Mislabeling emtions

In reading Stumbling on Happiness, I found several ideas that I think are relevant to MS.

On page 63, he writes that mislabeling emotions is a very common and easy thing to do.

When I think back on my own experience, I spent many years lost in fear without even being aware that I was scared. It took a very perceptive person to point out to me that I was frightened before I could even begin to perceive it. When I first became aware of it, I didn't even feel scared, but instead I just felt a vibration in my guts and my body would shake.

It then took years to be able to actually feel scared and properly identify the emotion. Even now, I sometimes only know I'm scared because I see that I'm reacting poorly to things and realize that my fear must be taking control. I have to sit and meditate to be able to relax enough to feel the fear, which allows me to move beyond it.

I wonder if there are commonalities among people with MS and if we commonly mislabel the same emotions? This could help lead us to the patterns of thought that lead to the disease.

Has anyone noticed any patterns of mislabeled emotions in their own lives?

On fears for the future

I received a letter today from someone who was asking me about the possibility that taking Copaxone can help reverse existing damage and prevent new damage. I am posting my response because I think these questions are something we all face:

My read on your questions is that you are scared about the possibility of long term disabilities and are wondering if copaxone helps to clear up old damage. Is that a correct read? My answer is many layered and not an easy one.

Over the past 20 years of having MS, I've had to learn to live with the fear that today might be the last day I walk. I could wake up in the morning and find that my legs no longer work. Or the fear that whatever transient thing I am feeling today may be with me for the rest of my life.

Copaxone is a negative drug, like all MS drugs: if nothing happens then it's working. But, at the same time, nothing might be happening in any case so the drug might be having no effect, so there is no way to really know. I hate to say it, but these are the fears and the uncertainties that the condition brings. I could tell you different, but it wouldn't be true.

I spend a lot of time working on my fears, as I'm a person who was completely lost in fear for much of my life. Knowing that these fears are real means that I am aware of them and then they don't have control over me. I suspect that another person (who I have yet to meet) would use these fears to take every moment as special knowing that tomorrow everything might change.

For me, I use the fears to help propel me forward on my person growth. I know that my spirit is very tied up with MS, so I try to use it as a tool to give me clues as to the growth I need to do. But I suspect everyone forms a different relationship with the fear.

I recommend not trying to get to any point, but spend time with the fear and then see what relationship develops, just making sure that the fear is acknowledged without letting it take control.

Fear is the mother of anger

In Chinese medicine, health is achieved through the balancing of the five elements. Each element has an associated internal organ and emotion. In the generation cycle, water is the mother of wood, meaning that water energy creates wood energy. The emotions that are associated with them are fear (water) and anger (wood). Fear creates anger.

In the western world, we refer to this as fight or flight. When we are scared, our instinctual reaction is either to run or to turn and fight. In Chinese medicine, the wood energy is understood to be forceful directed energy, much like a punch. We get scared, we want to hit something. My experience with MS is that the wood energy often gets directed back at oneself, so essentially when we get scared, we hit and hurt ourselves. It's a very ineffectual way of running away. It's also another aspect of the urge for self-destruction.

The key to unraveling this cycle is to deal with our fear directly. There are many ways to do that which I will write about in my next post, but the best way is to send love to the fear. In the five element cycle, fire is the child of wood. Fire is associated with the heart and with love, so when we transform our anger into love we are bringing ourselves back into balance. More on this in the next post.

This post has a lot of Chinese medical jargon in it. I chose to use it, though I usually stay away from jargon if possible, because it's the best way to express what I wanted to convey, so if you have questions about the jargon, please let me know.