Odelya Gertel Kraybill Ph.D., Psychology Today, May 31, 2019.
A decade ago, soon after I moved to Africa, I got sick a lot. I had several bacterial and viral infections, and many small colds. I was tired all the time, mothering toddlers in a new environment, and working as a trauma therapist with clients facing enormous amounts of trauma and pain.
I got gradually sicker, experiencing muscle pain, nerve and joint pain, irritable bowel, and severe hormonal changes. I was bloated, unable to sleep well, fatigued, and moody. My doctor suggested that I see a psychiatrist and start taking antidepressants. I told him that I didn’t think this was depression. True, I was moody, but something wasn’t right in me physically. Although there was no way to know for sure, I felt strongly that treating only the emotional side of things was just not enough.
I come from a line of women who believed and practice mind-body healing. When I was sick as a child, my mother, like her mother, used all kinds of homemade remedies. When I was not well she was as likely to take me to a homeopathist or acupuncturist as to a medical doctor.
Now, less than confident in the advice I was getting, I found a Chinese doctor in South Africa, three hours from where I lived in Lesotho, and began seeing him monthly. He told me, “It is like your body is in a constant chronic flu state.” From a Chinese medicine perspective, he said, my body was fighting “heat.” Indeed, I felt like I was in an ongoing state of flu or infection of some kind. But from what?
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