After a bit of a hectic ‘running around’ weekend, I drew this card from my tarot deck last night:

Image taken from Littleshopoftarot.com

I instinctively knew that, although this was meant for me (I had been avoiding meditating for a while even though I desperately needed it), it was also meant for you, but in another sense. This is something I haven’t really spoken about on the blog yet, but it’s something that I found to be incredible painful and agonising during those years of lying in bed waiting for everything to get better.

How CFS Made Me Shrink

Every aspect of your life has to become smaller and quieter when you have CFS, but for me, this could almost be plotted on some kind of timeline.

CFS = struggle with self = struggle with others = less interaction = more time alone = only being comfortable in your own mind = getting sick of your own thoughts = reaching out = not having the energy = relapse = anger = resentment = shrinkage = why bother?

You spend more time alone, away from others, because speaking is tiring, and the cognitive function needed to express yourself is just taken over by brain fog. Eventually you end up in such a crazy cycle of struggle and denial, that you find that eventually, the safest place to be is in your bedroom, alone. You can maybe hear your family downstairs, but they don’t understand what’s happening to you, so you actively stop reaching out. Just being with you is the safest place to be.

This is where fear steps in.

Fear and CFS

After this point, this is where the fear really starts to set in…

Fear that you’ll never leave the house; fear that if you did leave the house, you’d collapse on the street (one of my most common anxieties).

Fear that you’ll always be like this; fear that you might not be able to stay like this forever (click here for more on this).

Fear of what other people might think; fight that other people might not think of you at all…and this cycle continues.

When you let yourself shrink, everything about your world tends to shrink and fall into lack with it- love, relationships, money, health, mindset. Your optimism and outlook automatically become more constrained and smaller.

How to Stay Open

Don’t let yourself shrink. As soon as you do, you’ve given into the fear voice that is keeping you small.

You must hang on to that little piece of you that is ever hopeful, ever childlike, ever present, ever curious. The size of this piece might change from day-to-day- somedays it might be the size of a football field, sometimes you’ll barely be able to feel it.

Don’t panic if you can’t feel that hope inside you- where else could it have gone to? Don’t make a brain foggy/blue today affect your tomorrow.

Stay open to the lesson that this glowing part of you is here to teach you, and for goodness sakes, don’t let yourself get sucked under by everything.

This is the part of you that is your recovery. Honour it, respect it and listen to it with everything you have.

Don’t let yourself  shrink.

Love and light,

Katie     xxx