Take the first positive step and believe you can get better
When you are feeling tired, exhausted, foggy headed and putting up with other symptoms as well for weeks or months on end, you can quite understandably be left wondering “will I ever get better”?
It can be depressing as you remember what you used to do without a thought or a worry and then that doubtful part of you starts wondering if you will ever see the real energised you again.
I know you know this already, thinking like this is not going to help your recovery.
It is possible to recover from Chronic Fatigue and it can be a journey to get there.
And the first positive step you can take is having belief, believing in YOU.
Believing you can get better.
In this blog, I will show you how believing that you can and will get better, could be the first step you take on your CFS/ME recovery journey.
Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash
The power of belief
Here’s what Muhammad Ali famously said:
“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it”
We know what he was able to achieve in his life.
It’s supported by science
Science is starting to show us how powerful the mind can be and if we start visualising our life differently, things can change.
Scientists have been looking into the power of visualisation and they have discovered that visualisation activates the same networks in the brain as actually doing the activity you have been imagining.
A study in published in the journal Neuropsychologia found that participants who imagined moving certain parts of their body strengthened their muscles as much as the actual movement.
It’s a much used technique
Doctors like Dr Joe Pizzorno recommend people experiencing chronic fatigue visualise themselves feeling better as a way of positively conditioning the body.
How to build the belief:
Visualising your recovery
Visualisations can be really powerful. As you as seeing yourself in your mind’s eye, they can be done anywhere and no specific skill is required.
You could start by visualising you feeling well again.
Perhaps seeing and feeling what it will be like when you can go out for an evening with friends and enjoy yourself and still wake up feeling great the next day.
Visualising yourself out for a walk in nature or going to the gym and still feeling energised later that day.
Feel what its like to be busy at work and having the energy to get through that to do list.
You are telling yourself that it is possible.
In my recovery I did just that. I believed that could and would happen, and in time it did.
Whilst change didn’t clearly happen overnight, it made me feel positive about my recovery and that I was taking taking action.
Feeling in charge and not a hostage to this illness can be very empowering.
Affirmations - building belief in your recovery
Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself to embed new beliefs about yourself and displace any negative beliefs.
There has been increasing research on the use of affirmations and they have been shown to be very powerful to helping people get and stay well.
I used affirmations on my recovery journey. I said to myself, several times each day “I will get better’ – “I have the tools and support to help me to get better” and I kept focussing on this belief.
I will be honest and at the start it was more challenging when progress was infinitesimally small, but I still kept the belief and kept visualising myself well and repeating the affirmations to myself.
I made progress and I started to recover, and affirmations certainly helped to build and reinforce my belief of “I can get better”.
What the science says
Medical research is starting to show how powerful the mind-body connection is in helping us to feel better. Research in the USA has shown that positive affirmations can have a beneficial effect on wellbeing.
Photo by alex bracken on Unsplash
So why might this work?
Through a daily practice of positive thoughts about feeling better and believing that our body is healing, it will help to lift your mood and things can start to change. When we feel happier and more secure in ourselves, our bodies experience an increase in testosterone, which helps us to feel more motivated. We also see a decrease in the hormones involved in the stress response (cortisol and adrenaline), so by changing our mood we can help our bodies to start the healing process and our road to recovery.
When we feel helpless, not in control or depressed, there is a decrease in the hormone testosterone and an increase in the hormone cortisol (commonly known as the stress hormone) in the blood. Cortisol plays an important function in our body and should follow a rhythmic pattern, declining throughout the day, but if the levels are raised throughout the day due to our emotions, then if we have been feeling like this for a while, this will perpetuate the feelings of exhaustion, feeling tired but ‘wired’, brain fog and digestive problems.
So, trying to improve the way we think and focussing on something positive, like getting better, will help us in the healing process.
It worked for me
My positive mental attitude supported my healing process and combined with using mindfulness to reduce the stress I was experiencing and nourishing my body with nutritious food, herbal medicine and quality vitamin and mineral supplements, I experienced a steady gradual improvement in my energy levels over the days and weeks.
I continued to say to myself “I am getting better” as my energy increased, to keep me in a positive frame of mind.
As I improved the positive affirmations got easier and easier!
Has this inspired you?
I really hope this blog has inspired you to consider using visualisations and affirmations in your recovery. They can be incredibly powerful, and research is starting to show how the mind can influence how our bodies react, so thinking positively can be 1 practice you can use from your CFS recovery kit. Perhaps it could kick start your journey journey.
It doesn’t cost you anything to try these practices, which I think can be incredibly powerful .So why don’t you …. give it a go for 7 days and see how you feel?
Let me know how you get on!
Your top 5 takeaways
It is possible to recover from CFS.
Visualisations have been shown to make physical changes in the body.
Affirmations have been shown to help people believe they are well or can get better.
Feeling positive and in control reduces the feeling of stress in the body and supports our body to heal.
Whilst it may not be easy at the start, the advice from top naturopathic doctors is “Positive mental attitude is critical to healing”. Why not give it a go?
A free resource to help your on your recovery journey
To help people just starting their CFS recovery journey, I have produced a FREE 10 page guide to ‘Reclaiming your natural energetic high without spending a fortune on costly supplements’.
Here I will guide you through 7 easy to do and lower cost ways you can kick start your recovery from CFS.
Download your guide to help you begin the process of feeling like YOU once again.
Want to know more ….
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References
1 – Pizzorno, Murray and Joiner-Bey, Elsevier, 3rd edition, 2016, The Clinician’s handbook of Natural Medicine.