Self Help Overdose

My next post was supposed to be on saving money, but hey, plans change.

I can't remember if I mentioned that I'm on a 5 week rest leave from work. It's been a month now and after March Break next week, I go back. This leave was due to physical and mental exhaustion, to the feeling that I can't keep up with my own life, that I can't keep my head above water, and any other expression you can think of that illustrates this. I guess it's all due to the continuing effects of chemo -if my oncologist tells me one more time that he has "aged me considerably" I will tell him just how little he knows about women. If I had known, I would have given myself a lot more time to recuperate after treatments; I went back to work after 3 months, what was I thinking? Now it's taking everything to prove that cancer (and its peripherals) and exhaustion are related. My hormone levels are out of whack, stress and exhaustion has an effect on hormone balance, and high estrogen feeds my cancer. But there's no study to prove that so I'm out of luck. At least my doctors support me. My family doctor said that I have lost perspective and balance in my life. That sounds right. And so, this is how I came to have a ridiculously high pile of self help books on my table.

I read the following --it's quite comical: The 4 Hour Work Week, The War of Art, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Your Money or Your Life, The Art of Simple Living, You Can Heal Yourself, The Power of Now 1 and 2, The Art of Happiness, The Happiness Project, Downshifting, and the list goes on. Some of these have helped considerably. Some have pissed me off. Like the one I'm reading now.

According to this author who shall remain nameless, "we create every so-called illness in our body". This isn't the first time I've read this. When I picked up one of those cancer preventing books at Chapters while my head was as bald as an eagle, the first passage I read basically told me I was responsible for being sick. This concept isn't new. Apparently, in the Middle Ages, people thought acting happy would protect them against the plague. I'm not saying it isn't a possibility, or one of many factors. I do think stress affects hormones and my hormones could kill me, so I do see the correlation between being happy and being healthy. Someone I know who lived in Nepal for a year told me that they laugh over there when you ask them in the morning if they slept well: "Ha ha! Of course we did! Not sleeping well is a Western World disease!" I can see that for sure. Insomnia, back and neck aches, seasonal depression, migraines, muscles spasms, irritability, PSM, etc, all results from our speedy way of life. And, as I was coming back from massage, physio and therapy appointments in one week, I thought of all the services provided as remedies: massage, chiro, physio, osteo, psycho, speech, gym, and the list goes on.

But to say that I made myself sick is a typical case of blaming the victim. Besides, how would anyone explain that I was sick regardless of: being a positive, confident person who sees the bright side of every situation; who has never suffered from depression of addiction; who likes people and is active; who is relatively emotionally healthy and quite self aware; and especially, who doesn't seem to notice the stench of shit when I'm knee deep in it. So changing my mental state to heal my body isn't going to cut it.

I do need to relax and limit the sources of stress in my life. I need to pay attention to myself and actually do the things that bring me joy to get all those healthy endorphins. But that alone won't heal me. I'm thinking happy thoughts of burning some of these book though...