Case Study: Opening Up to New Life

By: Wendy Bjork

Living and coping with MS Blog post by Wendy Bjork, aka The Empress of MS ™

I didn’t realize until I started digging deep how much of a traumatic experience dealing with multiple sclerosis has been these past 35 years. I have buried so many feelings of my own, the sting of other people’s comments, the looks, the judgments. I have wrapped it all up and put it in my basket of “I’m Fine.”

I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. Even when I would see my neurologist, he was so busy “testing” my reflexes there wasn’t much time to talk about anything other than my physical symptoms. And when I brought up any new signs, the immediate response was medication. Had I known about breathwork back then, maybe I could have helped myself earlier.

This illness can be a lonely one. It’s not that I don’t have a husband, parents, friends, and family that love me; I didn’t want to be a burden to them. There isn’t a cure for MS, and I believe how we view it and navigate it has a lot to do with how it affects us.

I know for myself when I worry about anything, I can feel the numbness and tingling becoming even more noticeable very quickly in my feet and legs. This has such a chain reaction. It can escalate into tripping and falling, running into a door or wall, or just wasting my energy worrying about something I have zero control over.

What happened to change this for me

Well, first of all, embracing the illness for what it is, without letting it “have” me. Which is way easier said than done. And I realize that there are so many different aspects to the healing journey.

I have spent so many hours with my Emotion Code™ practitioner Jenn. She helped me release a lot of the old feelings I had buried, such a profound way back when I was diagnosed at age 22.

Let’s see if any of these sound familiar: shock, frustration, worthlessness, despair, discouragement, anger, panic, humiliation, anxiety, grief, lack of control, sadness, and bitterness, just to name a few.

When we hold on to these old emotions, they don’t serve us, and we need to let them go to move forward in pursuit of our hopes, dreams, goals, and whatever else we plan on achieving in our lifetime.

While you will have MS for a lifetime, it’s not an automatic life sentence. I’ve learned to accept help when needed, whether letting someone else do my grocery pickup or hiring mentors and coaches to learn how to give myself grace and love myself again. While the journey we are on is not changeable, the steps we take will make the difference.