When you beckon lightning and invite it in for tea

image

By February 2007, I had been receiving daily Nexavir injections (an antiviral) for six months and I was actually starting to see small improvements in my health for the first time in over two years of being acutely ill. But friends and relatives kept sending me newspaper cuttings of articles about the Lightning Process (LP) curing people with ME. I became under enormous pressure to do the LP (“What’s the harm in trying it?” “Don’t you want to get better?” “It has helped others so it’s worth a shot”). I was only 20 years old, vulnerable because of my desperation to get better, and didn’t know much about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and what the illness actually was (a multi-systemic, neuroimmune illness). By that time, I also had been gaslighted by so many NHS doctors and private doctors about my illness and symptoms, that I was doubting myself. When so many people disbelieve you, you start disbelieving yourself, despite all physical evidence to the contrary. In the end, I buckled and, although sceptical, I agreed to do the LP. I was so ill and I just wanted to get better.

Ironically, I wouldn’t have even been able to get to the LP practitioner’s house (he was an NHS doctor but did the LP privately) even a couple of months previously but because of the small improvements due to the Nexavir injections, I was able to get down the stairs and lie down in the back of our car to get there. There were consequences for my body but I thought that it would be worth it.

I’m not going to go into detail about the “mechanics” of the LP; other people have debunked the methods far better than I’m currently able to. Back then, I decided to throw myself into the LP and be totally committed to doing it properly. The results, however, were nothing less than disastrous for me.

First, the fully-qualified practitioner artfully gaslighted us (a group of four patients) with what I now know is pseudoscience quackery about M.E.; it was done in such a subtle, convincing and skilful way (even experienced scientists have been taken in by it). Using “science” to explain, he told us how we didn’t ‘have’ an illness but that we were ‘doing’ an illness; it was our thoughts, behaviours, and fears about post-exertional symptoms that were causing us to stop ourselves from living normally and causing us to believe that we had symptoms and to believe that we were ill.

He then put mechanisms into place in my brain, via neuro-linguistic programming, that made my own brain automatically gaslight me constantly and stop any thoughts of symptoms dead in their tracks. He added repetitive gestures/movements/phrases that I had to continually apply to my thoughts and body in order to reinforce the programming. This is brainwashing.

It’s hard to describe being brainwashed. The next six months in 2007 after the LP are still a hazy blur to me. Not only did the neuro-linguistic programming in my brain not allow me to ever mention any symptoms to anyone, I was not even allowed to think that I had any symptoms. I wasn’t allowed to be ill anymore. I pushed and pushed myself, even when in the most excruciating pain, even when I was in heart failure or experiencing seizures or passing out, because they didn’t exist. My illness didn’t exist [even though I was extremely ill, I honestly believed that I wasn’t ill anymore, that I was cured]. It sounds ridiculously idiotic but that’s what brainwashing can do. My body was becoming more and more damaged from the enforced gradual Graded Exercise Therapy that the programming in my brain was imposing on myself. It was completely out of my control; I felt glazed over and not with it.

As per what I’d been conditioned and instructed to do during the LP training, I told everyone that I was no longer ill and that I was recovering. I’m pretty sure that I told all my friends and family that I was in recovery, that the Lightning Process had been successful and had worked. I even had a huge 21st birthday/’I’m better now’ party in a village hall, celebrating recovery from illness. Remembering it now is upsetting. I had the biggest smile on my face the whole time and looked fine to everyone but would have to frequently escape into the toilets where I would almost black out and would collapse on the floor for a while. I was in oxygen starvation from being upright and from heart failure. I was very dizzy and everything was spinning around me because of my very low blood pressure. All my muscles were screaming at me. Nobody had any idea that this was happening to me; the LP programming prevented me from being able to tell anyone or from even acknowledging my symptoms to myself. They didn’t exist because I wasn’t ill. It’s just a haze to me now.

In the following months, I kept on pushing myself, doing insane damage to my body (I pushed myself to the point where I was going on a slow 5-minute walk every few days, which was a huge deal for me considering I had been bed-bound for two years) until one day in August 2007, when my parents were away, I pushed myself too far and went on a longer walk. At the end, my body failed and packed in completely; the six months caught up with me and I collapsed. I was never able to get up again. Ever since, I have been bed-bound, unable to sit up and unable to speak, struggling to breathe and swallow. The permanent organ damage that was done during March to August 2007 during the self-imposed GET due to the LP brainwashing, was devastating. I never recovered from it and my health has only deteriorated since. The hold that the brainwashing had over me was broken pretty quickly and thoroughly that August, thank goodness. But I can’t remember much from those six months.

Today it is being reported in the news that an experimental trial of the LP on children and teens with M.E. has been successful. The fact that the results are based on the children and teens themselves saying that they have recovered, is extremely worrying to me. During the six months that I was brainwashed with the LP, I would have said the same: that I was cured, that I was recovering and that the LP was successful. Those poor children. They are even more vulnerable than I was. What they have been subjected to is nothing short of abuse and should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

Whatever you do, please don’t send news articles about the Lightning Process to anyone with M.E. It’s a dangerous thing. Don’t beckon lightning and invite it in for tea; it will burn your house to the ground with you inside until you’re nothing but ashes.

____________________________________________
____________________________________________

What is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?

This is when a virus or enterovirus (or an as-yet-undiscovered retrovirus) causes:
• inflammation of the brain, spinal cord and neurons
• immune system deficiency and dysfunction
• mitochondrial malfunction (the body’s energy is manufactured in the mitochondria), which leads to muscle failure (including heart failure), and heavy exhaustion
• damage to and dysfunction of the heart
• dysautonomia
• POTS
• dysfunction of the digestive system, including poor absorption
• extreme sensitivity to noise, light and movement

The hallmark of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is deterioration upon any slight activity/exertion/movement. Gradually trying to increase your activity can cause permanent damage. The severity of the disease varies greatly. Unfortunately, I have a severe case and am bed-bound, unable to sit up and unable to speak. My heart is so unstable and my condition so fragile that my body cannot be moved.

[I wasn’t diagnosed with vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (vEDS) until May 2015 after genetic testing, on top of my diagnosis of severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, but in 2007 I was completely unaware of this, of course. I don’t think I would have felt pressured into doing the LP if I’d have had the vEDS diagnosis back then.]

___________________________________________

About me: https://www.jkrowbory.co.uk/about-me/