little miss reverse

A journey from ME/CFS to health using Reverse Therapy and Lightning Process

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Ooops!

Thanks Elisabeth, that made me laugh! Yes, read hypothalamus switch off as the hypothalamus 'overdrive' being switched off, not that the hypothalamus decides to switch off completely, retire and move to the Bahamas.

Miss B

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Hypothalamus switch off

I've been having some discussions with other people on the RT forum about how to tell if your Hypothalamus (H) has switched off. It appears that some time into RT if it is working for you, your H switches off getting rid of a lot of the very physical symptoms. The sort of symptoms that disappear at this point are: temperature control, blood sugar imbalances, post exertional malaise, aches and pains. The result of this is that your physical stamina starts to increase and you stop getting the usual payback from physical activity. It seems that my H is now switched off.

The bodymind realises that it is now being listened to and acted upon, so stops sending physical symptoms. What you are then left with is learning to listen to and act on emotional and physical 'flags' in the present moment. In my opinion everybody experiences emotions and not responding to them in a positive way can lead to many other illnesses such as high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, IBS, etc, etc. I'm not just talking about feeling upset about something or being 'very' emotional, I mean imagine a guy who is at work and the amount of work he is asked to do is not possible in the time allocated to it. He may well get very stressed, irritable, unable to sleep, get an eczema flare up or a cold sore. This is bodymind in action, sending emotional flags as well as physical signs telling him something is wrong and needs to be addressed. RT teaches you to recognise these signs and not to ignore them but to act on them.

After the H switches off, you are still left with other less specific symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog, which come in directly connected to you ignoring some of these emotional and physical flags. Sometimes it takes a while to figure this out but so far each time I have experiences an increase in fatigue, it is because I am not responding to what my body is telling me. It's not just about unexpressed emotions, which some people seem to think RT is all about. In some cases that is because I am pushing myself beyond what my body is able to do, other times it is because there are emotions that I haven't addressed and sometimes it is because I have tolerated something that my bodymind does not want me to tolerate and that can be physical or emotional.

It may appear on the outside that I still get symptoms from increasing activity and yes I do, but it is very different to how it was prior to RT. My body gets tired when I do too much and as long as I respond to this by resting, I don't get fatigue or brain fog in a post-excertional way i.e. then next day. Sometimes I feel a bit fatigued from going on the computer, but when I stop, it lifts. I get fatigue that comes on and stays for a couple of days at a time, when my bodymind is telling me to sort something out, but it's not usually from physical activity and I don't get any of the old physical symptoms I mentioned at the beginning of this post. This means that I no longer fear relapse and can focus on getting my life back on track.

I've been doing RT for 6 months and I still find aspects of it really difficult, but some of it is really easy and I can't believe how quickly my body responded to it.