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Inner Work And Symptom Exacerbation

Kailyn

Caregiver of a person with very severe ME/CFS
Messages
64
Hi there. I realize I'm responding to this one year later- but I can see if, in the next few weeks, I can learn a little more about this from my spouse.

Before he became very severe, we both spent a lot of years doing inner healing work- both from a meditative/spiritual framework, and from recovery/therapy. And everything in between, lol!

Reading gives him PEM, so I may have to wait and see if I can figure this out. But its something I've been wondering too. Last week, he had an immense experience of grief. His mom and I thought that the PEM from this experience would be so intense, it would do lasting damage. But it didn't. In fact, it seemed to be healing. But then this weekend, he experienced grief when a friend visited, and it just seemed to give him PEM as usual. This challenged my suspicion, that maybe griefwork could be safer, or more inherently healthy, than other kinds of emotional expression (like anger.)
 

maddietod

Senior Member
Messages
2,860
In my experience, it's all non-linear. CFS, healing, spiritual growth, emotional healing, PEM. This isn't to say that everything is non-linear. I haven't watched TV for decades because it's always exhausting. But grief, for example, has so many roots and offshoots that one experience can be cleansing, and another can feel debilitating. In one case there's relief and I can just move on. In the other case I have work to do and I might not be up to it, which short-circuits me.