When last we spoke, things weren’t looking so good over here in the land of bright and dark. Now, I fully realize that most of you don’t come to this site to be uplifted by sunshine and rainbows. I have never even pretended to be that girl. In fact, I don’t think I even have the ability to try being that girl while also being the broken hot mess of a girl that I truly am. But when you get so damn low that everything starts looking gray and your vision is blurry, not literally, like from MS, but the vision you employ for looking into your future is the one I’m talking about here…something’s got to give.

I’ve been here before. You may have been here with me – visiting that place where I get so low I start being darker than dark and having a hard time seeing the light. I think it’s a basic reality of my nature that I don’t have the capacity to live down here for very long. I just can’t do it. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe. It doesn’t feel right inside my skin when I’m down there. I begin to do desperate things.

Like affirmations.

Holy shit, you guys, I’m putting myself to bed by making a list of the things I have, and the things that I am, that I am grateful for. I know! I’m annoyed with my own damn self but here’s the thing about the amygdala. If you didn’t already know, the amygdala is the place where fear lives in your brain. It drives those feelings of desperation and panic. Fight or flight.

When I’m stuck in my amygdala, I am a decidedly sour woman. I start forgetting to be grateful. I start feeling desperate. I stop being able to have any perspective about any damn thing at all because my amygdala is driving the bus and she doesn’t like to slow down to let anyone off. My amygdala, that ornery bitch, is a strong mofo. She knows how scary she is and she dares me to defy her. She laughs in the face of my usually very successful coping tactics. She sees my normal every day kinds of fears, wraps her arms around the MS madness and floors the struggle bus until the very windows begin to shake.

Monday night I was so upset, uncomfortable, miserable, afraid – you know the drill. I was so much of all of those things that I sat myself up in bed, whipped out my journal and wrote down a list of all the things I’m currently afraid of. It was a very long list. It got me to sleep, the writing down of the list, but it didn’t ease my mind like it normally does. It bothered me. The list just kept getting longer. I woke up and added a few items. I forced myself to do it using the logic that the things that I keep in the dark can’t scare me as much when I force them into the light. Write them down. Review. See how ridiculous the list is. Move on feeling oh so much better.

The problem is when I read the list to my Precious, Cheryl my therapist, she was completely silent when I was finished. This is highly unlike Cheryl. She has words for most every occasion, very good words. Words that help. This time? Her words said, “Oh my. That’s a lot of really scary, very real stuff to be afraid of.”

Wait, what?

Those are not the uplifting words I was yearning for. I’m used to Cheryl being able to flip my perspective so that I can see how my fears are either a) kind of ridiculous or b) totally made up by my fantastic imagination.  This time? She called my fears very real stuff to be afraid of. GAH. She eventually went on to say some other very insightful things but we were both kind of off our game yesterday. We’re used to my normal crazy! The kind I create in my mind that is usually some kind of self-defeating BS that I totally made up to punish myself for some perceived failing I also totally made up. These were real fears. I’m not going to list them here because you probably already can guess about 50% of them and also because some of them were just plain crazy…I present you fear number 6 from my list as evidence:

6. I am afraid Fred (my cat) is mad at me for spending too much time upstairs and he’s punishing me by not coming up to snuggle. He will probably die in the dark, downstairs and alone (because he’s so old) and then I will die from pure sadness.

I never claimed to be sane, y’all. Never once. There may have been one or two more kind of crazy fears but the rest of them? Purely not crazy. You’re gonna have to trust me on this.

So, in my crazed scanning of Instagram, which is a highly unhealthy thing to do when I couldn’t sleep in the first place, I saw a post from one of my favorite MS resources, Dr. Gretchen Hawley (@doctor.gretchen). Dr. Gretchen is a physical therapist who specializes in multiple sclerosis. I believe she is based in Boston, but she has a virtual physical therapy offering that is really appealing to me.

Everything about her from her approach, to her understanding of the disease and its peculiarities, to her very voice works for me. She posts a daily exercise challenge on Instagram that I’ve come to look forward to and actually DO. I’ve tried other online MS-specific programs. I’ve even joined the MS Gym as a paying member. It didn’t work for me. I didn’t take to it. I know it works for tons of others but it just wasn’t effective for my particular set of challenges. Dr. Gretchen is simpatico with what my body and mind need, I guess. I’m not even sure why! But when something works, I try to go with it.

But back to my crazed scanning of Instagram in the dead of the night…I came across this post:

doctor.gretchen

Have you heard of NeuroSculpting Meditation 🧘♀️?
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I just learned about it and it blew my mind 🤓. I’m going to go LIVE in my IG stories soon to give you all the details… but there’s one thing you should know first…
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According to my teacher, ☝🏻our limbic system (the part of our brain that is in FIGHT or FLIGHT mode 🧠) is ALWAYS ON. In order to meditate and get clearer thinking, we need to shut it off (or at least try to turn it down).
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But how??
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By reassuring yourself that you are OKAY & don’t need your fight or flight response to kick in. ✨Here’s how to do it:
👉Sit in a relaxing position with your eyes closed or gazed at the ground in front of you
👉Reassure yourself of the follow:
•You have a roof over your head
•You are breathing
•You are clothed
•You have access to clean water
•You are sheltered
•You are safe
•You have a bed to sleep in
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Reassuring yourself of these basic human needs will calm down the limbic system and you will better be able to meditate, focus, and relax 💆🏼‍♀️.
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Try it out and let me know how it goes!

OK. I usually scoff at these kinds of “everything is going to be OK you are #blessed” kinds of exercises (you already know how I feel about people who use the hashtag blessed) but Dr. Gretchen did NOT use that hashtag (whew) and she knows about the amygdala and how to manipulate, er, I mean manage that bitch. She had me right where she wanted me. I’m telling you. If you’re at all interested in a very effective and appealing approach to online PT, go follow Dr. Gretchen on Insta, stat.

I did what she said to do last night. I felt kind of silly but I did it.

I woke up today not feeling all that great (shocker) but I had a full day. I had the Lemtrada labs guy coming. I had meetings. I had important PowerPoint decks to make! I also had to fit in some Beth-level exercising somewhere in there. Here’s the thing. It wasn’t like I felt so great today that my little meditation exercise last night changed my life. But I did start my day with a promise to myself. The promise that I wouldn’t take my many basic needs for granted. I wouldn’t forget how fortunate I am. I wouldn’t magically be all “MS DOESN’T HAVE ME!”  but I wouldn’t see the world as gray, blurry and scary if I could help it.

I would just keep going.

I would do my work. I would talk to the people and do the PowerPoints and get the blood drawn and pee in the cup and visit with a friend for a short spell and then at the end of all of that I spent 10 minutes on my Cubii. It’s not like it was easy. I know that number up there is nothing to be proud about – it’s actually kind of laughable – but I did it. I did my little exercising and I got my work done and I’m about to settle into the upstairs theater area to get set up to avoid steps for the rest of the night.

I was thinking of trying to get out of the house tomorrow. I don’t want to curse it by telling you why. I’ll just hold off to see if I actually make it happen before I get into the details but I’m telling myself that even if I don’t make it out tomorrow, everything is still going to be OK. Somehow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hit 800 steps. I KNOW. That’s probably crazy talk but stay with me. It could happen.

Anyway. This is a long way around to get to the point of this post and that point is quite simple: Don’t let your amygdala be the boss of you.

Even when you think you don’t have it in you, make your amygdala your bitch. I learned it from the smartest woman I know (Dr. Cheryl) and had it reaffirmed by another amazingly smart woman I’m just getting to know (Dr. Gretchen). You will thank me for this advice someday. Your amygdala wants to protect you but she’s misguided in her approach sometimes. She can learn. And so can you.