In this episode, I discuss one of the greatest lessons that I learned from my illness, namely that my self-worth comes from within.
Category: Recovery
Homeopathy was the answer to my prayers.
Have you ever prayed to God that you would heal? I have, many times. I struggled with a debilitating mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, for ten years. There were many times during that period when I was brought to my knees, times when I screamed at the top of my lungs for help, times when I cried out from my soul. Nothing in my life has been more painful than the powerlessness that I experienced during my illness.
My greatest fear was that I was never going to get better, that I would be stuck with the illness for the rest of my life, that I would not be able to live my life. I couldn’t accept that, but I didn’t know of any other way. That is, until my partner discovered a homeopathic doctor that specializes in mental illness. Homeopathy was the answer that I had been searching for for ten years. It was able to stop my dysfunctional symptoms without suppressing who I was (like the pharmaceutical medication did). In other words, it helped me to be in balance so that I could function.
Homeopathy is the ONLY thing that healed me from my mental illness.
Homeopathy is the ONLY thing that healed me from my mental illness, specifically the psychotic aspect of the illness. There were other things that assisted in my recovery and helped me to persevere during the illness, many of which I discuss in my book and podcast, but homeopathy was the key. Without homeopathy, I would likely still be on-and-off of medication, having relapses, not able to maintain consistent work, and basically would still have the illness.
I do not consider that pharmaceutical medication was able to heal me, because I didn’t feel like myself when taking them. Nothing else that I tried was able to do what homeopathy did. I tried healthy diet, exercise, psychotherapy, work, socialization, and all of the will power that I could muster. Nothing was able to help me maintain balance and function without the schizoaffective symptoms, except for homeopathy.
It’s really sad that so many people are suffering unnecessarily, all due to people’s unwillingness to see outside of their own belief systems. Homeopathy has been scientifically validated, and yet many people in the West haven’t even heard of it, or are reluctant to believe that it could work. The following article discusses a scientific study by Dr. Jacques Benveniste, showing the ability of water to retain qualities of a substance that “exert a therapeutic effect”, even after the substance has been “diluted out of existence”:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/mar/15/technology2
As the article explains, Professor Ennis, who was a skeptic trying to disprove the original study, joined “a consortium of four independent research laboratories”, a “pan-European research effort”, to try and do so. The results of the studies were that they were consistent with the original findings! There it is: a double-blind study with results that can be replicated by other scientists, i.e. what people use to justify “science”. The problem is, what most people call “science” is just their belief system. True science is neutral and objective. As the study says:
“The consequences for science if Benveniste and Ennis are right could be earth shattering, requiring a complete re-evaluation of how we understand the workings of chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology.”
This article was published fifteen years ago! Why don’t we hear about studies like these in the mainstream? Why aren’t people’s minds blown? Why hasn’t this been “earth shattering”, as the article says? I suspect that protecting profits has something to do with it, but that should be irrelevant to true scientists and seekers of truth. All I know is that homeopathy has been earth shattering for me. It gave me my life back, in a way that nothing else was able to do. Now that I am well, I am working to raise awareness so that other people can have their lives back too. We just need to be open to what’s possible, and willing enough to try.
HMI 009 : Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
In this episode, I take a new look at “stepping out of your comfort zone” by discussing the importance of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
HMI 006 : Taking Personal Responsibility
In this episode I discuss the importance of taking personal responsibility despite the illness.
Relapse & Post-Traumatic Stress from My Illness?
Relapse
A couple of weeks ago, after a few challenging life events (the death of a family member and getting fired from the yoga studio I was teaching at), I must confess that I had somewhat of a relapse. I’m even hesitant to call it a relapse because in my book I said that I was fully healed from the illness. I was afraid that if I got sick again, that it would invalidate my book and my message. In my book, I say that the mental illness was not my symptoms, but my inability to function. The truth is, over the past few weeks I did lose my ability to function.
The first thing that went was my sleep. Then my thinking became disorganized, to the point that I couldn’t get anything done, or make decisions. However, I felt more mentally clear than I had in any of my previous relapses, and my other symptoms weren’t as terrifying. Whereas normally I take my remedy once per day, I have been taking a high dose of a different remedy four times per day. (The reason I am not specifying which remedy it is, is because homeopathy is individualized medicine, and the remedy that works for me and my illness may not be the one that another person needs.) My wife and I were a little late in catching the onset of the symptoms, so by the time my doctor switched my homeopathic remedy, it took a week to pull me out of it (rather than a couple of days). I have already started returning to work and am functioning in my life again.
While it is hard for me to accept that I had a relapse, this experience did teach me a few things:
- It proved to me once again how amazing homeopathy is. If it were not for homeopathy, I would have been back in the inpatient hospital on multiple psychotropic drugs, and it would have taken me years to recover and get my life back.
- It made me realize how important my mission to help people with mental illness is, and it re-invigorated my passion for the cause.
- It showed me that I may have some post-traumatic stress from my illness and from what I’ve been through.
Post-Traumatic Stress
I recently heard on a radio show that post-traumatic stress is not just the result of war. It can be caused by any stressful situation, depending on how a person is affected by it. During this recent relapse, I felt that I was exhibiting some signs of post-traumatic stress injury. Some of my difficulty with decision-making, my difficulty trusting others, as well as the physical discomfort that I was experiencing, I felt was at least in part due to the trauma that I have endured in my life.
I decided to meet with a therapist about it. He seemed to agree that it was possible, and he recommended a therapy for PTSD called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). He said with PTSD a person gets stuck in one side of the brain, and that EMDR balances the two hemispheres of the brain. A light is used and the person follows the light from side to side with their eyes. He also mentioned that audio with sounds going back and forth from the left ear to the right ear could do the same thing.
I decided to look online for audio that I could listen to on my own, and I found the following album on Amazon:
EMDR Music Therapy Album:
I bought a couple of songs for 99 cents each, and I have to say they are quite amazing! I just listen on my phone (with the Amazon Music app) with headphones, and not only is it very relaxing and pleasant, but I feel that it is very therapeutic.
One thing that I have learned from my over ten years experience with mental illness is that mental illness is not linear. There are ups and downs, detours, steps back and steps forward, and winding roads. We need to be able to “roll with the punches”, adapt, and utilize the resources that we have to the best of our ability, in order to move forward. Human beings are incredibly resilient and can recover from even the harshest of circumstances. I’m in this with you and I truly care about helping people who are suffering to recover. God bless you!
Healing Is Possible!
When I was first diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, and told that there was no cure, and that I would have to manage the illness with medication for the rest of my life, that did not sit well with me. It didn’t feel right! Life is meant to thrive. Our bodies are designed to heal, and to move into balance. I am meant to be whole. I am not meant to be “broken” for the rest of my life. That can’t be!
While a mental illness like schizoaffective disorder is no picnic (it’s the hardest thing I have ever gone through), I do not believe that an illness has more power than we do, and it definitely is no match for our divine source. Schizophrenia and schizoaffective diagnoses are like the “cancers” of mental illness, and yet there are people with cancer who heal. There are people with mental illness who heal, and I am one of them! I believe that our own belief in healing has an effect on our ability to heal.
Do you believe that healing is possible?
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