When despite the first, initial symptoms you still got sensation within your hands and feet, within your arms and legs:
It is time to heal.
When you are suffering from harsher pain and mobility restrictions:
It is time to heal.
When you feel sad, hopeless and tired:
It is time to heal.
When health only exists in your memory of past times:
It is time to heal.
There is no time?
Are other things of more importance?
Our goals are best reached healthy!
Pursuing what we want for ourselves is so much easier and works so much better without RA.
For we are both: the path to our goals and the goal of all our paths.
Back in time, when I was unable to explain my RA, it seemed to me as though my body acted on its own – without me being able to do anything about it. It was like trying to drive a car, but all steering and shifting made only a minimal impact on where the vehicle was going. At the car service station, the problem couldn’t be fixed; instead, some symptoms were merely covered up. Now I could have just gotten out of such a car. From my body, there was no escape. However, I could help myself as I saw my rheumatoid arthritis as well as my healing from it as the outcome of my actions.
To everyone who suffers from pain, injuries or inflammation, a certainty of healing is helpful. Suppose it is a minor or major ailment that we classify as curable based on our existing knowledge, such as a cold, a cut finger, a broken arm, or an intolerance reaction. In that case, we ensure that the cause is eliminated as quickly as possible and devote ourselves to healing. Depending on the situation, we can do all or part of the healing ourselves. We have a plan, are optimistic and trust in what we are doing.
In contrast, everything that burdens us without a way out in sight leaves us puzzled and worried. One of those burdens can be a chronic inflammatory process within one’s body. Pain and general damage made it clear to me that something was wrong with my body. So I sought help to heal – and got drugs and treatments to suppress the symptoms. My life became an RA-management rather than a search for a cure. The disease seemed unpredictable, uncontrollable, despite what I tried for help – it became a heavy burden, and I resigned. “I can’t do it; others can’t, nobody can. “
Our most persistent convictions mainly arise from the views and perceptions we get inside our boundaries. These are the kind of convictions we believe are not merely beliefs but knowledge. And if one experiences healing as impossible, then he gets another problem in addition to the disease:
Any attempts to heal now seem to be senseless for “good reason “.
Not letting that be the end of the line helps to orient toward the desired healing. Coming from there, I can say that I was searching, and with searching came sadness and insecurity. But my burning question was always: “Is my knowledge enough to help me? Is the experience of others enough? “
“Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.”
George Bernard Shaw¹
My stress-related rheumatoid arthritis meant both a chance of healing as well as my own personal rat race, where I just stayed in the same spot.
The suffering caused by the disease can help define one’s priorities more clearly and bring about a more insightful experience. That was the chance I used to get out of rheumatoid arthritis for:
The inflammatory pain made stress, tension and overburdening in my body more obvious and thus easier to eliminate.
Albeit cruelly, the pain allowed me to increase my sensitivity in the regions I had overloaded by moving and posturing my body in a harmful manner. That was the chance to improve my body perception. Today, I can clearly identify which sensations indicate or don’t indicate an overload in everyday life. For example, when I do my stretching exercises, I can distinguish between excessive tension and the slight, painful pulling that comes with stretching.
As long as I did not recognise this chance, I resigned to trying to heal and, in the absence of any other solution, had accepted medication as a constant companion. In addition, I felt my life was meaningful and satisfying because my rheumatoid arthritis was by no means all that made me special. Resignation relating to healing can lead to the momentous attempt to integrate the disease as an integral part of one’s life. You get used to it. You settle in. You rationalise: I’m already doing everything possible. My actions are reasonable. It’s the only, right and best thing I can do in my situation. And so I was caught up in an inner hamster wheel.
This doesn’t mean that a life with rheumatoid arthritis isn’t worth living. Because it is. In passing on my experience, I am only trying to describe how I managed to heal RA.
As I was adjusting to life with rheumatoid arthritis, back then was a milestone in my downward spiral of physical decline. Because we don’t just stay the way we are right now. That’s why we need daily training for both our bodies and our minds.
So I told myself: When I am long-lasting and/or severely burdened by illness and medication, this will immediately result in negative consequences for my performance and thus my future chances.
It isn‘t necessarily my momentary condition that should motivate me for change, but rather what this condition can lead me to become.
We can primarily prevent helplessness and reduce injury risks through healthy, anatomically correct movement as part of a healthy lifestyle. For example, we demand our mental skills by training for effortless and unrestricted mobility, quick strength, and perseverance. One acts on the other.
The more unencumbered our bodies are by diseases and medications, the healthier we can be when exercising. My healing from stress-related rheumatoid arthritis contributed significantly to this. This did not simply mean to me that when pain, inflammation and chronic progression ended, everything was as before, because some of the “before” had led to the RA.
Healing brought with it a better understanding of myself. I learned more about my physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns and how they affect my relaxation and tension.
The better our fundamental understanding of healthy posture and movement, the more positively we can affect our relaxation and commitment, even in challenging situations, which in turn relieves the body, soul, and mind, with protective and strengthening effects.
In the absence of this basic understanding, even athletes can overload themselves and become injured as a result.