Today was a rough day at work where I spent most of my day limping around work. I was surprised by how much pain I was actually in, when this morning the pain was around a 2 on the 1-10 scale and I thought I was going to have a great day, but by 9am it had been closer to a 7.
When I got home, I limped to the bedroom to rest and found that my boyfriend was still home. We laid in bed talking for a little while, and I have to admit that I was kind of hurt by one of the things he said.
My boyfriend is a very well meaning guy, who has been incredibly supportive and, well, awesome. He has good intentions, and believes in the body's natural abilities to heal itself. He asked me why I don't just meditate and ask my body to heal itself, to take away the pain.
This sounds like a great idea, but what in the world would make him think that I don't already do those things? I've tried meditating, most nights it is the only way I can quiet my mind enough to go to sleep. And as for asking my body to heal itself from RA and to take away the pain, well, of course I have tried. I think he gets this idea from several stories of people who have cured diseases like cancer by visualizing the disease being taken away, like in one example a woman with breast cancer visualized a white dove taking a piece of her cancer away each night.
One of the hard things about this is that cancer is usually in selected spots in the body, unless it has progressed to the final stages and is throughout most of the body. So in a way, it can easier to visualize a white dove taking away a piece of cancer each night. But how do you visualize a white dove taking away joint pain, or inflammation or correcting the immune system, when all of these things effect your entire body and not a localized spot? How do you take away something that you need(immune system)?
So now it has me thinking, wondering how a person would picture their RA? I have trouble visualizing mine. I don't know how to remove something like this...It's not like there are mutated cells in my body causing this.
When you try to visualize what your RA looks like, can you?
During my worst flares I try to focus on visualizing myself during my good days. I see my joints doing the things I enjoy doing, knowing that oneday soon I will be there again. I also spend time during these flares "thanking" my joints for all the hard work they are doing to keep moving even when they are in pain. I try to see them as powerful parts of my body doing amazing things.
ReplyDeleteFlares are hard Stacie. They take a lot out of us physically and also mentally. Keep thinking positive and know you will make it through this. Our bodies do want to heal themselves!