"Lyme Disease Is Not Emotional But Physical" (And It's Emotional Too)

Friday, April 11th, 2014

We received an email yesterday regarding this week's Lyme Less Live More Showcase with Connie Strasheim about the Emotional Aspects of Lyme Disease. We thought we'd share our response in case others had similar thoughts.

Tug of War Physical Emotional Lyme Disease JPG"Be careful here - in my experience I was sent to psychologists because no one knew what was wrong. I went through any and all issues I could even find and remained in dire pain. It wasn't until I found out what was going on and started antibiotics that the pain went to zero. I would argue that this disease is not emotional but physical, that this is the nature of spirochetal illness, to take over the body until recognized and dealt with, and to be very careful in making any statements about emotional factors mattering, which in my case I don't think had anything to do at all with being sick." - R

Dear R,

Thank you for your email. We appreciate your participation with us here.

We'd like to take this opportunity to make very clear that in no way do we feel that Lyme Disease (or any other chronic illness) isn't a physical condition or that it is purely emotional.

We both have suffered greatly with this illness and have endured bullying and disbelief from the medical community and had to fight for our care.

Labrynth JPGWhile we agree that Lyme Disease is so very clearly a physical illness (as it is an infection), from our perspective, it's also a multi-layered issue.

We are thrilled to hear that you don't have any residual emotional pain or trauma and that your case was cut and dry once you found Lyme. It's wonderful to know that exists in the world.

Unfortunately however, many of us haven't been that lucky. You see when we talk about emotional trauma, what we are really talking about is chronic stress in the body.

No one can argue the fact that stress kills, and at a minimum it steals our resilience. And as it is with emotional stress, unless we address it, and remove it, like (pathogens) it continues to stress our bodies and robs us of our vitality -- leaving us no strength for recovery.

We explore in many of our interviews how toxic emotions, (and negative self talk) can weaken our systems and keep us stuck in chronic illness, sometimes for decades.

The emotional pain/trauma doesn't have to be happening now... it could have happened weeks, months, years ago -- and often stems from our childhood.

Flower LLLM JPGEven if a person has cleared the hurts of the past by injecting some awareness into them, the pain, trauma, frustration of having an illness NOW needs continual healing.

We feel, Lyme (and all illnesses for that matter), stem from a systematic breakdown -- physical, mental, emotional and environmental -- each of these factors deserve due diligence as much as antibiotics or other protocols. Even our birth holds keys to our future health.

I hope you had a chance to watch Connie's video. Perhaps it will clarify even further.

Wishing you continued health.

With love,
Dana and Brent




« »
  • "it steals our resilience", this statement is so true, in addition for my case, my on-going 3 year treatment journey has given bloom to a new fear/anxiety that I won't be enough. That something will happen in my daily life that will demand an action, and I won't be able to deliver and something bad could happen. This isn't unfounded crazy, I am physically much weaker. One instance, we have 5 horses, if I had one trapped and hurt, I might not be strong enough to free them. That is just one possibility. Sometimes using the toilet in a restaurant is a problem because my legs are too weak to get me upright, no one is going to die with this problem except maybe of embarrassment. I don't have the energy to anticipate all the possible issues and figure out solutions so I can be prepared. So this new state of mind, compliments of Lyme keeps me on edge and is definitely a negative stressor on my road to recovery.

    reply
  • I find with myself that sometimes it's very difficult to know what's what.
    Mostly because of what the disease does to your brain you don't know what is
    Your thoughts and what isn't. It has you going in such circles seems like a merry
    Go round you can't get off of. Even at a moment of an argument(or discussion) with my
    Own husband I don't make sense. My thoughts don't make sense.
    That is stressful. So it's easier some times to shut down and rest that God will take
    Me thru this. Because it's difficult very difficult to really know what's what.

    reply
  • I will forever be emotionally scarred by Lyme. Lyme has depleted my trust kn the medical community as a whole.

    reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.