Amazing stuff- How you can retrain your brain to work around pain and other issues

Hi Everyone,
I watched an amazing podcast Nine Essential Steps Peak Brain Body Performance on Bulletproof radio with Dave Aspery who is a brilliant self taught Brain Hacker today ( which I am addicted to!) with a lady called Anat Baniel who has made some amazing discoveries about how the brain works things out and who has been able to work out how to hack the brain to find new pathways and it is so damn simple that we all should be doing it. Anat has done amazing things with Children with all sorts of conditions where the parents were told the child would live in a vegetative state and yet with some of Anat’s training those kids are now fully functioning adults who are themselves contributing to the world in amazing ways. For those of us with Chronic Pain , Scoliosis, Invisible Illness, Mental Health issues and other serious health issues this should be the first stop but unfortunately Drs are not aware of refuse to believe what modern Neuroscience is discovering. You can change the way that your brain learns, feels and sees the world with a series of movement exercises. Anat coins the phrase “Intentional Movement” as a key factor rather than the normal movement that we do without thinking about it- like gyms stuff. This stuff is groundbreaking and should be a part of our basic education going into the future. Please  Check out  the Bulletproof radio interview and her page- It’s really astounding.

Cheers Teesha Morgan
The Anat Baniel Method

Down the rabbit hole.

WARNING TRIGGERS- I had this as part of another post but it has been pointed out to me that it deserves it’s own post as it is powerful reading.

Oh how the Medical Sysytem fails us. It was very difficult and very cathartic to write this. I hope that it helps someone out there.

I would love to hear your stories good and bad- you never know who your words might help.

All I can say is if you think that you might have Depression, please call one of the numbers at the end of this post- I don’t want anyone to have to go through this like I did.

A lot of really bad stuff has happened to me from a very young age, which has basically broken my brain.

It wasn’t too bad until I had an acute episode of pain which put me in the ER and then left me on pain killers and crazy hormones waiting for surgery which made me gain 2.5kg per month so on top of the pain etc I went from a size 8 to a size 16 nearly doubling my weight which on it’s own was devistating.

But I thought it was the right thing to do-  I read all of the info they gave me and it said that this was “the treatment plan” for …I had no idea what was going on.

In the beginning of Chronic Illness we never do know what is going on- it is like you get this bomb dropped on you- you are not dying BUT you are not going to ever be the same and possible only get worse.

For the first couple of months everyone is there helping you, but for you the world has stopped, your life changed in a blink and you dont know how to feel about it. Everyone tells you that you will be OK soon and the Drs will fix it.

Then they start drifting away, they are too busy for your calls, they stop popping in and you start to feel like it is all your fault for not getting better. After a year you are left to fend for yourself even if you can’t- relationships start to break down as your partner goes on with their normal life and you are in this bubble of lonelyness.

No wonder we start to feel like a burden- we are not the person any of they chose to be with, we have changed and they have not.

WARNING TRIGGERS-

After a year of being bedridden and in a wheelchair it was so bad that I became suicidal and told one of my remaining friends how I felt.

She did the right thing,  raced me off to see my Local GP who had known me for over 10 years.

but and even when I was begging my GP to help me to not kill myself,

  • I was fobbed off

  • told to go home and call a helpline

  • not even told what was wrong with me

  • it felt like I had plague and he just wanted me out of his office so he didn’t catch it

I felt worse than ever, I called the helpline who sent someone out very quickly who read my goodbye letter that I had written, stayed for 5 minutes, told me I would hear from them and left.

Again, no mention of what was making me feel like this.

That was it, for 2 weeks!

2 weeks of crying, feeling more worthless, like I wasn’t even worth the time to stop me harming myself.

We’ll a few weeks later I did try to kill myself.

Luckily I didn’t because I apparently suck at that too.

Here is the breakdown:

I got a call after taking a bunch of pills, apparently I sounded off so they called an ambulance.

  • so I was rushed to the ER
  • admitted and stripped of my clothes
  • shoved in a room alone
  • (I had serious mobility issue at the time and couldn’t even get out of bed by myself so it was very scary)
  • of course I was tripping from all of the drugs which didn’t help
  • they came in and told me that what I has taken could have enlarged my heart but didn’t explain anything
  • and took me for xrays every ½ hour,
  • I wasn’t allowed contact with my family and they had no idea what was happening to me- I could hear them freaking out in the waiting area.
  • The nurses were rude and made me want die all over again.
  • I wasn’t allowed any of my normal pain killers for 24hrs even though I had not taken any of those and my records showed it. The Nurses basically berated me all night about how selfish I was and told me that I was addicted to pain meds and that there were better ways to deal with pain (but no advice on what they were, remember I was pretty new to this whole chronic pain/mental illness thing back then)
  • and then
  • a girl came to see me in the morning who was a trainee in her 2nd year of Med school who said I could go home but should probably see a psychiatrist.

 

Hmmmm I thought that was obvious and should be who was seeing me at the time but NOPE.

So I was still undiagnosed until 12 years ago

Finally after seeing lots of duds, I found myself a good psychiatrist who helped me to realize on the first visit! that it was my past ruining my future AND that the pain meds that I was on were not only, not strong enough BUT were making me suicidal…great.

She put me on antidepressants medication for the rest of my life, sure it has side effects but it is better than the alternative. Plus she changed my pain meds to a slow release formula of a much stronger medication, removed things like valium, buscopan and the worst one Endep from my regime, gave me some strong sleeping medication to combat my painsomnia and we waited for 30 days to see if it helped. And it did!

I ended up waiting 2 more years for my surgery and it was a successful failure. I no longer have a uterus, ovaries, cervix, 70% of my bladder and lots of bits and pieces missing. But they discovered that I had a nasty form of Endometriosis that is everywhere in my body affecting a large percentage of my organs.

I still get very depressed when life sucks but I understand why and have tools to deal with it.

I still have a pain score of 9/10 in Summer and 7/10 in Winter but I am used to it. I developed Chronic fatigue and some other nasties, quit my job, my abusive Husband and moved to the country with an old friend as my Carer who now is my Husband of 10 years..

I choose to survive my past, think of the future but live in the now.

I have been told that my story is sad, but it isn’t. I am now so much stronger than I ever thought I could be and I hope that my story helps someone who is just beginning their journey.

Opps just noticed I have tears on my cheeks so maybe a bit sad but still a story of resilience in the face of adversity.

Cheers Teesha

My not a DR advice from experience is if you start to feel blue with no obvious reason- don’t wait. We now have some wonderful organisations that can help you.

In Australia call Beyond Blue– they have wonderful trained staff waiting to help and send you off to a compassionate Dr who can really help you.

Beyond Blue Helpline 1300 22 4636 or online (3pm-12am AEST): http://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

Here is the Lovely comment that they made on my Instagram Post:

beyondblueofficial Thank you for sharing your story of hope @craftwerxstudio(my Instagram name).

We’re glad you found a professional support team who have helped you on the road to recovery. If you ever need to talk, our Support Service is here for you –

Call : 1300 22 4636

or online (3pm-12am AEST): www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

Lifeline  “is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention services”

Lifeline is another great Australian resource especially if you feel Suicidal and need help right now-their phones are staffed 24/7 by volunteers who want to help you.

Call 13 11 14

Also if you have recovered from Depression and want to volunteer they will always make you welcome.

And I call out to my buddies around the world to link to their recommended help lines in their countries in the comments and I will add them here.

Womb Environment May Be Tied to Teen Brain Structure

An interesting article that bears thinking on for those about to be parents or with teenagers. This research may in fact change how Mental Illness is viewed in general.

Womb Environment May Be Tied to Teen Brain Structure | Psych Central News
Womb environment may affect mental health
#mentalhealth #mentalillness #invisibleillness #majordepression #manic #anxiety #depression #stressrelief #suicideprevention #endthestigma #calm #nostigma #parenthood #teendepression
#teensuici #bopo #teen
#teengirls
#parentingteens
#craftwerx #craftwerxstudio

Breathe out the darkness and Breathe in the light.

Breathe out the darkness and Breathe in the light.

Repost from Instagram-

Concept Sketch by Teesha Morgan.

Woo hoo I just hit 400 followers on Instagram!

For all of my Followers on Behind the Smile is a Tornado on WordPress, @Craftwerx on Twitter, @craftwerxstudio on Instagram, @craftwerx on Tumblr, Teesha Morgan -Behind the Smile is a Tornado on Facebook, and The Mental Health Colouring Book Project group on Facebook, I want to thank all you so much for following my journey you guys are awsome and I love looking at all of your stuff.

I really needed a boost today, we have some really big stressful stuff going on with our housing atm so I have been pretty down and you guys gave me something to celebrate !
Here is another sketch for you, this one is “Breathe out the darkness and Breathe in the light” this one will be for sale in my ETSY store soon.
I hope that you like it.

I know that I have done a few different pages around the word Breath

I believe that proper breathing is so important for your health, deep yoga breaths from your diaphragm “belly” it gets oxygen into your cells, elevates your Chi and keeps you abs and pelvic floor tight and strong.
I’m off to do some meditation on gratitude, what are you doing for yourself this evening?

#mentalhealth #mentalillness #anxiety #depression #stressrelief #colouring #selflove #freecoloringpages #painmanagement #selfhelp #colourin #invisibleillness #breathe #yoga #chronicillness #bellybreathing #wellness #wellbeing #gratitude #400followers #endo #adultcoloringbooks #adultcolourin #etrepeneurs #health #painmanagement #zendoodle #fibromialgia #spoonies

Breathe out the darkness and Breathe in the light.

Thankyou so much for following my journey you’re awsome, I love looking at all of your stuff

breathe2

Breathe out the darkness and Breathe in the light.
Repost from Instagram-
Concept Sketch by Teesha Morgan.
Woo hoo I just hit 400 followers on Instagram!

For all of my Followers on Behind the Smile is a Tornado on WordPress, @Craftwerx on Twitter, @craftwerxstudio on Instagram, @craftwerx on Tumblr, Teesha Morgan -Behind the Smile is a Tornado on Facebook, and The Mental Health Colouring Book…

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Tomorrow won’t be better unless you change what you think about.

“Tomorrow won’t be better if your mind is still on Yesterday.Sunset is the time to Relax and Let Go.”

I found part of the Quote on Instagram with really crappy type just planted in full caps and I wanted to make it look better. Then I thought that it could sound better and give a little bit more information about what you could do. So here is my new Quote by Teesha Morgan.

This quote really resounds with me because I have Major Depression and it makes it very hard to live in the now.

You see I have a lot of trouble just dealing with day to day set backs as my brain always says..

“See what did I tell you, you only deserve bad thinks because that is what happened before”.

A lot of really bad stuff has happened to me from a very young age, which has basically broken my brain.

It wasn’t too bad until I had an acute episode of pain which put me in the ER and then left me on pain killers and crazy hormones waiting for surgery which made me gain 2.5kg per month so on top of the pain etc I went from a size 8 to a size 16 nearly doubling my weight which on it’s own was devistating.

But I thought it was the right thing to do-  I read all of the info they gave me and it said that this was “the treatment plan” for …I had no idea what was going on.

In the beginning of Chronic Illness we never do- it is like you get this bomb dropped on you- you are not dying BUT you are not going to ever be the same and possible only get worse.

For the first couple of months everyone is there helping you, but for you the world has stopped, your life changed in a blink and you dont know how to feel about it. Everyone tells you that you will be OK soon and the Drs will fix it.

Then they start drifting away, they are too busy for your calls, they stop popping in and you start to feel like it is all your fault for not getting better. After a year you are left to fend for yourself even if you can’t- relationships start to break down as your partner goes on with their normal life and you are in this bubble of lonelyness.

No wonder we start to feel like a burden- we are not the person any of they chose to be with, we have changed and they have not.

WARNING TRIGGERS-

After a year of being bedridden and in a wheelchair it was so bad that I became suicidal and told one of my remaining friends how I felt.

She did the right thing,  raced me off to see my Local GP who had known me for over 10 years.

but and even when I was begging my GP to help me to not kill myself,

  • I was fobbed off

  • told to go home and call a helpline

  • not even told what was wrong with me

  • it felt like I had plague and he just wanted me out of his office so he didn’t catch it

I felt worse than ever, I called the helpline who sent someone out very quickly who read my goodbye letter that I had written, stayed for 5 minutes, told me I would hear from them and left.

Again, no mention of what was making me feel like this.

That was it, for 2 weeks!

2 weeks of crying, feeling more worthless, like I wasn’t even worth the time to stop me harming myself.

We’ll a few weeks later I did try to kill myself.

Luckily I didn’t because I apparently suck at that too.

Here is the breakdown:

I got a call after taking a bunch of pills, apparently I sounded off so they called an ambulance.

  • so I was rushed to the ER
  • admitted and stripped of my clothes
  • shoved in a room alone
  • (I had serious mobility issue at the time and couldn’t even get out of bed by myself so it was very scary)
  • of course I was tripping from all of the drugs which didn’t help
  • they came in and told me that what I has taken could have enlarged my heart but didn’t explain anything
  • and took me for xrays every ½ hour,
  • I wasn’t allowed contact with my family and they had no idea what was happening to me- I could hear them freaking out in the waiting area.
  • The nurses were rude and made me want die all over again.
  • I wasn’t allowed any of my normal pain killers for 24hrs even though I had not taken any of those and my records showed it. The Nurses basically berated me all night about how selfish I was and told me that I was addicted to pain meds and that there were better ways to deal with pain (but no advice on what they were, remember I was pretty new to this whole chronic pain/mental illness thing back then)
  • and then
  • a girl came to see me in the morning who was a trainee in her 2nd year of Med school who said I could go home but should probably see a psychiatrist.

 

Hmmmm I thought that was obvious and should be who was seeing me at the time but NOPE.

So I was still undiagnosed until 12 years ago

Finally after seeing lots of duds, I found myself a good psychiatrist who helped me to realize on the first visit! that it was my past ruining my future AND that the pain meds that I was on were not only, not strong enough BUT were making me suicidal…great.

She put me on antidepressants medication for the rest of my life, sure it has side effects but it is better than the alternative. Plus she changed my pain meds to a slow release formula of a much stronger medication, removed things like valium, buscopan and the worst one Endep from my regime, gave me some strong sleeping medication to combat my painsomnia and we waited for 30 days to see if it helped. And it did!

I ended up waiting 2 more years for my surgery and it was a successful failure. I no longer have a uterus, ovaries, cervix, 70% of my bladder and lots of bits and pieces missing. But they discovered that I had a nasty form of Endometriosis that is everywhere in my body affecting a large percentage of my organs.

I still get very depressed when life sucks but I understand why and have tools to deal with it.

I still have a pain score of 9/10 in Summer and 7/10 in Winter but I am used to it. I developed Chronic fatigue and some other nasties, quit my job, my abusive Husband and moved to the country with an old friend as my Carer who now is my Husband of 10 years..

I choose to survive my past, think of the future but live in the now.

I have been told that my story is sad, but it isn’t. I am now so much stronger than I ever thought I could be and I hope that my story helps someone who is just beginning their journey.

Opps just noticed I have tears on my cheeks so maybe a bit sad but still a story of resilience in the face of adversity.

Cheers Teesha

My not a DR advice from experience is if you start to feel blue with no obvious reason- don’t wait. We now have some wonderful organisations that can help you.

In Australia call Beyond Blue– they have wonderful trained staff waiting to help and send you off to a compassionate Dr who can really help you.

Beyond Blue Helpline 1300 22 4636 or online (3pm-12am AEST): http://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

Here is the Lovely comment that they made on my Instagram Post:

beyondblueofficial Thank you for sharing your story of hope @craftwerxstudio(my Instagram name).

We’re glad you found a professional support team who have helped you on the road to recovery. If you ever need to talk, our Support Service is here for you –

Call : 1300 22 4636

or online (3pm-12am AEST): www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

Lifeline  “is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention services”

Lifeline is another great Australian resource especially if you feel Suicidal and need help right now-their phones are staffed 24/7 by volunteers who want to help you.

Call 13 11 14

Also if you have recovered from Depression and want to volunteer they will always make you welcome.

And I call out to my buddies around the world to link to their recommended help lines in their countries in the comments and I will add them here.

Tomorrow won’t be better unless you change what you think about.

I choose to survive my past, think of the future but live in the now. WARNING TRIGGERS

sunset-288531_1280-1

“Tomorrow won’t be better if your mind is still on Yesterday.Sunset is the time to Relax and Let Go.”

I found part of the Quote on Instagram with really crappy type just planted in full caps and I wanted to make it look better. Then I thought that it could sound better and give a little bit more information about what you could do. So here is my new Quote by Teesha Morgan.

This quote really…

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