Severe CFS/ME/EDS/Fibro/Post lyme

David, we're not medical professionals here, so the problem with your very short and recent story and your list of conditions, is that they reference a lot of specific physical conditions that we can't speak to. However, I do have a suggestion, which is that you read one of Dr. Sarno's books (The MindBody Prescription, or The Divided Mind) AND that you read some of the posts on the Sucess Stories subforum, scanning the titles to find references to things which sound familiar. After you've done those two things, perhaps you can ask your question again, but also provide a history of possible signs of TMS in your "former" life, and perhaps a look at your emotional well-being from childhood to current times.

People have recovered from all kinds of crazy symptoms and conditions, including ones that started out as conditions that the medical community ostensibly treated. "Chronic Lyme", for example, has pretty much been debunked as a real condition by people who eventually ended up finding recovery in TMS knowledge and practice.

Just off the cuff, in my personal experience as well as from my reading and other knowledge, it is absolutely possible that you have a weakened immune system which results from some kind of old emotional instability or trauma, and that's where we have to start from on this forum. It's also how you are more likely to find people who can relate to your amended story, and you'll get some feedback.

 

Definitely. Now you "just" have to dig really deep, and look at your childhood from the point of view of a completely self-absorbed infant and child.

I, too, was fortunate to have had an excellent upbringing with responsible and loving parents - but I have struggled with anxiety all my life. By doing some pretty deep exploration and visualizing myself as a very young child I remembered and discovered a couple of things.

One was remembering that my mother had been an only child, raised in European boarding schools. She never babysat in her life, she got married well into her late twenties, she didn't conceive right away, and then she had a miscarriage before I was finally born, almost four years into the marriage, so that she was almost 30 when she had her first child. I recall the stories she told me about how nervous she was with me - so guess where my anxiety came from?

Then there's the natural desire of the infant/child to receive 100% of the parents' attention - this is what Freud explored, and which Dr. Sarno incorporated into his theories. I was well-loved and very much wanted, but my parents proceeded to have three more children after me, and through meditation and journaling (at age 60), I was able to recall myself as an awkward and isolated child way back then. For better or worse, I was well-behaved and self-sufficient, which was all too easy for my parents to take advantage of when the demands of three more young ones became overwhelming.

Traumatic? Hardly, not in the big picture. But isolating for a small child? Definitely - and isolation, often experienced as abandonment, is a HUGE issue for human beings.

Another form of isolation is often described by people here, which is bullying - whether by peers or by siblings. The child might perceive that they have been abandoned by parents who are unable to protect them - and a history that includes some form of bullying is extremely common amongst those who suffer from anxiety. Of course, parents themselves can inflict fear and anxiety on their children, and in fact I am convinced that too many young people today suffer from anxiety, brought on by a society that worships safety above experience. The internet and constant exposure to bad news doesn't help, of course.

Try exploring some of these ideas. Humans were designed by nature to be fearful, and it doesn't take much to push us over the edge of reasonableness.

And this