Note: In November 2018 I was diagnosed with severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea.Check my most recent posts on sleep apnea.
One of my most influential mentors, Nicholas de Castella suffered from CFS way back before it was a household name. He attributes his recovery to developing emotional intelligence and learning to express in a healthy manner the feelings that he had previously repressed. I know this is a little controversial since the symptoms of CFS clearly appear in the body and most of us think of emotions as centred in the brain; but the more holistic approaches to emotional mastery recognise that emotions in the brain are connected to physical sensations in the body via our nervous system.
So the idea that suppressing powerful emotions for a long period could make you physically sick starts to make sense. I note that Mickel Therapy treats symptoms and bodily sensations as manifestations of unconscious needs that our body is attempting to alert us to. Meet the need, and the symptom disappears. The Gupta Program similarly treats physical sensations as stuck emotion in its meditations.
Whether you buy into all this or not, developing your emotional intelligence can only be a good thing. If it cures your CFS, that’s a bonus. With this in mind, I thought I’d let you know that Nicholas is running a free online breakthrough training session on Saturday 11 October at 11.00 am Australian EDT time, for anyone interested in dealing with emotions that are holding you back in life. I’ve heard his presentation before and he makes a brief mention of his experience of Chronic Fatigue. He’s fully recovered and now works as an emotional intelligence teacher, so you might like to check out what he has to say. Click here to join the free Breakthrough to Freedom training session.
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4 Comments
Cameo Franz · October 9, 2014 at 6:19 AM
I find this article and site very thought provoking and intend to study and reflect of it further. Unfortunately, I had a very negative divorce several years ago and, in thinking back, I haven’t dealt with the flat out “hate” I have for the disappointment in my former husband and the pain he caused me which resulted in stripping me of my future at 46 years old. I am open minded enough to believe this “hate” is eating away at my emotional self: it is there 24/7. I now endeavor to assuage it and try to move on; though he is in my face daily in the small town we live in. Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I will keep enjoying your site. Cameo Franz
Graham · October 9, 2014 at 5:02 PM
Hey Cameo. Thanks for your comment, and your honesty about how you really feel towards your former husband. I hear that you still have a lot of anger towards him; I’m wondering if you have someone supportive around you that you could share the anger with? I’m guessing underneath it is a lot of pain. Wishing you healing, Graham
Lisa · October 8, 2014 at 10:39 AM
The webinar sounds interesting and I definitely look forward to listening to it. In regard to emotions and CFS, feeling bad about the illness itself seems to propagate bad feelings and therefore it becomes a cycle. I know I keep suffering from boredom and frustration due to lack of mobility due to CFS. I was feeling pretty well today and felt like going for a ride, and your post encouraged me to drive a little further so I could see the coastline and some really pretty areas I’ve been wanting to visit, in an effort to break the cycle of bad feelings about being sick and missing out on life. I’m trying to encourage the happy feelings. 🙂
Graham · October 8, 2014 at 1:43 PM
Hey Lisa. Yeah, it’s a balancing act all right. Boredom and anger have been my big two and they were particularly challenging when I thought I didn’t have the energy to deal with them; but breaking them down and chipping away a bit each day helped.
I was reviewing my notes on Mickel Therapy last night, and it talks about primary emotions (how we feel about people and events in our life that aren’t related to being ill) and secondary emotions (those generated mostly because we’re ill). The idea is to focus on expressing and dealing with the primary ones rather than focusing on the secondary ones which tend to resolve themselves as we recover. It’s easy to get this backwards when the impact of being ill is so severe, and just end up stuck in frustration all the time.
Happy feelings to you! 🙂