A good quote

[DaveKD]

I find, and many of you can relate, that I get to bogged down in my health fears and it pulls me a way from being fully alive. This is a good quote/affirmation for when you find yourself in that spot.

Better to lose count while naming your blessings
than to lose your blessings while counting your troubles.

[Davey]

I live by this motto:

Don't fear death so much that you forget about living.

[JohnV]

My wife worries quite a bit about things, not health stuff, but things in general. I'm still learning about how to deal with it and support her as a husband, but I'm familiar with the subject enough that I teaching a Sunday school class on it...

One of the quotes that helps her is by Corrie TenBoom, a Dutch woman who's family survived Hitler's death camps:

Worry does not take the sorrow out of tomorrow,
it takes the strength from today!

Mary Englebright also paraphrased it:
Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles,
it empties today of its strength.

[Arron]

Keep in mind that worry, (which when you're worried you are also "scared" something will happen), is also a safety mechanism that is built-into our bodies to keep us from getting hurt.

If you were standing next to a cliff, and the edge was unstable and you had no worry or fear that if you got too close to the edge, the ground underneath you might crumble and you could fall to your death, that is a dangerous situation and you would probably end-up dead. Worrying or being scared about falling to your death makes you think twice about getting too close to the unstable edge of that cliff and in return, keeps you alive. I think what we have is an overactive "built-in safety mechanism" that just needs adjusting. Keep in mind that I still don't 100% believe that BFS or fibro is "caused" by stress. I think the symptoms came first and once we found out that it "might" be ALS by to being misinformed about what ALS symptoms actually are, THEN came the fear and anxiety.

Think about this, Some people worry about getting killed on carnival rides, so they never get on them. Is that rational considering that the car they drove to the carnival has about a 500,000 times better chance of killing or injuring them than a carnival ride? No, it isn't rational but in their mind, they think it will keep them safe.

Is it rational that people like us fear something terrible is going to happen because we have "symptoms" that "could" be slightly consistent with something terrible? Yes, actually it is to an extent, BUT what we need to do is also keep it rational and not let it keep us from getting close enough to the edge of the cliff to get a beautiful picture of the scenery, yet not close enough to fall off the edge. Or in other words, don't let it keep us from enjoying the fun rides at the carnival when in reality, the statistics and "actual" dangers are so minimal that we forget about how to have fun. It's a matter of regaining control of our fears is all. Just my two cents on it.

[jblack]

Another good one I heard from a yoga teacher recently:

"Worrying is like praying for something you don't want to happen."

If any of you have ever thought about yoga, btw, I can't recommend it highly enough. I do have exercise intolerance with my twitching/aching, but it's worth it for the peace of mind I get from yoga.

[Davidd]

Sometimes the following quote seems to pervade my life:

"In life no one dies a virgin. One way or another we all get screwed!"

Hope you get a good chuckle out of that one.

Peace,
--David

[Debbs]

JohnV,

She couldnt have said it any better "Worry does not take the sorrow out of tomorrow,it takes the strength from today"....Spoken by an amazing woman and she would certainly know. I have read Corrie TenBooms books, what a woman !!!!


Deb

[Souris]

I read somewhere:

"People who are afraid of dying are afraid of life itself."

I still ask myself if that could be true for me. I completely adore life, but could my hypochondria be a hidden fear of the future? I envy my boyfriend who isn't afraid at all of death. He tries very hard, but my fears are difficult for him to understand.

What I can't understand myself is why we all scare ourselves to death with something that most certainly will not happen. Once something dreadful happens, there's still enough time to worry... We're wasting so much time, just to find out in the end that there's nothing to worry about. This isn't my first episode of hypochondria. I've been through this before and I always regretted the waste of time and energy afterwards.

I wish you all the best and I hope that we all find a way out of our fears.

Souris

[Asterix]

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance
It's the one, who won't be taken who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live



However, this is much easier said than done.
I can relate very much to what Souris said: for me too, it seems
that the reason for my fearig death that much is just because I love life so much :-/