Magic Valley NLP

Me, before NLP. 

Maybe you can tell, I just felt better, more alive and more aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'me."

I am entitling this, “My Journey through Liver Disease” because it was a part of my journey through life.   I went through it and I went on past it and it is now a part of my history.  It is a part of my learning.  It is a part of me, my experiences, and my sum total whole.  It is a part of my past.

In 1977 my husband Carlos graduated from college and was hired to teach at a small town in Idaho. We packed up all of our belongings in my dad’s truck and prepared to make a new home.  I was pregnant at the time and due a couple of months later.

 Our little boy was born in November.  He was a breach baby and the delivery did not go well.  I had him in a doctor’s office, although it was not planned that way. The doctor had had some experience turning breach babies and we had gone to him to see if he could turn the baby.  Instead I went into labor and a very short hour later the baby was born there in the office.  He was not breathing and the doctor immediately started resuscitation and took him to the hospital.  By the time he was stabilized, his brain was damaged and he was profoundly retarded.  He only lived for three days. 

Returning home empty handed, I easily heard the gossip grow.  No one ever asked what had happened.  The stories would occasionally come back to me and none of them were true.  I knew the gossip was “better” than reality.   When I would enter a room, things would suddenly go quiet.   No one said, “I’m so sorry.”  No arms around me, just cruel gossip behind my back.   No friends and no support came my way and I felt so alone in the world. Fortunately I had my teaching career and was quickly back in the workforce substituting.    One year later there was another baby, a beautiful dark and curly-haired girl. 

Two years later, in 1980, I was again pregnant and the doctor made a mistake in prescribing prenatal vitamins by prescribing 100 times the normal dose of vitamin A.  At that time vitamin A was considered a cure-all for everything, and many were taking mega doses unaware at that time that the oil soluble vitamin was toxic in large doses.  A fellow teacher in the area died that year of vitamin A poisoning.  A few months later I had a beautiful, blonde baby boy ...and liver disease.  I knew about the baby, I didn’t know about the Vitamin A induced stenosis of the liver.

Several years passed and I, like other young mothers, complained of being tired, a typical complaint and one to be ignored as a part of a young mother’s life.  Eventually I was sleeping more of the day than I was awake with just the important things getting done with numerous rests in between.  Over the course of the next several years I saw eight different medical personal but no one could figure out what was happening.  My medical doctor, though, told me that there was something wrong but he didn’t know what and to keep watching and that eventually it would surface.   I was so grateful for that because it felt like finally someone believed me.   It offered me hope also that in time we would get to the bottom of it.

Eventually it did surface and it was my liver. Because I did not drink alcoholic beverages, no one had tested my liver and it was a chance health fair blood test that caught it.  Numerous tests were done and one day the internist sat down with me and explained that I had chronic liver disease and eventually it would be fatal.  

I asked what he could do for me.  He replied that there was nothing he could do, that medicine did not have an answer, but that as I went through the process they would have medications and helps to alleviate the pain and support me. Already I had a systemic fungus disease that I could not fight off and we had spent a lot of time finding the best balance of medication to keep the fungus from “eating me alive,” while causing as little damage as possible to my liver so I knew what he was talking about. 

Knowing there was nothing more that he could do to “cure” me; I started looking at other choices and praying for guidance.  I recalled a naturopathic doctor who had worked in our area for a short time.  Dr. Charles Wilcher was now in Boise.     I went to see him and he gave me hope.  Yes, he had worked with liver disease before and had had good results.  He started me on some herbs and used acupuncture.  I didn’t have any idea of what that was, but I was willing to give it a try.

Soon I noted that I was feeling better.  I did not have that overwhelming desire to sleep all the time and I was able to better care for my family.   Once in a while I even felt “good” for a minute or two.  Never long, but it happened.  I had not felt “good” for so long.   I still saw the medical doctor and he saw the results of my blood work.  He said, “I don’t know what he is doing, but it is working.  Keep doing it.”  Oh, I was, believe me, with all my heart. 

Then the time came in 2006 that Dr. Wilcher sat down to talk with me.  He told me that he had hoped that he could get me beyond the liver disease and past needing medication, but he couldn’t seem to.   I would likely need medication all of my life.  He was sad about it, but I was so happy.  He had given me back my life.  I was now functioning and able to meet the needs of my family, teach school, and even do a few things for myself.  I was so grateful to him and continue to be. 

This is a graph of the acupuncture meridians.  It was done after about 10 years of working with my doctor and it beautifully describes in graph form exactly how I felt.  It was like the doctor had taken a picture of my feelings inside.  I was mostly balanced and I felt that balance, but very, very low in energy.  Still I was now functioning and most important, I was alive.   

There is a saying that “when the student is ready the teacher appears.”  I was ready.  Some years back my little daughter had an experience that resulted in her needing some counseling.   We took her to a counselor in our area and after a session or two; he called me up and told me she needed a woman counselor.   I recalled that a friend of mine did some kind of counseling but I didn’t know what. I had been interested but she never seemed to talk much about it.    I gave Sharalee Clawson a call and yes, she did that kind of counseling and told me to bring my daughter in. 

After a couple of sessions we talked about her health. She had had multiple sclerosis in the past, but seemed to have no evidences of it now.  “How are you doing?”  I queried.

“Well, it seemed to have left.  Some people would say it is in remission,”  she said and added “If so I would invite it to stay in remission for the rest of my life.” 

I started thinking.  I couldn’t think of liver disease, I knew at that time that it would eventually take me home, but I had diabetes and the process would be much nicer if I didn’t have diabetes.  I asked her “Did you ever work with diabetes?” 

“Yes, does it feel like you are damned?”

“It sure does but spelled different, dammed.  It is like there is a dam in the way and I don’t know how to get over it.  Sign me up for a session. “

The first session we did the SWISH program.  I went home.  I felt good.  My blood sugar levels went down, but more important, I felt good.  It was easy.  I would try it on other things.  I sat in bed at night and would take a symptom and allow it to come forward.  I would note what it was. Then I would form my well formed me and swish the well me into the place of the symptom.  It seemed to be working.   I liked it.

 I continued to work on my health in the evenings before bed and when a symptom appeared I would allow it to come forward and take shape, then create again the well-formed me and SWISH.  One example is the fungus. It appeared on the 6^th of January, and took the shape of an orange covered with mold.  It SWISHED away and I have not had to take medicine, nor have I have had the fungus since.    I note that I am not craving sugar any more.  I feel so good inside; I like what is happening.

Then one evening I got to thinking, “What about the liver disease?”  Never before had there been a possibility that there might be a cure and now there was not hope, but only possibility.  Yet possibility was there.    For several days the symptoms of liver disease seem to come back to me.  It was like my body now knew what to do and I was drawn towards it.  What would happen?

 
New Years Day in 2007 I could not sleep.   I realize I will not sleep until I deal with the pain in my liver that has become insistent.  I settled in to do the SWISH.  It comes forward, the pain.  It is a coffin.  I know that coffin.  I buried my first son in it.  I try to SWISH it back, but realize that is not right.  I gently take it and put it into my past.   I construct the anima (in Jungian psychology, the true inner self as opposed to the outer persona) that is me in the future, my well-formed outcome, and put it in the place of the coffin. 

The coffin reappears in what I now understand is my present.  I tenderly carry it back again.  This time I create a sleepy, well-formed me and soon I am sleeping in, with no liver pain. 

As an aside, understand that this is all in my imagination and I am not dreaming.  Bandler and Grinder, in Frogs into Princes said “Images always have internal reality” pg 29.

Then, a day later, I felt myself swirling into a vortex that I knew well, a blast from the past, depression.  Over and over a girl would appear. She was in a crystal egg or tear drop and she was sobbing and sobbing. As the days passed she appeared to follow me and I could not seem to get her to stop crying.  I knew who she was.  She was me.  I picked her up in my mind and held her protectively. I gently took her to my past and placed her there and as I set her down it was as if a knife stabbed me in the back where the liver pain resided.  She was back there, but she wouldn’t stop sobbing and I knew without a doubt, she was a part of the liver disease.

It began to affect my teaching.  I did not know what to do.  I certainly had never had such a thing happen to me before.  I wanted to go in and comfort her, yet I was afraid to shatter the glass and reach in.  I had tried once long ago and had almost killed myself in the process.  Did I dare one more time?  I wrote in my journal, “I cannot risk it.  There is too much at stake.”

It took me many days and prayer for guidance to build up my courage to again go see my NLP counselor.  It finally became necessary to choose either her or go see a doctor. The sobbing girl would not leave me alone, and she cried day and night. 

On January 16^th I had a second appointment.  I do not think my counselor understood just how fragile I was.  I was barely holding on to reality.  We did a program called “Imagery for Healing.”  In this I created and sculpted with my hands a well-formed me.   I also learned to draw upon my own resources in depression.  Resources included a song I sang to my little boy before he passed away, a hug and even dickering with the girl in the crystal to wake me when needed and allow me to sleep in between.   Most of all there was a promise to that girl that her needs would be taken care of over time. 

The next morning at about 3:30 I was jolted out of my sleep.  A huge burst of energy like nothing I had ever felt before in my life, traveled across my shoulders and down my back.  It was incredible.  I did not know what to think of it.   I went back to sleep and awoke again at 4:30. This time the energy burst repeated itself three times, each a little differently.  I fell back to sleep and awoke again one more time.  This time it was familiar and I was able to trace its exact path across my shoulders, down my back, then in across my back.   Then I slept the rest of the night.

 Somehow I think that is the night that my body learned how to get over the dam.  Or maybe the dam broke and let the energy flow.   I don’t exactly know what, I just know something changed and it was incredible.  That was the beginning of my return to health.

My coach was busy through the month of February, yet she had promised to give me a hug when I needed it.  I so hated to call.  I felt both guilty for bothering her and sort of inadequate for not being able to care for myself.  I look back and realize what a huge stressor it was.  My February was the February from Hell.  It is what led me to study NLP and a bit of the story is found on the web site.  I had one student from my classroom die from natural causes as a result of her disability, and anther girl in the school die in a car wreck, three other car wrecks including one where my daughter rolled the car numerous times.  I had three reports to Child or Adult protective services and two of my students were molested in seperate incidences,   To all the other things that went on in February, I added the insistent sobbing of the Girl in the Crystal.

At the end of February I had another blood draw and there was no sign of liver disease.  My blood sugar was down and by September it was in the ranges I wanted it in.

Over the course of the next many months we continued to address the problems that came up.  For those familiar with NLP processes we did a lot of time line work and the forgiveness process.  There was also a separation out, defining and integrating internal conflicts.  There was Visual Squash, Re-imprinting, the Dancing SCORE, Mapping Across, Neurological Level Alignment, Health Wholeness with Submodalities of Expectation, Integrating and Resolving Health Conflicts, VK Dissociation and always more time line work.    

My coach warned me that I would swing inside like a pendulum. She was right and again this chart looks exactly like I have felt inside, ups and downs. Notice also the energy difference. I feel that too. So much more energy, so vital and full of life.

Now it is four years later.  This summer I celebrated my birthday with a little extra exuberance.  I had made it past the time I had at one time expected to live.  Most important, I was healthy.  I hike and bike, run and jog.  I teach school, see clients and chase a Special Olympics team around.  I enjoy my grandchildren. I feel vibrant and alive.   It has been an incredible journey. 

Now we are working on balancing all of those swings and I know it will happen. It has been such a journey, my journey.  Thanks for letting me share the story with you.