I don't suppose for one moment that you welcome mood swings, especially those that move you into negative emotions. But I expect you judge them. As soon as those subtle feelings of sadness, or those violent energies of anger or frustration overtake you, you push them out of view, if it is humanly possible. But if you have had M.E. or any other debilitating condition, you may well not have had a choice, because in your time of weakness you become very vulnerable and cease to have control any more over your feelings. This emotional side of the illness is just as devastating as the physical side, perhaps for some even more so, because the turbulence of these feelings is frightening at the very least, and often quite terrifying. I used to describe it as going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And believe me, it was not funny!
What I think is taking place, is that our body is trying to help us to move energy in a way that most of us don't understand. Having been a nation which has very much repressed its feelings, all we want is a quick fix to get them safely behind bars again. As we are pushed onto the roller coaster against our will and whooshed down the slope, we are desperate to slow down and if possible, stop the whole scenario before it gets out of hand. What on earth is actually happening here?
On one level, the explanation is quite simple. Our brain chemistry has been seriously affected by our illness. Oxygen seems not to be getting to the brain through the brain stem. The hypothalamus, which organises so many of the body's activities is not working competently and our emotions are one of the casualties. Dr. Batmanghelid in his book, 'Your Body's Many Cries for Water', suggests that levels of Tryptophan, and its by-product Seratonin, reduce when the body is dehydrated. Our normal feelings of wellbeing diminish and depression, anxiety and other mental problems are the consequence. So on a physical level hydration is one solution.
But now let's look at it in terms of the energy body. Einstein, in his momentous discovery which changed the face of physics, came up with his famous equation E = MC2. In simple terms, one unit of energy was the same as one unit of matter multiplied by the speed of light squared. It is phenomenal to think that so much energy is bound up in one atom and that your body contains billions of them. That is why such a relatively small nuclear warhead can cause so much devastation, and in a similar way so can blocked emotions when they explode into awareness. In other words, your body can be viewed in two ways, as matter and as moving energy. Your physical form may seem solid enough but look at it through an electron microscope and you will see 99.9% space and the rest just electrons zooming around. Everything you do, the food you eat, the air you breathe, the exercise you take, all affect the flow of energy. And so, of course, do emotions.
Throughout the whole of our lives, whenever we have not fully expressed an emotion, we hold it in our bodies. Look at a tiny baby. In the course of a day he or she will have expressed every emotion under the sun........delight, joy, happiness, sadness, anger and anxiety. But look how the baby expresses the feeling, lets go, forgives the person or event causing him the trauma if necessary, and switches back to the present moment, never holding onto the emotion at all. The baby exudes Unconditional Love and look how flexible and relaxed her body is. But soon the baby learns as he gets older that certain emotions are not acceptable, not only in public, but even within the confines of his family circle. The young child intuits she is not loved when she is naughty, and so she begins to repress her feelings and she forgets how to let the energy of emotion pass through her body.
So what happens to it? It becomes lodged inside her, and it stays there until some incident triggers her rage or her anxiety, and on the back of it comes out all the other times she has felt the same way. So, when a tiny event is the straw which breaks the camel's back, our reactions can be very much over the top. Sometimes this is extremely frightening and so we feel we should not express our anger and frustration at all, because it is the sign of being a bad person, and then the pressure in our bodies increases and a physical symptom may appear. When we feel we have no energy at all, because our chi is blocked, our body uses its next strategy, which is to dislodge the emotions which are stuck there. Often this happens after we have overdone things. We have walked too far, we have talked too much or we have overstretched ourselves in one of the myriad ways in which we do. The energy is moving, but in order to operate effectively it needs to move through the parts of the body where emotions are being held. If it cannot break through we experience pain, but when it finally manages to do so, it dislodges whatever feeling is there.
I will never forget waking up in the middle of the night, having spent a good deal of time the day before engaged with practising my breathing. In particular, just before I went to bed, I was working with the six healing breaths of Qi Gong, outlined in William Collinge's book, 'M.E. A Guide to Self Empowerment' from the chapter, "Breath, Energy and Emotion". This links breathing to body parts and specific emotions. When I awoke suddenly, I found intense anger coming out of the backs of my legs and my elbows. That was when I first sat up and noticed that specific emotions could be held in particular places in the body and that I needed to release so much that was inside me.
My next breakthrough was when I was much better and was working on some family history research using microfiches in a local centre and I felt a headache coming on, which became increasingly violent. At first I thought it pointed out I had had enough and that it was time to quit. By that time I had got past making myself carry on with something, despite the pain, but, instead of packing up and going home, I decided to just sit and see what was behind the headache. Eventually a feeling began to well up and soon I realised it was not just anger but sheer rage. It was extremely frightening and I felt at first, if I expressed it, it would shatter me into a thousand pieces. I knew I simply had to experience it as energy and eventually it seemed to come out of my throat in huge waves, one after the other, each one lessening until they stopped.
It was as if all the times I had ever failed to express my point of view, particularly if it involved a conflict, had come together in a huge ball of rage, then a tiny hole had appeared, through which the rage could escape. The feeling of relief that occurred after it happened was incredible, like an abscess when it bursts, and my headache faded away quite rapidly. Most important of all was that I knew if I could experience my rage as a wave of energy I could experience any emotion at all, and what's more it was a good thing when it happened because it freed my energy. I needed no longer to judge my emotions, I could just allow them to happen.
My final breakthrough with the release of emotion happened after several sessions with both a masseuse and a kinesiologist, both of whom had an uncanny knack of finding spots on my body that were so painful, it brought sweat to my brow when they were deeply massaged. This always followed a pattern. First came the acute pain, which eventually turned into a chronic pain, not quite so intense as the original touch, which then faded into a sick and nauseous feeling, where there was an awareness of lack of balance. Quite quickly after this stage came a deep sigh and the pain rapidly diminished and often went altogether. At this point I usually accused the person inflicting the pain upon me, that she could not be pressing as hard as before, but I was constantly assured that this was not the case.
One morning, when I woke up the day following one of these sessions, and I am afraid to say, it was also after a succession of days when I had probably overtaxed myself, I felt very off balance and sick and nauseous. I was about to criticise myself for never learning, as we all tend to do when our energy fades after a good period, when it came to me that what I was experiencing was a magnified version of how I felt in the massage session. In the massage sequence just described, this feeling came immediately prior to the sigh, which let go the emotion and which took away the pain. Suddenly I thought, "Suppose this awful lack of balance means I am about to let go and release?" I breathed deeply into the imbalance as I lay in bed waiting for the emotion to rise. Sure enough the sigh came and I released whatever it was I was holding. I can honestly say that within twenty minutes of getting up, the feeling of nausea had gone completely. Normally, at this point in time, it could take up to forty eight hours of taking it easy to rid myself of this condition, usually accompanied by a great deal of resistance and annoyance. By accepting, thanking the body for showing me an imbalance, giving it permission to present itself without criticism, it arrived and went with little fuss. This was indeed a huge breakthrough!
Anything that gets the circulation going is important. The lymphatic system gets rid of the toxins in the bloodstream and it drains through exercise. In the absence of exercise the lymph glands need to be massaged. This can be done oneself as well as by a professional masseur. You will find plenty of sore spots on your body to work on! Deep slow breathing from the abdomen moves the chi around. The secret is to move the energy enough to dislodge the unexpressed emotions, but not to do it so wildly that the emotional release becomes overwhelming. I have just taken up Qi Gong and Tai Chi and certainly many of the Qi Gong single exercises and breathing exercises are wonderful for balancing the body, mind and spirit. Many can be adapted to sitting and lying positions. Yoga is another discipline, which is helpful in this way, and there are sometimes classes run specially for those who are physically disabled, which go at a very gentle pace.
I first understood how important the mind was in influencing our bodies when I read Deepak Chopra's 'Quantum Healing'. In it he recounts how patients with multiple personalities amazed him. In one of his personalities a man was diabetic and had to have insulin, but in all of his other personalities this was unnecessary. A child broke out in water filled blisters, if he drank orange juice in one of his personalities, but the blisters would subside as soon as he entered another, even if the orange juice was still in his system. Chopra's logical mind said that this was impossible, but yet he knew it was verifiable. This led him to a lifetime's work on this subject and his observations led him to believe that every single cell has its own intelligence and memory and these can be influenced by the way we use our minds.
When I was first very ill and housebound, someone passed on to me the words of a spiritual teacher, that I should be thankful for everything that was happening to me. That was quite beyond me at that time as I floundered in a very frightening illness, which I did not understand. All I wanted was to get back to normal, whatever that was. I was angry, I fought it, I resisted it and I would not give in. "Mind over matter" was my motto, but of course it is not a very good idea with M.E. The number of times that I worked along the lines that, if I operated as though I did not have the illness, it would go away. Who was I kidding? Only myself. Now I know that I can be grateful for M.E., because when I eventually let it, it took me deep into myself to discover my own wholeness. The dragons in the cellar, which I so feared initially, turned out to be more friendly than I thought. But first I had to discover that working on myself was a worthwhile task.
About eight months into my illness I had a miraculous healing. A whole set of coincidences, which is a story in itself, led me to a healer called Harry Thompson. When I first went I could scarcely walk a hundred yards, but within six weeks I had played ten holes of golf. Eleven weeks after my first visit, after a hectic weekend, I relapsed. After that, Healing would stay there for a short time and then I would use it up and progress was very slow even though I was much better than I had been before I went. The anger I felt at my idiocy you can well imagine. I had simply gone back to the way of life I had always known. I see now that even if I had not relapsed then, I would have relapsed at a later date, because I had not yet learned to truly love myself. At one session at this time Harry quoted to me from 'A Course In Miracles':
"When you are afraid, remember this; that God is real and you are His Beloved Child in whom He is well pleased."
Much to my amazement I found myself thinking, "Who me? A Beloved Child. How can I be when I am so ill?" Intellectually I would never have reasoned this, arguing cogently that I was loved by the Divine, but caught unawares emotionally, I obviously saw myself unworthy of Love for some reason, when my health was so imperfect. This is reflected in most of our lives. We feel we are unworthy of giving ourselves Unconditional Love, which means absolutely no criticism and no judgement of ourselves at all. This Love we don't have to earn by working hard, it is ours by right simply by being human. Simply accept that you are accepted.
Everything your body brings to your consciousness is wise, whatever it is, and this is particularly true of emotions. Our emotions should be free and flowing and we should not be afraid of them. Fear in particular, blocks energy more than anything, because it makes us contract and not expand. Can you remember falling in love and how expansive that was? Your heart opened and became one with the beloved. That's how you need to be with yourself, so that everything about you can come into the open and be accepted without judgement. Then you can feel your very cells expand with joy and happiness, and gradually as your emotional blocks are released, your energy will flow.
You can begin on any level; physical nurturing, through food and supplements, mental relaxation, by ceasing to criticise yourself, emotional support, by allowing your emotions to flow without judgement, or spiritually by letting go and letting be, the action through inaction, which is the beginning of finding "The Way". Every way in works through all the other levels. But Love is the Key. Love is free. It expands and relaxes the body and of all the ingredients for recovery it is by far the most important. It costs nothing and you do not have to rely on it being given to you by others, even though it is very beautiful to receive it, because you can give it to yourself at all times and in all places. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and truly say, "I love you," and mean every part of yourself? I certainly could not before I was ill, but I can now, because there is nothing I have yet met within myself, which is unlovable. That is M.E.'s gift to me and I am truly grateful for it.
So give thanks for those mood swings. They are as much a part of you as your greatest talents and the feelings they represent desperately want to be loved and accepted and not pushed out of view. And most importantly, remember this. You will not get better without experiencing your emotions, because so long as they remain repressed, they are blocking your energy, and that is the hub of the problem with M.E. Please welcome them and ask them to come out into the open. They are all okay and bona fide. And next time you have a mood swing do not judge it. Love it instead. Remember! It's making you better!
© Jan Brumfitt, January 1999
Jan's website: www.janbrumfitt.co.uk