The bulk of this post is from Bloom in Wellness facebook page. Baylissa writes for those of us who’ve dealt with severe withdrawal issues. She is one of the inspired people who having gone through protracted withdrawal from psych drugs was able to turn her experience around in love to help others. She has certainly helped me through the darkness of my own journey.
She introduces her post here:
I hope today’s post will resonate with some of you. It’s a letter of compassion to the body. I thought of it because the body endures and overcomes so much yet there is a tendency to not fully appreciate how amazing it is. Anyway, have a read and see what you think.
And take good care. Remember to nurture yourself well – do your breathing and all the other things that help you to cope. Try not to be disheartened if you’re having a setback or if there seems to be no improvements. Keep soldiering on because that break – the evidence that the healing was taking place all along – will eventually arrive!
then:
Dear Body,
I don’t know where to begin. I have hardly, if ever, taken the time to reflect and put into perspective just how fortunate I am to have you. Instead, day after day I have complained about you and how you manage our challenges. I have failed to recognise your loyalty and determination to heal and have been nothing but ungrateful.
Today I want to say I’m sorry I have been so unappreciative and impatient with you and I want you to know I love you for never giving up as together we endure withdrawal. Please forgive me for criticising you when I should have been thanking you. I am sorry for disregarding your intelligence and resilience. Because of you I am still here.
I am sorry for blaming you for my withdrawal reactions. I am sorry for not recognising that you, too, feel everything I am feeling and that all you want is for us to get better. I know that if you had a voice you would be telling me that when we feel anxious, disconnected, or react to certain stimuli, it is because you are protecting me. I am ashamed that I get angry with you at these times rather than thank you for keeping me safe and for coping.
I am sorry that I look in the mirror and find fault with you. I make an inventory of everything that is wrong with you, failing to see just how unique and beautiful you are, even with imperfections.
My dear body, THANK YOU, WITH ALL MY HEART. Thank you for withstanding the intense, weird, bizarre withdrawal symptoms. Thank you for your beating heart, for a lifetime of breathing, smelling, tasting, hearing, walking, and for all the other fascinating things you do unasked, despite my having been so ungrateful.
This letter is my commitment to loving and respecting you more, and to treating you better. We are in this together and I am deeply grateful for you, my resilient, self-healing, innately intelligent, beautiful, amazing body.
With love and respect,
Me
And I said:
Yes! Coming into relationship with the wonder that is this body has been a miracle…and, just as with all relationships, one that has it’s up and downs in understanding…. thank you Baylissa!
It has been the source of great joy to come to know this body and what it needs. I am grateful for having come to know it as I now know it and would not have been able to do it on psych drugs which for me completely numbed out the faculties needed to listen to the body. I am grateful to now deeply understand things about the nature of being human that I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to learn. Some of the many things I’ve learned are talked about here: Everything Matters: a Memoir From Before, During and After Psychiatric Drugs
Coming to know and trust my body is how I’ve been able to heal: We can know more about our bodies than our MDs do…trust that, develop it
Baylissa Frederick is the author of Recovery and Renewal: Your Essential Guide to Overcoming Dependency and Withdrawal from Sleeping Pills, Other ‘Benzo’ Tranquillisers and Antidepressants
She is a benzo survivor and is one of the many lovely people who has helped me greatly over the years. I wrote about how we all support one another recently. See: Peer support? This is the real thing. Free of institutionalization. (psych drug withdrawal)
More posts by Baylissa Frederick on Beyond Meds:
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