Thomas Reid, the British philosopher, makes the distinction between mind and brain. In Lyme Disease, Chronic Lyme Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [CFIDS], Fibromyalgia, the brain and body are messed up, but the MIND can remain very sane . . . despite perfectly normal lows and mental anguish caused by suffering . . . and perfectly normal ups as we feel better for a while, or make progress, like accepting certain limitations while striving to flow with our illness, to lift ourselves above it, to be as "well" as we can be, and to have hope.
We do a lot of inner work. Despite appearances. When the brain cannot think, is fogged-out, locked-up, there is still the sense of mind, of being, apart from the brain-fog and the other physical symptoms. I have felt keenly the difference between MIND and BRAIN. Have you?
(When the "lights are out in the attic" it doesn't mean someone's not home.)
Posted by lyme_suz (Member # 7628) on :
Thankyou for putting this into words. I am very sane and have good judgement...Yet my short term memory is bad and I get confused. my mind is working-that's encouraging.
Posted by cecy (Member # 8215) on :
Hi lyme_suz,
You've encouraged me to post again. It's the first time I've put the BRAIN/MIND thing INTO words. But I've thought-felt it for over 8 years (by thought-felt, I'm speaking strictly of the MIND). It's one of those things that, as someone once wrote, "once you know it, you can't un-know it," because you think-feel it deeper than words, or emotions . . . even if it did take me nearly 8 years have it crystalize.
I was glad to find the distinction between BRAIN and MIND differentiated by an eminent philosopher (Scottish born Thomas Reid, 1710-1796, is still studied today). Reassuring, huh.
When you have Lyme, Chronic Lyme, and/or the CFIDS/FM it can produce, you have to keep believing in your MIND: It IS there. Your brain "just" ties its hands and feet, and attempts to gag it. (That is, the Lyme bacteria in your brain does.) The MIND-HEART can still soar! And that's where true courage lies.
I hear you! on memory problems and feeling confused (especially the worse the information-sensory "brain-overload" gets). I've been told often enough that there can't be anything "wrong" with my brain and that I "put on" my illness, to get out of things, or for some other undisclosed, bizarre reason, because I am at times very articulate, especially in writing. The hours spent on the writing go unseen, the periods of rest, the brain power expended.
One small flight of stairs becomes our Mt. Everest. It doesn't ``look'' that way to others because it isn't that way for them. They only see an apparently healthy human being crawling up the stairs. Sometimes I've been told I behave irrationally. I'm close to collapse and feel some anxiety; is this not natural? I must rest, and if crawling is all I can do at that moment to get to bed, I crawl. Is this not rational?
Like you, I have good judgment. Ours must be exceptionally good, in fact, because we must constantly make "judgment calls," or rather, are more aware of doing so, since -- in the midst of a "modern" rush-rush society -- we are placed on a level of survival. Once-small decisions with no lasting impact, have changed. We must weigh carefully a course of action (or rest) as we are forced to consider: How far can I walk? Can I get into, and then back out of, a store? How much information-data can I take in, and how much sensory input, without brain over-load? Should I rest, eat, or sleep first...or next? Will an activity, even reading, cause me to lose too much energy for eating?
Conservation of energy -- brain and body, yes, and mind (one must not neglect to rest the ``thinking'' part of it) -- is as paramount to our survival as to the climber of Mt. Everest. Using our body-brain power is like driving some intricate device upon which our survival depends, as if orbiting in the space shuttle. Our MIND, like a dedicated nurse, works to keep our body and brain, like a patient in an ICU, alive.
It goes without saying that I wish you didn't have to go through this. Since we do, it's nice to go "through it" together, with others on this forum. I feel a little "laid bare" here. You've made me feel I'm among friends.
[ 07. November 2005, 12:51 PM: Message edited by: cecy ]
Posted by lyme_suz (Member # 7628) on :
Cecy,
I so enjoyed your posts.
I don't understand why there weren't more responses because it makes so much SENSE!
Posted by Ann-OH (Member # 2020) on :
Thanks Cecy!
I know just what you are presenting. At my worst, I could sort of stand aside and look at myself and know it was the disease talking and that I wasn't really that sad,pained,discouraged,suffering person.
I knew that time and treatment and courage and determination would bring me all back together. And it did..... though some would disagree. I have remnants of memory and cognitive problems and a very slight seizure disorder, but I am me again.
Ann - OH
Posted by hopeful123 (Member # 3244) on :
cecy, there's an inner wisdom that we all possess. it's our mission to push away the clouds that cover the sun.
hopeful123
Posted by cecy (Member # 8215) on :
Lyme_suz, It helps me so much to know that some of you enjoy my posts, and that you "hear" what I'm saying. You "get" it; that for you "it makes so much SENSE!" It tells me that I am not alone in this inner-thing. That we're "on the same page."
I'm glad, Ann-OH, that you've been able to reach the point where your "ME" shines through again; I'm there more often there, too, and it SUCH a relief, even if "often" is relative! I'm still in survival-mode, and that's O.K. I think. I would hate for it to pass too soon for me to learn all there is to learn from it.
Hopeful123, I think it's true that there is a voice of "inner wisdom we all share." I guess I'm thinking deeper even than that, to the spirit-self, our true identity which is, I believe, the child of God we are, possessing as it does the divine spark that is unique to each of us regardless of clouds or of how disguised we are from each other. Appearances, again. And degree of depth.
By "pushing away the clouds that cover the sun," I understand you to mean, that this is for us to do, for ourselves, for each other...again and again. And of course I wonder if "pushing the clouds away" is an "act" (or "thought" or "attitude"), or if it is really an acceptance, a surrender, an opening up to the winds while ever rooting deeper into the firmest foundatation, drinking of the well of living water there, despite storms. Even "health" is a relative term, giving the illusion of security.
For me, part of the exquisite beauty of life, the bitter-sweet-ness of it, is found in the always-to-be-internalized images of the sun breaking through clouds, of storms coming and going, and of the light always there somewhere (even beyond a clear blue sky).
Lyme is not the only trouble we have/had/will-have, and so I think it of quintessential, paramount importance to apply what we learn in this storm to other ones, and to appreciate both the clouds and the sunshine we see them by.
I didn't mean for this topic to become my own personal "sounding board" and don't want it to be. But perhaps I just needed a place to say it, perhaps because of own experience of what Viktor Frankl calls "Man's Search for Meaning." And your responses helped me to venture into LymeNet again.
You know, if I'd never had Lyme, and years of intense suffering, I would not have experienced the depth of joy "I" feel as a result. Even in, being ill, "I" still feel well, "I" feel whole. My body doesn't have to match my mind. In fact, mind can go where body and clogged-brain can't. That's freedom.
But all this aside, the "brain messed up, mind sane" thing is pretty straight forward, I think. Maybe others will slip in here, and find what they've experienced put into words. And, like us, add their own.
If anyone else with Lyme understands this "messed up brain but mind sane" aspect of Lyme (or CFIDS/FM/etc) I hopw you'll post.
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