Diagnosis: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
When I was a 31-year old mother, I left my marriage of 4 years and moved to a log house on 23-acres in southern Maine. The divorce was stressful; my ex-husband waffled for months on the agreements we made before finally signing the papers. When I arrived in Maine, I was exhausted, overwhelmed, but relieved to be on my own, to live with my son and dog in a house and on land that supported my being.
I was concurrently in a process of deep spiritual awakening and what I believed was inner healing. I didn’t realize that my practice was untethered, poorly contained. I was enamored with all I was experiencing and learning, and going at it with…dare I admit it…reckless abandon.
Let’s be CLEAR: spiritual awakening is serious work. It does not include rainbows and unicorns. If it does, it might be missing some essential elements, such as:
grounded practices
energetic and physical boundaries
truth vs. magical thinking
clarity of intention and purpose
I continued to work, care for my son & home, explore my spirituality, but I remained stressed and exhausted. As my symptoms increased and my energy declined, I was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
My Story
I grew up in a religious home; my parents were Christian Scientists. I am not religious, however, I am grateful for the exposure to healing through spiritual practice. In spite of my family’s deep religious beliefs, anger was a staple in our home. My mother was a rigid, difficult, opinionated woman that my lovable, but also angry father enabled. As the youngest of 4, I assumed the role of rebel, and spent a lot of time experiencing my parents anger because of real and perceived mischief and misbehaviors. I didn’t know how angry I was until many years later. When my marriage fell apart, I went into therapy to figure myself out, to try and clean things up, so I could live differently going forward. What a surprise it was to realize how much deeply held anger I carried, and how it governed my experience!
Now living in Maine, my whole life began to feel exhausting. My son was an active 5-year old. I had a challenging, time consuming corporate job. My new partner had emotional baggage that impacted our relationship. Somehow, I felt like I had to hold everything and everyone together. My spiritual life was still very important to me, but I was stuffing so much rage, I was unaware of how dysregulated and out of balance I had become.
I slept long hours without feeling rested, developed food and chemical sensitivities, went through boxes of Kleenex from histamine reactions. And more. So many symptoms, so much fatigue! There were jokes between my partner and I that I could be counted on to shine brightly between the hours of 11am and 2pm. The rest of the time was spent getting ready to shine, or recovering from shining! Bottom line: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and adrenal depletion were the result of my years of living with suppressed anger and stress.
Energy Healing & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
One day a friend listened to my complaints about my situation and responded with her hypothesis that I had an energy problem. If I’d had more energy I would have clocked her. It seemed like a fairly obvious statement!
She explained that she thought my chakras and aura needed regulation and clearing, that I could heal this with the right tools.
Tools for (r)evolution:
Chakra regulation – what a gift! I learned which chakras were too closed, which ones excessively open, and the perfect storm they were creating in their lack of balance and alignment.
Energy clearing – all the patterns I identified in therapy, the rebelling, the over-compensating, the anger and rage, the spiritual promiscuity, as my friend Blair calls it — flitting from one spiritual practice to the next, skimming the surface instead of doing the work. My lack of grounding and boundaries, the judgments and rigidity — I went to work on all of these things.
My Intention: I am aligned, balanced, grounded, congruent, abundant and healthy.
I healed.
I didn’t get my old life back, I got a new one! One that I’ve built on ever since.
I regained my energy and vitality. The symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome disappeared. I participated in my life through grounded awareness. I let go of the anger, rigidity and rage that informed my childhood and crafted my emotional reactivity. I learned to accept, allow, let go, Be.
I anchored into a spiritual practice that has stood the test of time. I’m not a seeker on the outside, I’m a seeker on the inside!
Life happens. My practice is my constant. This work is my life. I’m here to share it with anyone who wants to do the work of arriving within themself, to actualize life from the core of their being.
Let me ask you
Do you understand that working with your energy is working at the root of whatever is happening in your life? Would having tools to get to the root of and then resolve your issues be useful to you?
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The skills and tools referenced in this post are from two online courses that EHI offers to the consciously curious. The Present of Presence is a free, 1-hour engagement with two foundational skills for energy regulation and embodiment. CLEAR is a series of skills, delivered in an online, self-paced format, for energetic self-care, and for clearing and releasing patterns, themes and behaviors that inhibit authentic presence and in the moment choice.
A special, 2-hour, live online group workshop to design and jumpstart your individual clearing practice, to work on resolving something you’re committed to clear and evolve is being offered to CLEAR participants in mid-December. If you want to workshop what you’d like to evolve, then it’s time to get CLEAR!
