurveda, Orthomolecularism, raw food diets, cleansing, candida treatments, fasts, rolfing, sauna treatments, etc etc etc. Its exhausting. So I have always been hesitant to try a new one, as the benefits are generally seen in committing oneself wholeley to the program, but requiring a new vencular, a new perspective and a course of study. And there is also the desire to avoid the crushing emotional defeat of another hope and another failure to resolve anything.
But I was gentle and never pushed it at all, just quietly and kindly made the option available. I turned her down for months, but eventually found the resources to be curious.
So I stuck me with her pins and took my wrist and whispered strange things about water, wood, kidneys and yin and such. And it would seem like so much hokum except that it was repeatable and predictable. "This will make you feel X". and it did. "This should help with Y", and it did. So I was intrigued and more so as we went on and in the greatest compliment I know how to give, I stopped overlooking what she was doing and just let her help.
And help it did. If nothing else, I looked into the gaping maw of my own exhaustion. Out of respect for her work, I quit the gym in February. I have been lifting weights, without surcease, since I was 14 years old. Canceling, alright freezing, my membership was a painful step of faith. I also stopped climbing and resolved to surf when there was surf and not when there was not.
And I felt better. It took three days post exercise to feel that way, and frankly, day 2 was rough, but I did feel calm.
The more I stretched that, the more interesting it got. On day 4, I felt depressed. Leaden legs and sad head. I felt heavy and dark. But the depression was not unpleasant. It was like a friend holding my shoulder down when I was trying to get up on the 8 count to take another beating. Throwing in the towel for the fighter to dumb to stay down.
And it went on like that.
The more I rested, the more rest I needed. Weird. I found myself sleeping, routinely, 9, 10, 11 even a couple of times 12 hours. I went with it. I am going with it, when I can. It makes work hard, but the thought of work right now even grates on my nerves and causes me a painful jolt. I just want to rest, and to sleep and to be administered to.
I had and have fantasies of being in a hospital, in the country, with endless white sheets and fiction books and movies to watch and sleeping 16 hours a day. And I never felt this tired before, until I realized it has been there since college, deep in my cells, ignored and repressed.
And being a father scares me, terrifies me, that I haven't the gas to go forward, that the exhaustion that comes with parenthood will swallow me whole when the mother goes back to work and I am up at 6am every day with C. That I cannot heal there, that C will be faced with a father forever one step away from health, battling depression and weird symptoms, sucking her into his self centered death spiral. I want to be well so I can be out of the way for her, so she can be in the spotlight. As little girls should be. So I am not selfish and paranoid and instead, you know, Ward Fucking Cleaver or some such.
The long story short is that I am finding significant traction, anecdotally, medically and personally, in viewing this illness as overtraining, and ultimate stress machinery failure. Sometimes healing is a matter of finding a story that is consistent with the symptoms, but its important to remember that is is just a story, and the story itself can become and illness if you forget that and are unwilling or unable to throw it out when it no longer serves its purpose, or to turn it over and kick the tires anew when it has lost its power to guide.
the unraveling of the illness has re-traced the stress reactions that lead to the illness in the first place.
This is all I gots for now.
Why was it down? Mind your own business. Oh wait, this is a blog, where I make my business your business for the self gratifying experience of maybe someone caring.
Well, frankly, I became a father, and until issues of child care were worked out, I was not really in the mood to be sharing intimate details on line.
What's been going on. Well, to tell the truth even before I went radio silent, I was not posting much. Looking back, I think, like my journalling, I find a greater desire to write when I am away from home, and my healing journey was bringing me back to home and the stories seemed less foreign, less frightening, less important.
These days, my interest has spiralled back to the events preceeding my illness in April of 1998 and viewing recovery from that point of view. It might be impossible, but would definitely be inaccurate, to explain how I reached the conclusion that the essence of my illness for so many years was a result of over-training/exhaustion.
But I will try. Why? Because you have paid your dimes and now you get to see the monkey dance.
As the symptoms have faced, one thing I have noticed is how they often fade in order, those arriving latest fading first, those arriving first, staying longest and being most resilient to my efforts to coax them into sleep.
Take for instance muscle twitches, which were early on the scene, dissapeared in about 2006, but made a reemergence as I am healing.
Starting about 9 or 10 months ago, I, a girl I was dating and who is still a wonderful presence in my life, started giving me acupuncture treatments. I was resistant at first, more from an exhaustion with new healing modalities. For the unwell, there exists a morass of options, well meaning most, if not all, but ultimate of questionable and varying degrees of efficacy. Dedicating time, energetic and financial resources to each is draining and counterproductive, yet there exists little guide between those that work, and those that don't as most refuse to be verified, and shriek indignantly when you ask them to verify their effectiveness. Accupuncture is, of course, one of the more widely accepted holistic healing modalities, but yet, even within that narrow group, there are so many as to swallow you whole. Acupressure, homeopathy, body work, yoga, pilates, vegetarianism, blood type diets, bio-metrics, Alexander, energy tapping, Ayurveda, Orthomolecularism, raw food diets, cleansing, candida treatments, fasts, rolfing, sauna treatments, etc etc etc. Its exhausting. So I have always been hesitant to try a new one, as the benefits are generally seen in committing oneself wholeley to the program, but requiring a new vencular, a new perspective and a course of study. And there is also the desire to avoid the crushing emotional defeat of another hope and another failure to resolve anything.
But I was gentle and never pushed it at all, just quietly and kindly made the option available. I turned her down for months, but eventually found the resources to be curious.
So I stuck me with her pins and took my wrist and whispered strange things about water, wood, kidneys and yin and such. And it would seem like so much hokum except that it was repeatable and predictable. "This will make you feel X". and it did. "This should help with Y", and it did. So I was intrigued and more so as we went on and in the greatest compliment I know how to give, I stopped overlooking what she was doing and just let her help.
And help it did. If nothing else, I looked into the gaping maw of my own exhaustion. Out of respect for her work, I quit the gym in February. I have been lifting weights, without surcease, since I was 14 years old. Canceling, alright freezing, my membership was a painful step of faith. I also stopped climbing and resolved to surf when there was surf and not when there was not.
And I felt better. It took three days post exercise to feel that way, and frankly, day 2 was rough, but I did feel calm.
The more I stretched that, the more interesting it got. On day 4, I felt depressed. Leaden legs and sad head. I felt heavy and dark. But the depression was not unpleasant. It was like a friend holding my shoulder down when I was trying to get up on the 8 count to take another beating. Throwing in the towel for the fighter to dumb to stay down.
And it went on like that.
The more I rested, the more rest I needed. Weird. I found myself sleeping, routinely, 9, 10, 11 even a couple of times 12 hours. I went with it. I am going with it, when I can. It makes work hard, but the thought of work right now even grates on my nerves and causes me a painful jolt. I just want to rest, and to sleep and to be administered to.
I had and have fantasies of being in a hospital, in the country, with endless white sheets and fiction books and movies to watch and sleeping 16 hours a day. And I never felt this tired before, until I realized it has been there since college, deep in my cells, ignored and repressed.
And being a father scares me, terrifies me, that I haven't the gas to go forward, that the exhaustion that comes with parenthood will swallow me whole when the mother goes back to work and I am up at 6am every day with C. That I cannot heal there, that C will be faced with a father forever one step away from health, battling depression and weird symptoms, sucking her into his self centered death spiral. I want to be well so I can be out of the way for her, so she can be in the spotlight. As little girls should be. So I am not selfish and paranoid and instead, you know, Ward Fucking Cleaver or some such.
The long story short is that I am finding significant traction, anecdotally, medically and personally, in viewing this illness as overtraining, and ultimate stress machinery failure. Sometimes healing is a matter of finding a story that is consistent with the symptoms, but its important to remember that is is just a story, and the story itself can become and illness if you forget that and are unwilling or unable to throw it out when it no longer serves its purpose, or to turn it over and kick the tires anew when it has lost its power to guide.
the unraveling of the illness has re-traced the stress reactions that lead to the illness in the first place.
This is all I gots for now.
posted by warnerk | 12:00 PM
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