| Richard |
 "I’d not been feeling well for a while, headachey, sleeping badly and that sort of thing, but one morning I lost all feeling on the left side of my face..."
Of course I thought I’d had a stroke, so I was rushed to hospital and checked over but there was no sign of any damage. They came to the conclusion that it was a sort of stress attack, not serious, and perhaps I’d been overdoing it at work. There was no real advice about what I should do next, so I did nothing, just hoping things would get better and in fact they got much, much worse. I suffered from dreadful bowel problems, bad headaches and nausea (particularly at the weekends when I was supposed to be relaxing) dizzy spells and double vision and generally thought I was on the way out. And of course the more I worried about them, the worse they got. I spent months going from one specialist to another and they all agreed I was unwell but all the tests came back negative – MS, bowel cancer, brain tumour, you name it, I was tested for it. One well-known doctor told me I had to be an alcoholic and took me straight off to an AA meeting! Eventually, I saw a GP in the City who specialised in stress at work. He immediately diagnosed me as a chronic over-breather (hyperventilator) and put me in touch with a Relaxation for Living teacher he knew. I shared a class with four other sufferers and over the next six weeks of breathing exercises and learning how to identify negative thoughts and relax my tense muscles I gradually started to feel better. Once I felt the symptoms were on the way out, my teacher suggested I took the time to work out the cause of the underlying anxiety producing the symptoms. It didn’t take me long to work out that a combination of my father’s early death, divorce and a truly horrendous long-term working environment had created a recipe for disaster. I’d completely lost my ability to think positively about myself and what I did. When I finally got rid of the symptoms, I realised that I had got my sense of perspective back and I hadn’t felt so well for years. In fact, it made such a difference to me that I decided to train as an R for L teacher and share the benefits with others who needed them. One thing led to another and in 2004 a group of us, with a wide variety of useful talents, got together and founded the Relaxation for Living Institute, whose website you are looking at now! |
