The Truth About Healing Chronic Fatigue No One Told Me

I remember when my chronic fatigue syndrome was so bad that lifting my finger to change the button on the remote it felt too exhausting so I didn't.

I kept watching whatever was on TV because it felt easier.

Today I want to tell you about my chronic fatigue syndrome journey and the truth about chronic fatigue that no one ever told me and if they had oh my gosh I could have saved years of actually being taken out of life because chronic fatigue syndrome took me out of living life for at least two years.

If you have chronic fatigue syndrome I know the journey is hard I empathize and I'm here to maybe give you some hope because I'm all good now and help you understand what might actually be at the origin at the root cause of your chronic fatigue syndrome.

If you don't know me my name is Claire Siobhanovitch and I am a naturopath and a human design analyst and my passion is really about helping people like I just said get to the root cause of their health issues and it usually involves spoiler alert looking at your emotions.

So without further ado let's jump into my chronic fatigue story.

I was 19 I was just out of high school I finished high school at 18 and for a bit of context I recall being in year 12 and having our principal talk to our entire grade and say if you don't go to university you're a loser you'll never get anywhere in life you'll never make any money your life will be a failure and I obviously took that on board because when I left school I really didn't know what I wanted to do but I did clearly remember our principal saying what he did about university so I thought well guess I better enroll in university I'm watching all my friends do it and seems okay so sure so let's do that so not knowing what I wanted to do well I thought maybe I'm gonna do accounting even though now I don't know why I wanted to do that because that is so not a good fit for me however I didn't have the marks to get into that so I thought what can I do so what I did was I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts what do you do at university when you don't know what you want to do a Bachelor of Arts that's what I was told anyway so that's what I enrolled in and I enjoyed the lead-up to university because there were lots of parties and there were lots of like concerts and events and hey I was having lots of fun but then cut to the real world and the classes for my Bachelor of Arts began I recall very soon after I started this Bachelor of Arts degree hating it with a passion I remember waking up every morning and thinking oh how can I get out of this oh I hate this I remember being in the lessons in the lecture halls listening to the lectures sitting with the students going oh I hate this how can I get out of this I remember sitting in the beautiful grounds under maybe a jacaranda tree going oh between classes oh I hate this how can I get out of this the thought process running through my head as often as possible was I hate this how can I get out of this and the logical thing would be for me to go oh I don't want to do this anymore I'm gonna stop but I didn't do that and I can only assume that look part of it was probably a confidence thing part of it was letting down my perception that I'll be letting down my family my friends those around me oh oh I failed I couldn't even do this university course that's what everyone else is doing and part of it was probably my memory of my principal saying you're a failure if you don't go to university so hey I stuck with it I was there and I don't even remember how long I was there now but I'm gonna say six weeks max now after this salt and salt process running through my head I hate this how can I get out of this there was one day when my body said you cannot do this anymore I had the most intense fatigue come across my body I'm quite sure I was exhausted the morning when I was driving to university but I remember being in a class don't remember which subject it was and the fatigue I think the anxiety as well it was overwhelming I had to get out of that classroom and just being on the grounds of the university it was too much as I'm saying this my heart is pounding I need to not go back there too much I'm pretty sure I walked back to my car and I'm like I've got to get out of now and I drove home with the most heavy feeling of fatigue and anxiety running through my body and it was from then that I was not well I had so many symptoms seemingly coming out of nowhere but the overwhelming issue that I remember was the fatigue the intense need for sleep the inability to exercise the waking up at 11 a.

M.

The just wanting to do nothing all day getting up to watch TV was the thing that I did to fill in my day to pass the hours in my day and even that felt exhausting it was raining sometimes the TV shows would just be too much stimulation and I would just maybe go and sit outside a little bit I was overwhelmed with fatigue in every sense of the word but every day it would reach about 5 p.

M.

I would get so much worse my energy would go down I would start getting anxious I would start getting very short of breath and just my body would be like oh so imbalanced I knew that was what my body would do and I started routine of having a bath every afternoon at 5 p.

M.

Going okay this is how I'm gonna calm myself down every day and running the bath was exhausting thankfully I was still living at home and my parents were amazing they did everything they could to run me around to try and get diagnosis of what was going on for me now this was in the very late 90s so there wasn't as much information around about these conditions as they were now this fatigue instantly instantly got me out of going to university my body had successfully created a way for me to get out of that thing that I hated so much remember how I was saying I hate this how can I get out of it my body said I hear you let's create a way for you to get out of it and the way it created was zapping all of my energy having so much fatigue that I had to deal with that I could barely leave the house I had to stop work I loved my job so much I was working in a video store which back in the day that was a very coveted job so I was very sad that I couldn't do that socializing was too much it was just all overwhelming now I remember going to the doctor and this is where I must pause and say I apologize to you mum if you ever watch this video because I remember being so unwell that on her birthday I'm like I've gotta go to the doctor oh I need help and she did a wonderful mother she took me to the doctor on her birthday sorry about that mum but the doctor was not much help they my only memory of what they offered me was antidepressants they're like oh maybe you're depressed and these will help and look I was unhappy at university but I wouldn't have said that I was depressed and then eventually I went to see a naturopath for the first time ever and this naturopath did kinesiology as well as many other things and it came up that I had the chronic fatigue but I also had Epstein-Barr virus EBV now that's very commonly talked about these days back then not as common but it's still common for people to get it when they are at university or college age now some people would say that it was the Epstein-Barr virus that caused my chronic fatigue and it most certainly contributed but I'm gonna take it one step further and say that it's the stress it was the stress it was the intense desire to get out of the thing that I hated without taking the action to actually make the change that I needed that is what depressed my immune system enough to create an opening for the virus to come in which led to the fatigue that got me out of the thing that I didn't want to do that's how mind-body medicine works everything is energy everything is energy before it comes into form my energy my thought process in my brain was the energy that was restricting me mentally and that created the restriction in my body that then manifested as a physical symptom as a physical disease it was a tough ride and I mentioned earlier I was only at university maybe about six weeks and the reason that I remember that is because I remember being so relieved not just to get out of university but I'm like oh oh I remember now so one of the reasons I didn't want to leave university or actually say I hated it was because we paid all this money in the beginning got to pay money to go to university and I was just within that cutoff period where I could go to like the administration and say oh I'm sick I can't do this I need to get out of it so we got back everything that we had paid because I had this reason to not be in university anymore my body would would not allow it so we got everything back and I felt relieved to a point but I wasn't magically better just because I left university I still went on this journey it was at least for the next year that I was at home sleeping eating watching TV struggling to change the channel on the remote because it felt so exhausting I could tell you what time of day it was based on the TV show that was on because that was the routine I created for myself to feel like I had a routine because everything else in my world had dropped away my health only started to change look I should say the naturopath was helpful the naturopath put me onto a gluten-free diet gave me some antiviral herbs and whatnot which helped to a degree but it still didn't correct the chronic fatigue to a degree where I felt like oh my god life is amazing and I have all this energy no no here's when it changed as part of my daily routine occasionally I would go on to the computer for a short space of time check my email I don't know what I expected to see in there I wasn't very active in the world there's something to do but it was around that time that on the internet I discovered Louise Hayes Louise Hayes work my health only began to change when I started to understand through listening to this Louise Hayes work what I would do is I would lay on the kitchen floor put headphones on so no one else in my family would know what I'm listening to and slowly I would start to realize through listening to that oh my mind is actually influencing my health it was my mindset it was my deep desire to get out of this university thing that created this change in my cellular structure that basically made me sick that was the origin of the story I'm like oh I did this and in realizing oh I did this I then realized oh that means I can correct this okay that's what gave me hope listening to those Louise Hayes audios realizing I created the chronic fatigue maybe I could fix the chronic fatigue too and it was by shifting my mindset by starting to drop the resistance that I had to being in the world that resistance that I was still holding on to from the university failure that my energy started to come back and eventually I did enough in a work and unraveling to gain enough energy to study and this journey taught me oh I think I want to study natural medicine I think I want to be a naturopath so I did I enrolled in naturopathy and I qualified as a naturopathic nutritionist and a medical herbalist and I started that journey with the bare minimum of subjects well maybe not the bare minimum I started with two subjects just to kind of get my energy to show you that I could do it show myself that I could do it that I could be in the world and not freak out and actually experience these things and learn and pass subjects hey I was great in school so this whole university thing had flipped my brain out made me think I couldn't do it so I started small now that that course took me five and a half years to get through to become a naturopath but it's one of the best things that I ever did and it showed me not just how my body responded to my mindset by studying flower essences for example flower essences are vibrational essences that help to shift emotions that can impact us mentally emotionally but as well as physically my favorite flower essence for chronic fatigue is macrocarpa it's Australian bushflower essence macrocarpa it's specific for giving you more energy when you feel drained and here's why if you look at the Chinese medicine wheel it's between five and seven when the kidneys and the adrenals oh they are more active because in the 24-hour cycle there's a couple of hours each day when every organ gets it's like prime time to shine and 5 to 7 p.

M.

Is that kidney adrenal time and for that time because my kidney adrenal energy was so zapped from cortisol running through my body through the stress reaction that I had created when I was in university so stressed out wanting to leave these things this thing so badly but not wanting to and then decreasing my immune system my adrenals had nothing left in them that's why 5 to 7 p.

M.

Put me in the bath don't let me do anything it's interesting that I intuitively intuitively wanting to be wanted to be in the bath surrounded by that water because kidneys obviously regulating the water element the fluid element in the body that's the connection to the macrocarpa macrocarpa helps to lift those adrenals back up boost those adrenals you're so fatigued macrocarpa comes in and helps to really nourish those adrenals if you're deeply drained and fatigue it's also hard macrocarpa is like a shot of life it's not gonna like send you to high s just like oh I feel more normal now yeah it's a beautiful thing so I did I went into the world as a naturopath and I loved that and eventually I evolved my natural medicine practice into infusing with human design now this is relevant to the chronic fatigue journey because it gave me a deeper insight into why my system was so vulnerable to this thought process that I've just shared with you I hate this how can I get out of this and not acting on it if you don't know human design human design is a combination of astrology quantum physics the chakra system the I Ching and the Kabbalah it's a beautiful mix and what I realized when I started diving into human design now that I'm a human sign analyst is that my energy type is what you call a generator now generators and manifesting generators we operate from we have a very strong sacral energy so if you don't know what a sacral energy center is visualize where the sacral chakra is same area now as a generator I am designed to respond to the world by listening to my yes and my no responses and honoring them that is what aligns me with my highest level of energy and digestion by the way my digestion was horrible through that chronic fatigue time oh it's all related but as a generator knowing that my yes and my no responses by listening to my body not my head my body will always tell me in a situation in an opportunity if do I want to do it yes my energy expands or do I not want to do it no it sinks in and what happened every day when I was at university my body was saying no this is not for you and I'm like yeah no but ooh and I was staying in it my body contracted more and more and more and more and it is set the sacral energy center in human design that sacral chakra that is the most potent giver of life energy and vitality for any human design energy type but for me as a generator that was my core so we could see that I was depleting my core energy by knowing that this thing was a no and not acting on it and of course my body was going to basically crumble and fall over because those symptoms were a signal from let's say my higher self that I was not aligned with where I was meant to be this path that you're on that you don't like hey you don't like it for a reason because you're not meant to be there you are meant for different things in this world so listen to it and make a change that is the thing if you have chronic fatigue please ask yourself is there something in your world that you are doing that you are saying yes to you actually want to say no to or are you saying no to something when you really want to say yes to something because if you're doing the opposite of what you feel that you truly want to do that is creating a resistance in your body and it's the resistance that can literally over time change your cellular structure hello and impact your immune system and impact your energy levels your adrenals adrenal fatigue burnout all those things often have their origins in are you wondering your yes and your nose now if you know human design you will know there are also there are five energy types generator manifesting generator projector manifester and reflector now what I've just said is still relevant for you too because even though your cycle is not what we call defined like a generator and a manifesting generator is defined you could still feel that sacral energy in different ways so yes you might be saying yes to things that you don't want to but say you're a projector it may have started as for example you may have been invited into something into a work opportunity hey did you want to do this thing because projectors are all about the receiving an invitation and you might have said yeah but when really you want to say no and this is the lesson for projectors they need to want to be yes and they know especially when it comes to an invitation now for a manifester you may have decided because you guys are very I'm taking the initiative you just might have been like yeah I want to do this course for example yeah I'm gonna go to this university course and you're there and you guys need your freedom oh my gosh and you might have felt so trapped doing the course and you're like oh I hate this so much and you let yourself feel trapped when you could have freed yourself by just going yeah I'm gonna get out of this course now could have been that easy so for you it could have been if it manifested that way and as a reflector you guys oh my gosh you feel the energy of everyone around you so you may for example have enrolled in a course we'll keep talking about the course scenario thinking yeah I think this might be interesting for me but for reflectors because you absorb the energy of and the ideas of people are around you if you had waited and really assessed this concept for you you could have discovered ah this idea of doing this course this is actually my friends idea it's actually theirs and I've absorbed that from them so yeah if I just give myself time to work that out I would have known this course isn't for me and I hate it so much and oh that's what I've got to do this thing that I'm so disappointed I've got to leave now also hard fatigue sets in now let me just tell you it took me at least a year probably a year and a half to feel like I'd cleared the chronic fatigue and I was able to go back to work and I was able to study but you know what happened again because I got into my head and I thought I was headed at this stage I was it had a different job I was working in a crystals crystal store think a crystal store and I thought well I better go get like a naturopathic job like a proper job or something and I took this job at a pharmacy and it was five days a week as their naturopath and I knew from the beginning that if my body was saying no but my mind went no the money will be nice it's good for you you should do it so I did and reach the point where not not that long in chronic fatigue came back really quickly I reached the point where I couldn't it was about a half an hour drive from home I reached the point where I couldn't drive in I remember on my last day I got my dad to drive me to work so I could do the last shift somehow and then he came and picked me up he's amazing thank you dad and again it was my body signaling get out of this thing this is not for you we told you it was a no you felt your body go oh you were considering the job but you went it and did it anyway because you thought of money it'd be great oh this is something that I should do good for probably where I should be the moral of the story is honor yourself if you want to say yes to something please say yes if you want to say no to something please find the confident and confidence and the courage to say no because doing those things that is the core the origin of your healing medicine until you start honoring yourself and living authentically healing is gonna be something that you want to get in small bursts you're not going to feel great in the long term you've got to do the inner work to clear what's holding you back once you do that you can fly like a bird and be free and have all the energy that you want trust me I've been there I have lived that journey I know it to be true I want to thank you for being here please feel free to share any comments below about your chronic fatigue journey because I know it can feel very isolating I would love to support you in any way I can this sharing the stories is often something that feels supportive until next time I genuinely wish you the very best of everything and I send you all the healing energy and the epiphanies that you need to start feeling better today