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Secrets to Recovery 12 Lessons in Healing ME CFS Fibromyalgia
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About The Optimum Health Clinic
LUCY: Lesson 1 Release Your Fears
NICK: Lesson 2 Open Your Mind to New Ideas
JOY: Lesson 3 Anything is Possible:
TIM: Lesson 4 Be patient
THEA: Lesson 5 Commit to Yourself
PAUL: Lesson 6 Finding Your Purpose
SARAH: Lesson 7 Determination and persistence
FRANCES: Lesson 8 Open to the Journey
CATHERINE: Lesson 9 Love Yourself
RENU: Lesson 10 Release The Past
LINDA: Lesson 11 Mind and Body Together
ESTHER: Lesson 12 Let Go
The Optimum Health Clinic is an award winning integrative health clinic specialising in
M.E./C.F.S./Fibromyalgia, set up in 2004 by Alex Howard, (author of WHY ME? My Journey from
M.E. to Health and Happiness), with Nutritionist, Niki Gratrix (former Director of Nutrition at the
clinic).
The clinic is internationally recognised for its innovative approach of systematically
researching and testing all available treatments, and integrating them together in the most
effective way. With over half the clinic team having themselves also recovered from M.E., the
clinic is also well known for its caring and empathic approach.
The clinics team of ten practitioners have treated over 5,000 patients with
M.E./C.F.S./Fibromyalgia in over twenty-five countries around the world. Their patient range is
vast, and covers the complete spectrum from medical doctors and board members of Fortune
500 companies, to students and housewives. As a first step towards one day government
funding hopefully being available for treatment, the clinic launched a two year clinical trial with two
leading universities in January 2009.
Please note that whilst we accept there is significant debate over the
possible differences between M.E., C.F.S. and Fibromyalgia, for the sake of
simplicicty in this book we have not made distinctions between them, and
have allowed those whose stories were included to use the terms they were
comfortable with.
Although we accept this will be far from preferable for some readers, we
hope you will understand this was done in the spirit of keeping this book
as simple as possible.
We would like to dedicate this book to the thousands of patients we have
been fortunate enough to work with at The Optimum Health Clinic.
Your passion and determination to recover your health inspires us
everyday to be better practitioners and continue to drive forwards in
researching the treatments that have been at the heart of so many
recoveries.
For many of us working at The Optimum Health Clinic, M.E. has been a significant part of our
lives (over half of our team have themselves had M.E. and recovered). If you are reading this,
the chances are that either you - or someone you love - are facing some of the many challenges
that this complex and often misunderstood illness presents. The process of recovery can often
feel like trying to piece a jigsaw puzzle together, but without the big drawing on the front to tell
you what to do! We know what that feels like. So it has always been our mission to better
understand and ultimately simplify the process of recovery. It was this mission that prompted Alex
to set up the clinic, and it continues to be the driving force for everyone who works as part of the
Over the years we have been privileged to support thousands of people on their own journeys,
and piece by piece, we have been putting together what we believe to be the most integrative
picture of M.E. available. As the clinic has developed on its own path, our vision has become
clearer and clearer: integration of the best ideas, techniques and approaches that exist;
education to share and offer that knowledge as freely as possible; inspiration offering hope,
support and the sense at all times that recovery is possible.
So it simply made sense to take all of the learning, tools and insights that the clinic had become
home to, and turn them into a useable resource for patients and non-patients alike. Alex called
this resource Secrets to Recovery, a series of fortnightly interviews and talks with practitioners
and patients, developed and launched in May 2007, to be available by telephone, online and
through postal membership.
We knew it was a great idea, but we could never have quite anticipated the impact that Secrets
to Recovery would have. Since it began, we have heard over and over again how much this or
that story has impacted, supported and inspired patients. People have even accosted us at talks,
and told us that they are planning their Secrets to Recovery interview in their heads and what
a great way to stay inspired!
And so, when two former patients, Lucy and Frances both previous patients and interviewees
on Secrets to Recovery asked us if we had ever thought of putting together a book of recovery
stories, we leapt at the idea..and asked if they might like to help! Luckily for us all, they said
yes, and so this book was born.
This book is a compilation of some of the most powerful recovery stories from the Secrets to
Recovery interviews. The people we have chosen range greatly in age, background and their
experiences of both illness and the path to recovery, so there will doubtless be one or two that
you relate to most strongly and keep re-reading. And for each story we have tried to pull out both
a main theme that made the difference in that recovery story the Secrets to Recovery, in
essence. We hope this will make the stories not just inspiring, but really thought-provoking and
useful on your own journey.
We have also kept some of Alexs comments made during the interviews, were we felt it helped
the story flow better. Additionally, we have added a summary of the key lessons at the end of
each chapter, with some top tips to help you get the most from it.
The book is not an attempt to summarise everything that you could possibly need to get well
indeed we have not even begun here to cover the topic of the nutritional approach that we at the
clinic know to be so central for patients in recovery; that is an entire other book in itself. Nor, we
hope, have we focused on just the techniques which we primarily use in the clinic we know that
the journey of recovery is a winding and complex thing. Instead, we have focused on the key
emotional, psychological, and yes, dare we say it, spiritual lessons that have been central for
each of these people in their recovery stories.
We hope that this book will be a source of information and inspiration to you and those around
you. If you would like to enquire more deeply into any of the stories, you can of course join and
log onto the website and download the original interview and transcript from the archive. The
interviews contain a fair bit more detail, and you can also hear the interviewee actually sharing
their story in their own words. www.SecretsToRecovery.com truly is an amazing resource, and
we do hope this book inspires you to look into it further.
If you would like more information on the actual treatments offered by the clinic, which were so
central in each of these recovery stories, please do visit www.FreedomFromME.co.uk or use the
contact details at the end to order our highly informative free information pack.
There is one more dimension to this project which is worth mentioning and that is that all
proceeds will be going to The Optimum Health Clinic Foundation. This charity has been set up to
fund research into integrative health approaches, with the long-term aim of government funding
being available for the very treatments that those interviewed have benefited so much from.
So we invite you to read on with an open heart and mind, to take from this what resonates for
you, to share it and use it, and come back to it time and again. And, more than anything else, to
take from it the knowledge that whatever your background, however old or young you are, and
whatever your experience, recovery is possible.
With love and warmth,
Alex Howard and Anna Duschinsky
London, August 2009
(Meeting 43)
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
I first became ill in 1999 when I was twenty-five. At that time my life was really busy. I worked full
time as a primary school teacher and had a class of forty-two seven-year-olds. I was also living
ninety miles away from my then partner, and was spending quite a lot of time travelling to see
him. I was going to the gym a lot and had a really busy social life too. Towards the end of 1999 I
got a really bad sinus infection. I went to the doctors and was given antibiotics, but the infection
just didnt seem to go. This rolled on into 2000, I wasnt feeling well, but I was still working.
During this time I would be at work for a week or so, get really unwell with another sinus infection,
be signed off again for a week, never completely recover, but go back into work for another week,
until it happened again. I felt a lot of expectation on me in my job, I hadnt been teaching for that
long, I had this quite large class, and everybody at work and in my life was telling me how
brilliantly I was doing to handle all these children. Actually I was really, really struggling, but
because everyone was saying how great I was doing, I didnt feel there was any room for me to
say, This is crazy, this is a crazy amount of children for one teacher, and that I needed a bit of
During this time I applied for and got another teaching job which I was due to start the following
September. I knew I was quite unwell at this time, but I felt what I needed was just a bit of a rest.
The summer holidays were coming and I was sure I would be absolutely fine for September.
Id heard of M.E., but really didnt know what it meant. At the time the doctor said I had Post Viral
Fatigue. I knew that I had had a virus and that I was now very tired, but I didnt understand what
the implications of that diagnosis were. The holidays came and went, and I was due to start my
new job, but it was then really very obvious that I wasnt going to be able to. I started to get a bit
more of an inkling as to how ill I was. I didnt start my new job, and I then began to see a lot of
doctors and specialists.
That time was really difficult. Id moved in with my partner by then, but we were really struggling.
He was used to me being this outgoing, sociable girl with whom he did lots of fun things, but the
reality was now quite different; I was basically either crying, or asleep, and he found that
challenging. It wasnt what he had expected when we planned to move in together.
At this time, I still wasnt fully clear about the nature of my illness. I had repeated tests for
glandular fever, and each time they came back negative I felt relieved; I knew that could last for
months and I didnt want that. But the result was, I still didnt know what was wrong with me. I
remember one doctor asking me why I wasnt pleased that all his tests were coming back clear,
as if just not finding anything meant there was nothing wrong.
I was desperate to get back to work, as I was desperate to get my life back, and so in January
2001 I started teaching two mornings a week at my new job. I would get up on a Tuesday, go into
school for the morning, come home, go to bed and stay there until the Thursday morning, go into
work until lunchtime and then go back to bed until the following Tuesday. I continued like that for
two years, steadily getting more unwell. It sounds an extreme way to treat my body but at the
time I was just absolutely desperate to hold my life together. I could feel and see literally every
single part of my life falling apart around me and the harder I tried to keep all these things - my
work, my partner, my house and my independence - the faster they seemed to fall away from me.
I was just desperate to keep hold of anything that I could because at that stage, all I wanted was
to get my old life back. I felt it was being taken away from me.
By 2002 my relationship had ended and so I decided I had better work a few more hours in order
to get my life back on track. I started teaching an evening class too. I managed about a week.
One night I rang my Mum to tell her I was now feeling very poorly, and so I was going to go to
bed. I was there for the next four years.
I was taken to my Mums initially and stayed there for two or three months, and then I went to live
at my sisters house. Physically I was extremely tired. I wasnt completely bed-bound, but I didnt
get very far. I did get up, but frequently I would spend a lot of hours just lying on the floor. I had
really bad physical symptoms, a temperature, swollen glands and a sore throat. I had really bad
headaches and a lot of pain around my mouth and face. Sometimes every part of me hurt. I also
had this terrible feeling in my head. I couldnt cope with any noise whatsoever. I couldnt speak,
and I couldnt cope with the noise of people speaking to me. I couldnt watch television because
it was too noisy and there was too much movement. I spent a lot of time looking out of the
window but I couldnt do that unless it was a really still day because if the wind was blowing all
the leaves on the trees it was too much for my brain to cope with. I couldnt read or write
because my head felt so terrible. Everything was over stimulating.
It was terrifying to have been reduced to that state of incapacity and when I look back I dont
know how I managed it. I think basically I did not allow myself to think at all about the absolutely
horrendous situation I found myself in. I had no idea how I was going to get myself out. I had no
idea when it was going to end. It lasted for four years but at the time I had no way of knowing
that. I didnt know how long I would be there. If I ever did think about it, I knew it could not last
forever, that it had to change and that it was probably changing even if I could not see it. I
thought that it was part of something and that I just had to go with whatever it was. Mostly I didnt
think about it though and I tried to never think further ahead than about managing the next halfhour.
At that time I became very interested in the outdoors, in plants and gardening, mostly because I
was looking out of the window a lot. During those years I literally saw the seasons change
through several cycles before my very eyes. I didnt feel I was changing, nothing seemed to be
changing within me, but I saw this epic change happening, through spring to summer, into
autumn and winter, and back to spring again, round and round, and I thought the same thing
must be happening here within me, even if I could not see it.
At that time I learnt about pacing from the hospital in Leeds. It was an interesting experience for
me. Although I wasnt doing very much, the things I was doing I was timing extremely carefully. I
had all my hopes tied up in pacing as it was the only treatment I knew of at the time, and because
I wasnt getting the results I wanted from it I assumed I wasnt doing it properly, or thoroughly
enough, and so I became very precise about timing everything. It didnt even cross my mind that
it might not work intrinsically; I had to make it work because it was the only resource I had.
I timed everything to the nearest minute although as the years went on I would occasionally allow
myself a little break whereby I would start or stop something fifteen seconds early, but never, ever
more than that. I believed that the way I was going to recover was by stacking up so many days
when I didnt feel so bad. If I had a day when I felt ill, which was actually every day, I felt it was
because I wasnt pacing properly, that I had failed and that I had let myself down. It was another
wasted day during which I had prevented my own recovery. I had no concept of this at the time,
but later as I started to look at what the M.E. had ultimately been about for me, a lot of it was
about control and fear, and I think that the way I used pacing was actually another manifestation
of that.
Alex: Pacing definitely has its place. If someone is booming and busting all the time, pacing can
be a great way to break that circle. However, the trouble is that when it goes to the extreme that
Lucy was using it, it becomes a massive source of anxiety because people become terrified when
they get outside of their routine or do more than they think they should be doing. Anxiety levels
just get higher and higher and higher. Although the intention of pacing is a good one, the actual
result can in fact be an increase in stress. It is the absolute opposite of being in the calm and
relaxed healing state the body needs to heal. Im not saying people should not limit activity at
certain stages of the illness, but pacing is ultimately a head driven thing, and the secret is
learning to listen to the body.
Early in 2007 I heard about The Optimum Health Clinic, which was run by two people who had
themselves recovered from M.E. I hadnt met anybody who had recovered at that point and so I
was very excited. I had been literally nowhere for years, except for the couple of times my Mum
had taken me to Leeds to the hospital, but I wanted to have a look at these people, to see if I
thought they were truly recovered and to pick up any information I could from them that might
help me. I had no idea what the clinic did, I knew there was something really physically wrong
with me and I wanted some really physical solution. I had done yoga and various other
alternative treatments during the early stages of my illness but I felt these were only going to
manage the M.E., and I wasnt interested in that I wanted to be completely free of it.
The trip was a huge undertaking for me. I had frightened myself an incredible amount when I had
suddenly become severely rather than moderately ill a few years previously, and the fear of
jeopardising the very limited life I did have was terrifying. I believed this might be the last thing I
ever I did, that this might be it. I knew I could not go on as I was, and not only that I could not, but
that I was not willing to. Also if I lost what little bit of life I had managed to create I felt I did not
have it in me to work all those years to get in back again. And I was simply not prepared to do so
either. So the concept of coming to the clinic was both massively daunting, a huge risk, and very,
very scary for me. But something drove me to do it.
My sister booked some rail tickets and once I decided to make the journey, I didnt allow myself to
think too much about what I was doing. Physically getting outside of my normal life and travelling
to London was a in a way, a huge thrill. It was a four hour trip; I hadnt been anywhere for years
and now I was going to London! How exciting! I gave myself a day off from the pacing because I
knew there no way I could keep to the regime whilst I was away. I hardly spoke at all at that time
and I knew I was going to be with people, so I just let the whole thing go. It was great to have a
break from it, because it was an exhausting way to be. It felt incredibly freeing.
I was in London for three days for The 90 Day Programme, and when I arrived back home having
had a full three days out of my routine, the first for many years, I was amazed by how good I felt.
Before the course, I had imagined I would subsequently need complete rest but in fact the next
morning I got up and mowed my lawn. I just knew I had met people who had recovered
themselves and that was what I most wanted. I believed what they had taught me worked, and I
thought it would work for me.
I started with the Stop process, one of the techniques I learned at the programme, using it
literally hundreds of times a day. I used it a lot and really thoroughly. I also had help from Anna
to shift some of the rules and routines I had got into, and some of my beliefs about them. Not
being able to read or write anything and the physical symptoms of that was something that had
persisted for a number of years and it made my life very difficult. When that changed I was
absolutely amazed and thrilled. It was a very, very, powerful experience for me. It was
absolutely brilliant to start doing things again. I started with tiny activities at first, seeing friends
again, going out for lunch, and after several months of doing this I decided to visit my cousin who
had a hotel in Brighton, and it was there that the next big shift happened.
I was again very nervous about my trip. I was still in my routine a lot and I knew I would struggle
to keep it together whilst I was away. I was very worried where the resultant physical symptoms
would leave me. I knew however that I very much wanted to go, and I felt it was the right thing to
do. I had been living my life literally in deep fear of my symptoms even though to me it had
seemed so common-sense, just a way of protecting myself from getting worse. But now I began
to recognise the role that fear and the need to try to control my symptoms had been having on
me, in a very real physical way. I found that a very challenging concept. I was quite shocked too;
I had always seen the illness had been to me very much a physical thing that was just happening
to me.
The first night of my visit we went out for dinner and by the end of the evening I was feeling
extremely, extremely ill. I felt if I went to bed I might not be able to get up again and I knew I had
to try and help myself. I started to use all of the resources and tools I had learnt and really, really
worked with myself. I used Stops, E.F.T. (Emotional Freedom Technique), I did yoga and
various grounding, breathing processes, all on my own in this hotel room, just working with
whatever came up.
The result was miraculous. I went from feeling extremely ill to feeling absolutely fine in about two
hours. It felt like a miracle had occurred. I had spent so long with the belief that M.E. was
something I had absolutely no influence over and I couldnt believe that difference I had managed
to make to myself. It was absolutely amazing.
That experience had the effect of freeing me up in the rest of my life. In the months which
followed I would still get quite bad physical symptoms on a daily basis, but I was routinely able to
shift them, often quite dramatically. I was able to do so much more too because I knew I could
shift the symptoms when they came. Similarly, later in my recovery when I needed help with the
deeper emotional aspects of the illness, just knowing the symptoms of this could potentially shift
in an instant, even if I couldnt shift them at that moment, allowed me to completely relax about
how I was feeling. Having that complete change of perspective was just brilliant.
Working through what was coming up for me as the emotional content behind the symptoms was
fascinating and challenging. In sessions with Anna (my practitioner at the clinic) I began to
understand that I was feeling overwhelmed and that I just wanted to lie on the floor in the pose of
a child, and let the world carry on without me - just as people get close to the floor in a smoke
filled room - only for me the smoke was life itself. Although I was not consciously feeling I didnt
want to be here, on another level I realised I was feeling that way. After several experiences of
symptoms moving after I addressed this, I realised that this was precisely what I had done during
those four years of being severely ill. It was an alarming revelation and very hard to take in. I
was shocked that part of me had actually achieved this very thing despite me using my every
resource to stop it and fight against it.
I began to realise, however, that there was clearly another very powerful part of me that I had not
acknowledged, and I understood that if I could harness this energy and work with it rather than
against it, it would be incredible. I felt the way to do this was to listen to my emotions as I had
been taught at The 90 Day Programme, and to do the things that brought me joy. Perhaps if I
did, then this very powerful energy would support me and it would be a huge success. I started to
do literally anything and everything that I thought would bring me joy; having fun, going to
festivals, studying plants and botany, running, dancing, lots of physical stuff. I moved to Brighton
too. The effect was miraculous, and turned out to be the final stage for me in my recovery.
Having M.E. has in many ways set me free from myself and reconnected me with joy and passion
for life. I have so much I want to do now travelling, working with plants and the natural
environment, having fun with other people and developing other more esoteric aspects of my life.
I have learned that things often arent what I think they are, and that anything is truly possible. I
am committed now to doing whatever makes me happy.
I have spent the last year studying at Chelsea Physic Garden, and I am currently applying for a
three year full-time course at Kew, in London. I love running and I am training for a half marathon
with a view to running the New York marathon next year, something I dreamt about when I was
very ill. It feels hugely exciting to be making choices about what is in my life again.
Alex and Anna summary:
Many people reading this may relate to Lucys story her initial fight against what was
happening, to eventually being forced to accept that she could no longer function as she had, and
then as her life became more and more limited, to living in perpetual fear of her symptoms. When
we feel that desperate, confused and trapped, we will, quite reasonably, go to any lengths to
avoid doing anything that could worsen our symptoms or situation. However, as Lucy had to
learn, living in fear of an illness and putting strategies in place to protect yourself from its painful
effects can seem logical, but it is in part this fear and stress itself that can help prevent healing
from happening. Fear is a major stressor on the body, and even though it in itself will not cause or
heal M.E., living in constant fear can have a major impact on the bodys ability to heal.
The key for Lucy was to begin to understand the role that this conditioned fear response was
playing in her illness once she began to see her symptoms from a new perspective, and could
understand that they were not just happening to her, but that her emotional and mental state
played a part in how she felt, then she could begin to take control. This was not without risk for
Lucy she had to make several leaps of faith. However, as she was helped to see what was
going on, she was able to use her drive and determination to put to use the tools she was
It is important to note that in no way are we suggesting that releasing her fears was the only thing
that needed to happen for Lucy to recover. The period of rest she took was essential, as was the
nutrition work she needed to do. However, until she released her fears, and calmed her nervous
system, her bodys resources were just not available to truly heal.
A key element of the work we do in the psychology department at the clinic is to help patients get
their body into the optimum healing state necessary, and Lucys story shows the dramatic impact
this can have.
Top Tips:
Recognise that your body has an innate drive and ability to heal, very often part of
supporting this process is creating an inner environment of calm and trust where this
can happen
Understand that symptoms can be a message that your body is in a stress state, and
that you need to find ways to access a calmer, more healing state in order to allow
your body to heal
By changing our mental and emotional response to what is happening to us, we can
ultimately take more control of how we move forward this feels far more
empowering and promotes healing.
Understand that FEAR is very often False Evidence that Appears Real. This is not to
say that our fears dont sometimes have a message for us, but the message is never
that we should be imprisoned by our own mind
And the day came when the need to remain closed
became more painful than the risk to open
I remember vividly the night I first got sick, it was bonfire night 2004 and I had just gone down
to the local pub. I came over all fluey and achy, with all the usual symptoms associated with
that. There were little signs before, but to the untrained eye they were minor ailments, little
things that would just go away; a body rash, pain in my stomach, and tinnitus. Looking back
now they were clearly signs from my body saying, There is a problem here and you need to
address it, but I didnt think of that at the time. I went to my doctor with each and every
ailment because they were what seemed to be unusual symptoms. It is not everyday that
you get these things, and each time I just got an answer for what they thought it was, and
either a pill or was told to rest and that it would disappear on its own. So on each occasion I
took their word for it and carried on.
I am a policeman and at that particular time I was working on quite high level undercover
work. I was asked to go on a job which was the highest level of covert undercover work that
you can do for the police service, and felt privileged and proud at the time to have been
chosen. There was a lot going off around then so it was pretty stressful but I was trained just
to get on with it.
Within a few months there were warning signs for us all really. My sergeant immediately had
a stroke which came completely out of the blue and with hindsight was obviously down to the
stress he was under. Following that we lost a guy on the job, and finally my working partner,
the guy I was doing most of my work with, was diagnosed with a mental illness stemming
from the problems and pressures of the job. He ended up in a mental institution and has
since retired. To me stress was just being busy. If I had had a busy day I thought I had had
a stressful day that was my interpretation of stress. I was working in an environment where
people use it as an excuse for a lot of things. It was always a dirty word and I have always
associated it with, for want of a better word wasters because I have always been hard
working. Anyone who has pulled the stress card to me has just been looking for a way out.
Also, from my point of view up until this point, you just push through these things.
The police force is an environment where you kick on, you kick through, and you maintain
professionalism in your image, and for me that was the culture. I wanted to maintain my part
in it, selfish or not there is this image that we cops want to keep, and mine was this hurly,
burly copper who Aint going down, who was not going to show any emotion, and had got to
get on with it. At that time I didnt recognise the pressure and I didnt recognise all the
symptoms and signals that were being thrown at me. During that job I didnt get any help
from the organisation and nobody came to me and said, How do you feel after you have just
seen that? How do you feel having experienced your friend die? There was no support and
so it was all suppressed. I was suppressing all these emotions, not dealing with them. That
all happened over two years and throughout those two years I was fine. I was working long
hours, staying reasonably fit, and living a normal life outside of work. When I track back,
however, it was within a month of finishing that job that I started to get symptoms.
I had this image at the back of my mind of what M.E. was. And when I finally came to terms
with having it, it completely destroyed me and my morale. It destroyed me as a worker, as a
family man, it destroyed me in every way. A big part of my life is keeping fit; I have always
enjoyed it, and used it as a release at the end of a busy or stressful day. I enjoyed the burn
and the running and everything to do with it, and so to lose that was a massive part of being
ill. It also destroyed just enjoying family events, like going to the movies or to Sunday lunch
at my parents. It destroyed it because it is always there niggling away at you and it spirals
and manifests into all the other anxieties and problems that you are creating for yourself. As
a man who was the main breadwinner and very physically active it took away my life
Learning about M.E was a petrifying experience. Everything I read to begin with was saying
You have got this and you are never going to get better. I searched the internet, bought
books and read articles in magazines. It was all very, very negative, based around, You
have got this, how are you going to cope with having it? I was gearing up for life as a
disabled man. There was very little of Youve got it, now you need to sort these things out,
you need to start doing this, and this is how you are going to get yourself back to normality.
They were very dark days.
Determination is a big thing however, and I believe that if you want something badly enough
and you go about it in the right way then you will be able to achieve the goals you set. I just
kept thinking that there must be people out there who have beaten this, and all I have to do
is find them, bounce off them, and start doing what they did. If other people could do this
then I knew I could. For a year I hunted people down who had beaten this and anyone that
fell outside of that I didnt want to talk to, I wasnt interested in them at all. I went to M.E.
groups, I went to talks, and if there was an element of negativity in it I didnt want to know and
I didnt go back. They were just going to drag me down to where they were and I didnt want
to be there. I wanted to be around people that were positive and could tell me how they had
done it, then I could start cherry-picking what was right for me. So that is what I did, trawling
the internet and buying books.
I read WHY ME? and had an appointment with the author, Alex Howard. I came away
thinking this guy has told me that if I go away and say Stop a few times Im going to be okay.
I said to my wife, I said stop a few times and Im still bloody ill, and he has charged me and it
is going to cost me a fortune.
As I sat on the train on the way home I thought What a waste of time. At the time I wasnt
open enough, I wasnt open to what I was being told and I probably wasnt ready to receive it
and embrace it. I believed that if you got sick, you took a pill and you got better. Suddenly I
was being offered a completely different way of looking at it firstly that my emotions were
involved, and secondly that there was no magic pill to make it go away. It was a completely
different way of looking at things which was going to take some time to adjust to. I had very
little trust in it. It was not something I was used to and it was very unconventional. I wanted
the pill; I wanted the G.P. to say, There is your M.E. pill, swallow it and you will be right on
I probably didnt believe it was going to work anyway and I just wasnt ready for it at the time.
I knew, however, that I had to stick with the clinic. I knew deep down that is wasnt going to
be one session, one cure fits all. I stuck with it because I knew these people had been there,
probably in a lot more severe way than me, and they had found a way out. Alex had
obviously got something, and that was crucial to me, he had got what I wanted. It takes a
brave and strong person to set themselves up and to open up to all these new and different
treatments.
I also began working with Niki on the nutrition side of the clinic. I thought I had had a good
diet before, but it was just ripped apart. Amongst other things I was told to start juicing and
taking certain supplements. I realised that you genuinely are what you eat, it is the
foundation of getting better, the building block to then move on to other things. This had quite
a big impact quite quickly and I thought then that I had actually recovered, which was great,
fantastic. I felt high and went hell for leather, straight down the gym, back on the bench press
and kicking the hell out of it. Although I had dealt with the physical side of the illness, it
wasnt solid enough at the point to go straight back into that life. I had not addressed the
issues that were deep inside me. I had not dealt with them properly and the underlying
causes of M.E. were still there. The nutritional aspect had just boosted me, set me up and
given me a temporary life, but it wasnt enough on its own and I then crashed again after a
few weeks. I had to face the disappointment and start reassessing where I was.
I found it easy to be committed and determined but I also needed to accept my situation. It
was a very low point when I realised I was going to have to stop working for a while and stop
going to the gym. It felt like a very difficult thing to do because I felt I was really letting go of
my life. I went into work and said I needed time off. I saw that the gym was a thing for the
future and not the present.
I was determined never to be beaten by this; it was never going to rule my life and I was
going to get better. I believed in myself, I believed that I could do it and I surrounded myself
solely with positive people, people who talked really positively to me, gave me good
information, and who had done it themselves, people who had been there and done it and I
whom I could absorb some of that energy from.
I became in touch via email with a girl who had had M.E. very severely and had gone on to
become a world Olympic champion canoeist. She lived near me In Nottingham and we met.
Her openness to the emotional component of M.E. made me realise I that I wasnt being
open. I saw there was something that I needed to explore more and I started getting into
some of the complementary therapies like hypnotherapy and shiatsu massage. I went
through the whole list pretty much and cherry-picked those that worked for me. I then drew
up a program and stuck to it. The steps were very small and I had to keep looking back to
where I had come from to realise where I was now. I still had bad months, but I also had
better ones. When I did get those openings of good months, good weeks, good days, I knew
I could have them and that was the biggest part of it I could have them.
By Spring 2007 I was having prolonged good periods where there were no symptoms and I
had quite good energy levels. I was obviously doing something right. Around that time I
spoke to Tim Bichara (whose story is also in this book). Tim was somebody I found most
useful because I spoke to him when I was 95% recovered but struggling to make the final
push. He reminded me about continuing to focus on the techniques and really trying to cut
out the mental patterns present in my life at the time. He also spoke about just accepting bad
days as bad days, moving through them and concentrating on everything I had learnt along
the way. It brought me that extra 5%.
I constantly hung on to what these people were showing me and telling me. That last 5% can
be quite challenging. Its the shift between someone who has M.E. and is doing really well,
and someone who has actually recovered. The beginning of the illness and the end of the
illness were for me the two hardest points to be at because that is where I wanted it the most.
When I was most poorly and at my lowest I wanted it so badly. The road of recovery just
seemed that little bit better and I was plodding along nice and slowly. But when I reached
this plateau that was almost the end of it, I wanted it even more.
I would never have spoken a few years ago about the connection between the mind and the
body. It was completely alien and it would just not have registered. Now I realise that the
symptoms I was getting pre-November 2004 were my body giving me warning signals, and
that if I didnt take heed of them it would take action. My head was telling me that I had just
got a rash and to go to the doctors and get back to work, but my body was saying something
This has been a massive transformation for me in many ways. The change has been internal
rather than external. I am still happily married to the same person and I am still doing police
work, but I am doing it from a very different place. When I first became very poorly I had a lot
of anger and a lot of resentment towards the police service, it was unbelievably strong and I
was a very angry man. I held them 100% responsible for my illness and carrying that anger
was a contributory factor to the stress my body was under at the time. I dealt with it on a
psychological level by excluding the people who had made me angry, by changing the
department I worked in, by taking a break - which was also beneficial.
I also put in a claim against them. I saw this as a way of getting even with the police service
initially, getting my own back and exposing them for what they were. I also wanted to
highlight what I had been through as they were always trying to brush it under the carpet.
The claim was incredibly stressful and not conducive to recovery. I was constantly getting
solicitor,
which were often
disappointing. They caused me frustration and anger and were very stressful themselves. I
stuck with the claim because I got so far into it that I reached the point of no return, and I did
see it through. I needed to draw a line in the sand and put the whole experience behind me.
It then took me a long time to figure out that being a police officer is something I had loved
before and that it was something I could carry on loving. Deep in my heart I knew it was
something I could go back to and that it would make me happy again. With hindsight I wonder
how quickly I would have recovered without that stress and I would not have done it. I would
have chosen another option I think.
The road to recovery from M.E. is a jigsaw puzzle but all the pieces are not in the box and
they forget to print the picture on the front. I just went out there and hunted down the people
who had what I wanted. If you want to make a million quid you dont talk to the beggar who is
playing the violin in the old market square, you go and talk to people who have made a
million quid. To sit around with other people who are ill, bouncing off their ill stories about
who has been the most ill this week and who has the worst symptom is not setting yourself
up for recovery. You have to get yourself in the environment internally and externally where
you are going to heal. It took longer than I would have liked but I did eventually put myself
into the place where everything started to click into place. Its nutrition, its psychology, its
having the right people around you, its dealing with your ghosts and hidden agendas. Your
body will do the rest.
Having M.E. opened me up as an emotional person and enabled me to express emotions.
There is no shame in crying. This illness has driven me to the pits, I have cried and cried
over it and that has been a good thing. There is a connection between your mind and your
body and you should always, always, listen to your body, because it is there to protect you. It
will perform all the functions to keep you alive, to heal you. I have opened up to the tricks the
mind can play on you and the sort of traps you can fall into.
It has also opened me up to the nutrition side of things and to complementary therapy which I
would have laughed my face off about. I have embraced psychology and I am convinced it
has helped me along the route, but I would have laughed my head off about a colleague of
mine doing that. Often I didnt get the techniques the first time, but I would revisit things and
find they were right for me once I had read a bit more and come to terms with them.
I have just come back from six days in New York and you aint going to need to large it up
more than me! I walked more in those six days than probably in the six years before. Life is
for living and you are going to spend a long time dead so enjoy what you have got because
this is not a dress rehearsal. If I was the person I am now, six years ago I would have been
able to stop myself from getting ill because I would have recognised those symptoms, I would
have listened to my body, and not to my head.
To work the connection between the mind and the body is an art. It doesnt come naturally
because it is not engrained in you when you are a young person. I maintain the principles
that made me well in my life, but now I do it from a place of appreciation.
Many people will relate to Nicks story and to his mindset he was part of a culture where the
body is something you use to get the job done; where you dont even consider stopping,
and where admitting you need help is shameful. Illness was just not something that had been
on his radar and his model of the world was that when your body is sick, you take a pill and
you get better.
It was a life-changing and mind-changing process for him to understand that health is actually
the result of the harmony of mind, body and emotions and that when part of this picture is
out of balance, it will ultimately impact the rest. So a big part of Nicks recovery was his
journey to first accept what was happening to him rather than fighting against it, which is
what everything he knew was telling him to do.
There is also a key distinction here to notice between Nick learning to accept what was
happening, but not giving into his situation. Acceptance is a necessary step on the healing
path, giving in is not.
Nick then took the very courageous step to open his mind to new ideas, many of which went
against everything he had thought to be true. His commitment to do this and to persist with it
even when was having to make real leaps of faith, has been the ultimate key in allowing him
to find his answers.
Illness is not as simple as many of us were taught to believe it is an imbalance of
mind, emotions and body
Learn to accept where you are, without believing that you have to stay there accept
the illness but dont give into it
The frustration at what is happening to us, can actually be channelled to help drive
our commitment to follow through with those actions and behaviours that will support
our recovery
Commit to finding your truth there are people out there with the answers and
knowledge that you need
Surround yourself with people and information that support the idea of recovery this
positive inspiration makes a big difference
Dreams come true.
Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
I was unwell for about ten years in total. Early on I found out I had an under-active thyroid and I
had polyps, which I had two operations for. Then about six years ago I suddenly developed
excruciating ankle pain. The pain would get worse and then go, which was a pattern that went on
for a couple of months. I thought I might have M.S. Eventually it got so bad that I did go to the
doctor and she did various tests. She thought it was rheumatism, yet all tests came back
This went on for six months, and in that time I gradually became more and more exhausted. I
had been an incredibly active person and a very early riser before, and now I was not waking up
until 9am, which was late for me. I would get up, just about manage to have a shower, and then
be so tired that I just felt like going back to bed. I was sleeping every afternoon for four to six
hours; my husband said I didnt move and it was as if I was unconscious.
I had no idea what was happening. I felt so ill, but with this terrible guilt that I must pull myself
together and that it was something I was doing. My doctor didnt seem able to give me any
answers; over and over the tests came back with nothing showing up. I began to think I was
going crazy. My doctor had been incredibly supportive and eventually after six months I went in
to see her again. She said she had been doing research and she was sure I had Fibromyalgia
and Chronic Fatigue. She gave me a leaflet about Fibromyalgia. I had vaguely heard of it, but I
didnt know what it was. I can remember sitting in the waiting room to have blood tests and not
really knowing why I had to have them. The first thing I had read on this leaflet was that
Fibromyalgia is a very strange illness. People may say to you that you look well and yet inside
you feel so ill. That was the first time that I felt, That is exactly how I feel. The nurse held me
while I sobbed and I told her the leaflet was about me.
A few comments from friends and family lead me to assume that they thought I was just making a
fuss. I didnt want to let anyone down, and so I was struggling all the time to lead a normal life,
even though I felt so ill. The doctor eventually sent me to a rheumatologist. I went privately so I
could be seen quickly. I hoped that he would find something and just give me a pill to make me
better. I paid 190 and was in there for twenty minutes. He pressed all these spots on my body
(because with Fibromyalgia there are eighteen spots in your body that are incredibly painful),
which were excruciating. He said there was nothing he could do for me and gave me a sheet of
paper with a list of books on how to deal with pain. I cried all the way back home.
I became quite depressed and that was very unusual for me. I hated what was happening to me.
People might think its strange or funny, given that I was sixty, but I had always been so active regularly swimming and tap dancing, playing table tennis with my husband at our local sports hall.
And suddenly I felt as if I was living in a twilight world, all I wanted to do was lie down and go to
I fought it in the beginning - I fought it tooth and nail. It made it worse, the pain became
excruciating. I could hardly walk anywhere because the pain in my thighs was dreadful. I
couldnt walk more than fifty yards. I would get shooting pains in my shins, pain that reminded me
of being hit across the shin when I used to play hockey. After about nine months my husband
bought me a walking stick at a garden centre. These pictures stick in my mind.
We walked past a window and I could see my reflection with a walking stick and I can remember
the tears pouring down my face thinking, What has happened to me? How can I have gone from
being this active sixty year old to having a walking stick? That is how it went on and then within
three months I realised that unless I had a wheelchair, I wouldnt be able to go anywhere.
It wasnt just the pain - if I pushed myself I would start to get faint. It was just as if someone had
stuck a needle in me and dragged out every ounce of energy. I collapsed in lots of stores. I have
been ill in M&S, John Lewis and ASDA, and they have had to get chairs and water for me. In the
end my husband said This is ridiculous, and that he was going to buy me a wheeled scooter,
which was like another nail in my coffin.
It was absolutely horrendous to use a wheel chair at first. It eased things physically, but
psychologically it was a very difficult experience. I would be in it wondering what people thought
of me, whether they thought I was a fraud because I looked so well. I would see people out that
knew me and they would say, What on earth are you doing in that? then I would feel guilty and
think I shouldnt have it, that I should make myself walk. I lived in this perpetual cycle of guilt and
Alex: I think people dont know what to say and they feel uncomfortable around it. People have
described to me that if they are in a wheelchair in the supermarket and then get out of it to get
something off the shelf, people wonder what is going on. There is so much misunderstanding
around F.M., M.E. and C.F.S.
I felt almost invisible. I still liked to have fun though: I used to put it on full speed and whizz
around the aisles. My husband actually insured me for a million pounds because I knocked a pile
of books over in WH Smiths. I reversed into things. I thought I was Lewis Hamilton on the quiet,
really. I found that people just didnt move out of the way and that was an eye-opener.
I got used to it in the end because I decided it was ridiculous being cross. I practised being
grateful for it and what it enabled me to do. It took me over a year to give in and think, This is it
then; maybe this is the rest of my life. I have got to make the best of this. I have got wonderful
children and lovely grandchildren; and they were all so supportive and kind. My husband has
been absolutely amazing. I decided I just had to make the best of it. I started doing what I call
the Pollyanna game, which I always taught my children, that whatever situation you were in, it
could always be a lot worse. I started being glad I hadnt got anything worse and focusing on
simple things like I am still breathing. I found craft helped a lot because I love making things.
I liked making things for other people. I have always been someone who was there for everyone
- I would look after my grandchildren and always worked with other people and helped in any way
I could. Suddenly I felt as if I had no purpose in life and that I was useless. I used to listen for
people who were ill, had a baby or whatever and I was able to make them a card. Doing this
allowed me to feel as if I still had a small purpose - and it was a two way thing because I was able
to do something that I loved for an hour in the evening. I was less stressed than I used to be, but
most of the time I felt really fed up knowing this wasnt at all how I wanted it to be. It was such a
contrast to how my life had been before and I still found it really hard.
Alex: Its good to have something to focus on that you enjoy doing. A way of being creative that
you could express yourself with is great. It sounds like, at that stage, you also really began to
accept what was happening. Most people when they get ill resist it until they are finally forced let
go. I always say to anyone in that stage, that you have to accept it for now, it doesnt mean you
are accepting it forever, but by accepting it, it stops the resistance to it, which means that there is
a certain amount of calmness that then can start to come in to assist moving forwards.
I met a friend whose son had M.E. and he had it for eight years and she was seeing somebody in
Bolton who thought it may be caused by a beryllium infection, so I went down that road and had
loads of blood tests with Andy Wright. He was lovely, but I honestly dont think it helped. It was a
bit scary to have gone through this period of firstly resisting it, then accepting it and then the
possibility that maybe there were treatments out there that may be able to improve the situation.
Id got to the state where I thought this is it and it was hard enough to get to that stage, and then I
began to think, there may be some help out there. It was so complicated - blood tests and urine
tests for different places around the world, I found that incredibly difficult.
I spent two years trying to get the right treatment and looking back, maybe I did feel slightly
better, but I dont know if that was psychological or physical. I think the pain got slightly easier for
a time, but the tiredness didnt. My doctor did try to get me on anti-depressants because she said
that would relax my muscles, and I went to physiotherapy as well.
The physiotherapist did acupuncture and it did help. She was a lady who was recommended to
me who knew about Fibromyalgia and M.E. She was the sweetest girl and she helped me
because I was able to talk to her. I found it really difficult to talk to other people about it and I kept
it to myself and sometimes even with my family, I didnt want to keep saying I felt terrible.
Sometimes I felt I needed somebody just to scream at and say, Actually today I feel absolutely
awful. I was able to talk to the physiotherapist and that helped a lot. Something that I thought
was amazing was that she used to do acupuncture on the backs of my thighs because she had
never seen muscles in such spasm in all her patients. The first time she did it she would press
my leg and ask if it hurt. She would find the spot and it was excruciating, put a needle in, which
sometimes hurt a lot, yet most of the time didnt.
My emotional health was helped a lot by this. She only had a small treatment room and I can
remember saying to her one day that it is the only place, this little room, where I feel like I can be
me. I was able to talk to her and to cry. I realised all these emotions were pushed down because
I didnt cry in front of other people, because I didnt want to worry them, and so I put on a brave
face. She was incredibly helpful for me, it was amazing, she went on then to do talks in
Fibromyalgia and M.E. groups on how physiotherapy helps, and she is still doing it now. She said
she learnt a lot from me because she could not believe the state my muscles were in; how tense
and knotted up they were, particularly my neck and back.
The next stage was about two years ago. I had an under-active thyroid and somebody told me
about this gentleman in Birmingham who said that most of these problems were caused through
under-active thyroid. I went to see him but I didnt relate to what he was saying and it didnt feel
right for me, so I didnt go back again.
That was two years ago and I decided, I am not bothering with anything else now. I felt I had
was.
I got into a routine of getting up at 9am, going back to bed again at 1pm, sometimes I would be
asleep for two hours, sometimes three or more. I just did what I could really in the time that I was
up. I just accepted my life was like that.
The crunch came last year, because my daughter had a baby and I was trying to help her and I
was absolutely exhausted. She doesnt live in Bristol, so we were travelling to see her and I felt
so ill, and I realise now I had depression. I couldnt sleep then and was really tired. I was having
terrible nightmares - I would wake up screaming and frighten my poor husband to death; horrible
dreams, like my grandchildren were shut in a barn and it was on fire and I couldnt get up. I
would wake up and have to have a cup of tea and stay awake for an hour because I was shaking
so much.
I got really down and I didnt want to get up anymore. I thought I might as well stay in bed, thats
what my body wanted to do and that was what I decided to do. I would just stay in bed all day
and I did that for a couple of days, just getting up for an hour or so. It was quite scary because I
can remember thinking my family would be much better off if I wasnt around. I knew they would
grieve, and they would all miss me and it would be horrible, but they would get used to it
afterwards and then they could go on with the rest of their lives without having to keep worrying
about me all the time.
My eldest daughter was amazing as she was calling me every night and she worked full time, had
two children, and a home to run. I felt I was a burden. I can remember thinking quite clearly then
that that was what I was going to do, but then I opened this little book that my friend gave me, a
bible verse to say, God does care for you, even when you have grey hair, which I thought was
quite good because I have white hair! That was when I felt my worst so bad that my family
dragged me to the doctor in the end. My doctor was lovely and gave me a very small dose of
antidepressants. That helped for a month or so, it calmed me down. I went to a couple of parties
and everyone was up dancing, which I loved to do but I so hated not being able to join in. The
frustration hit again just being faced with all the things I would like to do. I couldnt even go to
Cornwall on holiday and we love travelling. I couldnt go anywhere or do anything because even
the thought of packing a suitcase and thinking what to take would be too much. I couldnt walk
around on cliffs or go through national trust properties like I loved to do.
I didnt really think there was anything I could do, I prayed because I am a Christian and I thought,
There must be a reason why I am going through all this, I dont understand it but there must be.
I thought I have got to be brave and this is how I am and trust that a cure may be found for it
I went to a craft class on a Monday, my husband would take me. It was all day, but I used to go in
the morning for a couple of hours. One particular day, only about six weeks after this crisis that I
feel I went through, the lady who runs it said there was a new girl coming today and Ill put her by
you and you will know why when you talk to her. It was a young lady called Sharon and I started
to chat to her and she was really nervous so I was doing my mummy act - she was only in her
30s and I have a daughter her age. Eventually it came out that she had been ill for eight years
with M.E., so I just sat back in my chair and said That is amazing; so we didnt do much craft
that day! And when she started to talk about The Optimum Health Clinic, it was like a light bulb
going on in my head. She told me all about the clinic and she sent me the DVD and information
pack.
Then last October, I had an initial consultation by phone with Sarah (my practitioner at the clinic).
My initial response was that I didnt believe there to be a psychological component I was not a
head case! This was medical, there was something wrong with my body. But it was a real eyeopener, because on the questionnaire I filled in, I had to write all the things that had happened in
the previous ten years. So I went through everything that had happened - my sons divorce, my
mums illness, my husband going through an aortic aneurism repair, my dads illness, my best
friends husband leaving her with three children. Plus I had had polyps and continuous sinus
infections for years. When I read that and I showed my husband, he actually cried when he read
that and said, No wonder you have been ill - anybody would feel utterly exhausted. Sarah
helped me to talk through so much of this, even to my relationship with my mum, which had been
difficult, as I had always felt that I never quite met her expectations.
It was amazing to talk to Sarah about all this, and about my M.E - I cant tell you how it was just
incredible to speak to somebody who understood. One thing she said early on really struck a
chord, and has stuck with me she said, I guarantee when you wake up in the morning, you
open your eyes and say to yourself Oh no I have got to do another day, I have got to get up, I
have got to do another day, where do I hurt today, which part of my body aches?
I cried then because I did feel like that every morning. I had never said that to anybody
because I felt it sounds so awful to say that when people are dying and children have got cancer,
to say you didnt want to get up, but it was so amazing to be able to be absolutely honest with
her.
It was very bizarre, telling my innermost thoughts to someone down the phone who I had never
met and her telling me these amazing things back - that it was okay to feel like that and I didnt
have to feel guilty, and it was perfectly understandable that I was reacting the way I did. My
husband said that I went in to my room to have that conversation full of anxieties and fears, and
when I came out of that room after that hour I looked like a different person. I feel even from that
moment, I came out of that room thinking: I am going to get better, I really believe what she is
saying, it all makes sense, this circle of stress and pain, and stress and pain. For the first time
since I had developed this illness, I felt that I had spoken to somebody that knew exactly how I
felt and who really made sense to me. Also, she had the tools I needed to change things. It was
incredible really.
The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which is one of the tools that Sarah taught me,
seemed unusual at first. I had been in emotional turmoil and she said I just want you to sit and
relax and do this chopping motion with your hand and then tap your head. I was thinking, Oh my
gosh what have I got myself into, they are all crazy. I had never heard of EFT. I thought, She
sounds a sensible lady, I cant believe she is telling me to do this. But I went with it, and actually,
it was amazing. Over the next few weeks, I started to use these tools, and I began to realise
exactly how much stress and how much emotion I had been holding it was as if my body had
been a coiled spring for years. Gradually, though, I was beginning to learn how to make my body
and mind relax, and that felt amazing.
I started to think of my body as an engine and everything, the emotions and the physical body
had been a real mess; I felt that between Sarah and Niki, who was working with me on the
physical and nutritional side, that they were bit by bit getting it running properly again. That is
how it felt.
On the physical side, I had to make significant changes to my diet changes that people would
think, Oh I cant do that! but you know, if they felt as ill as I had, they would do anything to feel
better. So I did everything Niki told me. I was taking I think eleven different supplements at one
stage and some of them were pretty disgusting concoctions, but you do it if that is going to make
you feel better.
After Christmas was the first time I thought, I am definitely feeling a bit better, and it has
gradually improved since last October and now in the last two months I have felt so much better.
The physiotherapist that I went to see said that the best thing you could do with your muscles is
to go swimming, but our local bath is very cold and so she said you need to go somewhere where
it is warm, so I found one to go to and they have a hot tub there.
I started in February doing two lengths which really frustrated me because I used to be a strong
swimmer. I gradually built it up every week, and the week before last I did twenty-four lengths in
twenty minutes. I have walked to the high street for the first time in five years from where I live,
and a gentleman came out of the shop and said, Good morning how are you? I stopped and
said, Do you really want to know? So he said, Yes, and I said, I am so excited I could run up
and down this high street screaming with joy because this is the first time I have walked down
here for five years. Tears came up in his eyes and he gave me a hug and he said you have
made my day. That is such a lovely thing.
I know the nutrition has helped me. I have been taking a supplement to help me sleep at night
and I have been sleeping much better. I have been taking that and the protein shakes, and am
careful with what I eat. I have just done everything Niki said, and she has helped in encouraging
me. It is just the whole package really of talking to people who really know what they are talking
Alex: What I also think is quite extraordinary is my mother and step-father are a few years
younger but neither of them can swim twenty-four lengths in twenty minutes and have never had
M.E. It is quite extraordinary in such a short period of time that you built up that strength.
I am that sort of determined person and if I make up my mind, thats it. Thats why I found it so
hard at the beginning because I had made up my mind I wasnt going to be like this but actually I
couldnt do anything about it. I had to learn to listen to my body.
That change from last October, being in a wheelchair and feeling like there was no future, to
swimming and doing all the things that I am now able to do is wonderful. I would say to others to
trust it, especially with the nutrition and the diet. I know that sometimes looking at everything I
had to do left me feeling overwhelmed. But it was actually my daughter who helped me on that
one she told me to just concentrate on one thing at a time, just do a little at a time. And that
proved really helpful.
To someone who believes there is no way out, I would say to get the DVD, read Alexs book, and
get all the literature. Go on the website, read all about the clinic, and listen to these messages
from people and then just go ahead. You have got nothing to lose. That is what my husband
said. He said, We have nothing to lose, if it is going to help you it would be wonderful, if it
doesnt, you are not going to get worse from it Im sure. Go ahead and do it.
I feel like I want to stand on the rooftops and shout out and tell everybody. I just hope that if
anyone hearing this story feels as horrible as I did last year, just trust and put your mind to it, it is
hard work at the beginning, there were a few times when I thought, I cant deal with this, but just
keep persevering and think, Yes I can do it, and look to the future really and think: I can get
better with this. Just do everything.
We have booked a holiday this morning and I am so excited. Our son lives in America and we
havent been able to go and visit for over five years now because there was no way I could have
travelled that far. My husband booked tickets this morning to go for two weeks in September to
see my son and we have actually got two new grandsons that we have never seen. We are just a
bit excited today! So, thank you from the bottom of my heart, because it is due to your amazing
ability that you didnt sit back and just give up, you were determined to help others and I think it is
just incredible.
It was heartbreaking for Joy to find herself in a situation where she could no longer live the life
she always had, and be the person she defined herself as. Yet, as for so many busy wives and
mothers, who work and look after everyone else around them, the fact that her life had been so
focused on the needs of those around her was actually part of the cause of her getting ill. When
we constantly live to serve those around us, eventually it will take its toll simply because we fail
to look after ourselves and our own needs. For Joy it was a very difficult lesson to accept,
especially when shed lived her entire life this way.
But as Joy could begin to recognise the stress and pressure that the years of constantly placing
others needs before her own had caused her, she could also begin to recognise what she
needed to do to recover her health and allow her to live life once more. Through her
determination to really use the tools she had learned, she was able to find a way out of the pain
and debilitating fatigue, and get her life back.
Joys story is all the more remarkable because, firstly, many people believe that it is much more
difficult to recover from M.E. as we get older. Secondly, to make major changes in ourselves and
how we approach our lives is not always as easy as we get older and our personality patterns are
more deeply ingrained. And yet, the truth is that anything really is possible
What has happened in your past will often have defined the present begin to become
aware of the patterns of behaviour that might have lead to your current situation
Learn to put yourself before the people around you whilst you are healing, and let go of
the guilt.
Recognise the many small steps on the journey to recovery, rather than just focusing on
the big goal at the end.
Dont give up even when it feels impossible
(Meeting 2)
He that can have patience can have what he will.
Even before I had my final crash in November 2003 Id been off colour for a few years. Id had a
virus that had taken me a long time to recover from and I was picking up a lot of bugs and
illnesses, colds and flu. The other thing was that I was quite depressed, very depressed at some
points, but not really wanting to admit it to myself.
I was also working very hard. I had a company that wrote and produced music; I had a studio in
East London and worked there three days a week. I also worked a further three days as a project
manager in new media, which involved working a lot of nights.
Music was absolutely my passion. We were on the road and enjoying some success. There
were a couple of tracks that got a lot of radio play, one was in the dance chart, we did remixes,
work for television and radio, and there were adverts that were broadcast. I was also playing a lot
of sport and partying a lot too. I dont necessarily think that all of that would have been a problem
if I had been in a good physical and mental state, but I wasnt. I remember being very, very
depressed in a club one night at a friends stag do. I felt I couldnt see the point of living beyond
forty if my life didnt change. I didnt know quite what it was, just that something was very wrong.
I was pushing myself very, very hard. I wanted to prove that I was successful. I knew that
something had to change, and something very definitely did, but it wasnt quite what I expected it
to be.
In October 2003 I was visiting Paris for the weekend, and as I was walking around I suddenly
started feeling very dizzy. I remember trying to go up the Eiffel Tower and I couldnt, I was just
too dizzy. I started to have a panic attack, although I didnt recognise it as such at the time. I
couldnt walk, I had this weird and very scary feeling I couldnt explain, and I felt really, really
anxious and really nervous. I felt as if I had been taking drugs, but I hadnt. It was very difficult to
put into words and I was extremely frightened. I went to casualty in Paris where it was diagnosed
that I had a virus.
I returned to London still feeling odd. I went back to work, but after a week I was unwell, and it
then started to feel very viral. During October and November I fell into the pattern of being ill for a
few days, then going back to my job but not feeling great, and then being ill again. I was on and
off at work and getting worse and worse. I just didnt know what was happening.
I started to do some research on the internet and I went through the whole gambit of what I might
have; Malaria, Lymes disease, things like that which I could have picked up. It was incredibly
frightening. In December I finally crashed. I went to stay with my parents who live in the
countryside, hoping Id be better by the end of Christmas. I wasnt. My Mum, who knew a bit
about M.E., persuaded me that that might be what I had. I saw a doctor in Suffolk, where they
lived, and he actually diagnosed M.E. I knew very little about the illness then, but I was so ill
myself at that point that I really didnt feel that bothered what it was. I then probably reached my
lowest point.
One of my main symptoms was very, very disturbed sleep. I was sleeping probably only one or
two hours a night. I was so tired. I couldnt walk down the street because I felt so ill, and I felt so
sick. I described it as like the worst hangover ever multiplied by one hundred. I was tired, wired,
depressed and extremely anxious. Every time I shut my eyes I was having horrendous thoughts
about ending up in a wheelchair, or never being able to have a career. All I wanted to do was
make music and I could feel life slipping away. It really felt like my whole life was falling apart.
My first turning point came when I began implementing some nutritional recommendations. I
started to feel much, much better and I had a spell of feeling quite good for the first time in six
months. To do something which tangibly impacted the illness was a hugely important experience
to have. Rather than M.E. just being something that was happening to me, and that basically I
was a victim of, I began to recognise that there were things I could constructively do to improve
my situation. Although I didnt have the magic cure, and unfortunately the high didnt last long, it
gave me hope.
The recovery process was like an old penny slot machine with several layers. As I developed
new understandings about the illness the penny dropped a bit, it then worked around and
dropped a bit more as I gained further insights, and worked around, and in the end it got to the
bottom. I began to develop a mental model of M.E. as an illness and this understanding of what
was happening took away a lot of the anxiety and was crucial to me in my recovery.
The second turning point was the realisation that there was perhaps more happening within me
than just physical illness. I met Alex Howard through a friend whose step-brothers partner was a
colleague of his partner, Niki. When I rang him to make the appointment it had been a very bad
day and I was feeling really terrible but after about 20 to 30 minutes of our phone call I started
feeling much, much better.
The difference was real and tangible and I started to understand how much my brain was revving
up my nervous system as a result of the mental patterns I was running. I began using the
techniques diligently and after a week I really felt as if somebody was taking the gas off the pedal
of my nervous system. It felt like my car had been revving, revving, revving but now I could feel
myself calming down. It was a truly revelatory experience. I continued to have ups and downs, it
was still a rollercoaster, but the ups were at the point where, for example, I could go into London,
take the tube and visit a shop. It wasnt much initially, but starting to do those things made a
huge difference.
In June I returned to work part time, three days a week. Some weeks it was a struggle but the
fact that I was working was good as it gave me focus, which was itself conducive to recovery. Id
been doing a lot of yoga and I continued improving until August when I sustained a back injury. I
was in intense pain in my neck and arms in particular. I began to run all the old fear patterns
about illness again, including anxieties about Fibromyalgia. My M.E. worsened as a result of the
injury, and the injury was made worse by the M.E. A scan showed a bulging disc and disc
I visited medical practitioners, an acupuncturist, an osteopath and a chiropractor - physically
based practitioners who were giving me real, practical evidence that the pain was a real physical
thing with a specific cause. The cure came, however, as the result of reading Healing Back Pain
by Dr. John Sarno. His theory is that pain is a manifestation of repressed emotions that the
subconscious mind chooses to keep hidden from conscious awareness by the distraction of
physical symptoms a physical pain driven by psychological components. After reading the book
fifty percent of the back pain just left me, and I shifted the remainder over subsequent months by
journaling, making myself sit down every day and writing out my feelings.
At the end of 2005 I experienced a very bad relapse which ultimately taught me how
psychological my journey had now become. Having returned to work full time I once again found
myself feeling terrible again and unable to leave the house. I decided to return to France and
stumbled upon some of the ideas of the Bodymind (one approach which uses this for M.E. is
Reverse Therapy). I researched on the internet and incorporated some of the ideas into the way I
was thinking. From having been too ill again to even walk down to the shops to feeling pretty
much okay and flying back to London took about two or three days. II was back to where I had
been before Id had the relapse over a month before. The experience was phenomenally
important. I realised I could control what was happening to me. . Until that point the M.E. was a
mist that came down when it suited it and left when it suited it and I was at its mercy, whereas
after this incident I realised that I had control over this illness.
It was one of the biggest turning points and after the two years I suddenly realised I could control
this; I could control my recovery. I had all the tools and all the skills and all the competence I
needed to recover, it was just a matter of waiting it out, being diligent and doing what was
necessary. The realisation was such a major turning point because it took away the anxiety and
it also empowered me, and that was definitely what I needed.
In 2006 I moved to France. I was ninety percent recovered but still had bad days when I
wondered if the illness would ever go, then I would hit on another way of thinking about
something or perhaps realise a pattern I was running, or that I was feeling bad about something
that had happened, and it would push me through.
My brother came to stay (hes a very successful man) and I remember at the time of his visit
feeling pretty off- colour. I thought, Why is this? and it suddenly dawned on me that his arrival
was stirring up issues in my own psyche regarding achievement. As I realised that I felt a
whoosh, the energy came back and it came back much better than before, pushing me to a
higher level of recovery. I had reached the point where every time I was down I knew it would
have a positive outcome, a down was always a sign of an up to come, another opportunity to
learn and resolve something. It was a key shift in perception.
By early 2007 I was still having down days, albeit in a much milder form. They were ultimately to
do with me still being worked up about the M.E. and just not relaxing and enjoying myself. I
realised I needed to go out and have fun and then the energy really came back.
The first time I went out for a run was fantastic. Id had a lot of pain from the injury as well as the
M.E. and to finally go running for fifteen minutes on Hampstead Heath was incredible. I love
being active, I love playing sport - running, playing tennis, going to the gym, kick boxing and
yoga. Im making up for the three years I lost. Im much, much healthier now than I was before I
got sick. I feel generally much better and much happier. I feel I got sick for a reason and I got
better for a reason. The things that I did to make me well have also made my life a lot better. I
live in France now, in Montpellier and Im starting my own business. Its a healthy version of Pret
a Manger, healthy eating has become a passion of mine and I have always been into food.
My recovery was absolutely up and down for three years. It was really a process of when I had
symptoms thinking and feeling what I was down about, and what my body was trying to tell me,
finding ways to push myself up the next two or three percent, and then the next two or three until I
was finally well.
M.E. was ultimately an extremely positive experience. At the time it felt like the worst thing that
could have happened, but it put me on a whole new life plane which was something I needed to
go through. I havent just stopped working on myself now, I am better; its almost as if that was
actually the beginning. I find I have much deeper issues coming up which are probably more akin
to why I got sick in the first place. Im starting to work with those now, whereas before I was sick I
just didnt want to look at them. Its a life-long journey that is no longer about how Ill get through
the day or how to avoid being ill, but instead about evolution as a human being and taking my
health, my relationships, my work, my whole life to an even deeper level of connection.
Having been through M.E., I know that life truly is a gift and I dont want to waste it. I now come
from a place of joy and gratitude rather than of insecurity and having to prove myself. I am much,
much happier. Its so important not to believe the crap. You can get better. I have met people
through the clinic who have been ill for twenty years who are now recovered. It is possible and
the first step is to believe in that possibility.
Tim describes things perfectly when he says that he had to work through a whole series of
layers to recover fully. Each time he found a secret to recovery, he saw it initially as the whole
answer and it was at times frustrating to recognise that recovery is called a journey for a reason.
But, Tim was helped to realise that pushing himself too hard was part of the issue, and in
developing patience in his recovery process, he also learn a very important life lesson.
It is also important to notice that Tims learning of patience was not a process of waiting for
something to happen, but being prepared to keep taking consistent action, without expecting
overnight results and developing trust in the process. He was able to see that the recovery
path is often not a straight path, but in patiently understanding each turn on the way, he was able
to accelerate his progress as much as possible - whilst also learning to enjoy the journey.
Recovery is often not one simple smooth upwards curve; once we understand this, we
undertake the journey appropriately
What can seem like steps backwards can often be an opportunity to learn what we need
to for the next breakthrough
Keep going patience and persistence will get you there in the end
To thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day;
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
The first thing for me was getting glandular fever when I was eighteen. I was doing my A-levels
at the time, and studying ridiculously hard - I felt that my grades were a reflection of my selfworth. I remember my glands swelled up and I felt terrible. I recovered from the glandular fever,
but looking back on it now I dont think that I ever properly regained my energy. I remember
coming home from sixth-form college and needing to take naps, and not really realising that there
was anything abnormal about that for an eighteen year old. Life otherwise pretty much got back
to normal and I was able to finish my A-levels, take a year out and then go to university.
When I was twenty-two things started to go downhill for me again and once again I crashed. At
that time I was in my third year at university, I came home for the Christmas holidays and I got
terrible cystitis which led to a really awful kidney infection. I was in bed for a week in terrible pain
and couldnt move. After that I didnt really recover and the doctors told me I had post-viral
fatigue. I felt incredibly tired all the time, my right kidney still ached even though the infection had
now passed, and I literally found that getting out of bed and going to make a meal was an
enormous ordeal.
It felt reasonably serious but the doctor told me it was something that would pass in time, so I just
expected to get better. It was suggested that I took a year out of university, and it took me six
months to recover during that period. It was quite a shock for me because I was living the
student life, I had a house with my friends, and suddenly somebody else had to pack my room up
for me and ship my stuff back home. Going from gearing up to write my dissertation and finish
my degree, to suddenly being at home with no energy, was a big shock.
I was brought up with the ideas of Louise Hay and that there was a connection between mind and
body. Whilst I was trying to get better during that time I figured out that maybe Id been overly
involved in my parents divorce and I hadnt been able to process the emotions properly from that.
Id also discovered Brandon Bays and The Journey, (her book had just been published in the
U.K) and I went on one of her workshops. I think that helped me move through that period and I
actually recovered, maybe not back to full health, but enough to be able to finish my degree, do a
bit of travelling, and then a full-time job.
I had another four years of relatively good health, but in a way it is amazing my body hung on for
as long as it did. When I look back at the period now I can see that there were so many factors
that contributed to me getting ill again, plus I think I was already carrying something from the
previous illnesses. I got my degree English Literature but I couldnt really find a way to use it.
I didnt want to be a teacher and I didnt want to go to London to work in publishing, so I ended up
doing various office jobs. One that was particularly hard was for a network marketing company
that was slowly going into bankruptcy. People were running their businesses from our company
and essentially we werent able to supply them with the products and support they needed
because we were going into liquidation. I had too much work to be able to cope with and I
couldnt meet the demands of the clients. I took my work home with me, remembering clients I
had forgotten to call, I was behind on my work and using all my energy to try and keep the
company afloat.
Following this, I then had a job for the council installing panic alarms for elderly and disabled
people. I enjoyed parts of it, but the downside was that it involved twelve hour shifts and then
being on call during the night for emergencies. Id work two or three days of twelve hour shifts,
and then I could be called in the middle of the night when I was fast asleep, have to throw on
clothes in a panicked, stressed state and drive the car, not knowing where I was going to find
someone who may be dead or having a heart attack or something similar. On top of this I was in
a relationship at this time with a partner who wasnt very good at earning money, or paying the
rent, or knowing what he wanted to do with his life, so I was keeping him afloat as well. I was
also doing voluntary work.
About an eight month period before I finally crashed again, my body was really beginning to shout
at me. I started to wake up in the morning feeling as if I was going to faint, I had pins and
needles that would go on all night and I was picking up lots of infections. I had really serious
throat infections, PMT and thrush, I felt nauseous and started to have feelings of depression.
Finally my boss told me I couldnt take any more time off work. It was a situation where I was
giving and giving but I wasnt receiving back the support I needed at the time. I was genuinely
really ill and I was doing everything I could think of to get better.
I then got a really serious bout of cystitis which was very frightening for me because of how
severely the previous kidney infection had hit me. It was incredibly scary. I took a load of
antibiotics and I was in bed for about three weeks with the pain. I got rid of the initial infection but
I just didnt recover my energy afterwards.
Suddenly I felt my life fall apart. I realised I would have to leave my job and I didnt have any
money. I was with a new partner but we hadnt been together very long and that put an awful
amount of pressure on our relationship. At that stage I was pretty terrified. My boyfriend would
come home from work and find my crying on the doorstep most days because nobody was really
explaining to me what was going on. I just knew I had to protect myself and that I was having all
these crazy symptoms. Even though I didnt have cystitis any more, I felt like I needed to go to
the toilet the whole time. That can literally drive a person mad.
I went through a period of a year and trying various treatments. I had a lot of blood tests at the
doctors which didnt find anything. I also went to alternative practitioners, trying herbalists,
naturopaths and homeopaths, but none of them seemed able to get to the core of the illness. I
had this overwhelming tiredness and it was not shifting.
I understood from the experience I had had with glandular fever that there was this mind-body
connection and that there must be some reason for me getting ill, but it took time for me to really
deeply understand what had happened. I also took that knowledge to be responsibility; that it
was my fault and that I had got it all wrong. I started to see a psychotherapist and began to
digest my past and my emotions around it. I realised that I hadnt dealt emotionally with a lot of
what had happened to me. I spent a lot of time journaling and letting things out as they came up.
I did meditation and walking and read books that helped me to se things in a new way.
Another side of this time was that I was starting to find out who I was and what I was interested
in. I had depleted my body by not listening to it in terms of my emotions and the signals it was
giving me, and I had not put anything back in because I hadnt been doing things that fed me and
gave me energy. I had to make an enormous commitment to myself and I think the illness forced
me to do that in a way nothing else would.
I began to commit to looking after myself, and also to change some of my relationships as I saw
how much some of these were costing me. I was literally seeing some people and getting really
severe symptoms afterwards. I did different things with different people some people I had a
break from and some I changed the way in which I was relating to them through psychotherapy. I
also became aware of my boundaries. This has been a huge part of my recovery. I began to
realise I was taking peoples negative stuff on and into myself. Giving for me was a way for me to
make me feel better about myself, and increase my low self worth. It was not easy initially, I think
people couldnt understand why I was pulling back and I had a sense of guilt about that. . I felt I
should be the person that I had always been in their lives. I also had a sense that something
terrible would happen to them if I wasnt around in their lives the way I always had been.
I have now learned how to be in relationships with people and have sympathy, especially when
people are facing really difficult challenges, but I can see the difference in how I relate now and
how I used to relate. I used to put myself totally in their experience, needing to feel what they
were going through fully, in order to be a good friend or good daughter or good sister. Now I
realise it is important to stay in my own experience, in my own body, and in what I am feeling that
day and yet still feel empathy. That has been quite a shift for me and it feels like one of the keys
to my recovery.
As a consequence of this, some of my relationships have changed in quite profound and
unexpectedly good ways. In one close relationship the person had to deal with me not being
there for sometime whilst I sorted myself out. During that period I worked on my own boundaries
which meant that when we came back together I wasnt playing the same game in the old way.
We had to find a new dance, a new way of relating, and since then what we have has just grown
and blossomed.
I still check in with myself and my boundaries. There are ways I connect with myself all the time
when I am on my own, journaling, walking in nature, meditation, reading and yoga, anything
where I am checking in with what is going on for me that day, what I need and what I feel. At the
same time I check in with myself around other people and noticing how I am feeling around that
person, noticing how much I am giving.
I am quite energetically sensitive, and so if someone walks into a room feeling anger I can feel
that anger. There was an example when my boyfriend came home and hed had a bad day and
was feeling anger, and as he came in I felt really angry. I thought Where has this come from?,
and I realised it wasnt mine, it was his. Reading William Blooms Psychic Protection really started
to shift things for me too, it gave me another tool, imagining blue bubbles of light around me and
that peoples negative energy was bouncing off.
The more I connect with myself, the more I have learnt how to have a good life. Being in a
healing state and being emotionally happy feeds my energy and now I am always looking for the
things that make me feel good. I can have the happiest life! I feel I have made this absolute
commitment to myself in my healing journey and to find joy and happiness and ultimately that had
brought me health. Relationships are not just a source of my happiness now but an expression of
Finding the clinic along the way in this journey was pretty fundamental in my recovery. Whilst I'd
learnt a lot myself and started to make improvement, there was a way in which Alex, Anna, Niki
and the other practitioners there have put the pieces of the jigsaw together that really makes
sense.
After seeing Anna for the first time in November 2005 I felt such a burst of hope.
In many ways I felt quite alone with the illness, thinking that the way I was reacting to it was quite
unique. What I leant was that I was having a normal reaction to a tough situation and they really
understood what I was going through I hadn't experienced that before from anyone. I also
learnt that the on-going stress of living with the illness was not aiding my recovery. I totally
absorbed and practised the techniques that I learnt and whilst the C.F.S. took a little time to fade
out, I made progress all the time to the point where I'm at today, where it simply isn't a part of my
life anymore.
Recently I went on a trip to Canada. It was something that a few years ago I would have thought
impossible. We had a ten hour plane journey with an eight hour time difference. We went to
Vancouver, had a few days there to look round and then hired a camper van and went travelling
in the Rockies. It was a full-on camping trip, sleeping in the camper van every night and doing ten
mile hikes in the snow. We saw six bears, three of them grizzly bears together at the side of the
road which did make my heart stop a bit! I carried a bear bell with me when I was walking in the
woods, because you dont want to startle one!
Being ill has influenced me and my direction in many different ways. Id wanted to study in
psychology for a long time and so being able to do a practitioners course at the clinic was
phenomenal for me. I have also learned to listen to my intuition and I continue to look at and play
around with that. I am exploring creativity and I have set up an art group in Brighton which I got
funding for too. It was ten weeks of different artists coming in and working with people with M.E.
doing lots of fun, exciting things. I think play is so important and underrated. It has been a huge
spiritual journey for me too, which I continue to work with.
It takes huge strength and courage to commit to yourself, to commit to really listening to yourself
and to loving yourself and to giving yourself the time and space to get better. I feel enormous
compassion for people who do this.
Since her interview, Thea has gone from strength to strength, and has recently joined the clinics
psychology team as a practitioner.
Thea had spent much of her life in service to other people, and unconsciously absorbing the
issues and emotions of those around her; in fact she had become so good at this that she had
almost lost the ability to know what she wanted, who she was, or what she needed. Nothing in
her life at the time she got ill from her family, to her job or boyfriend at the time really gave her
the support she so needed, and eventually the stress of this plus a series of physical issues
caused her body to give up and burn out.
The process of recovery for her was one of no compromises. It was almost as if her body,
ignored for so long, was no longer prepared to give even an inch. The truth is that stress, to a
large degree, is about not listening to or acknowledging our needs. If we truly listen, pay attention
and trust our own instincts, our response to even the most fundamentally stressful situations can
change radically for the better.
So for Thea, the key was learning to listen, and to take action on that awareness even when
that meant disappointing people, saying no, or acting in ways that seemed selfish. As she
learned this, more and more, she found herself building strong and solid foundations for health
and for her life.
Valuing yourself and looking after your own needs is an essential part of creating health
In order to look after your needs, you have first to acknowledge that you have needs and
emotions separate from those around you so learning to hear your emotions is vital
Activities and people can either be drains on your energy, or help create and promote
energy starting to notice what helps and what depletes you is a key learning in recovery
True purpose is what you find when you let go of everything you think you should do
and discover what gives you joy
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose
- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 - 1851)
I had M.E for about three years, beginning with glandular fever when I was twelve. Initially, I had
it for a year, which meant missing a year of school, but then I seemed to recover, and for a year
was well. But the following year I relapsed a downturn that was to last two years. In the last
nine months of that relapse, I found the The Optimum Health Clinic and began to see Alex
Through the illness, what I remember most was the constant flu-like feeling and my head feeling
like it was swimming. My body generally was very weak - I would catch a lot of throat and ear
infections, and also had a lot of sinus problems.
While I was ill, everything in my life had to change I was home tutored, my social life was
completely stopped and I couldnt make it in to school at all. I would be too tired to have even a
conversation on the phone. It was quite hard for my friends to understand, and not many people
at my school really knew what M.E. was, so it was quite embarrassing. My parents had to explain
to people why their son wasnt going to school and interacting with other people like normal
teenagers.
It got to the point where even my home tutoring sessions often had to be cancelled and I was
often in bed all day, almost not knowing whether it was night or day. Everything was totally
haywire at this point, completely upside down, and I am pretty sure that really didnt help my
energy.
In the time of being ill, I missed some really crucial years years that shape your character for
and who you become. In the year when I had recovered prior to the relapse, I had been doing
really well and was getting really into martial arts. I was probably at the peak of my fitness and
training when I relapsed, so it really knocked me when I got ill again. I wondered looking back
whether I was overdoing it at the time. I figure it was a mixture of things really, but I feel that
contributed.
Alex: As a guy, especially in those formative years, being able to play sport is a big part of our
identity and how we relate to the world. Not being able to do that can be really damaging to selfesteem and confidence.
Looking back, I had always generally not been well as a child, and had missed almost a full year
of primary school because I was always getting ear infections. But in the time coming up to my
relapse, there had been a lot going on - my parents got divorced and my mum had cancer not
long before I relapsed. So I know it was a mixture of things that contributed to it.
Alex: It is normally a multitude of factors together at the clinic we talk about a theory of
overload, with too many stresses happening at once that really push your system over the edge.
In my case people seemed to think that I was clinically depressed and had major anxiety and that
was why I was ill, rather than I was ill and therefore I was depressed. I had to go to a psychiatrist
for a while, because from my schools perspective my parents and I werent doing anything to
help me recover. At the time I was trying alternative therapies like acupuncture and that wasnt
considered proper treatment. I had to go on anti-depressants and sleeping pills. I never felt
that people were able to understand that I was depressed because I was ill. I had a lot of fear
that people who knew nothing about M.E. and nothing about what I was going through were
controlling my life; they were trying to make me go to school when I hardly had the energy to
make it as far as the car.
Alex: I think its true for a great number of people with M.E. that you get a lot of anxiety and
depression. But, its not that its the anxiety and depression cause us to be ill, they are the
reaction to being ill and is a very natural reaction to not being able to do the normal things on a
day to day basis.
I had tried so many things, anything that was mentioned that might possibly help with M.E., I
would give it a go, but nothing seemed to be working. I had a few treatments and nothing was
going well and the last person I had seen prior to coming to the clinic had been a bad experience,
so really at that point I just wanted to give up. But when I read Alex Howards book WHY ME? it
opened up a whole new door. At that time I had never read a story about someone who had
recovered from M.E. and we were about the same age when we were sick. When I went to see
Alex there was a lot of trust straight away because I knew he knew how I felt and I felt it was my
last hope.
From that point on, my life basically was trying to recover, as it is for most people who get M.E.
There was quite a large phase when I was feeling sorry for myself when nothing seemed to be
working. With Alex there was some kind of hope that I could get better, and then I really started
to do everything I could, including taking all the different supplements recommended by Niki.
A vital part of my recovery was when Alex started nudging me to go to do some filming. In my
recovery until that point, there was a massive period when I didnt have anything to focus on and
that was really the worst bit. I loved film and wanted to make films ultimately as I now am so
filming gave me that focus; initially I was just filming anything. Even if it was from my bed, it didnt
matter, it was the principle of doing something that I was passionate about and it was something
that I wanted to do with the energy that I had.
Alex: This was a turning point for you that gave you a focus outside of M.E. and gave you
something to move you towards.
I was also seeing a woman called Denise Usher who combined all the treatments that had been
quite beneficial for me like acupuncture, cupping, massage, acupressure and Reiki healing. I was
seeing her along with Alex and also doing treatments with Niki on the nutrition side of the clinic.
I did the basic GCSEs Maths and English, that was the only thing I could do with the amount of
time I had with my tutor. As my GCSEs were coming up, I wondered what I would do after that,
whether I could go to sixth-form college and be well enough by then. It was all very up in the air,
not really the kind of thing you want to think about when you feel so terrible.
Then I found a film production course that you only needed basic grades for, so any time and
energy I had I would be revising, just the thought that if I was to get those grades I could go and
do this. I would then be on the path to doing what I wanted to do with my life.
Alex: For you, one of the things that was so important was having this compelling future, that
you were moving towards something exciting that gave you a lease of life again. You had the
focus and discipline and determination to apply all the things you were learning to get better.
With my new goal, and applying the tools and techniques I was learning like my life depended
upon it, I did start to make some solid progress. With exams over, I went on holiday to Spain for
three or four weeks. At that point we were trying to get me into a routine; a key aspect was
getting my sleeping patterns back into place. Id get up at a certain time and go to bed at a
certain time of the day. Id get up at 9am even if Id got to sleep only an hour or two before that Id still get up and get dressed and then go for a walk even if it was to the end of the drive. . It
was really exhausting, the whole routine of going downstairs downstairs and going out the door,
of getting up and doing that. Often I would go back to bed, but I still had to get up in a routine.
Alex: I think it is important to point out that it was really clear to me that based on the stage of
recovery your body had reached, you were ready to push in that way.
I began going to the swimming pool even if it was drifting about initially. It was the principle of
having some resistance. I hadnt been doing any exercise at all for years and my muscles had
got so weak, I was so skinny and I was trying to build up some strength again.
Not soon after this, I had pretty much recovered and I was trying to integrate back into the world
and doing various things just to get me out again. Bearing in mind that the only people I had
really been in contact with for a good few years were any therapist I was seeing, my parents, and
close family it had been a very small world, and much of the time just in my house. The first
time I went to a shopping centre it was so overwhelming I felt like I was going to faint, because
there were so many people and everything was so loud.
I remember experiencing everything as just being really loud for the next few weeks and there
was so much going on, I couldnt really handle it at first. It did take a while to adjust and to get
back to normal. Nobody is aware of what you have been through and you kind of get thrown
back in there initially, and you have to make sure that you pace it.
Even when I started my course, I was still quite weak and it was a bit of a struggle initially. The
thing that had changed was in the physical exertion, getting the train to college and spending the
whole day there was a bit of a shock initially. I realised how far Id come though, getting a
reminder of the big shift from where I was a few months previously. Soon after this I would say I
was fully recovered.
Alex: I think that is such an important point it is amazing people come and say I feel like
nothing is changing and then you point out that in the last month or two they are actually much
further than they realised. A classic example is one patient who was having a session with Anna
she asked how he was doing and he said that he felt a bit rough, and she asked what he had
been up to and he replied that he climbed Snowdon on Sunday! ! He had gone from no exercise
for years to doing this massive thing and he had some symptoms afterwards and the penny
hadnt dropped that he really had improved massively.
On the second to last session with Alex he sprang it on me to karate chop a piece of wood in half
with my hand, as a metaphor for the power of the mind. I was quite surprised, it was fairly thick
and I didnt really see how it could be possible. Alex told me to visualise that the wood was my
M.E. I was so close to recovery and I thought, This is it, this is the final barrier, and I spent
some time thinking about that and it seemed to just break when I hit it in the way Alex showed
me, which felt great. After I did that, I decided to make a commitment to myself that I would have
to do a fire walk on hot coals when I was healthy. Well, Ive been well a couple of years now and
at the end of the week Im going to do my first firewalk!
A few months after becoming well I assisted on the filming of a yoga DVD that Alex was
producing with Fiona Agombar. Alex then discussed the idea of making a short film together
about the clinic. The longest thing I had produced before this was probably about a 5-6 minutes
film for college, and the thought of doing a full length film documentary was very exciting, if a little
overwhelming.
The eventual creation of a film was a big learning curve for all involved. After the first interview I
knew it was going to work as we wanted it to though. I think also it was quite bizarre, after filming
late that we were driving back at 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning sometimes - it was kind of weird that
a couple of ex-M.E. sufferers were up until that time. We also spent a lot of early mornings up
trying to get the perfect sunrise shot for the opening sequence.
Since the film I have been working on my course and making up for lost time, and I have been
trying to build contacts for this year because Im not going to go to University, which was initially
the plan. I feel that after being ill for so long, in three years you dont want to be still talking about
what you are going to do, you just want to go and do it.
Alex: I think that you have learned so much over the past year or two, and your learning curve
has been so fast that I think you are more ahead in terms of your development than many people
who have been to University, that it seems a bit of a waste of three years for you.
Personal experience is much richer than theory because that is how I have learned everything I
have done, I have learned from my mistakes and not making them again. I have done several
short films over the past year which are on You Tube and have also helped produce DVDs for
home study courses though the clinic.
To people reading this who still doubt about the possibility of recovery I would say I have been
there and come through it, so have Alex, and all the people
on the DVD, and everyone else who was involved, like Daniel Hill who did the music. It certainly
is possible. I have felt that low, thinking that nothing is really going to work. Having been that low
and now recovered, I appreciate every little detail in my life so much more.
I remember the first time I was able to go for a run, even though I was fully recovered, it was still
pretty tiring because of the de-conditioning. The feeling of being able to run though is just the
most incredible feeling if I had to describe what freedom feels like, I would describe it as just
being able to run and being able to do whatever you want its just incredible really.
Im 18 in two weeks. From having M.E. I have increased openness, discipline and determination.
Being at such a low point emotionally and physically all I could do was think and it made me think
about things that I would never have thought about otherwise. M.E. did change my life and
changed it in a positive way; I would be on a completely different path if I hadnt gone through
what I did.
Alex A public thank you for all the work you did on Freedom from M.E., you didnt get paid for
that, you did out of passion for wanting to share those kind of experiences.
I hope people enjoyed the film and I hope it helped, even if it only helped one person it was worth
Paul is continuing to develop his film career, having written, acted in, and directed, several short
films, the latest of which has been shown at international film festivals.
Going through the journey of M.E. at the age Paul did is in some ways even more difficult, as at
that age we havent had the opportunity to develop the life skills (such as determination, patience
and so on) that can be so key on the journey. This means that we are being forced to not only
face our own recovery, but also develop the resources we need along the way.
Paul emphasises throughout his story the vital role that hope, inspiration and a vision played in
his recovery. It is important to recognise that we are not saying that having a compelling reason
to get better was the reason Paul got well. Having a compelling reason to get better gave Paul
the motivation he needed to be able to make some radical internal changes both emotionally and
physically in a situation where many people believed there was no hope.
It is also interesting to notice that the very resources Paul developed on his healing path have
had a massive impact on his life since. His considerable success as a writer and director at such
a tender age he puts down entirely to the determination and personal power that he developed on
his healing path.
Never give up hope that you can find a way through
Having a purpose and vision for why you want to be well will help drive you through the
very difficult times
The lessons you learn on the recovery journey are not just about recovery they are
lessons for life
Nothing seems impossible when you have succeeded in recovering!
Failure will never overtake me
if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
I am delighted to have recovered and to be in a position to tell my story to give other people some
insight into what I did to recover. Im forty-two, and I have three young children, now aged nine,
six and three, and am now pregnant with my fourth child. I live in Singapore. About ten years
ago I was a very driven investment banker and I got posted from the London office to the Hong
Kong office, and my fianc came out to join me. We got married and when I was pregnant with
our first child I gave up work and we moved to Singapore. Things started to go downhill from
about 2000, when wed just moved.
Id always been quite a driven person and I suddenly went from working to having my first child. I
was a housewife in Singapore and the change was a shock. I got really fed up and bored. I
didnt know anybody so I thought that I needed to go back to work. I set up my own business, but
at the same time I had my second child and I think it was all too much. Some people with M.E.
will probably be able to identify with being your own worst enemy. I drove myself on, rather than
anybody else pushing me on. I kept on doing the business, had my second child and I just got
really tired. That was the personal background, but it was also in the context of being in Asia at a
very difficult time. In 2003 there was a terrible SARS epidemic in Singapore. SARS was a
serious viral epidemic and in Singapore it had a very high death rate amongst infected people .
We were living half a mile from the isolation hospital where everybody that had got it was sent.
At that point, I had a three-year old and a one-year old and was very worried about them. I was
hearing on the news how many people had died at the hospital right next to us. At the school
they were taking peoples temperatures, people werent allowed to travel, and it was really
frightening. Id never experienced anything like that living in the UK. We got through that, yet
next there was bird flu, and of course we were frightened because it was thought bird flu might
start transmitting to people, and then person to person transmission, like SARS. Where we were
living they were culling all the chickens round us and we were waiting in fear for someone to
catch it from the chickens. After living through SARS it was very frightening.
In 2004 there was also the tsunami in Thailand. That was also very frightening because so many
people died, and there was a knock-on effect to the international community here. Its very
werent
there,
but it was really bad. There was a whole series of tremor aftershocks from that for about another
year, wed feel it shaking in Singapore and wonder whether it was going to be another serious
earthquake.
We went on holiday to Penang in April 2005, and the worst aftershock, which was seven on the
Richter scale, hit Penang very badly. We were in a hotel on the fifth floor. Id just put the kids to
bed and then suddenly the whole building was shaking and everyone was saying, Oh God, its
an earthquake, so we rushed out of the building carrying the children. We were on the beach
and I knew that half an hour after the earthquake you can get a Tsunami. I was in my pyjamas
and I was five months pregnant with my third child. Id got no medication, no glasses, no
nappies, one of them was wearing a nappy and one of them wasnt. My husband said, Well,
weve got the car. He hadnt got his shoes on and he drove us all up the only hill. It was the
most frightening drive because we were right on the beach and were wondering if the Tsunami
was going to just knock the car over. We got up the hill, parked the car and there were other
people in their pyjamas and local people wandering around with babies in sarongs. There was no
food or water. We had one bottle of water with us. My daughter was sick over everyones
remaining clothes.
I can laugh now, but it was desperate. We turned on the one English language radio station and
people were calling in from Thailand and Singapore to say they were shaking, and a terrible case
of a mother saying, My husbands a sailor at sea, and Im in a very high rise block and I dont
know what to do with my children. Should I stay in the block or come out? It was just an awful,
frightening night. I think at that point after the bird flu and the SARS, something in me cracked. I
thought, Ive got small children and theyre just so vulnerable, Im so exhausted myself and now
Im having another one and I just cant go on. I think that was the beginning of adrenal fatigue. I
was still running the business yet realised it was all too much. I didnt really understand what was
going on, but my body started to tell me it was time to stop.
Alex: As you know we talk about a Maladaptive Stress Response which is something which
comes in for the vast majority of people when they crash with M.E. The whole system goes into
hyper alert, and its almost like you went into hyper alert before you even got any real symptoms
because of the stress in your environment.
Id always been quite a stressed person, but I felt that I was doing quite well to manage a lot of
stressful situations in my life, but these new stresses were really imposed upon me by the
situation. I went into this hyper alert state and I think I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder of some description after that. That was at five months pregnant.
The birth went fine and I thought I was coping well; six months post-birth I went to the doctor and
said that I was feeling okay. Yet soon after I started to get these really strange symptoms of the
nervous system: my eyes wouldnt quite focus, I could not quite see out of one eye and then I
started to get tremors up and down my spine, and I started to shake. I wondered about postnatal
syndrome, but it was clearly not typical. I went to the doctor and theres no acknowledgement or
recognition of this kind of condition at all in Singapore. The Chinese local doctor said to me, Oh
you are just postnatal, go home, just relax and it will all be fine.
Alex: Theres internal stress and theres external stress, and it sounds like you already had a
predisposition towards internal stress. When you had that much stress in your environment, the
cocktail of the two together means you went in to a higher state of alert, and your body just
couldnt sustain it any longer.
I was too far gone for it to be a case of just relaxing at that point. I was way out of kilter and the
doctor just said I was post-natal and refused to deal with it. I saw him very recently, a few months
ago because hes still in the hospital and he still maintains there has never has been anything
wrong with me except that I was exhausted after the birth. M.E. is just not recognized in
Singapore. At the very beginning, when I was very ill, I saw so many doctors here and they all
said they dont get that illness in Singapore, that its a Caucasian illness. Basically though, there
is a substantial minority of people who have got it and they are just left at home and left in their
beds; they pay for some local help to come in and look after them and thats the end of it. Theres
no recognition at all.
Alex: What you are describing is how it was in the 1980s, maybe up to mid 1990s, in the UK.
People just didnt recognise it and of course when theres no recognition, theres not even the
beginning of treatments. Theres got to be the recognition and the definition, before you can even
start looking at potential treatments.
That sort of opinion is so damaging when youre that ill, you feel desperate and people are saying
its all in your head. Id seen all the different specialists, and they essentially told me there was
nothing they could do for me. They gave me a psychiatrists number so that I could be put on
anti-depressants and told me about renting a wheelchair. That sort of attitude is enough to make
you go crazy even if you werent in the first place. I really violently resisted that and I didnt go
and see the psychiatrist because I knew that that wasnt the problem. I knew instinctively that it
was a physical problem and at least one thing that really helped me was the fact that my husband
actually believed me. I think its so important if youre living with other people
who are your primary carers that they are basically on side with you about what you believe is the
problem. They become part of a solution rather than an additional part of the problem; being with
someone who doesnt believe whats wrong with you every day would be very draining.
I saw a few doctors and they couldnt really think what was wrong with me. In the end I saw an
endocrinologist because I have hypothyroidism, and she thought maybe I needed to increase the
thyroid medicine. She did some general blood tests and said Id also got Mycoplasma.
Mycoplasma is absolutely epidemic in Singapore, a lot of people carry it. I only had a very low
level, and when the rest of my family were tested, they had much higher levels. She didnt take
that into account and put me on a twelve-week course of antibiotics. At that point I knew nothing
and I had no idea the harm it could cause. I took this massive dose of antibiotics and it
completely wiped out my gut. It knocked me out and I think that eroded what level of energy I
had left and put me into M.E.
After five weeks of the antibiotics, suddenly one day I couldnt stand. I was really frightened and
said to my husband, I just cant stand up. We had been married a while and he knows that I am
not the sort of person who would make it up. He took me to the A&E department in the night and
we saw an emergency neurologist. I thought I might have M.S. or something. It was very
frightening. The neurologist was quite good and he ruled out all the degenerative diseases. He
said that he recognized there was some kind of post viral condition, but that he didnt know
anything about treating it so not to come and see him anymore. He said you just need a good
long rest, but as we know lying in bed if youve got M.E. is not recovery, its just lying in bed.
I was so ill and not sure if I was ever going to get better. I was just lying there in the dark and the
sensory deprivation just made it worse and worse. The doctor tested me for Epstein Barr virus
and I got the highest level theyd ever seen, and he tested me for my CoQ10 level and it was the
lowest theyd ever seen. He didnt see that as markers for a particular problem, but now looking
at some of the measures that he did, it was all pointing towards fatigue, but he had no idea, so he
just told me to stop bothering him, that I didnt have M.S., and he didnt know what to do next.
That was the end of help in Singapore.
I rented the wheelchair which for me was just so psychologically damaging. The wheelchair was
useful because my alternative was lying flat in bed, but I saw myself as totally destroyed. That
was the beginning of rock bottom. One thing that really factored heavily for me was that ironically
my mother developed M.E. in about 1988 in the UK when there was no treatment, and
unfortunately she has not fully recovered yet. Id lived with her being unable to lead a normal life
for twenty years, and the really frightening realisation was at this time in about March 2002, as
things,
dawning on me that Id basically got what shed got.
Id been deprived of life with my mother over those years and now was concerned that the same
thing would happen to my children and me. I was worried I wouldnt be able to get out of bed
again either. That thought was really the rock bottom. I decided that I couldnt do this to my
children in the same way that it had happened to me. The family situation really compounded
everything. That was when I really hit the rock bottom and I didnt know how long I could go on
like that. One helpful thing was that my mother told me about The Optimum Health Clinic, which
she was recommending despite not going for treatment there herself.
That was the turning point. She gave me numbers of a few people, some of whom were
absolutely useless. I somehow tracked down an NHS clinic in East London that seemed to
believe that M.E. was in your head and was purely psychological. I saw that The Optimum Health
Clinic give free chats to people for fifteen minutes and decided to go for it. What I really liked
about it was that they could do everything by phone, which suited me because in Singapore I was
so far away from any other help and I couldnt possibly travel because I couldnt even stand up. I
spoke to Anna, who was brilliant.
I was experiencing these terrible symptoms day and night. I struggled to move, sleep, eat,
breathe and had terrible brain fog. I had terrible weird neurological symptoms and it was just
awful. Anna kept on saying, You must calm down, and she taught me techniques I needed to do
Alex: Thats quite a big shift for a lot of people, from knowing you have something very physical
going on, but also embracing a psychological approach.
Theres a massive difference between what Anna was doing, and a psychiatrist who is talking
about more general issues. This was very specifically tailored to what was actually going on with
the illness. I finally got it that being in an anxiety state was really linked to the physical
symptoms. That took me a while to understand. I dont think that seeing a psychiatrist, especially
one here who did not understand about M.E. being a physical illness, would have been at all
helpful. Anna explained that this was a physical illness with a mental overlay. It made a very big
difference to me. At the same time I was speaking to Niki on the phone. I had always eaten
relatively well, but I hadnt got any basic nutritional supplementation in place. I had no idea about
supplements or anything. I took multivitamins during my pregnancy, but they werent particularly
good quality and werent focused enough towards my situation.
Alex: Theres a big difference between taking vitamin pills and taking very specifically targeted
treatments towards specific imbalances that are going on.
It was a big struggle initially having to do it all by telephone. Once I realised there was viable help
available somewhere just not where I was in the world I discussed with my husband moving
back to the UK, but his job was in Singapore and the kids attended school there. I realised I was
just going to have to access the resources from here. Once we had got through that, I realised
that a lot of people with M.E. are bed-ridden and they are all relying on telephone and internet
anyway. None of the practitioners that I was dealing with at the clinic was remotely thrown by the
fact that I was in Singapore because a lot of their consultations were done by telephone or
internet anyway. Actually it didnt make much difference. The other good thing was because of
the time difference, when I was most awake in the afternoon, in the UK it was early morning, a
time when all these practitioners had free slots which were all completely vacant because nobody
with M.E. in the UK could get up at that time! I made it work to my advantage. I was getting
supplements sent over.
Alex: Its amazing how these things can actually work remotely. We find with face-to-face
sessions, (like the 90 Day Programme) it can be easier to get people to really commit to using the
tools because you have that face-to-face contact. In my experience, the key ingredient in really
making it work by telephone is people making sure that they are self-motivated to really commit to
following through what they are learning, and I know for you, you had this almost ferocious
commitment.
I had no other alternative other than to be committed. I was absolutely desperate and I looked at
my children everyday and decided I couldnt just do nothing and lie there, because that was their
young lives passing by. Seeing them was a real motivation to get help and get better. Id seen
my mother and I remember when I got married trying to get my mother to come to my wedding
and it was just so difficult for her. I decided I must get better so it wasnt like that for my children.
I generally got more in tune with listening to my body. It took me eighteen months to realise that I
was coming at everything from a position of fear. Which is ironic because the whole illness is
about fear, but I was so scared that I wouldnt get better that I was pushing myself on to achieve
getting better, and I realised that was putting me into fear and anxiety which makes the illness
worse. It was only when I finally got that, which took me a really long time to accept, that I was
less hard on myself. I felt more relaxed and then it all started to come together and I got better
fairly quickly. When you are in the mindset that gets you into M.E. in the first place, its very
difficult to change your mindset to this new way of thinking that gets you out of it.
Alex: Its such a simple idea: take the pressure off, get yourself in a relaxed and calm healing
state, and yet its actually so challenging. A patient had a mitochondrial test which came back
and showed their mitochondria were very badly affected and then was retested because the lab
had taken a long time to get the results back, and before theyd even done the nutritional
treatment, after doing just the psychology theyd improved dramatically.
My mitochondrial tests initially showed really bad results initially seven percent of the normal
level, but improved to almost one hundred percent normal within a year from all the work I was
doing to heal. I also really think that a huge amount of M.E. comes from hyperventilation as well.
As you calm down you hyperventilate less.
Alex: Breathing is a very important part of it. When people go into a state of stress, one of the
first things to go is their breathing, and thats why learning to actually get the breathing in balance
is a really important part of the psychology side of it. And, its one of the mechanisms where the
psychology side and the physical side are very interrelated because when we are psychologically
breathing,
functions because all kinds of physical systems depend upon the right balance of oxygen and
carbon dioxide.
I do think that most people, this included me, are adamant that they are not hyperventilating.
Alex: Most people with M.E. when we first treat them are adamant that they are not in a stress
state either. But as we discover thats usually not the case!
I finally got it that I was in a stress state, but it took me longer to realise I was hyperventilating.
Once Id got my breathing right, all the tingling in my hands, all the numbness in the sides of my
feet, all those weird symptoms, disappeared within about a week. That told me that I had been
hyperventilating. It was an extreme relief to start to feel better. In the beginning I was in a
wheelchair and then I could walk five yards, then ten yards. I used to have an evening walk
where I would go out at six oclock and walk. I gradually increased from a few roads, then a few
more roads and it got to the point where I could walk three kilometres, which was a big loop
around the area where we live in Singapore. I tried to do that walk every day and if I could do the
walk and not have delayed fatigue, then I knew I was not overdoing it, and if I wasnt then Id try
and go a little bit further.
Alex: Youd learnt to listen to your body rather than just keep going, you were monitoring, and
then as you were ready to, gently expanding your comfort zone. Thats what I call bouncing the
boundaries and finding the limit, and thats changing all the time.
In the UK under the psychological approach to M.E, they have this frightening thing called
Graded Exercise, and I dont see that as graded exercise, I see that as listening to your body.
Alex: Graded exercise is a great idea if you are basically recovered and youre getting yourself
back to normal functioning. Graded exercise when you are in a state of crash and burn is about
the worst thing you can possibly do. The statistics of graded exercise are very interesting. They
say that its the one treatment thats been the most shown to have the most negative feedback so
there are a few people that it helps, and theres a group that it makes no difference to. But a
scary number of M.E. sufferers find it makes them significantly worse.
We can get the International Daily Mail in Singapore and an article in the medical column in the
Daily Mail, last week in fact, end of October 2008, is still advocating graded exercise and
psychiatry as the approach to M.E.
Alex: As clinical trials start to get published and things start to come out over the next five, ten,
fifteen to twenty years, it will start to change things. Its actually quite frightening that a lot of the
studies that have actually been done reviewing research in the area specifically only look at the
psychiatric treatments. But, if you look at patient feedback through questionnaires and the M.E.
charities, the thing that consistently seems to come out highest is actually complementary
therapies. And yet theres almost no research being done in this area.
I decided to set a goal of what I called reliably well, because what really frustrated me was that
some days I could do something and the next day I couldnt. The unpredictability made it difficult
to confirm arrangements and to know I would be able to attend things like school parent-teacher
meetings. That sort of thing was so frustrating and I depended on my husband, I basically made
commitments to the children that wed do something a particular day, But it might not be with me
it might just be with Daddy, and thats how we got around it. My poor husband was trying to hold
down a job and look after the three kids. We did have help, at least out in Asia you can get lots of
help; we had two brilliant Philippine helpers who lived in with us, and I cant imagine how I would
have coped without them because I had no family members within 13,000 miles. They were
there for emergency situations.
For things involving the children though my husband would say, Right, if you cant get to this
school concert or whatever I will definitely be there, and things like that. So it took the pressure
off me and actually when the pressure was off, sometimes you could manage it when you didnt
think you would be able to. Although sometimes I still couldnt, there were still some things I just
had to miss. I then had to work through feeling the guilt about whether I should have pushed
myself, or is it bad that I missed this.
When I got to the point I called reliably well, I started to feel calmer. The irony is that the worse
you get the more you panic, and if you get into the upward spiral then the better you feel, the
calmer you feel and the faster you get better. I was going up and down in these spirals and
something would happen to crash my energy and then Id panic and get worse. Then something
would happen, and Id manage to do something that Id wanted to do and then Id feel uplifted and
feel better. Then gradually I got more good days and fewer bad days and I began to trust my
body more. I came less from a position of fear, more from being relaxed, and I managed to do
more and more. Gradually I began to realise that I was actually living again to some extent, and
that was an amazing feeling.
I started to get my freedom back and a big milestone for me was when we were able to go away.
Singapores a very small island, about as big as the Isle of Wight. We used to drive up to
Malaysia or fly to places like Australia. My husband was going stir crazy after two years staying
in, basically looking after me, and it was a big milestone when we were able to fly down to
Brisbane in Australia in Spring 2008 and have a two-week holiday. We were on the beach every
day and we were swimming. I realised I wasnt worrying about what was going to happen next or
where the nearest doctor was, so that was real freedom and that was when I realized Id pretty
much recovered.
It was funny because when I got to that almost recovery stage I was feeling on top of the world
and almost euphoric because I knew Id done it. I found that nobody in the street really
understood how ill Id been so they didnt really notice, or theyd see me again and say they
hadnt seen me for a while and Id tell them Id been terribly ill. They didnt register so they
couldnt understand that I was euphoric about being better.
Anna and Niki have both been absolutely brilliant. I wrote to Anna and told her I felt I needed to
acknowledge it somehow. Even though no one else would understand, at least I would. She said
to have some sort of ritual to acknowledge that youve come to the end of it, and she said she
was doing skydiving to raise funds for the clinics charity and that I could do something like that
(although it obviously didnt have to be so dramatic), to mark the end of the illness. It was so
funny because I went back and told my husband Id got to think of a ritual, to do something that
proved to myself that I was no longer ill. Now Ive found out that Im pregnant and I decided that
that would be a good ritual! If I can get pregnant and carry through this pregnancy, I think that
pretty much proves that I am well. To have a sustainable pregnancy at forty-two without any
preparation, I think is a sign that your body is back in kilter.
I rang Dr Myhill to talk to her a bit about it and she said the regime that Id been on, all the
supplements that Niki provided, all the psychology work that I have done with Anna, that it had
made me super fertile, and she actually said it had given me Optimum Health! So for me the
recovery was to go into another pregnancy. And so Im eight months now, everythings looking
really good, and the baby is due towards Christmas. I would never have thought thats how it
would all turn out. In March 2006 when I was very ill, I imagined myself aged sixty still in bed. I
didnt see myself as totally recovered in two years and having another baby. You can really turn
it around if you really work hard on it.
I think a key lesson for me was that its worth investing some time, effort and money into your
recovery. That may be learning a particular technique to calm down, eating in a different way, or
putting in place a new health regime. What I found is all those things you learn are not just for
recovery, they really help you in your life once you are recovered. For instance, the breathing
techniques which I thought I was just doing because of hyper-ventilation have really helped me
with the breathing during pregnancy. A lot of the techniques you learn are really good life skills
and when you recover you will have all those life skills in place for the rest of your life.
Alex: Also a key point I take from your story is it wasnt just learning techniques, it was the level
of application that was there as well; that you were really disciplined and determined. You talked
about the motivation of wanting to be there for your children, and that was as powerful driving
force for you.
I think you have got to find what drives you on to get better. If you want to get better, there must
be a reason why you want to get better. And if you focus on that, and imagine it happening and
really believing, its going to happen.
I gave birth to our fourth baby, Matthew, on 5 January 2009. He is a beautiful healthy baby, now
6 months old. The birth was very straightforward and the breathing exercises really helped during
the delivery. I was careful to look after myself after the birth and make sure that I put my own
needs first and that I lined up enough help with looking after my other children. I did not relapse
into M.E. and in fact I feel even more well after the pregnancy than I did before it! I am really
enjoying life now with my husband and four beautiful children!
Sarahs is an amazing story. To deal with not just increasingly bizarre and frightening symptoms,
but also three children and all of the traumatic and scary events that were going on around her,
was quite an ordeal. Looking at her story, it is no wonder that in the end something was going to
give. What is interesting in Sarah is that the key to her recovery was also in many ways the root
of some of her issues that determination to push through, to just keep going at all times. She
was determined that her children would not be disadvantaged by having their mother ill and
absent, and this served as a powerful motivator, to never give up in her commitment to find a
Gradually Sarah had to learn to use her inner drive to her advantage, by learning to use this focus
to ensure that she consistently did the things that she knew would help her. Every time she
looked at her children, rather than allowing her mind to focus on the negative aspects of her
situation, she used it as the fuel to keep getting back to her tools and techniques and applying
them consistently. And, ultimately, a big part of this learning process was to find a way to be kind
to herself, to become determined to let go and relax, and learn to trust.
Behind every self-destructive trait there is very often a gift; seek to discover your inner
gifts and use them to your advantage
Use your pain and frustration positively in order to support your determination to get well
Understand that sometimes the biggest thing we need to commit to is learning to accept,
be kind to ourselves and trust so that we can begin to move forwards
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Prior to getting unwell Id been travelling for a year. I taught English in Nepal for four months and
travelled around the world. I started at Nottingham University soon after my return home,
studying Psychology and Philosophy. In my first term at university I came down with what I later
found out to be M.E. symptoms. Initially brain fog was my worse symptom, but gradually fatigue,
muscle weakness, dizziness and headaches developed; I ended up having a constant headache
for about six months.
I came home from university after my first term and took on a job in a pub, I even worked New
Years Eve feeling like I was about to pass out. I went back to attempt my first term exams, but it
was just too much I was too ill and getting depressed about it. I couldnt stop crying, I was very
scared, and I found studying impossible. I was told by a doctor at the university that it was likely
to be depression. Although I knew that I was getting depressed, I also knew that I had something
very physical going on and was convinced that it wasnt just depression.
Alex: Depression is often a reaction to what is happening rather than the cause of it and the
trouble is that very often the medical system is not able to see beyond categorising, Oh you look
depressed, therefore you are depressed and that is causing the symptoms.
I was found to have low levels of iron in my body and was slightly anaemic. This became my first
hope of a cure. All I would need to do was take iron tablets and I would be fine! Of course it just
wasnt that simple.
I ended up in a real state physically and mentally for a few days, crying constantly, with a sense
of despair and helplessness. I was clearly unable to carry on at university. I came home and
presumed that Id be able to go back again soon and carry on as normal. But, after another four
weeks I was told I couldnt come back to my course as Id missed too much. In reality, I was too
ill to go back anyway.
I was at home with my mum and sister again, and it was very depressing at first. Id spent a year
travelling and two months at university, and suddenly I was back at home and unwell. Id started
to make some good friends at university and was really looking forward to getting to know them
more. Initially all of my school friends from Sheffield were away at University, so I felt very lonely.
My sister was the first to actually mention the prospect of M.E, although Id never even heard of
M.E. before. My dad had a client with M.E. whod had it for over twenty years; he clearly didnt
want to entertain the possibility that thats what it was. When I found out what the symptoms
were it sounded exactly right to me, but it took eight months to get a diagnosis through the
hospital. I was going to the doctor in Sheffield and he referred me to The Tropical Diseases
department and they did diagnosis by exclusion (as in they couldnt find anything else wrong, so
concluded it was M.E.).
For a while I was just at home struggling with the physical symptoms and emotionally down a lot
of the time. I watched a lot of daytime television early on and that was pretty depressing. It made
me just feel like my life was worthless and hopeless. I started doing relaxation tapes and that
was a key early on. I noticed the first time I did a relaxation tape, on the M.E. ability scale I went
up from about forty percent to eighty percent, it was an obvious sign that my body really needed
to relax and get into a much more healing state.
I was very glad that the Buddhist Centre had just moved round the corner from my house. To go
and meditate there was the only thing I was able to go out to do in the first few months. I also
started to do daily meditation at home. Id got interested in meditation before being unwell when I
was in Nepal, and had also read a bit about it, made a few Buddhist friends, and dipped into a
little meditation practice.
I found peace when I was doing meditation, and this was such a support. I also began a yoga
class and started doing some yoga at home too, which was a great adjunct to the meditation.
The two together began to help me feel I had ways I could help myself. The Buddhist philosophy
of acceptance of things as they are, and the process of learning through the suffering which is
inherent in being human, was very powerful to keep coming back to.
I read many books on Buddhism in the early stages of being ill, and I felt supported by the
philosophy. It made a real difference to feel that this time of being unwell may be a great
opportunity to practice spiritually, to help me grow in wisdom and compassion.
At moments when I was doing my meditation or yoga I could even start to see it as a blessing and
experience a deeper sense of peace and wholeness. Although, I would then of course come
back to my life in my body, and that would be really difficult at times. Overall though, I felt that I
was starting a process of spiritual development that would benefit me for my whole life.
I next went to see a nutritional therapist who had some experience in treating M.E and candida,
and was recommended by my Dad. My Dad knew someone whod got better from M.E.
symptoms just from following an anti-candida diet so that was the second thing that I latched onto
that might cure me. I didnt know that the therapist also did colonic irrigation, and she thought
thats what Id come for and I hadnt! When she said, Well just do a quick consultation and well
get on with your treatment, I replied, What treatment?! At that time I didnt know anything about
these kinds of things and needless to say I refused treatment!
I dont know if the diet helped me. I did do it quite strictly and ended up cutting a lot from my diet,
which left me feeling quite neurotic around food at times. I think longer term it did help as I
believe looking at my diet was a really crucial aspect of my recovery. Im not sure if following the
anti-candida regime for as long as I did was beneficial, as in the end I ended up on the anticandida diet for quite a few years (although not strictly the whole time).
Alex: A lot of these programmes that are very extreme can actually make people more allergic.
The perspective in those days was that you go on a very extreme diet and then nuke the
candidate with anti-fungals. Its a very old medical model of, Youve got something wrong and
you kill it, as opposed to the more evolved model of supporting and strengthening the system so
it can fight it off for itself.
I had a two-year period of being ill and I felt in the same brain foggy cloud almost the whole time,
except for little windows of better health and wellbeing during or after meditation, yoga or
relaxation. Generally I felt that my poor concentration and brain fog was something that would be
key to improve. I found certain situations difficult to deal with, like social situations. My brain
couldnt handle talking to lots of people, or people talking across each other. I used to get really
upset sometimes, Id try and go out to socialize and end up in tears because I couldnt cope with
it and had to go home. I also regularly had nightmares and experienced sleep paralysis, where I
was somewhere between sleep and awake and couldnt move. This was terrifying, especially
when it often involved a dream of a dark figure trying to get me.
In those two years I kept on trying different things, including seeing an acupuncturist for a while. I
was hoping for a cure, as Id read an article about her in a local magazine entitled ,Me and my
M.E. cure. However, it didnt benefit me at this time and I felt frustrated with her as she brought
me back weekly for six months with no improvement before saying it didnt seem to be working.
She also gave me a herb mixture that would make me retch it was so horrible. Although later in
my recovery I did find benefit from acupuncture, it was very frustrating at the time.
I also went to an NHS chronic fatigue service and they spoke about pacing and I started to write
out diaries of how I felt every hour. It was helpful to assess what was helping to improve my
energy and what wasnt; to tangibly see the impact the relaxation and meditation was having on
my health and mood for instance.
Alex: Also the great thing that pacing does where it is appropriate, is it stops people booming
and busting. And at that stage, sometimes you were up and then youd crash, and each time you
crash obviously that depletes the system further. The secret is to be building more energy than
were spending and thats something we do over time.
I also had some homeopathy through the NHS with a really kind Buddhist homeopath. Combined
with meditation and yoga practice, changing my diet and falling in love, after two years I got much
better for a while and actually thought I was cured. I had a peak experience in meditation which
was very intense and left me feeling high for two weeks, hardly able to sleep and over-flowing
with energy. In a way it was quite an intense initial peak spiritual experience which affected the
undercurrent of my being thereafter, which I later attributed to the rising of kundalini energy
(spiritual energy stored at the base of the spine that facilitates spiritual growth).
The high settled down, and for a while afterwards I felt considerably better physically and
mentally. Yet a few weeks later I was just about to start my second term at University (my
second attempt) after a weekend celebration in Brighton of completion of exams, and my health
crashed. This time I felt worse than I ever had before. I could hardly walk or manage to look
after myself, and felt so weak it terrified me. I had to lie down much of the time for six weeks and
I was forced to leave my University course for the second time. I did improve again, and entered
a boom and bust cycle that lasted for nearly three years, although I was gradually improving
through this time.
In that period a friend gave me a Reiki treatment. I felt that lifted a lot of emotional things that
were going on around being ill and was quite amazed by how it made me feel. I ended up doing
Reiki Levels one and two, and did about an hour a day of Reiki on myself for a year, which I
found very beneficial. Through my Reiki teacher I found out about Bowen therapy and decided to
train, once I got to the point where I was well enough to take the training course. Bowen therapy
is a gentle form of body therapy. Gentle rolling movements are made over muscles to stimulate
the body to rebalance and heal itself. It is often used for muscular-skeletal problems, but it can
be used for releasing tension and improving energy.
As I was doing the course, I was amazed at how much I could manage. The first part of the
course was four full days, but I felt better after than I did before I went. Many people commented
on how tight my muscles were, and it certainly seemed that beginning to release that was freeing
up my energy. To manage four full days was a surprising indicator of what I could actually
manage, as opposed to what I thought I could. I completely expected that it would wear me out,
but in fact it had quite the opposite effect.
I knew people in Sheffield who were practicing Bowen, and so we were swapping sessions, and I
was also receiving treatments while training. It was definitely helping my health to improve, quite
significantly at times, although it wasnt addressing some of the underlying patterns that were
keeping me ill. I think it was good in that it was improving my energy levels and making me
realise the potential my body had for being well. But, I wasnt at the time resolving the underlying
issues that were causing me to relapse again and again. I know I had many of the M.E.
tendencies, such as a perfectionist, helper and achiever personality, and working on these was
ultimately a key factor in my recovery.
I did have a very strong pattern of feeling well and thinking I was cured and almost forgetting how
ill Id been and doing too much, that was the boom and bust cycle which essentially went on for
three years. Id do crazy things like suddenly going out and thinking I could run, thinking maybe
Im going to run off the remains of the illness! Also at times I was so well, I danced for a whole
weekend of Five Rhythms, a movement meditation I was really into.
I also became well enough to go to China to see my mum and her partner who were teaching
there, which was great. I walked the furthest I had since being unwell and also went on a full day
cycle ride. However, other times when I was there I also had to spend the day in bed feeling
unwell which was still very frustrating. Each time I felt more ill again there was a lot of blame and
criticism towards myself, yet once I managed to let go of that, accept and
surrender to the situation as it was, and trust I would pick up again, quite quickly the symptoms
would again lift. I also read with relief that the process of recovery was an up and down one, and
that was quite natural, which took away some of my inner critic when I was down and also helped
me to trust it didnt mean I had gone right back or would never recover. I was in a process of
recovery, and it helped me to know and trust that.
I also read The Journey by Brandon Bays and ended up attending her workshop, which I found
deeply healing and transforming. I felt so hooked on this way of working that I booked on the
next course. I was so desperate to be completely healed. I was also using her approach in
meditation and going into intense emotional states, and dropping through to peace beneath, and
really allowing it to be there. Surrendering and letting go in the present.
I read an article by Alex Howard and looked into going to The Optimum Health Clinic. I
thoroughly enjoyed Alexs book when I read it too and related to a lot of it. My sister by this point
also suffered with M.E. She developed it a few months after I did during her A Levels, although
she was able to go to University. I encouraged her to go to The Optimum Health Clinic as she
was close to London living in Brighton. I worked with the techniques they taught, and related
some of the process to what I had been doing with Buddhist mindfulness to calm my thinking
down by coming back to the moment and my body.
At the time I had also just got into working with the Bodymind (as referred to in treatments such
as Reverse Therapy and Mickel Therapy) after reading an article that convinced me of its
effectiveness, and I applied the principles to the ups and downs of the illness and it seemed to
make sense there were definitely clear links between my emotions and my symptoms. I
realised this was that my symptoms were to some extent a message telling me that I wasnt
responding to my emotions and I needed to respond more clearly to them. That could be things
like not being passive in situations, or saying something if it needs to be said, rather than putting
it off.
I was towards the end of the illness and it was just amazing. I felt much better after the first
treatment just knowing what I needed to say to a couple of people. I felt empowered by it, and
actually felt that it was the final key to being well. I ended up expressing anger and being quite
aggressive, but its almost like I had to do that to become more balanced and find a middle way not being passive and not being aggressive.
Alex: The way I often describe it is its like a pendulum. If its held too far in one direction, if
youre holding back on everything, then it kind of swings the other way and then it can come out
as letting everyone know exactly what you think of them! I think the secret as times like this is just
being really
patient with ourselves and giving ourselves the permission to experiment and be okay with getting
it a little wrong sometimes.
Around this time I was staying with my Dad and what started off as immense suffering with feeling
so unwell changed into a beautiful experience. Basically it seemed my body needed me to say
things Id never said to my dad, and to allow him to be open with me. It took me at least a day of
feeling dreadful physically and emotionally to dare to open up, but what transpired was such a
relief. We sat on the cliffs of Dorset talking and crying, and all the intense symptoms which had
been bubbling up disappeared. I also felt so grateful that my Dad was ready for that level of
openness and healing.
Once well enough to start work I really struggled with my first part-time job to run alongside
developing therapy work. I think I mustve been a bit mad to apply for a job in an after school
club! It was too much after what had in some ways felt like a four and a half year retreat, being
surrounded by loads of loud children. I didnt last long in this job, and soon focused solely on my
therapy work. My states at this time varied between quite extremes of energy, trust and
happiness, to fatigue, fear and depression.
I got into one of the worst emotional lows I had ever been in for three weeks once, like I was in a
dark strange terrifying black hole which I couldnt escape from. The light was there in the
periphery, but I felt stuck in the darkness and couldnt escape, and was experiencing a lot of fear,
and also feeling fatigued and ill. Fortunately exactly at this time a friend had printed some stuff
off the internet which he felt to be very relevant to me. Being mystified at my insistence that it
was no longer good for me to meditate he researched why this could be so. I read with relief
about kundalini energy and the problems it can bring up as well as the ineffable transcendental
states of consciousness. It seemed I was in my, Dark night of the soul.
I felt I had veered off the spiritual path into a darkness I couldnt escape from and had times of
feeling there was no point in going on. Yet this would clear and a clarity, peace and acceptance
would come again. Like another level of my consciousness was being cleared, to leave peace
and relief. I completely stopped meditating, focused on developing my therapy business and
doing positive things. I began regular exercise swimming, Karate and walking. My task now
seemed to be to integrate the experience into my life and being.
I was grateful to meet someone on a retreat I worked on who had undergone similar experiences
and to talk to people with a lot of experience of meditation about everything. It gradually all
settled down, and I feel much more balanced and grateful for the journey ill health and spiritual
on. Eventually, aged twenty-three, I considered myself cured. I found attending one of Alex
Howards courses and seeing him once helpful in this process of integration of the journey
and getting back into life post-M.E. I also decided to embark on the clinics training course to train
up in tools that would further aid me to facilitate others journey to health, which I finished in 2008.
I was nineteen when I got M.E. and twenty-one when I had my initial awakening experience so
its not surprising I suffered the difficulties I have. I entered M.E after some chaotic teenage years
of alcohol and drugs, and was taken on a journey of healing and transformation. I now see it is
important to ideally have the roots right before one goes too deeply in to spiritual practice to be
functional in the world, to have a job, healthy relationships and be in a healthy environment. Yet
despite all the problems this energy caused within me, paradoxically I feel it was a central part of
my healing. For instance, I had experiences of waking in the night with the sensation that healing
light was just pouring through me and each time I felt I might wake up fully cured.
I write quite a lot about the spiritual emergence side to my M.E journey because it is a little known
phenomenon. Also to provide insight to other people who may be undergoing a similar
experience. Im also interested that sometimes M.E symptoms can be linked to this process.
I have been fully well for three years and Ive been practising as a Bowen Therapist for five years.
In 2007 I qualified in another therapy that works well with Bowen called the Emmett Technique. I
also practise as a psychology practitioner, having trained with The Optimum Health Clinic. I have
assisted on The Optimum Health Clinics 90 Day Programmes in Sheffield and Manchester. I
love my work as a therapist, working both one to one with clients and in a group setting, and
being able to contribute to others journeys to health. I work now predominantly with people with
M.E and am interested in developing work with people undergoing a spiritual emergence/ crisis/
kundalini awakening.
My secrets to recovery were learning to respond to my emotions, clearing old emotions and
following a spiritual path, yet learning to trust once it felt it had all gone terribly wrong! Also, to
learn again and again to come back to the present moment and to accept however that was, that
through acceptance things would naturally start to shift, but resistance would keep the situation
locked in place. You can recover, begin to believe you can and take positive action to help you
get there! It will probably require some financial investment and commitment to practising what
you learn, but in the end you can get there and it will have been so worth it. I now just wish that
the M.E journey and any change in consciousness may assist me in being of better service to
others and the world.
Like so many people, Frances tried a whole host of treatments and approaches through her
journey. But, she ultimately recognised that she would need to address the physical, the
structural, the emotional and the spiritual dimensions of her illness in order to fully heal.
Her journey was one of learning to confront and address the emotional demons in her past,
which she had never recognised as significant before, and was also a real path of spiritual and
intuitive awakening. As she herself says, she committed to that path fully and intensely perhaps
sometimes too intensely but ultimately it freed her in every way.
Francess experiences and her ability to move through them has given her a deep understanding
of herself and those around her and a clear sense of direction and purpose in her life. Frances
is an excellent example of how life-changing, mind-changing and powerfully transformational the
journey of recovery from M.E can ultimately be.
Open to the idea that the path of recovery is sometimes a mysterious one, and the best
way to navigate it is to gently open to it one step at a time
Learn to trust your instincts and intuitions and use them as your inner compass
Understand that what is happening to you can be seen in a broader perspective, and that
we are more than machines that need fixing there is much to learn about the human
system, and the healing path is an opportunity to learn to create balance within it
You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself.
The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life
is the relationship to the self.
Jo Coudert
The ending of a serious relationship in my early twenties resulted in me throwing myself heart,
body and soul into my job in the Travel and Tourism industry. I worked long hours and partied
hard trying to fill the void that the relationship had left. I was living in the fast lane, busy searching
for happiness and love externally. As long as I kept busy I wouldnt have to look at the painful
emotions resulting from the loss of first that relationship and then a subsequent one. However,
approaching thirty, my career (which had until this point provided an escape from my inner world)
started to lose its appeal. I became increasingly disillusioned with it, feeling I was making no
meaningful contribution to anything. I woke up on my thirtieth birthday feeling very ill and
unhappy, I had a bad cold which subsequently became flu, and I was in an unhappy relationship,
but I was too frightened to leave because I didnt want to be alone.
I knew something had to change. A chance conversation with a good friend provoked me into
questioning what I could do with my life. I had previously taken an evening class in psychology
and counselling and I felt I could do something with that. I had always felt inferior to people who
had university degrees, so I did some research, found a psychology degree, and applied. I hoped
to find a fulfilling career and simultaneously boost my self-esteem.
In 2000 I was accepted on the course but my body was by now giving up on me. I could no
longer get into work; the hour long journey physically exhausted me. I struggled to sit in my office
chair trying to function, praying that the telephone wouldnt ring, and crying if it did. I couldnt
walk to the fax machine and I felt overwhelmed by the amount of emails that required a response
from me. I just couldnt cope with my normal job or even the day-to-day activities that Id taken
for granted and had previously been able to do easily. I could not comprehend what was
happening. My body had always been obedient if I had a sore throat in the past I went to the
chemist, maybe had a day in bed, and I was back to normal; or I went to the doctors and took
antibiotics and was fine again after a week. But this was different, this permanent fogginess in
my head and the pain in my legs. I even became sensitive to light and sounds. I was so
frightened and it became challenging to explain to anyone what was going on. I looked so well,
perfectly normal, apart from maybe a little tired. I felt I needed to learn a whole new language to
communicate how I was feeling.
Thinking these symptoms were perhaps stress, I booked a holiday visiting friends in the Canary
Islands. I arrived on the Saturday and went to bed. I felt I needed to sleep for a day, and
planned the next the day to start visiting the islands and the beach doing all the fun things that a
holiday entails. The following day I remained in bed and I began to get worried. The third day I
was able to go out for a few hours and do some gentle walking, but again I had to rest in the
evening. This was the best it got for me on this holiday. I cried as I travelled back to the U.K. as I
knew something was seriously wrong but I just did not know what.
This was the spring before I was due to start my course in September. It was a bitter-sweet time
because I had this chance of a new life, but my body was falling down around me. I moved back
to my parents house and visited the doctor. By now my symptoms included extreme fatigue,
headaches, muscle aches and nausea. Initially it was thought to be IBS (irritable bowel
syndrome), then diabetes. Eventually I was given the diagnosis of M.E. My aim became to
resolve it before my University course began. I had seven months and the clock was ticking.
I began with psychotherapy as I didnt feel I could relate to anyone anymore. My family were
trying to be supportive, they were doing their best, but they really couldnt understand how to
support me. A nutritionist put me on an anti-candida diet that did give me a bit more energy after
about a month. However, the diet brought its own challenges, as I no longer ate the chocolate or
drank the alcohol I had previously used to numb my emotions. This meant I really had to sit with
them and start facing them. Around this time I also came across Reiki, which I did some training
in, and giving myself sessions definitely helped me to relax physically and emotionally.
By September 2001 I was able to start at University. I wasnt cured but was physically able to
make the journey into college. My life literally became studying two days a week, resting, and
doing the homework when I could. Id have good days and bad days and had to measure my
energy levels to ensure I didnt overdo things and exhaust myself that was what I wanted to
stop on a physical level.
On another level Reiki began to open me up to another part of myself, my spirit. M.E. had taken
away my career and my relationships, the external things with which I had been so strongly
identified, but what was left was something much more real and much more tangible. Something
awoke inside me that I had not given any space to before my true self. Prior to M.E. I really
didnt know myself in terms of my physical, mental and emotional needs.
Two and a half years after I was first diagnosed, my energy had significantly increased and I was
a lot better. In this period I did a huge amount of work on myself. The core of much of this was
really learning to love myself, and to not look to meet all of my needs through a relationship. I
read numerous self-help books, attended workshops and did a lot of personal therapy. Alex and I
were also in a relationship together, and we supported each other immensely in our personal
healing journeys. Learning to really love and accept myself was not an easy journey, but I truly
believe it was at the core of my healing.
However, at the end of this period, I didnt feel I was completely cured and I continued to monitor
my energy. My mind was so used to worrying about being ill that things had started to self
perpetuate. The newer NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques (which I know Alex in
time also trail blazed at the clinic) were only just beginning to be developed. With these new tools
to shift my residual mental patterns I then began to fully experience the benefits of the work that I
had already put in. It felt like I had finally been released from what was, on some level, a selfmade prison.
On reflection, the person that I was when I became sick and the person that emerged three and a
half years later are fundamentally different, and I am truly grateful for that. It was a hard journey
and I had some very long dark nights of the soul. There was lots of frustration, despair and
depression, but I have come through it and my life is so different.
My healing journey also changed my relationship with myself as I learned initially to like and then
to love myself, rather than expect someone else to fulfil my needs or make me happy and love
me. I am now passionate about authenticity. Whereas in the past I would have told a little white
lie because I was worried about upsetting people, I know now I have positive intentions and if
people choose to get upset I really do understand that it is their issue. To feel that you are
responsible for the happiness of others is a huge burden and it is so liberating to learn that this is
not the case.
M.E. forced me to be with myself and stay with myself. It is so easy to get caught up in all the
things that are taken away, but the massive thing that is given is time to sit with and truly get to
know ourselves. Life now (not just because I have my health back) is truly transformed,
compared with life before M.E.
Like so many people, Catherines life prior to M.E. had been one where she numbed herself to
her emotions using work, and attempted to fill her inner sense of emptiness through relationships.
When this became no longer possible for her, she was forced to deal with her underlying issues
and insecurities.
Her story is a great example of how the journey to recovery often becomes about so much more
than just regaining our health. In addition to returning herself to full health, Catherine went on in
some ways an even more important journey - learning to truly love herself.
Catherines story was also partly included because many of those who have read Alexs book,
WHY ME? My Journey to Health and Happiness, remember Catherine as someone he shared a
very important relationship with on his path to recovery, and we thought this was an ideal
opportunity to share more of her inspirational story.
Understand that a healthy relationship with yourself is central to your ability to be fully
well at all levels
Learn the value of self-care - invest the time in really getting to know yourself, and
understand we are all intrinsically special and worthy of love
Any emptiness you feel inside can never be filled by anyone or anything else. The
resources you seek are always inside of you, and once you feel whole, then you will be
much better able to have healthy and fulfilling close relationships
Stand up and walk out of your history.
When I first became sick I had just returned from acting in a play in which one of the characters I
was playing was a seven year old child. I found myself really breathless during the show, but I
just put this down to my fitness levels not being as good as they could have been, and so decided
to start doing some extra classes.
After the play finished I went to see friends in Cornwall for a few days. Walking along the cliff
front again I found myself very breathless and really quite shattered. I was completely unable to
withstand the level of activity of the rest of the group, many of whom were considerably older than
I was. When I returned to London I went to see a G.P. and had lots of tests done. They showed
that I was very anaemic and so I started taking iron tablets and various other medications.
I was working in the theatre in quite a responsible job, in charge of the figures and the money for
twenty ushers. I was also doing six shows a week in the evenings and I was by now feeling
increasingly exhausted. I had begun having muscle pain, and then developed a series of throat
infections, pain behind my eyes and terrible, terrible headaches I felt about ninety years old.
It was apparent that although my iron levels must have been returning to normal as a result of the
medication, I was very definitely not. But my symptoms were not going and in fact were getting
worse. Tests showed my iron levels had indeed corrected, but by now I was having what I would
describe as fits. I told the doctor about this and the headaches and the pain behind my eyes
and he told me that I may have a brain tumour.
My figures at work were all over the place by now, and that evening I knew it was only a matter of
time before my manager pulled me in to find out what was happening. By affecting the figures of
the ushers, I was affecting the figures of the whole theatre. I went into his office and burst into
tears. I couldnt take it anymore. That was my last show.
I had worked incredibly hard and fought my whole life to get into acting, and now I was having to
admit defeat. I couldnt sustain my life, and I couldnt look after myself. I needed to be in a place
where I could rest, and not have to worry about day-to-day things like cooking and cleaning,
washing and running a house. I went to stay with my family in Wales for six months.
As an Asian woman I have always been taught to put other peoples needs first, to keep the faith
and to keep up appearances. Having friends over and going to gatherings is a big part of Asian
culture. Back in Wales when my parents had friends over, if I was well enough to go downstairs
and meet them, I would then be asked questions and have to make up this life of shows and
auditions that I was supposedly living in London. It was a complete lie.
I wanted to tell people what was happening, especially family friends, many of whom were
doctors. I wanted to say I wasnt well and that this was the situation. I could imagine them
perhaps being sympathetic, but my family believed it was impossible for an Asian woman to have
an illness that they could not understand, and also that we could not show that there was
anything wrong in the family. The messages I received were that I was ill because I was not
doing a conventional job, and that if I learned to control my thoughts and think that I was well then
I would be, because there was clearly nothing wrong with me.
I saw a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) practitioner who diagnosed me with
hyperventilation syndrome. I was hyperventilating because I was anxious, but in fact this was a
symptom of the illness and not the cause of it. I returned to London believing that if I developed
symptoms again then it was my fault. With hindsight I simply didnt understand what was
happening to me, but I was doing the best I could at the time.
I recovered some level of health and I started doing a few shows a week thinking I could sustain
it. After three months my symptoms started coming back. It was quite a gradual thing, but I could
feel them creeping up on me. A locum G.P. in London mentioned the possibility of M.E., and so I
began to research this on the internet. I then read the magazine Action for M.E. and responded
to an advert for a clinic in London, run by a specialist rheumatologist. I was given the Myers
cocktail which is an infusion of vitamins and magnesium injections.
On my third appointment at the clinic my Mum accompanied me because she was by now
becoming rather worried. She asked for a prognosis and we were told that I would probably
never get well and all I had on my side was the fact that I was so young. This was devastating. I
hoped for understanding and sympathy from my Mum as a result of this, but instead was met with
the same barrage of beliefs about there clearly being nothing wrong with me as all the tests had
come back normal, and that if I thought I was well then I would be. Again, I felt it was all my fault.
I was still working, but having to take quite a lot of time off and starting to feel panicky about
money, rent and bills. I knew I needed to do more because there was clearly something wrong. I
became a patient at The Optimum Health Clinic in London, initially undertaking their nutritional
protocol. I then began to explore more fully the role psychology was playing in my illness,
working with Alex.
Following a family holiday at Centre Parks, I developed a severe ear infection. The pain was so
horrendous that it caused vomiting. The pressure of the infection caused a tiny rupture in my
eardrum which took over a month to heal with antibiotics and regular suction from the E.N.T.
specialist at the hospital. That began a series of over twenty-five ear infections. People used to
ask me what it was I didnt want to hear, and I would laugh, but I then began to see a pattern
emerging. Every time I visited my family I returned with another infection. It was so direct and it
never once failed to happen in that pattern.
It took me quite a while in sessions with Alex to open up to the role my emotions and psychology
were really playing in my illness. Until that point I had found it very difficult to see how my history
and my childhood were affecting my health, but after really opening to see the link, I decided to
create some distance between myself and my family. Miraculously the ear infections all stopped.
That solidified my emergent belief that my symptoms had a deeper meaning. I started to talk
more openly about my family in sessions with Alex . I could no longer maintain the faade - it was
just layer upon layer of lies.
The realisation that the biggest contributory factor in my illness was my past, my upbringing, and
in many ways the treatment I had received as a child, pulled my whole reality from under my feet.
It was a huge shock, such a big thing and I didnt know what to do with it. I had spent my whole
life trying to run away from these feelings and now I was overwhelmed by them. I knew that I
needed to ask for help but that was horrendously hard for me something I had never done
before. Being fiercely independent had been my way of coping.
Under the guidance of Alex and Anna, I spent two months on the road staying with friends. As a
result of their wonderful support, their nurturing and holding, I learned to be vulnerable which
enabled me to go into my experiences and my past. I was in a very dark place and I felt I had
literally lost everything. But I had hit rock bottom and was starting to come up.
Losing the ability to function in the way I had before, forced me to undergo internal changes in
order to come out the other side. Death and rebirth is a fascinating thing. It was terrifying in the
middle of it and yet there was something incredibly alive about being in that place.
The more courageous I was in being able to do that the more I discovered what was real. When
everything was stripped away, be it status, relationships, money or career, there was something
that was left, and that was a much deeper aspect of myself. The more I processed emotionally
the more my energy came back and it felt that within this a tiny flower was being born. I was in
touch with an extraordinary inner resource, something far more real that anything I had ever
experienced, which enabled me to face things I would never have thought possible.
I came back into my body, this place that I hadnt been for most of my life because of all the
fearful feelings and emotions there, and I connected with this precious, nascent thing; something
so fragile and special. It was my spirit. Previously I had taken my career and my religion to be my
identity, but I changed how I related to the world; to people, to friends and to relationships. It was
a process of learning how it felt to be in me, and also as the months passed, how it felt to be well.
In December I visited Findhorn in Scotland where I was busy from 9am until 9pm doing physical
things and feeling very energised. I was well and I had a wellness that I had never had before, a
quite amazing feeling. I now work for Alternatives in Piccadilly, an organisation that has
workshops and talks every week regarding spirituality and happiness, health and creativity. I am
also going back into acting but it feels unbelievably different. I am doing it because it is part of
what I want to do and it is driven by my instincts, my intuition and my whole being. I am doing it
because I love it.
In Renus own words, she had never considered the role that her upbringing and belief systems,
her past and the emotions around it, had had on her illness. It is very easy to assume that when
the physical body is not functioning as it should, that it is because there are pure, simple physical
reasons. And whilst this is also true, we cannot underestimate the role that emotional and
psychological health have on physical health.
The old model was that mind and body were separate. We cannot now ignore the scientific
evidence that this is not true. Nor, it seems, when we are working on our own recovery, can we
ignore how much of a part these aspects of ourselves play in health and healing. Renu did a
great deal of work on herself physically and from a nutritional and functional point of view but it
is interesting that in her view, it was recognising the emotional changes that needed to happen
that ultimately allowed her to heal.
Allowing ourselves to open to the role of our mind, emotions and past experiences in our health is
often very threatening for us and it can sometimes feel overwhelming at first. However, by getting
the practical and emotional support she needed from the people around her, Renu was ultimately
able to free herself.
Be willing, where relevant, to look at your past, and the role it may have played in your
current situation
Learn to ask for help when you need it addressing issues is not something that you
have to do alone
Understand that your emotions are there for a reason, and they need to be understood,
processed and released
Sit mens sana in corpore sano
A sound mind in a sound body
The eighteen months leading up to my getting sick was an extremely stressful time. Id not
long ended a seventeen year relationship and I was piling on the work to pay for my first
mortgage living on my own. My Dad then got severely ill and after a distressing four month
stint in hospital, he subsequently died. Towards the end of this time I began to get lots of
colds and flu. I then went down with a really serious bout of flu which turned into bronchitis. I
was in bed for three and a half to four months with this; it completely floored me and basically
didnt go away. I had had a hunch that there was something not right in my body for a couple
of years prior to this. Id been through a very stressful time relationship-wise and was aware
that my energy was going through highs and lows. Id visited the doctor who said I was just
sensitive, that I needed to look after myself, and basically sent me away.
As I began to recover from the bronchitis I decided to go on holiday to India to further
recuperate. I had some vaccinations for this but had a very severe reaction to them. My
immune system was so low they just made me even more ill. I had a temperature of 102 for
a week and I had to put ice on myself.
I had been working for some years as a psychotherapist and healer and my professional
supervisor suggested that I visited a blood microscopist to gain more insight into what was
happening to me. As a result I was diagnosed as having mercury poisoning. An indicator of
this was that none of the antibiotics I was taking and I was taking a lot were having any
effect on the bronchitis. I was also diagnosed as having systemic candida. I was promptly
sent off to a dentist to have all my mercury fillings removed. I had them all out but, it
transpired, rather too quickly. The release of the mercury during the removal process was
too much for my system to cope with. I was completely overwhelmed by the candida and
became really seriously ill. I felt very let down by my dentist at the time.
I really struggled. My system was extremely low and candida is a very nasty illness having
many of the symptoms of M.E. with the mind fog and severe digestive disorder. I looked
quite yellow and on a daily basis could digest very, very little. I was on a diet of rice cakes
and water and very little else and lost an awful lot of weight. I walked around as if in a
goldfish bowl with Vaseline around the edges and I was the goldfish inside. It was very
disorientating and I really wasnt with it at all.
To give the specialists that were seeing me their dues, this was 1997 and there wasnt much
known about M.E. or candida. An anti-candida diet of no sugar, no wheat and no alcohol got
rid of the candida, but I continued to have quite a stressful life. I was in a very stressful
relationship and I still had this driven quality. Id go for about nine months relatively, but not
really, well and then crash again, have another bout of candida, go on another diet and take
another load of supplements. Id then get better again and go back to drinking a bit and
eating all the wrong sorts of foods, have another stressful period, and then crash again. I
wasnt really given the sort of advice that could have supported me to really maintain a
balanced state of health. I was pinning what I was then calling Chronic Fatigue on the
candida. In fact when two healers told me that I had M.E. I was really angry with them. I
didnt want that label. I wasnt dealing with the underlying factors of the illness; on a
physiological level, what was causing the candida to keep replenishing itself, and also
psychologically, the patterns that were causing me to be driven and push myself in that way.
About six or seven years into booming and busting Id reached a rather uncomfortable
plateau. I was sort of doing alright, but I wasnt really. I had lost touch with all my friends and
I wasnt able to reach out and describe to them what Id got, or get help and so again I began
to feel very let down. My social life was absolutely zilch. I was managing to continue working
by literally resting in the morning and resting in the afternoon if I didnt get my afternoon
sleep I was just completely wasted, and I didnt go out in the evening. Working in the healing
profession I was used to being a giver and a do-er and it was very hard to effectively become
the patient.
At some point I realised I was making a big compromise and that I had normalised a quality
of life that was really subnormal. I decided to do something about it and I found myself yet
another blood microscopist. She was helpful in the sense that she helped me to understand
that my adrenals were knackered and that if my body was in a place of stress then it was
creating a prime breeding ground for candida. She prescribed a very, very powerful form of
homeopathy, an American form. It has a very good reputation but my system was extremely
sensitive, partly because of the M.E. and partly due to me being a healer, and it made me far,
far worse. She wasnt there to support me or manage the treatment and so again I felt let
down. During this time I couldnt tolerate light or noise or crowds, any sort of stimulation.
Just thinking of talking to friends exhausted me and took me into overwhelm.
At this someone recommended Gill Jacobs to me, who is considered rather an expert on
candida, and she suggested I go and see Niki Gratrix at The Optimum Health Clinic. Niki
helped me to understand the way my metabolism runs, which was very fast (Metabolic
Typing describes it as being a fast oxidiser) was compounding the state of stress that I was
in at the time. I started a high protein, low carbohydrate diet which effectively slowed my
system down. The protein component took longer to digest and I therefore had more ongoing
energy available. I began to feel my system was more robust.
Prior to this I had been doing a lot of work with meditation. Coming very much from my
experience as a body worker, therapist and healer I am really interested in how the mind and
body connect. Meditation is a state of relaxed, centred awareness where you feel not only in
touch with yourself but part of a much bigger whole. There is nothing mystical about it, it can
be a spiritual experience but there is nothing difficult, it is entirely natural. The kind of
meditation that I teach would probably be called mindfulness meditation, which means that
you are nice and relaxed and you are also noticing. Noticing your thoughts, noticing your
feelings and noticing the things that happen to you. You can check out when you are being
ridden by a feeling or sensation and you can just think, Okay, this has just happened to me,
it is not everything that I am.
One of the things that kept me hopeful that I would get better at some point was that after
meditating for a while Id notice that my eyesight would refocus, my brain would come back
clearly and I would feel more connected; I wouldnt have that disconnected feeling that you
have when you get M.E.
The nutritional work I had begun was mutually supportive of the psychological work that I was
now doing with Anna at The Optimum Health Clinic. I began to understand how the
experiences I was having in my meditation fitted into the overall system of my recovery.
Processes and techniques I learned there were aiding me in further grounding myself,
dealing with and minimising the stress and anxiety that I might be having, and working with
my past history and some of the root causes of my M.E. This work really helped shift me
forward. I wanted to train with the clinic and I began a psychology course. I was concerned
that I wouldnt be able to manage a two-day stint because I hadnt been with a group of
people for two days for seven or eight years. But, I was amazed to find that fairly quickly I
was feeling stronger and stronger.
There came a point during the training when I realised that my health really needed to
become my priority and I decided to move home and take three months completely off work.
It was during that time of moving, having a complete change of circumstances and also doing
all my home decoration, that my system seemed to take another shunt forward and really
make a big recovery. Whereas previously physical work had made me totally wired and
unable to sleep my body was now much, much stronger and by doing more I was healthily
tired at night and sleeping much more deeply.
When I started back in my practice again and wiped the dust and paint from my hands, it
really came as a shock and a surprise that I could do so much. It had seemed to happen
when I wasnt watching. As I became more conscious of what I could do and feel fine with it,
so my body continued to accelerate at quite a pace. It was as if there was a shining light
bursting out of me, a sense of lightness and freedom. I remember being in the park, taking
my dog Bella for a walk, and everything started to clear. I felt connected with everything and
I started running with Bella my legs felt really strong and light and I had an image of a giant,
black crow that had had me in its claws for all those years having released me and flown off,
and I just cried my heart out. There were tears of joy, tears of grief for the horrid time Id
been through, and it felt to me, and still does, that life is such a gift, every day, when you
have been that badly ill.
I honestly believe that when I really embraced the opportunity to grow and learn from the
illness, that was when I started getting better. I have had to really embody what I knew in
theory and what I was teaching to other people, being comfortable in my own skin, being
grounded and connected to the world, finding balance in myself and feeling at peace in
myself. I had to find that at times when I could not do anything, to reach into myself and find
support there; really the best place support is found.
As far as the future goes, at 55 I still feel the skys the limit! In addition to enjoying life a lot
more and having a little more fun, Im also looking at expanding my practice. I love it and I
am passionate about the work I do.
Linda is now running meditation courses specifically for those with M.E. by conference call
(meaning you can participate by telephone from home) in conjunction with the clinic. Details
at www.MeditationForLife.co.uk
Linda had already done a fair bit of work on herself emotionally, as well as having worked on her
nutrition. One of the secrets for her was understanding even more deeply the relationship
between these two areas. It was the physical work and nutrition that corrected the underlying
imbalance and gave her body the fuel it needed to heal and repair, and the emotional and
psychological work which allowed her body to be in the optimum state it needed to be able to
heal.
Additionally, Linda really put into practice all that she knew, and had the courage and willingness
to truly apply it to herself. We can know what we need, but still fail to give that to ourselves. Linda
had to learn true self-care, and the practising of all that she intellectually held to be true.
Understand that health requires the integration and working together of mind and body
Recognise and let go of the patterns that drain and damage you whether that is overhelping, over-achieving, or being overly critical and harsh with yourself
Meditation can play a very important role in recovery, and a daily practice of connecting
to ourselves and the world around us is often an essential ingredient to our healing
By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go
I was diagnosed with M.E. in 1999 but I hadnt been well since I had glandular fever, ten years
previously, when I was seventeen. Id just started doing my A-Levels when this illness started
and I needed eighteen months off college. I didnt give myself a chance to recover. Throughout
my twenties I went from one virus to another and my health was slowly declining every time.
My idea of normal was to get colds and flu all the time. Ive never had brilliant health, ever since
being an infant I was plagued with asthma, eczema and allergies. They were never enough to
stop me going to school or participating in life normally. I was treated quite a lot with hefty
medicine and I was never as strong as my peers. I was in London after my A-Levels, doing my
degree and was in hospital quite a lot with health problems. On top of that every time I got a cold
it would get quite serious quite quickly and a lot of time I was in A and E.
I got salmonella food poisoning at one stage, went to see the doctor and he looked horrified and
asked how long Id been coughing up blood and I told him a week! Looking back I feel shocked.
He said he thought I might have pneumonia and I realised it was serious at that stage. I left
London and went back to York to my family doctor and he confirmed it. I stayed in hospital then.
So it was quite serious and I had just kept on going despite the fact that I was seriously ill!
I had lots of infections and courses of antibiotics. I had some quite nasty ones as well; often what
would start with a cold would escalate quite quickly into something worse. That was normal for
me. When Id got my degree I knew this was something I wasnt going to be able to keep
ignoring just through sheer willpower. I look back horrified that I kept going for as long as I did. I
think mentally I was saying to myself that when I got my degree it would be okay then and of
course it wasnt. I got my degree and that was when my health quickly declined.
I was in the centre of London doing a degree in fashion design, which is a full-on degree to do. I
loved it, but I had to work to support myself as its not cheap living in London! My first year I was
working two lots of double shifts every weekend. In the second year I started working in a club
and I worked from six until three in the morning. On a Monday, Wednesday and Saturday I
worked from six until finish, which was often five in the morning, which was
so much. I was doing reception so I was standing on my feet for often ten hours, then getting up
and going to college after. I remember thinking that if I got to bed for half past three, that would
be okay, that was normal to me then! Id get up at eight and get myself to college. It was insane,
It was such a drain for my body working those hours. I also had this really ambitious personality.
I was on such a hectic routine. Then I decided I wasnt getting enough exercise and started
walking to college, so I put another hour on my day walking!
I was hanging on by a thread thinking that Id finish my degree at this point and everything would
suddenly magically disappear and Id get better. It didnt get better and I started collapsing in the
centre of London just fainting. It happened a couple of times outside on the street, it happened
in a restaurant. It happened four or five times, I was quite used to fainting and didnt really pay
that much attention.
I suddenly noticed that I couldnt speak on the phone without getting a temperature. I couldnt
manage simple things and my concentration was worse than ever. It had been quite bad at
college. Looking back Ive got a lot of compassion for my younger self, not realising how ill I was
and working so hard. Things like pattern drafting were really hard for me. I would measure a
seam, put it on the pattern and literally have forgotten what I had just measured. That happened
all the time, everything took me four times as long as it ought to have done, which I got cross with
myself about. It was a terrible cycle. I started collapsing and having temperatures for doing the
slightest exertion. I went to see my GP as by this point I started to realise something was
seriously wrong.
I was very lucky because he knew me well and had the measure of who I was. He was used to
me bounding in and saying things like Im going to New York. I just crawled into the surgery and
said, Listen, theres something very wrong now. We talked about it and he said he thought I
had chronic fatigue, and I agreed I thought that was probably what I had.
I went to see a specialist the following week. I was in a position at that time to go privately and it
was the first time Id actually sat down with somebody and discussed what had happened in the
last ten years; the list of everything that had happened with all my illnesses. It transpired that out
of those ten years, five of them Id been well for and five of them I hadnt. It was just normal to
me but I was shocked to see that. The specialist said I needed complete rest and that it would
take about forty-eight months to recover.
I hadnt realised at that stage that thats four years. I dont know why I didnt realise, it just didnt
sound like four years, but to be honest I had no idea of the implications of that initial diagnosis. I
think its probably a good job that I didnt realise it was serious. My life was quite extreme
anyway. In my personal life at that time, Id gone from being in student accommodation, to being
engaged to this banker and living on Sloane Square, and everything was quite surreal anyway!
With this diagnosis I realised I couldnt work and decided to write a novel instead, rather than
thinking too much about resting. It didnt dawn on me what the implications were. In the weeks
following my diagnosis things got worse and worse quite quickly. My concentration got very poor
and all the awful things associated with being very ill; my breath was bad, my skin and hair were
awful. I felt I looked dreadful and I lost a lot of weight.
I stayed in London for two more years and was very miserable. I was in a relationship that I didnt
feel I could get out of, Id lost all of my confidence and I was physically incredibly weak. I felt
trapped by the city; everything required me getting up and was a tube ride away. I started to use
a wheelchair a bit which was terrifying. I think about it now and feel choked at how frightened I
was and how much effort was required to have a shower or put a bit of make up on. Heating up
food was almost too much to manage.
I can remember so many periods just sitting on the kitchen floor, having got to the kitchen I felt I
didnt have the energy to do anything about it and just lay there for two or three hours. I
remember at one stage I was on the bed and wasnt completely covered up with the blanket. My
hand on the pillow was really cold and I put off putting my hand underneath the cover, the effort of
just doing that was too much and I got colder and colder. Looking back its really frightening.
There were lots of times where I would cry over those years, with just frustration, weakness and
incredible debilitation.
I moved back with my Dad when my relationship was over. I realised I was stunting my recovery
by staying in that relationship and by staying in London. My Dad said I could live with him. I
decided that was the thing to do and it turned out to be a really good move. In 2001 I came back
to York and stayed with my Dad in the house that Id grown up in and was in my old bedroom. It
felt very safe and a good place to be.
I got into yoga through a programme for yoga for asthmatics and I really enjoyed it. It gave me
the childish enjoyment of being in a gym class and feeling flexible, doing the lotus and the back
bend. I kept it going. When I was very poorly Id do a minute or two minutes a day, standing in
the tree pose for a little bit or doing the sun salutation. I liked the way it made me feel.
Life picked up a bit. I started having acupuncture, which was good. I started getting energy and
moving more again. I started to do some nice things with my Dad, like ballroom dancing! It was
worth spending four days in bed afterwards to have a really great couple of hours on that
Wednesday night. We loved it. I also started meditating and had some CBT in Leeds which was
fantastic for me. I didnt realise I was actually having therapy!
I remember she said to me, Cognitive behavioural therapy, like what were doing, and I hadnt
realised thats what we were doing! I was really lucky because she was able to give me good
practical advice. I needed some sort of structure for my recovery and this therapy was very
helpful for that.
Id begun to realise that I was very stressed about being ill and that that was making the
experience of being ill far worse than it needed to be. Even though I could intellectualise that, I
couldnt solve it. The therapist in Leeds had said try meditation so I did a Google search for
meditation in York and it came up with these classes that I went along to. I didnt realise they
were Buddhist. Again, things dont dawn on me for quite a long time! The first series of
teachings I went to were about transforming anger into patience. I realised that what I was
feeling was frustration, which is very close to anger, because its still about dissatisfaction with
your situation or your desires being unfulfilled. It was really helpful.
That was the moment that I realised that most of my behaviours were habitual and about
familiarity. I was reacting in ways Id always reacted because I didnt realise there was a choice.
During the teaching I realised that I could accept the situation and could respond to it how I chose
to, and that was a revelation to me.
All these changes were impacting my health. Over four years I was doing the yoga. I started
seeing a naturopath in 2003 and that really helped, especially beginning to understand the idea
that the body can heal itself given the right circumstances. I realised I hadnt been giving my
body the right circumstances to heal itself.
At that stage I stopped taking antibiotics. I was still having so many problems with viruses, but I
stopped the antibiotics and just let my body get very ill at times. I hadnt realised that the body
actually needs to have a certain state of vitality to be properly ill. I had some really dramatic
healing crises. For example, once Id just had a holiday in Greece for a week in 2004 and I was
feeling great. I came back to London and Id decided to fly to Gatwick, had the whole thing
arranged and I was going to my friends middle daughters christening
and I was going to be the godmother. I was supposed to be the godmother for her first daughter
but I was too poorly at the time to go to the christening. This time I was well and here I was at the
christening. I had a tan and felt good. Id just managed to get into my godmother duties and then
I started to feel a little funny. Theyd known me for a long time and I asked if theyd mind if I went
and lay down for a bit. I went to lie down and realised I was very ill. I started being sick, it got
very violent, and a couple of hours later I was fitting. I lost consciousness and I was in hospital
for five days. It was just a bug, but my body couldnt cope with it.
Alex: I think the thing is, when the bodys very sensitive, it doesnt take a lot to push it over the
edge. Its also why its important that when people are doing nutritional programmes that theyre
working with specialists in the area and they do things very gently and carefully.
I started seeing a homeopath in 2005 which was really helpful. Along with meditation, yoga and
the other things Id been doing were gently nudging the system back into vitality. I wasnt joking
about writing a novel; I did want to write during this time of illness. I loved it and that was one of
the really important things about this healing journey. I have written a lot creatively. For me its
been really important to have something to do, something to focus my creativity on, because it
feels like its who I am. I got a lot out of doing local educational courses and a residential writing
course once a year. Even though it whacked me by the end of it, it was still worth doing for what I
got out of it and as something to look forward to.
After three or four years I was well enough to move out of my Dads. I was able to be
independent again, and to cook and clean for myself. That felt like a big shift. I moved to the
centre of town and that was really great.
I was helping my Dad in his shop part time, Id started looking after children which was something
I really liked to do. I was doing a lot of yoga on my own and enjoying it. I went on a yoga holiday
in 2002 with a friend of mine and loved it. I was actually still quite weak at that stage but was able
to do a yoga class in the morning and then lie on the beach, so it was heavenly. I came back and
practised most days, just a little bit and very gradually I got stronger. This was immensely
pleasing.
There was an edge to working in Dads shop that at times felt like going backwards. Generally I
could be with my Dad in the shop, be having a laugh and it was sweet helping my Dad. But
sometimes, especially if I was doing a job I didnt like cleaning silver or polishing the watches, Id
just think, Ah, I was doing this when I as fourteen and I didnt even like doing it then!
Thats why I worked so hard, invested so much in my degree, student loan, etc. and actually
never ended up where I thought I would be! There was a real low point when Id come a long
way on my healing journey already and suddenly I had this crisis of, My god, Ive still got so far to
go. That was really hard and came absolutely out of the blue. I remember for a few weeks I was
really struggling with that idea of seeing how far Id come, but still seeing how far away normal life
was. It felt almost too far away to bear.
I first met Alex Howard in 2003 in Yorkshire when he was doing a seminar there. I had a really
good inner critic, which he brought to light in the seminar. I then got back in touch three years
later and came to do the, Within and Beyond M.E. workshop with Alex in London in 2006 (which
in time developed into The 90 Day Programme), which had a huge effect. I realised I was very
nearly there, life was almost back together, but something was blocking me. I knew I was nearly
there at that stage, and thats when I went to see Alex for some crazy therapy sessions! Although
pretty well, I still wasnt there yet and I was really fearful of being ill again.
Alex: It was really clear to me that your actual physical health was basically pretty good,
although I know you were still getting quite a few symptoms and sleep problems. It was a
situation of somebody who was stuck in a mindset of constantly checking their body, and so
constantly driving up their nervous system. Its almost like we develop that way of being because
we dont want to get sick, the trouble is we actually end up perpetuating the one thing we dont
want to have which is symptoms of the illness.
I connected much more into my emotions and body in a healthy way. Alex asked what I actually
wanted to do now. I said that I wanted to go out partying, to stay out late, and not worry. I wanted
to have cocktails, smoke and have Haagen Dazs without guilt!
Alex: At that point, as a therapist, its always quite an interesting judgement call as to whether to
encourage that kind of behaviour! It seemed so important that Ester gave herself permission to
go and do that. If you think about a pendulum which has swung so far in one direction that lifes
constantly being controlled with should and ought, that to come back into balance, the
pendulum actually has to swing in the other direction. This is to basically go and do what you
wanted to do. All those years you hadnt been able to go out and have fun, that it seemed to me
completely appropriate to go out, drink, smoke and eat Haagen Dazs and party till five in the
morning! But to do it because that was what you genuinely wanted to do. For other people if you
connect them back into their body it might be the last thing they want to go and do, it might be
The important point was that actually at a certain stage of recovery you have to let go of all the
fears and anxieties. To really listen to your body and emotions and what you really want to do.
It was an interesting few weeks, quite chaotic and it felt longer than it was. I remember that I
went salsa dancing with some friends in Manchester and it was a big night and a big deal for me.
I dont think it was especially for them. We were coming back in the car, and looking at the sky, I
was thinking the sky was a funny colour and it wasnt till we were back in York and I realised it
was dawn! Wed been out dancing all night! It was a funny period, because I stayed up late. I
hired box sets of series and watched them all night long. I did eat a lot of ice cream, obviously
Haagen Dazs! I like the caramel, pecan vanilla one, with digestives, banana and Baileys on the
top! Like having hot chocolate with rum! Drink of the gods! So I did lots of things like that and I
did feel a little bit out of control.
Alex: I think in a kind of controlled way, you were out of control, and that was why it was
important, because that was what actually needed to happen to bring the balance back. I
remember you complaining a few times that you felt so sick and did you really have to eat so
much ice cream! I made the point that that was part of your prescription and if you wanted ice
cream, you ate it!!
Best of all I wasnt ill! I needed that reassurance; I could go out and do these things. Id feel
hung-over and tired, but not M.E. tired. The thing that was important was for the pendulum to
swing properly back into balance, because I naturally stopped wanting to do those things
Alex: I think thats the important thing to remember, if somebody has a truly addictive personality
Id never encourage such a thing. But if someone doesnt have that, theres a point where you
eat ice cream, you smoke, drink and party so much that as long as youre a balanced, healthy
person, youre naturally going to develop a more healthy relationship to these things.
There was a certain amount of chaos. I realised Id been clinging onto my systems to get me
through the day. But they werent helping me and once theyd gone I did feel like Id been
unravelled.
Alex: You did find the place of balance again which was important. But I guess its also
important to point out that things like your sleep (which had been an ongoing problem up until this
time), actually came back into balance and started to improve quite significantly.
I think it was probably last June or July when you asked me what I wanted to do now I was well. I
wasnt very pleased with how it looked, because for a long time I had thought so much about how
I wanted to be well, and yet life just goes on and I felt like I didnt have anything to show for it. I
had a healthy body and a much calmer mind, but I thought at the time about how it had taken at
least seven years to get well and I hadnt written a novel or done anything productive. So being
well didnt look how I thought it would.
I also wanted to have some kind of party to celebrate being well. It was a funny feeling and took
a little bit of getting used to. I spent a bit of time back and forth from London thinking about
whether I wanted to get back into fashion although I realised that I really didnt. The person whod
started the journey wasnt the same person who was at the end.
Fashion didnt feel like a worthwhile use of my time. My yoga teacher said to do yoga teaching
training and that Id be great. Id still been writing for children and really enjoying that and doing
lots of work with children. I started looking into things and thinking about what would be the next
step. I didnt want to do a PGCE though. I thought maybe I could be a teaching assistant
because then I get to work with children, often children with difficulties. That would feel
worthwhile, but also Id get to leave at the end of the day without having to do all the preparation
that teachers have to do. I could leave and do something else like teach yoga.
Before summer last year I did some careers investigation and looked into what really fitted my
profile for who I am now. I like being active, being outside, being with children and teaching. I did
a mixture of courses last year, for being a teaching assistant and an AS-level in Anatomy and
Physiology, because I thought, Ill need that if I want to be a yoga teacher. I started assisting
my yoga teacher in York. Things really changed. It is amazing when you set yourself on a path
and its the right path, I really think that the universe conspires to help you! At least thats been
my experience.
I also won a BBC writing competition in January for a bedtime story, which was really nice. I
wrote a story about a little boy called Mo, and it was all in rhyme. I had this idea where it was set
in a vaguely prehistoric time before the world was properly sorted out and all the animals were in
So the rabbits were falling out of the nest and he puts the rabbits back. He finds a frog in a
burrow and the frog is all cross and dry. He puts all the animals back in the right bed; its very
cute and all in rhyme. Its one of those things where you read it and it trips off the tongue, yet
theres been dozens of work hours involved with it. I was pleased with it and it was nice to win, to
be on the radio and on television. Everyone made a fuss of me and I enjoyed that!
I was assisting both of my yoga teachers by this point. There was a girl in York who was teaching
yoga to children which I thought was great. I emailed her to tell her so and she said to come and
help! So I went to help her and we became really good friends. She was a dancer and had a
contract in Covent Garden to fulfil, so asked if Id run her school yoga. I did that last term. Also I
was a teaching assistant; I had this wonderful place in a local comprehensive and started working
with teenagers with behavioural problems which I found immensely interesting and enjoyable.
I started volunteering at a local school for children with special educational needs and with a
group of children once a week with different learning needs. I got quite interested in children on
the autistic spectrum and did specialist study on that. Things really started working and people
started approaching me to ask if I could teach them yoga.
Alex: I think its also a great example of being in the flow - of attracting things into your life that
you want to attract.
My problem was not attracting them, but keeping them in balance! It was a better problem to
have though! I have big plans for the future. I spent five weeks in the summer in Austria on a
yoga teacher training course. I got out bed at five in the morning each day. It was amazing,
absolutely amazing. Ive never had energy like it in my life and with back-to-back activities. Just
so much exercise! When the course finished I stayed for a few days at the end and found myself
waking up at four in the morning, wide awake, my body diffused with oxygen, and went for a two
mile hike! Had a yoga lesson, walked up the other side of the mountain, watched the sun come
up, did my yoga class, and Ive never felt energy like it and its still with me, which is fabulous. My
plans now are to work supply as a teaching assistant, teach yoga and build yoga work around
that and keep writing when I can.
A key lesson has been gratitude for life now, and very easy joy. Its so easy to be pleased,
because I can ride my bike and do things I couldnt do, and I appreciate that so much more. I
think that Im really well equipped now to deal with whatever life throws at me, almost nothing
knocks me, not my core stability.
There are no relationships in my life that I dont want to be there, in terms of personal intimate
relationships. Im clear about what my needs are and what I want. My relationships with my
family are so strong and it was wonderful to come back to York what a gift to spend time with
my father as an adult and what a gift to let my Mum mother me, because I never did when I was
younger. Ive also learnt a lot about communication. I havent got the time to mess about; Ive
developed a way of getting what I want without upsetting anybody. I live in the flow more. I think
that truly Im the best version of myself, a much better version than if Id just stayed in London on
that path. I feel softer and more compassionate. I feel a lot of love and energy, and I feel its
directed out rather than back in. I feel really kindly towards everybody else. I really believe that
people do the best they can with the information and resources that are available to them at the
time. I really believe that and it makes communication with everybody easy.
I do live in the moment now. I noticed when I was in Austria I was part of the group that runs up
the mountain rather than staying in for extra revision, or swimming in the lake even though its a
bit cold, just to experience it. Before I would have been too fearful to do that and even before that
I would have been too conscientious! Now Im neither of those things, I just want to experience
that moment.
Alex: Its really embracing the now. Whether its the now you wanted or not, its important to
actually embrace it regardless, because it is the only place that happiness really is.
Esthers is a wonderful story to end with. She had worked very hard to get well creating a space
that would allow her to concentrate on getting well, engaging in physical and emotional
treatments to help her to come back into balance and committing to practices like yoga and
meditation in order to help facilitate her healing. She strengthened herself in every way and yet
what she had not yet done when she saw Alex was allow herself to let go of the need to control
every aspect of her life and self.
When we get ill, we quite rightly feel the need to take ourselves in hand, to make changes and to
commit to a plan to get well. Yet at a certain point, as we have seen in many of these stories,
there is a point where you have to trust and leap. You have to let go and risk living again. This
was Esthers final lesson, and it is also ours.
M.E. is an illness with different stages to it, and of course what is right at one stage can be quite
wrong for us at another. The lesson of Esthers story is not that we can all go and party our way
to recovery, but as hopefully you have seen through the twelve lessons, different lessons are
relevant at different stages. Towards the end of the path, we need to have the courage to
celebrate and to live again, and Esthers story beautifully demonstrates this.
Have a plan, and commit to those things that will help you create change
Give 100% of yourself to every step of the recovery process
Allow yourself to have more of what you need time, support, rest, fun (in whatever ways
you can)
When you reach the stage where it is time to Let go and party, embrace this wholeheartedly
When we let go, the universe can provide us with surprises, synchronicities and
abundance that we could never have planned and often never have dreamed of
Stories of healing and the power of the human spirit:
- Why I Survive AIDS (Niro Markoff Asistent)
- The Journey (Brandon Bays)
- Whose Hands are These? (Gene Egidio)
- My Soul Purpose (Heidi von Heltz)
- The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Dan Millman)
- Mutant Message Down Under (Marlo Morgan)
- Still Me (Christopher Reeve)
- My Life and Vision (Meir Schneider)
- The Healer (Jack Temple)
- Grace and Grit (Ken Wilber)
Books to feed your mind (Easier Reading):
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Steven Covey)
- You Can Heal Your Life (Louise Hay)
- Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway (Susan Jeffers)
- Self Matters (Phil McGraw)
- Everyday Enlightenment (Dan Millman)
- Awaken the Giant Within (Anthony Robbins)
- Unlimited Power (Anthony Robbins)
- Soul Without Shame (Byron Brown)
- The Biology of Belief (Bruce Lipton)
- Molecules of Emotion (Candace Pert)
Books to feed your mind (More challenging/for practitioners):
- Core Transformation (Connirae and Tamara Andreas)
- Change Your Mind and Keep the Change (Steve and Connirae Andreas)
- Tranceformations (Richard Bandler and John Grinder)
- Frogs into Princes (Richard Bandler and John Grinder)
- Beliefs (Robert Dilts, Tim Halbom and Suzi Smith)
- Hypnosis (Tad James)
- Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality (Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall)
- NLP and Health (Ian McDermott and Joseph OConnor)
- A Brief History of Everything (Ken Wilber)
- Spiral Dynamics (Don Beck and Christopher Cowan)
- Integral Spirituality (Ken Wilber)
- Waking the Tiger (Peter Levine)
Books to heal your body (including suggestions from Tanya Page, Director of
Nutrition at The Optimum Health Clinic):
- Quantum Healing (Deepak Chopra)
- Unconditional Life (Deepak Chopra)
- Age Power (Leslie Kenton)
- Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser)
- Detoxify or Die (Sherry Rogers)
- Food is Better Medicine than Drugs (Patrick Holford and Gerome Burns)
- The Sinatra Solution (Dr Sinatra)
- Nourishing Traditions (Sally Fallon)
Total Health Cookbook and Program (Dr Mercola)
The Metabolic Typing Diet (William Wolcott)
Desperation Medicine (Ritchie Shoemaker)
Books to nourish your soul and spirit:
- The Power of Now (Eckart Tolle)
- A New Earth (Eckart Tolle)
- Loving What Is (Byron Katie)
- Diamond Heart - Books 1-4 (A. H. Almaas)
- Essence (A. H. Almaas)
- Illusions (Richard Bach)
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach)
- One (Richard Bach)
- The Return of the Rishi (Deepak Chopra)
- The Knight in Rusty Armour (Robert Fisher)
- The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram (Sandra Maitri)
- The Link (Matthew Manning)
- Anatomy of the Spirit (Caroline Myss)
- Working with Natural Energy (Shirley ODonoghue)
- The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
- Conversations with God: Books 1-3 (Neale Donald Walsch)
- A Return to Love (Marianne Williamson)
- Intimate Communion (David Deida)
For more information on the life changing recovery group where these
stories were taken from, please visit www.SecretsToRecovery.com
At the time of printing, over sixty sessions have been recorded in the group. In
addition to the large number of additional recovery stories, there have also been
detailed interviews with the clinic team on a vast range of topics, including:
Working with the Mind and Body together
Meditation and M.E.
An introduction to EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
Anxiety and M.E.
The 5 Steps to Accelerated Recovery
M.E. and Detoxing
The Basics of Nutrition and M.E.
Supplements and M.E.
The importance of eating the right sources of food
EFT for pain
Optimising your sleep
At the website www.SecretsToRecovery.com in addition to finding out
more about joining the group for a small monthly fee, you can also listen to
some free audio excerpts from those included in this book.
To find out more about The Optimum Health Clinic, one of the worlds
leading clinics specialising in M.E./C.F.S./Fibromyalgia, please visit
www.FreedomFromME.co.uk or call 0845 226 1762
You can order your free Freedom From M.E. Information Pack, which
Freedom From M.E.: Journeys to Recovery (75 Minute Documentary DVD)
This inspiring and informative film was made by a group of patients from the
clinic (including Paul Young, lesson 6), with every component from the filming
and editing, to music and production being done by former patients of the clinic
that have had M.E. The film has received outstanding reviews from experts in the
field and patients alike.
M.E. in the 21st Century: You are no longer a mystery 16 page special
report.
This report was written by the clinics directors Alex Howard (Managing Director),
Tanya Page (Director of Nutrition) and Anna Duschinsky (Director of Psychology)
in May 2008 and is being internationally hailed as one of the most succinct and
integrative models explaining the symptoms of M.E. If youve ever wondered why
so many M.E. patients react negatively to the very treatments that should be
helping them, why different approaches keep seeming to find different causes, or
why you can be fine doing an activity, and then suddenly seem to crash two days
later, this report will explain why.
Each of the stories included has been based on transcripts of interviews conducted on
www.SecretsToRecovery.com and we would like to thank all those who have shared their
journeys so generously with us.
These stories were compiled, edited and shaped into their final format by:
Alex Howard
Alex is Founder and Managing Director of The Optimum Health Clinic
Anna Duschinsky
Anna is Director of Psychology at The Optimum Health Clinic
Frances Goodall
Frances is a Bowen practitioner, Reiki healer and psychology practitioner based in Sheffield. You
can find out more about her work at www.SheffieldBowen.co.uk
2009 Alex Howard, Anna Duschinsky and Frances Goodall
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