ME and us

I've noticed it before, and maybe it's not peculiar to the ME community, but there is a tendency for ME sufferers to discount the experiences of those who recover. If someone has recovered, the logic goes, then it can't have been ME. Suddenly our four years of struggling with neurological and immunological impairment are wiped out, or downgraded. Never mind that three years ago he couldn't get up and down stairs without a stick, that he couldn't read (even to the end of a paragraph) for two years because of brain fog, that he had severe pain from blood pooling in his legs, that his underarm lymph glands were so swollen that he had arm-mounds rather than arm-pits. If he has recovered due to something as seemingly bizarre (and unconnected to himself) as his wife's use of EFT, it must have been all in our heads.

I understand what a nightmare it is to have one's life taken over from ME and see no way out of it; I understand also that everyone's journey is different. But what we have experienced here is real.

My husband, I should say, is in recovery rather than recovered; and we are both careful about how much he does, but our lives are no longer dominated by illness. ME is not actively present. From all I have read and experienced over the last ten months, EFT is very effective in relieving the root causes of physical illness, even very serious conditions like ME, but only if the afflicted person is willing, and my husband is not. Though EFT proved itself extremely effective in terms of symptom relief, and we could have gone further with it, he didn't like the fact that it worked much better when I tapped with him than when he tapped alone (ME is disempowering enough), and he balked at using EFT to address any emotional issues. Plus I'm afraid I was both inexperienced and evangelical, without the experience to approach the problem with sufficient subtlety. As a result of all these things, my husband stopped doing EFT many months ago. He knows it works for physical issues, but he wants to do things in a more traditional way. Slowly.

Still, (and he would agree with this) EFT has been behind his recovery. My daily use of it, on my own issues, has enabled me to remove myself from what had become a vicious circle, and go from being equally needy to being fully supportive; to being able to meet all the physical and emotional challenges of being with someone who is struggling with a chronic illness. What has resulted is a supportive environment in which my husband can recover.

I appreciate that many people reading this blog do not necessarily subscribe to the idea of a strong mind-body connection, meaning that emotional/mental dis-eases show up in the body as physical diseases. Because of the battle of ME sufferers to have their (very real, very physical) condition taken seriously, and not something that's "all in their head" or even worse, as some idiot said to me about my husband the other day, "lazybones disease", there is a fierce denial of the body-mind connection in the ME community. I really do understand that too; I spent a lot of time defending the physical reality of my husband's condition to those harbouring the illusions that I was somehow making it up.

What is odd is that now that I am, at least in some sense, on the other side of ME, there are suggestions from members of the ME community, including some who supported me through my husband's illness, that it "wasn't real ME."

I'm not here to meddle with anyone's belief systems. And I have real compassion for everyone with ME who has not found a way out (yet). Everyone's answer, if there is one, will be different. In my experience EFT is difficult to self-apply when you have ME because you are already energetically compromised. I'd recommend, if you are an ME sufferer interested in exploring EFT as a possible solution, working with an advanced practitioner who has some experience with chronic illnesses of this nature. They don't need to be local; EFT can be done very effectively over the phone.

But if anyone reading this is the partner of an ME sufferer, I would highly recommend learning EFT and applying it to yourself. For me, I wish I'd known about it years ago. But there has to be some positives to suffering, some silver lining to the cloud, and this has been it for me. I don't know if I'd have tried it at all if I hadn't been desperate, and desperate is certainly where ME pushed me. Now I can be glad of the learning experience that was my husband's ME. It is good to be able to see it not as years of waste and pain but to know that something has come out of it that is proving immensely valuable to both of us.

Spring

Three months have passed, I see. The reason I don't post is because I'm happy... not all the time, obviously, but mostly. Happier, in fact, than I've been for years. My husband and I are getting closer and closer, my home life has settled down, and we are tackling the challenges around us reasonably well. If something blows up, it's quickly mended. Life is on the turn, a permanent turn, for the better.

I do EFT every day - it's part of my routine now. I've also taken up meditation, and find the two extremely complimentary. In fact tapping is a good way of reaching a more relaxed level very quickly. Relaxation means I get more things right - I work more efficiently, I communicate more effectively with my loved ones, and life is generally better. If something is bothering me, I tap it away with EFT and can get on with my day.

I'm going to do the EFT Level 1 training in July - not because I want to set up a commercial practice (I already have a vocation) but because I want to be more confident in using EFT with my friends and family. I realized at the weekend that I am quick to offer to help friends relieve their physical pains, such as headaches and toothaches, but shy away from applying EFT where the pain is emotional. There is still much I want to learn about, and do better, and training seems like the most time-efficient way to make a marked improvement.

I gather a handful of people are still dropping in here from time to time, which is why I thought I'd come back to let you know how we're all doing. But you can safely assume that if the blog is silent, the answer to that question is 'very well, thank you.'

I came to the blogosphere in distress, and leave in peace.

Blessings to every one of us.

Snowchild

It's funny how much things have changed in four months. My life is a lot more peaceful, and my husband isn't ill anymore. There is some closeness to be rebuilt but we are both managing to sidestep arguments. Now the season of peace and goodwill comes along to add its special magic, and despite the pressures of planning and preparing for Christmas (with four children, and in my case, two dozen relatives to buy for!) we have kept the air light and relatively tension-free.
After a spell of great excitement about this new world I've stumbled upon (energy medicine sounds kooky when you come from as straight-laced a scientific background as I do) I have adjusted to the fact that the world is still ticking on in much the same manner, and that most of the time my reality must coincide with that of the people around me.

Everyone has to find their own way to peace and happiness; this has been mine. Most people aren't even sure that peace and happiness are achievable, so I guess I was lucky that I always had a strong conviction that life could be better, and a hope that we might get there again.

So Christmas is coming, and with it, the time to properly connect. We started this afternoon at our daughter's first ever Christmas show, organised (with great courage, I thought!) by her nursery. We were - for the first time in my life, I confess - front row parents, beaming at her and whispering admiring things to each other. Look what we created! Isn't she sweet?

I've been incredibly aware, these last four years, of the power of children to drive their parents apart, no matter how strong the parents' love. It's good to become aware, also, of the power of children to bring their parents together. All this recovery, in some sense, and all of our battle (and eventual ceasefire) to stay together was underpinned by our determination not to damage our daughter. It was lovely to sit together and watch her beaming from the stage, dressed as a "snowchild", with a carrot for a nose.

Merry Christmas to each one of you, and may the mid-winter festivities warm you.

Healing The Dog

This morning, I was coming out of the shower when my husband came down to tell me that our dog (13 years old) had just collapsed, peeing a little in the process. He said he'd heard the scrabbling of feet, exactly the same sound that had preceded our last dog (this dog's mother) dying about five years ago. When I got to the dog, he was looking very unwell, too weak to stand. He had peed, it seemed in shock, and was lamely, really sadly, trying to lap it up (something he would not normally do with his own pee - but it was like when animals eat their own sick, perhaps they are trying to clean up. He looked really embarrassed, ashamed, as well as being shaken and clearly unwell.

I started doing EFT on the dog very early on, after only about 6 weeks of using EFT on myself; first on his kennel cough, which seemed to me to be associated with his loneliness (and so keeping him on a lead, as the vet advised, was actually aggravating it). I wasn't sure if it would work, but I hugged and held him and concentrated mentally on his tapping points. The cough went away. Could be fluke, obviously.

But he was booked in for a castration at the time because of a prostrate problem; and at just this time I started reading accounts of people healing their animals with EFT and I just knew I didn't want him to go through that operation (poor old man), the pain and humiliation, if it wasn't necessary. Let alone the fact we don't have £200 to throw around in this house. So I figured it was worth a try. I read a particularly useful account about a woman working with her cat, made a mental note of the technique, and then - while I was walking the dog one night - I just focused mentally on all his points, doing as best I could to mentally "tap them" while saying affirmations for him about his frustrated desire for local bitches (he'd had a particularly teasing encounter with an alsation in heat the previous day and was due, I suspected, another flare up.) I also worked for a couple of rounds on the physical pain, his swollen prostrate gland. What harm could it do?

That's two and half months ago, and his prostrate hasn't flared up since. Previously it was happening every time the chemical castration injection wore off. He hasn't needed to go the the VET since I took up EFT. A couple of other problems have been observed, worked on and disappeared: weakness in his spine and backlegs, an infuriating itch in his back. So this morning, as soon as the dog collapses, I'm called for. It's lovely to be able to help him - gentle, and simple.

He was well enough, within fifteen minutes, to get up and go for a big drink of water. We took him out for his usual walk - I went along to check he was fully better. He's right as rain now, and curled up snoozing in his basket.

My Ordinary Everyday Reality

I'm not going to come on here and tell you things are all roses and will forever be, but there is a sense that the drama has died down, and we are more aware of each other. There is much mending to be done, after the ragged damage inflicted on us by the last two years.

You'll see I've changed the Profile blurb for this blog... this blog is no longer about ME, because this is no longer the largest feature of our lives. It might at times be about trying to mend a marriage that has been ravaged by the pressures of the last four years (since our daughter, youngest of my brood, was born, which included my husband's chronic illness (brought on, I've no doubt, by the stress of overwork). But more often, I suspect, it will be about the positive impact on our lives of the extraordinary healing tool that ME led us to.

It's been nearly four months since I first learnt EFT and I have to remember constantly that to other people it seems very weird. To me, now, it is becoming increasingly ordinary - although I am constantly gratified (and still, sometimes, surprised) by the positive effects it has on me and on the people around me.

Some of it sounds a little crazy, I know, but you're just going to have to take my word for it - I'm completely sane. The fact is, you can not only heal yourself with EFT, but you can heal others. If you read the science around EFT, you can understand why this might be possible - but it is still something many find hard to accept, because it is so new (and yet, which might worry them most, is as old as 2000 years ago).

I know, if you're not doing EFT, all this is bound to sound odd, and you might think I've ever so softly and harmlessly flipped. But this is a true account of every-day reality in his household. And you know, as realities go, I vastly prefer it to my previous one. And so do my husband, children, and pets.

The Dawn of Peace

To update this account of my own rather bumpy journey towards reclaiming my husband from this chronic and debilitating illness, we are being softer with each other. He watched the first EFT DVD yesterday, all the way through. As long as I give him some time to himself every day, he will spend some time doing EFT (which is what we both need him to do). This is held in balance against me needing to spend long hours sorting out my feelings at my desk before I start work (I work for myself, luckily, so I don’t get complaints from the boss). And then actually getting some work done, because I am being funded by public money and what I produce better be something good. It would be so nice to be able to get straight down to work, and then I could probably do everything I needed in half a day (as equality and fairness in this partnership requires). So that’s why EFT continues to be my daily necessity. It offers insights and new perspectives. It’s about developing the art of communication, and good communication is what we all need (both good broadcast and good reception).

I must get down to work now, but I thought I’d assuage any concerns about me. My husband has agreed this must be worked out in peace rather than aggression. The more progress I can make in reducing my own problems, the easier it is to just be there for him.

This Demon Doesn't Want to be Exorcised...

I am down here in my basement office, and Brian - yes, Brian, my darling husband's violent alter-ego - is upstairs polishing off a bottle of whiskey. He is very, very angry (at the throwing things stage) so I have left him to it. At the end of the last post I said I thought things would be alright so long as he kept tapping. He stopped tapping just after I wrote that post.

Had this been a few months ago, after all the verbal assaults that have just come my way, I would have been down here crying. As it is, I am typing very calmly. Why? Because EFT works.

Why, then, has my lovely husband disappeared and Brian returned? Because EFT works, and Brian is very, very angry about that. Angry, so he shouts at me tonight, that he has been looking for some kind of spiritual answer all his life and I have found it. He can't accept that I should be the one to find something that works. He likes to find answers for himself.

What could I do, though? He wasn't looking for a way out. He was accepting his illness and the massive impact it had on all our lives (there are six of us in this house). He wasn't trawling the internet for anything that might help (as I did almost daily for three years). Even if he had been looking, brain-fog prevented him from reading. And even if he had been able to read, he hates "other people's answers". He has always despised self-help books and those who read them. He hates "being told what to do." Hates school and anything that looks like school. He doesn't believe in learning from other people. He doesn't believe in "easy answers" so how can he accept this one, even when he has proof that it works? That it worked for him (as far as he was willing to tap, which isn't far) and is working daily (and profoundly) for me. The more he can see that it works, the more he has drawn away from it.

He stopped tapping because he said he needed to understand better how it worked, and until he understood how it worked, he didn't want to tap. He hasn't made any attempt to get any further with finding out how it works (and the understanding is out there, if you want to learn) but he now says he is "suspicious" about EFT. For a while just me tapping on myself, and surrogate tapping on him, was helping him get better. He kept saying he would start tapping again when he had finished reading the manual. He would watch the EFT DVDs when he had finished reading the manual. But he would rather watch lots and lots of Top Gear videos than read the manual. He made it an extremely low priority, and is no further on in the manual (which took me two hours to read) than he was a month ago.

Not surprisingly, therefore, and with a sense of depressing inevitability, I have watched him slowly become overwhelmed, again, by the negative emotions that have been trapped inside his body ever since he was 11 years old. I've watched his face grow slowly more fearful and less friendly, more tired and locked up, putting up his defences against me so that even warmth and friendship can't penetrate. An increasingly number of miscommunications were occurring, and I could sense he was projecting stuff on me from his past, and reading me wrongly. Seeing me as the enemy. I handled all this much better than usual (thanks to EFT) but that seems to have made him even angrier.

Again, as before, he's started telling me (both explicitly and by his behaviour) what a shit person I am. Yesterday, he thundered down the stairs in a rage, accusing me of "breaking promises" to our daughter, because I had put a few dishes into the dishwasher before coming upstairs with her warm milk (but I was making the milk even as he thundered downstairs). And this was at the end of a day spent together with our daughter in the countryside; a good day, and I spent the last hour playing piano with her on her mini-keyboard, Mary Had A Little Lamb over and over again, singing loudly. We were having fun. He pretended to be having fun right up until the last moment when it turned out he was at the end of his tether.

EFT works, but only if you do it. I've been doing it every day, and it's been extraordinary. A week ago, for example, I was out for the evening (we were supposed to be out together but he cried off at the last minute) and halfway through the night my nose started running, my eyes watering, and I had the repeated urge to sneeze, and I could feel something "coming on" - that horrible lurgi that one of my friends (who I insisted on hugging even when she was ill) kept assuring me I would get. I went to the loos to get a whole load of loo-paper for the running nose, and did two rounds of tapping while I was there. Within 15 minutes, all the symptoms disappeared. I had directed my immune system to spring into action and - bless it - I guess it did. The next afternoon, symptoms returned briefly but I tapped them away again and haven't had a problem since. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, a cure for the common cold.

No wonder my husband hates me. From his perspective, I'm starting to look like a witch.

I did realise about three weeks ago that me doing EFT (while he steadfastly avoided starting it) was putting distance between us. I am really sorting out some serious stuff, getting a real sense of control over my life and that emotional freedom the name of the technique promises. It has been so immensely helpful in getting me through the difficulties of every day that I made the decision that I could not abandon my use of EFT, even if it increases our distance. He will (until he decides to take steps to do otherwise) continue to go through these cycles of depression, rage and self-destruction whether I'm able to handle it or not. I choose to handle it, and EFT works where crying and despairing never did.

I really wanted him to come with me on this; I asked him to. I wanted us to do it together; doing EFT together brings you closer. He refused. So I was obliged to make this journey alone when I'd have much, much rather had his company. Had he come with me, we wouldn't be having these problems now.

So my husband isn't languishing with ME any more, but he's about a million miles from okay. I'm not happy about that, obviously. I would like the other husband back, please, the one who loves and appreciates me and who can see me as I really am, the one who isn't blinded by his rage and jealousy and sense of injustice. But I can't make the man tap. The solution's right there if he wants it, but he doesn't want it, because he's afraid it'll take away his anger and he feels his anger - at me - is justified. (He thinks everything in his past is "dealt with".)

He's wrong of course. This anger should have been levelled at others. At the boys who bullied him and chased him and beat him up and called him "paki", at the parents who didn't notice their son was too afraid to leave the house for five years, the mother who smothered him with her anxiety and fears for his safety (don't climb on that wall, don't go near water, don't do anything adventurous in case you get hurt) at the same time as calling him "scruffy" and "lazy", the father who he knew as "the man dozing in the chair on Sunday afternoons" and who, these days, bulldozers his son with his incessant one-sided conversation, and God knows how many other people that have pissed him off or let him down or abused his good nature in the last forty years.

Unfortunately, he is not in a position to see any of that. Unfortunately, all the anger that should be associated with the people from his past is now associated (in his mind) with me.

There's nothing I can do, then, but look after myself, keep tapping for my own emotional and physical health, and hope this crisis will bring him to some kind of awakening.