What is Autoimmune Disease?
Our body’s immune system protects us from disease and infection. When a person suffers from an autoimmune disease, their immune system attacks healthy cells in their body by mistake. Autoimmune diseases can affect many parts of the body, cause ill health, make life difficult and cut us off from our desired contact with other people.
My Story
Recently I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. This means that my body is producing auto-antibodies that are attacking my thyroid. The prognosis is that eventually my thyroid will become under-active and that I will need treatment.
I work as a healer and am passionate about the connection between ill health and psychological/emotional trauma. As a baby I was very smiley, easily contented and apparently ate everything offered to me. I became a warm, affectionate child and I was a born performer. Highly sensitive, I felt everything form sadness and fear to joy and ecstasy deeply. As my personality developed, so did my artistic temperament and in hindsight my parents were unprepared for such an addition to the family. As I grew, the message that it wasn’t acceptable to express your deeper self seemed to become stronger. I became nervous and anxious and started to close myself and my gifts away from the world. Inside I felt as if someone had pulled a switch and within months of feeling this, I was suffering with stomach aches and allergies to foods, dust and pollen.
The Endocrine System
The endocrine system influences almost every cell, organ, and function of our bodies. So why do our hormones stop synchronising with us? Life experiences, particularly trauma and illness knock us off balance. We don’t feel stable and centred any more and this affects us at what I call a core level. Our body seems to echo this lack of stability back to us. Maybe our hormones are trying to give us a message.
My thyroid condition told me that my body was literally attacking itself. The thyroid is of course located close to the throat – the centre of our expression. This condition fits perfectly with the fact that I have always struggled with self expression.
When our hormones don’t work properly our temperature control starts to react strangely and our appetite fluctuates. Sometimes we have no appetite and other times we find we are eating more than our body really wants. In addition sleep patterns go awry and we feel tossed about by emotions and mood swings. This lack of stability is a clue to us that there are or have been some unstabilising influences on our lives.
How Do You Heal Your Endocrine System?
1. Check out your feelings of self worth
Think about whether you have unresolved emotional issues particularly related to your sense of self-value and self-worth. Do you have a sense of innate goodness or has some-one or something made you feel rotten to the core? If you feel deep wounds that hinder you in your life, find yourself a good therapist to help you reconnect with the wonderful truth about the beautiful person you really are.
2. Make sure you feel your feelings and ask for your needs
When we’re not having a good day and we meet someone we know in town, how many of us try to come across as if we’re fine when underneath we may be a quivering wreck?! It often doesn’t feel acceptable in our society to admit that we are not coping, sad or afraid. We exert a lot of energy when we try to cover up our true feelings. Conversely we release a lot of energy and feel much better when we allow ourselves to feel them and express them.
3. Make friends with your inner child
A truly self expressive person is childlike. When we are children we readily express ourselves – we cry when we’re sad and laugh when we’re happy. We are unafraid of our creativity and paint pictures for Mummy or Auntie with absolute careless. We express ourselves with our bodies – jumping, skipping, dancing, balancing on walls – generally careering about having fun. We tell stories just as they are to us without editing parts that others may find boring or insignificant. Life is an endless adventure of discovery. We see ourselves as important and naturally assume that others will see us that way too.
Learn to listen to the voice of your Child. For a while forget being a responsible adult and ask your Child what he/she would like to do today. Maybe it is a trip to the beach or to a favourite shop or a time spent painting. As you follow your Child, observe what feelings come to the surface. You may feel a lot of resistance to being childlike if you haven’t allowed yourself to play and have fun for a long time. Examine these feelings and ask yourself where they come from. Open yourself to letting go to any negative thoughts you have about being childlike and learn to embrace this wonderful part of yourself.
4. Embrace Your Passion
People who readily and freely express themselves live their passion. When you are disconnected from your passion you are disconnected from the fire inside of you that keeps you feeling alive, warm and vibrant. When a person is in touch with their passion you can hear it in their voice. They sound excited and animated whereas the tone of a person disconnected with their passion sounds dull, lifeless and lacking in energy.
At whatever age we first start to express our passion we need to feel that it is well received. If people are critical of us or seem uncomfortable with our emotional outbursts, this will affect our relationship with our passion in later life.
If you feel disconnected with your passion, make a decision that you will face the fear of becoming your true spontaneous self again. Fire can be frightening and dangerous if it gets out of control. We might fear our passion getting out of control and harming others if we dare to let it out. However this is just the voice of fear. When we recognise our need to be passionate, feel it and express it, we realise that it isn’t going to harm us. It warms us, enlivens us, sharpens our intellect and deepens our sense of feeling but it isn’t going to consume us. We are simply feeling empowered by energy. Sometimes our fire wants to roar, crackle and draw a lot of attention to itself and sometimes it burns with a calm even glow. The good news is that however much we quench it, the fire of passion doesn’t go out. However small the flame has become, it can always be rekindled.
Try thinking back to your earliest memory of feeling your passion and ask yourself what you were doing, was there anyone else there and how it felt. Did anything happen as a result of you expressing your passion? Allow any feelings about this to surface and observe where in you body you feel these. Be open to letting go of any painful feelings and to the possibility of living your passion and your dream.
5. Give Your Gifts to The World
Expressive people know their gifts and readily give them to the world. We all have gifts. You may be a good listener, a wonderful cook or an excellent business person. You might make people laugh or cheer people up. The list is endless. We all have innately good qualities and these are our gifts. Simply being yourself is your gift to the world.
Whatever our gift, we need to feel that it is of value and that others willingly and gratefully receive it. If this has not been our experience we will at some stage shut off our gifts from the world. We then find that when we want to give, we feel powerless to do so. This causes an underlying feeling of frustration and helplessness and creates inner conflict. Our gifts originate and are energised by love. The energy of love is warm. This love and warmth wants to be expressed to warm the people around us but when blocked the only direction it can go is inward. This creates inner heat and turmoil. The body is then forced to expend a lot of energy trying to regulate body temperature. By connecting with your gifts and allowing your energy to flow, a person’s temperature control can return to normal.
Spend some time thinking about what your gifts are to the world, what might be blocking you from giving them and where in your body you feel this block. Ask yourself whether you felt that your gifts have been received in the past and if they haven’t, observe what emotions come to the surface. Be open to letting go of any painful feelings about this and make a resolve to open your heart and your voice to share your gifts with the world.
In Conclusion
I don’t know where the story of my thyroid problem will take me. With any illness though, I will always see the potential of the power of healing. By identifying, acknowledging and letting go of the trauma that undermines and damages who we are, we remove the thorns that have caused us pain. By doing this it is only natural that healing must follow.
Jennie Williams works as a healer, specialising in helping people with auto immune disease. For more details please contact Jennie on 01460 78285 jennie.online@gmail.com www.healing.jenniewilliams.com
Hi
Just introducing myself. I’m really excited that my article is ‘out there’ today. Healing is an insatiable passion of mine and I hope you find some ideas/insights to help you.
I will really appreciate comments and questions and look forward to replying.
All the best, Jennie
This article has so resonated with me! It is another synchronicity for me re the thyroid and hormones generally-articles keep appearing on these subjects for me. Thinking of my gifts to the world, my compassion for people, the earth, plants and animals, my empathy, making people smile, helping them heal, my creativity, my self awareness and my child-like approach to life. Goodness that’s a lot of gifts!! Blessings x
Hi Jennie
Your passion for healing is tangible as is mine. After experiencing severe and life threatening depression over a number of years I am now in the privileged place to give something back and have been sowing the seeds of hope with patients in hospitals and in the communityregularly. I have also had published a book about my own recovery journey called “The Journey Home” which is in essence the return to my spontaneous, childlike and expressive self. It is about returning to my source of my authentic self. I am now at art school living my life’s dream aged 49, celebrating the gifts I denied myself when they didn’t find acceptance in earlier life.
I wish you well on your own healing journey and thank you for sharing.
Sincerely
Lorraine
Hi Jennie,
Wow, that was good timing, as I’d just been whammied by my own stuff and was in the process of resolving it when I got this link to you from Cygnus. I call that proper confirmation, and although what you say matches my philosophy, it’s always great when someone else describes how you can cope with the dilemmas of your world isn’t it!
Thanks for your guidance and good luck with your health problems,
Chrissie x
Thanks, Jennie. Your article has resonated with me too. Since going through the menopause at 45 , and continuing for the last ten years, I have had all kinds of hormonal and body temperature regulation problems. With these have surfaced all manner of old memories and echoes of things said to me in the long distant past. Essentially I was a very creative, intuitive child – my earliest stated ambition was to be an artist, closely followed by being a singer. I was told in no uncertain terms that there was no money in that (my family has issues with materialism) and to forget it. Even when I settled on wanting to be a teacher I was informed that the money wasn’t good enough!! Fortunately I did get to be a teacher, and have managed to express myself artistically as a happy amateur, also to have great fun singing in choirs. It still hurts however that the gifts I have been given have never been truly valued by some in my family. I know I have to let that go, but it isn’t always easy. Thanks for letting me know that I’m not alone.
Thank you for a wonderful article I can so relate to. I could write a full article myself in reply – perhaps I will later! My gifts as a child were frustrated, shut out as I feared ridicule and suffered much misunderstanding from family and friends. This killed my self worth and self value, only recently restored through years of therapy following a massive mental breakdown. Now I let my feelings all hang out, am not afraid to talk about the past and how it has helped me adjust to a much better future, where I express my passion in my writing and talks, my own gifts to the world. And I can run and jump and laugh like any child now!!! Blessings to all and good wishes for your healing.
Dear Jennie
have you heard of Brandon Bays and The Journey ??
Her work is truly amazing..healing yourself by working with cellular memory, releasing and replacing with love and forgiveness…her journey process allows you to let go of the old trauma..
you may well know it..but I was thinking about your thyroid..and whilst helping others as you do and giving out all that energy…thought this might be of interest to help you look after you..I am sure you do lots of things …but I too have explored many things and came to this process only recently..it is very, very powerful and life changing..the memories that are released that you think were long ago dealt with…adn resulting transformation..
Much love to you and thank you for wonderful article
Jennie
Dear Jennie,
I would like to say thank you for this article. I have small nodules on my thyroid or as it is also known a goitre. I have been told to live with it, ‘it will probably go away’ said my GP. All well and good, I don’t want to take medication and I have had acupuncture and I give myself Reiki. But, I know, not expressing myself is costing me so much. I have not been able to put all this together in the way you have done in this article. Energy flows through me and occasionally I am able to help someone but all the time I hold back. Recently things have begun to change and your wise words have inspired me to keep going and to send this immediate response.
Thank you
Irene
Hi Jennie
Thank you for your wonderful article! It’s such an inspiration to me reading it. As a healing practitioner also, it has pushed me on, in my own pursuit to help myself and other people with autoimmune diseases.
I have Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) which is a malfunction of hormone production starting with the Pituitary (MASTER gland in the head) and affecting other gland production along the way. Having done a lot of inner exploration (and still going) with plenty of reading on the meta-physical reasonings behind this disease, I have discovered that it’s related to my feelings and thoughts of low self-worth..
PCOS has also risen since 1930′s (and possibly even before it was diagnosed) which is no surprise considering women have been suppressed for so long in the past. It may well be a past life/family ancestral healing that i need too!
Learning to become a MASTER of my own life is proving addictive LOL and im becoming much happier!
My lovely partner (who is definitely a reflection of mine) also has an autoimmune disease (allergy sufferer) also and on medication to control it. I believe that only he can cure it by going within and re-assessing his own thinking belief patterns..
Thank you Jennie
With much love
Kerry xxx
Angela, yes, it does hurt doesn’t it? Although people say that we should be able to see past what our families think, I don’t think its possible. We all have a need to be seen, heard, appreciated and loved for who we are. The best I’ve been able to do with this in my situation is wait it out. Keep following your intuition and speak out for who you are when it feels right. and stay quiet when it doesn’t. This way you don’t feel powerless. And you may see things starting to change in little ways. As you go through this process, you may also realise that you don’t just hold your own frustrations but you are holding the frustrated dreams of other family members. You may need to process these before you can move on and see more change within your family situation.
Thanks so much for reading my article,
Hope this helps,
Love from Jennie
This is fantastic, Eleanor. I know how hard it is to come from such a low place to that sort of freedom -t’s well hard!! Its an amazing achievement. All the best with fulfilling your dreams. Love, Jennie x
It has taken me quite a while to live in unconditional love from the heart.
Everyday I wake I am grateful to still be here and it doesn’t matter whether it is sunny or grey I see the wonder in all nature has to offer. When I get up I feel happy and look forward to the day no matter what might come my way. I feel 12 years old most of the time and act that way, I do tribal belly dancing with three crazy and slightly eccentric friends like myself, the dancing is full of fun and we whoop with joy while we dance, and this raises our happiness quotient even higher, when we have done a show or rehearsed we feel like new people . I would also recommend singing, that is another thing my two friends and I enjoy together, we just sing in the moment, we do get funny looks from people in supermarkets and shops as even with muzak, we find our hips going and we sing along with whatever music is playing at the time.
In this age of gloom and doom it would be so easy to just slip down the slippery slope of depression and extremes of eating, drinking and smoking and I am not saying it’s easy but if you say to yourself I love my world and/or I love me and smile into the mirror every day even though you don’t necessarily feel like it, gradually it will become easier and the end product is a happier more confident you.
I look forward to everyday, send love and healing to lots of people through distance healing and just live the life I and my family want.
Remember to smile and say hello to people you pass in the street too, it is a joy to see them realise that you are smiling at them, some people will look at you like you have dropped from another planet, be strong and continue to smile and if they don’t react the person behind will.
One of my missions is to have a national hug day and hug as many people I can, combined with unconditional Love, this way we may even be able to slowly change the world If everyone join in. Obviously start with family and people you know
Love, Angel Blessings and Peace to everyone at Cygnus, the whole world and whoever contributes or reads this comments page, please pass it on to whoever you have contact with.
Ann
Hi Jennie
How amazing that your article should come my way this morning. I also have been diagnosed with an auto-immune problem (MND) and am struggling with self worth but working on it. Also trying to find my ‘usefulness’ and ‘value’ when so many of the talents I have been given are out of my grasp because of physical disablement. It is always uplifting to see messages of encouragement and affirmation come from unexpected sources. It is a reminder that we are truly not alone.
Thank you
Sue
Hi Irene
Thanks for your response. You know, sometimes it is right for us to hold back from giving much for quite some time. I know when we know who we are and we know we’re a healer this is very difficult to do. I hope you don’t mind my boldness but my feeling is with you that you might not have the words to speak yet. This means that speaking and giving energy at this point in time may be aggravating your thyroid condition. Knowing that one day I will speak has led into a lot of frustration when people haven’ t wanted to listen! When I was diagnosed with a the thyroid condition I started to learn what triggered my swings between hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Apart form extremes in temperature, stress and getting tired, I also found that an emotional trigger was a feeling of defeat that I had about people not hearing me. Even in simple day to day situations like choosing items at a supermarket with my husband I would go into a feeling of defeat if he didn’t hear what I said. This is made doubly worse by a thyroid condition because it effects your voice and your energy and you don’t want to have to repeat yourself. Now I’m speaking out more about the things I’m really passionate about (eg writing this response to you!) I feel I can rest my voice when things aren’t so important.
I hope this helps. All the best with your condition. It would be great to help you more. I work in person or by phone.
Love from Jennie x
Hi Sue
That must be really tough , not feeling well enough to pursue your dreams and use your talents. I’ve just looked up MND and now understand that the nervous system is a big factor. If you look at my web-site I have written about what I call The 5 Significant Systems and one of these is the nervous system. You’ll find a link at the bottom of the home page. I hope you may find something to help you here. My web-site address is at the bottom of my article.
Thanks for responding,
Love, Jennie
Thank you Jennie for your article.
Your advice is so much needed in this world right now. And you are perfectly right, we are here to express ourselves through our gifts.
I left my unfufilling job as a Sales executive and set up my own business called ”Positive minds’ to give free advice and information to people about how to discover the potential of our minds and achieve whatever we desire in life, in other words find what we are passionate about. Once we do this it can help to heal our health problems. My business has a very holisitic and spiritual approach. I feel fulfilled and happy being able to help people in this way and opportunites around me are opening up every day so I can reach out to the world with my message. As far as I am concerned I am not working for anyone anymore, I am only working for God and it seems like the Universe is supporting me.
Thank you for your message I hope it changes many lives for the better.
Hi Jennie
Yes, a lot of your ‘nervous system’ article resonates with me. We have become a society of ‘looking good’ and stuffing away what we deem unacceptable to ourselves and others, but it does come back to remind us it needs dealt with. Of course ‘looking good’ comes from within both physically, emotionally and spiritually and no amount of superficiality will appease our soul.
Sue
Hi Jennie,
I enjoyed reading your article, and as a fellow healer I resonated with a lot of your thoughts. I feel that I was the girl who put on a ‘front’ many years ago as a way of coping with feelings of inadequacy and lack of self esteem. The only problem is that the ‘front’ becomes your personality for the rest of your life, and you never quite feel that you are being yourself. Having just qualified as a homeopath, I have also experienced my own homeopathic journey and through taking the remedies I have gradually began shedding the ‘front’. The problem is that people close to you can feel threatened by the ‘real’ you when it starts to appear!
It does however, liberate you and help you find your true self, and what better place to come from when working as a healer? I would recommend homeopatic remedies and flower remedies to anyone struggling with these sorts of issues.
I wish you success on your healing journey.
Lorna
Interestingly, I too suffer from underactive thyroid, and agree absolutely that it has something to do with the repression of who you are. We are such sensitive souls, especially as children, and we all want to be loved. So we hide ourselves in the mistaken belief that this will save us from confrontation with those who do not understand, especially if they consititute a peer group. In my generation (don’t ask!) girls were also taught that their purpose in life was to put others first – and this included not imposing our needs/preferences on them. Interestingly, thyroid disease is much more prevalent in women than in men!
There needs to be a willingness to accept and encourage others in their true passion but there also has to be flexibility on both sides so that neither party is eclipsed. Sometimes it is only by ploughing your own furrow that you can find out who you really are and this is an ongoing process. In the course of it you learn confidence and self respect which is not dependent on the opinions of others nor relative to specific circumstances. Then you can go back into the scrum with a certain amount of equanimity!
To come back to the endocrine system – I always think of it as the nearest interface we have between the physical body and the true Self. There are, of course genetic tendencies in the bodies we inherit from our parents, but how we modify those by our thought patterns is probably more within our power than we, or the medics, realise. It is important to listen to our bodies and try to interpret their messages because we are not just machines, but an emotional and spiritual matrix trying to manifest through material form. To do this, we need confidence in the face of received opinion, and to take control of our own development (instead of trying to interfere in other peoples’!).
Hi Veronica
Thank you for your thoughtful response.I think some of your words were for me. As you say it is about having a voice and holding your ‘confidence in the face of received opinion’. My next step medically is to go and see an endocrinologist as referred to by my GP. Do you take any medication or has it been recommended?
Jennie
Hi Jennie
I was amazed to read this article. It so struck a chord with me as my childhood experience was remarkably similiar. For the last ten years I have been reliving things that were said to me, I have also had terrible problems with regulating my body temperature and can go from being freezing cold to boiling hot and vice versa in minutes. I shall read it several times to absorb the concepts completely. Thank you for writing this I truly believe it will help me. I have found in the past that the key to healing is understanding and when understanding dawns then healing follows. kindest regards Althea
Hi Anthea
It was lovely to hear from you today, particularly as I have had a difficult day of symptoms. I find my temperature control gets worse just before my period. I think it has something to do with finding it difficult to stand in my power. I seem to prevent energy flowing from my torso into my arms and legs, which doesn’t do well for making you feel grounded! Have you resolved your temperature problems now. I’d love to hear more of your story.
Warm regards, Jennie x
Hi Jennie
Funnily enough I have had a much better day today and a better night last night. I actually slept through the night, a minor miracle in itself. I have taken your advice and have been releasing my inner child by being quite spontaneous today, I usually have a tendancy to being a bit self conscious. This goes back to my childhood when I was not allowed to express an opinion. I know that it’s fashionable to blame our parents and no blame is implied in my comments just that childhood forms the foundation of our lives and being good children we take it all in and act accordingly. As I said yesterday I truly believe in our ability to heal issues in our lives if not totally but often enough to make things more bearable. Kindest regards Wendy x
PS Sorry about the name change, Althea is my writing name x
Hi Jennie, thank you for your article – so timely for me. I first developed an overactive thyroid at the age of 13/14 yrs ( 43 years ago!) and was very ill for many years undergoing various treatments, most of which made me worse, but we had little information available in those days. Eventually after surgery in my twenties I was left with underactive thyroid and also severe depression. Herbal medicine was a life saver at that time. I still take a thyroid supplement and in theory, according to conventional medicine, I have been stable for many years but I know that my condition actually varies from one week to the next and sometimes I slightly vary the amount of thyroxin that I take – just going on my intuitive feeling of how much I need. One of the most obvious signs for me is the inability to regulate body temperature – on fire one minute and cold the next! The other main sign is weight alteration, mainly due to fluid retention.
For the last eight years I have also had a severe form of a painful condition called oral lichen planus, no-one really seems to know what causes this but it seems to be an auto-immune dis-ease.
I have no doubt that both these conditions are to do with self expression and over the years have peeled back many layers of conditioning and emotional blocks; taking up artwork and writing have helped a lot. Homeopathy has provided brief periods of relief but not yet a permanent solution.
I still believe that I will eventually find a solution and healing for the auto-immune condition, although there are times when the pain is almost unbearable and I can become very depressed. Eventually I get my strength back through rest and letting go for a while – and on we go!
I wish you, and all those who have written here, all that we need to understand our selves and to bring our unque gifts into the world. Thank you, Pam x
Hi Pam
Thanks for your response.
It sound like you’ve had it very tough and I wish I knew what to say to help you. I do feel for you, though, and hope you find some more of the answers you are needing.
With love, Jennie x
Just a few comments on Jenny’s article, as I am also a Healer but practice on occasions when my Inner Being tells me to act.
We all know that all has to do with energies and vibrations, we when we are work on someone to heal him/her, we tend tend to absorb to those energies.
We need to know how to cleanse those energies that stick to our clothes and bodies are a sticky substance, otherwise you are bound to get ill…
Above all else the thyroid suffers from lack of Vitamin D, and this God-given remedy is easily obtained by being exposed to the Sun, naturally in the hours when the UV light is less intense, that is in the early morning hours and late afternoons.
Lightly tapping the throat area also stimulates the thyroid.
Tui Na massage is also highly beneficial to open-up the blocked meridians, to let the energies flow freely.
Finally, we should never be shy to express ourselves in a childlike manner…
Life is too, too short for us to repress our Inner Being…
Hi Abdul
I don’t know that ‘all has to do with energies and vibrations’. I think all has to do with God, us, relationship, life and love. I think the only reason we are affected by other’s energies is because people mirror back to us our own issues. The more we heal and resolve conflict within ourselves, the less affected we are by other’s conflicts.
Thanks for the tip about the Vitamin D.
Kind regards, Jennie
I had a dream this morning where a young girl shouted me from a glass building where she was trapped. I rescued her and held her close. Now I know who she was. There was always a silent reassuring figure with me who I did not know. Thank you .
When feeling that I am knocking my head against a brick wall, I have found that writing and singing a song helps. One of my songs is called Mercury because I think there is a link between the increase in auto immune illnesses and the vast number of wobbly mercury amalgam fillings in our heads. Imagine my inner child’s delight when the audience in a local folk club were shouting out Mercury in the chorus! I felt the need though to write another verse ( not yet on the net)when people came up to me saying they felt like slitting their wrists after hearing it. Not the required response.
Things are getting better. My doctor actually tested me for mercury levels. I now take selenium daily and vast quantities of vitamin C and Kelp when I have an irregular pulse. I am now reasonably symptomless except in times of extreme tooth rot.
The situation is becoming healthier . In the U.S.A they have changed their advice on these fillings and say not to put them in children or pregnant women. Norway and Sweden have given them up completely.
On healing and conflict I am feeling driven to do something on Hiroshima day this year and am organising a peace sing song and I have adopted a whale called Holly.
I have just watched a video on Care2( the second email I looked at) about some humans rescuing a whale trapped in a net and she (the whale) spent an hour after dancing what looked much like a Thank You. Oh my goodness was that the dream?? Love and health Jane