Chapter 4: Medicated

I was booked in for another round of corticosteroids and then immunosuppressive drugs to completely wipe out my B-cells. I was a patient. I was a person with a chronic illness. I was immunosuppressed in a global pandemic. I was weak. I was a tragic failure.

For me, that diagnosis was confirmation that I could no longer continue to live a lie. The lie that I was healthy, happy, strong and successful died with that diagnosis. And it was a relief more than a burden. It was an opportunity to dig down and get to the bottom of something that had felt wrong my whole life.

I wasn't immediately ready to start working on my psyche. It felt scary because I was sure that I was irreparably broken. I was certain that the real me inside was so reprehensible that I was afraid to uncover her. She was powerful in a way that I didn't understand and she was dark.

So I began my journey of self improvement in the kitchen. Food had always been my go-to comfort and I decided to try and use it to heal instead of harm myself. I had learned about the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) and went about doing a 180 on my diet. Out with the “planet-saving” tofu burgers, lentils, pasta, chocolate and cakes. In with the animal protein. My body was so relieved.

I was very dedicated to the diet, very strict with myself, intolerant of even the smallest slip-up. But after 6 months I realised that it wasn't enough. I needed to change more than my diet. Who could I turn to for help?

I found it difficult to lean on my family and friends for support. I had always found it difficult to ask for help because ultimately I thought myself unworthy of help. The contribution I felt I had to make as a friend was to be helpful and supportive of my friends, and if I was unable to do that, then the best thing I could do was remove myself from their presence. I didn’t really see myself as part of the group or part of the community. I was an imposter, an outsider. I didn’t belong.

That feeling I had didn’t mesh with my reality. I have wonderful friends who check in on me and offer me help. I made friends with some women who organised things like women’s circles, where I watched them express their feelings and make themselves vulnerable. And they listened to each other - really listened - without having to offer solutions, make light of the problem or discuss it. One day, one of my closest friends cried in the circle whilst talking about the grief of the endless giving of motherhood. This was a whole new territory for me and I was inspired by their emotional strength, a type of strength that seemed to exist precisely because of weakness. It blew my mind.

And yet I wasn’t ready to make myself that vulnerable just yet. I felt much more comfortable in the dynamic of asking for (and paying for) help from a professional. That way I didn’t feel like I was getting more than I deserved because I was paying the going rate for their time.

So first of all I enlisted the help of a nutritional therapist. I was very strict in following her advice and it was working. Then one session she recommended that I cut carbohydrates out of my diet and I got right to it. Two days in, I was lying on the grass in the park whilst my kids played, completely floored. I didn’t know about keto flu but I was deep in it and it hurt too much. So I quit keto and went looking for something else I could do.

I signed up with a psychotherapist, doing weekly sessions for 6 months and we worked through all the major issues that I had listed to work through. I approached it very logically, talking through my childhood and how it affected me in the present. I was scratching the surface of something that still scared me too much to really dig into.

Contact

anna@autoimmunerecoveryproject.com

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