Posted by gary g (209.187.113.39) on August 30, 1999 at 14:22:12:
In Reply to: dont agree with #6 and #8 posted by doug l on August 30, 1999 at 12:39:02:
doug
could have written your post word for word
took me over 20 years of clusters to discover & start practicing mental/spiritual exercises, for pain control, DURING attacks
this DOES NOT reduce the severity
BUT - makes it easier to get through with far less "damage" after
I realize this is one of those things that a lot of people are highly skeptical of, as I was for many many years BUT - FOR ME it makes the overall impact of this disease easier to bear
progess not perfection
relief not a cure
I'll take it
re:
if I let myself get anxious or hysterical, the attacks are worse ABSOLUTELY
if I let myself get stressed out over the cluster, the cluster seems to last longer, with more attacks, of greater severity
I COMPLETELY believe that we need to put more than just physical techniques to work on this bastard to make any impact
re: dark & quiet
absolutely avoid brightly lit areas
getting caught in the sun is a near death experience
I remember an attack in midday, in the middle of a snowcovered frozen north country lake - the sun in winter way up north is like being IN a strobe light - was SURE I was gonna literally fall into little pieces right there
re: NOISE - loud noise in the back helkps with the mental control/biofeedback business - I use it to contentrate on to break up the steady-state nature of perceiving the pain
BUT - noise that startles me, OR noise that I feel comppelled to "deal with" somehow (phone ringing, somebody talking to me, etc) is insufferable
SO - is not a totally simple, B&W issue
what is ?