Having this condition for 32 years, I've had a LOT of time to be alone with myself and observe my inner process--my mind and its assorted little insanities. 
When I first became ill in 1977, at age 20, most doctors did not even know what an immune system was, let alone what to do about one that was sick. So I was diagnosed as having DEEPRESSION, and consequently ended up spending quite a number of years in therapy, trying to fix my health via my mind.
Though therapy didn't work to heal my body, it did in many ways work out to my benefit. For one, I really liked my therapist. She was a very empathetic and supportive person, and one of the ONLY people who showed any concern for me after I became ill. She was also a Jungian, and given my great love of Jung and dreamwork, I was surely in the RIGHT place, with the right person. Lastly, and probably most importantly, having started therapy at such a young age, I was made aware early on of what a huge task it was to become a fully conscious person. Every time I thought I had this consciousness "thing" all figured out, and expected that Nirvana was just around the corner, I'd get smacked with yet another very humbling dream. Ouch! This went on for a while, until about two decades later, it began to dawn on me that being GOAL oriented doesn't work when you are trying to learn how to "be." Old habits die real hard.
Over the past several years, and continuing this process that I began so long ago, I've become keenly aware of how my mind participates in exacerbating some of my worst CFS symptoms--my brain symptoms. What I have noticed is how my keen dislike of, and subtle but overt resistance to, my most annoying symptoms (which includes hyperactivity, sleeplessness, frontal lobe pressure and headaches) actually magnifies and amplifies them all. AND how, to the contrary, being willing to accept, embrace, and openly investigate these symptoms with my awareness, actually causes them to ease up and become much much more periferal, much LESS predominant and much MORE bearable. I think there's a saying... that which you resist will persist... which has been the lesson for me here. With the opposite... that which you are willing to accept will become more acceptable... being the underlying, and in my case, very liberating truth.
What a weird, truly mind boggling MIND we all have. It never ceases to boggle the hell out of me.
When I first became ill in 1977, at age 20, most doctors did not even know what an immune system was, let alone what to do about one that was sick.
So I was diagnosed as having DEEPRESSION, and consequently ended up spending quite a number of years in therapy, trying to fix my health via my mind. Though therapy didn't work to heal my body, it did in many ways work out to my benefit. For one, I really liked my therapist. She was a very empathetic and supportive person, and one of the ONLY people who showed any concern for me after I became ill. She was also a Jungian, and given my great love of Jung and dreamwork, I was surely in the RIGHT place, with the right person. Lastly, and probably most importantly, having started therapy at such a young age, I was made aware early on of what a huge task it was to become a fully conscious person. Every time I thought I had this consciousness "thing" all figured out, and expected that Nirvana was just around the corner, I'd get smacked with yet another very humbling dream.
Ouch! This went on for a while, until about two decades later, it began to dawn on me that being GOAL oriented doesn't work when you are trying to learn how to "be." Old habits die real hard. Over the past several years, and continuing this process that I began so long ago, I've become keenly aware of how my mind participates in exacerbating some of my worst CFS symptoms--my brain symptoms. What I have noticed is how my keen dislike of, and subtle but overt resistance to, my most annoying symptoms (which includes hyperactivity, sleeplessness, frontal lobe pressure and headaches) actually magnifies and amplifies them all. AND how, to the contrary, being willing to accept, embrace, and openly investigate these symptoms with my awareness, actually causes them to ease up and become much much more periferal, much LESS predominant and much MORE bearable. I think there's a saying... that which you resist will persist... which has been the lesson for me here. With the opposite... that which you are willing to accept will become more acceptable... being the underlying, and in my case, very liberating truth.
What a weird, truly mind boggling MIND we all have. It never ceases to boggle the hell out of me.
