As many of you know, I can get very indecisive. I can be walking down the street to do something nice and languid, like have a tea in the sun. And I suddenly stall in my tracks. Where to go? What cafe? What tea? Sunny or cosy cafe? Such painfully indulged innocuousness can render me paralyzed for minutes. I’ll sit in the gutter and weigh up the pros and cons of various options…in charts in my head…aware it’s all just so dumb, which gets me even more paralysed. I’ve been known to turn around and head home because it all just becomes too much of a clusterfuck.

Photo by Heikki Leis

Anyway, I’ve shared how I get over indecision here and here.

And I think I’ve shared that it’s actually yet another side effect of hashimotos (thyroid disease affects the decision-making centre of the brain). If not, I now have.

But I’ve been experimenting with this idea lately: letting my body steer me to a decision. I’ve heard it referred to as using your body as a pendulum.

It works like this:

I have a decision to make. Let’s say, to turn left or right at the end of the street. I think of turning to the left and feel whether I lean that way. I try it on the right. Invariably I can feel my body lean more or less, one way or the other. I feel one way in a light, brighter, easier manner than the other. Sometimes the answer comes as a colour. Or it comes in colour, as opposed to black and white. Colour means go for it.

Others literally use their body as pendulum and tune their bodies to the idea that “yes” is a forward tilt and “no” is a backward tilt. And then they ask themselves questions.

But the operative word here is feel. This is the point. So is getting still and conscious, because it doesn’t work otherwise.

But mostly it’s about getting closer.

This is my aim in life these days. Just to get closer to that distilled, quiet, always-already essence at my core.

Really, if you cut out the angels and unicorns, using your body this way is just an exercise in coming in closer to your body. And when we get closer to our body, we shut out the chattering, distracting head that works in charts and pros and cons lists (which are ineffectual. Actually, they’re good to a point….for narrowing things down…but then the head has to step aside and let gut take over…this has been explored before by Jonah Lehrer). And when we shut out the head, something else far more organic kicks in.

Flow.

Hands down the biggest comfort to anyone with AI is to know the crazy-weird stuff they’re experiencing…isn’t so crazy-weird. Or at least, other people on the planet are going through the same crazy-weirdness.

image via 'Sweet pics dude'

The whys and how comes of AI remain, largely and bloody frustratingly, a mystery. But ask anyone with the condition and they will no doubt have a gut or emotional sense of what it’s all about. I have AI because I have lessons I need to learn. I have to slow down and enjoy life more. I yearn this and so my AI is here to ensure I get it. One day.

Someone sent me the below “letter from my disease”. As always, if you don’t have an AI or chronic illness, bear in mind that an AI is merely an extreme version of the dis-ease I think so many of us are feeling. When you have an AI, the reminders of the dis-ease are just louder.

If you’re new to this blog, you might like to catch up on some auto immune and hashimotos reading here.

The letter was originally posted on a UK thyroid support group forum and has circulated a little.  It struck me as uncanny how many AI phenomena it raises that I thought were just Me Things. Like:

* it rears its grim head on days when you’re looking forward to something

* it stems from a trauma. Yep, tick. Mine was a series of traumas that conflated.

* the Hashimoto’s roundabout ALWAYS involves seeing 23847239 doctors before you get something resembling traction.

As I wrote yesterday, I have reached another chapter with my hashimoto battle. I’d been doing everything right, but I was still having “thyroidy days” 3-4 days a week. My blood tests were also doing weird things (in the most recent case, coming back with low TSH AND low T3 and T4) and so the doctors were just shrugging at me and ushering me out the door. I thought I was at a dead end.

By Anna Hatzakis

Which was driving me MENTAL But then. I delved deeper. And I made some VERY EXCITING discoveries that I think will help many of you out there who write to me about your similar frustrations. Many of the principles will speak to anyone with an autoimmune disease, too.

I’ll be writing a few posts on some of the things I’ve found. To kick off, I chatted with Chris Kresser during the week. He’s had his own battles and understands frustration. He runs The Healthy Skeptic and is a practitioner in integrative medicine and acupuncturist (and has a wife with thyroid disease). Anyway, he’s come to specialise in hashimotos. And his info is sound and generous.

Listen in:

Chris Kesser Podcast [ 40:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In the podcast we cover (and I’m outlining the details below cos it’s all very DENSE info):

The three reasons why your thyroid medication might not be working.

Primarily it’s because hashimotos is an inflammation disease, not a thyroid disease as such. But only the thyroid gets treated (with a band-aid fix – the medication)…causing the other factors involved to continue on. So

1. Medication doesn’t address the damage done by inflammation to the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis, which is key to hashi.
2. Medication doesn’t address the damage done by inflammation to thyroid hormone receptors. If there aren’t enough receptors, or they aren’t sensitive enough, it doesn’t matter how much thyroid medication we take. The cells won’t be able to use it.
3. Medication comes in the form of T4 (this is what thyroxin is), which our bodies are meant to convert into T3 (which is the active form required by our cells).  BUT if your system is stuffed (by inflammation), it can’t make this conversion. Which is just so dumb (and the reason why I supplement my thyroxin with a compounded T3, since the drug companies don’t make it in this format…yes, DUMB!).

The six situations that might explain why your thyroid might be playing up

…and what to do.

As you listen to the six scenarios, we’ll be referring to a bunch of blood tests that will help you work out which scenario might be yours.

Below I’ve outlined the blood tests you’ll need to have on hand to do this.  If you’re feeling like crap, I suggest you go to your doctor/therapist and ask for all these to be done at once.