my story

my healing story from fibromyalgia, CFS & trauma

learnings about high sensitivity

traveling 14 months in Thailand

Everything that happened before my long thailand trip from 05.2022 - 07.2023...

The reasons for my 14 months long solo journey to Thailand... 

How my symptoms are started & why I was forced to chance my life...

What clarity and meaning I have found through this healing journey and what gifts I have unpacked along the way...

Everything that had to happen UNTIL I WAS ABLE TO CHOOSE AWARNESS OVER PERFORMANCE !!!

First some observations from life:

⚜ Life keeps us busy, so we function on autopilot most of the time and little consciously

⚜ Who is really connected to themselves these days, takes the time to feel into their body or listen to their intuition or heart? Most people are afraid to give up security and take risks in order not to lose their material status and reputation

⚜ Growing up in capitalism, which does not lack material things, has enough to eat & a roof under one's head, lacks true values such as: connection, love, compassion, tolerance, understanding, cohesion, patience helpfulness, serious interest in people by listening without adding a story etc. & often mental health. Highly sensitive/sensitive people in particular suffer greatly from this and do not easily recognize their role in this performance-oriented society

⚜ In Germany we have an unconscious health system that treats symptoms & fragments of the body, with too little considerration holistic approach to health

⚜ Chronic stress, chronic illnesses and mental illnesses are on the rise and are considered incurable in conventional medicine because only symptom treatment is covered by health insurance companies

⚜ Doctors who don't think outside the box often don't know the most modern stress disorders or are not trained in environmental medicine and abandon patients out of ignorance or engage in medical gashlighting

⚜ Health is personal responsibility, especially when you have something chronic

Three facts about chronic illness, healing & sensitivity:

⚜ It's not your fault that the system made you sick, but you weren't completely uninvolved either

⚜ You are not to blame for the gap in the system when it comes to chronic illnesses, but you don't have to believe everything, you can listen to your gut feeling and change/improve something about your situation by yourself

⚜ You are just as good as you are! You are unique in this world! Your body will heal completely when it can trust you again not to put it in that situation!!! (means: you no longer ignore your authentic needs (symptoms) & emotions but respond to them appropriately).

⚜ There is a group of people (around 20% of the population) who are conscious of stimuli that do not even reach the brain of others. This group is therefore genetically (scientifically proven) more susceptible to stress - although it has other, more rare positive qualities - but needs to work harder on its resilience. 

In order to achieve a better quality of life, rethinking and sustainable healing for this sensitive group of people, this group of people cannot avoid having to better understand and accept themselves.

Start doing your own thing more !!! I hope my story will inspire you ;)

So if you've read everything so far and resonate with what you've read, then you should definitely read on...

Main Diagnosis:

2016 the first symptoms and constant tension slowly crept 

2018 Diagnosis of burnout & chronic exhaustion/chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) 

2019 Diagnosis of fibromyalgia (chronic whole-body nerve pain syndrome & nervous system inflammation after reactivation of an Epstein-Barr-virus infection)

2024 C-PTSD (complexe post-traumatic stress-disorder)

My Story:

2016 At the same time, I switched from quality to quantity to mass processing in my sales job.

Conscientiousness & quality have always been more important to me than speed & superficiality - but I still ignored my inner voice for years and pushed and bent myself for 9 years for this company (sales in the private sector). 

At the same time there was a move from a small town to a big city & several job and company changes and here too everything went in the direction of quantity. I was losing more and more stability. 

Unfortunately, I never cured the burnout and the illness because I didn't know that I had burnout and our system doesn't allow me to get completely healthy. Things always have to move on quickly! Everything is designed to function quickly again & not to heal sustainably & completely. I also wasn't aware of what was happening to me. 

I understood: Coaching, the courage to listen to my inner voice, self-love and resilience would have certainly helped me at this point, but I couldn't expect any explanation or time from the doctor. After all, this was also about mass processing and documentation. Personal responsibility, courage and patience became more and more important to me at this point. 

For me, however, this stress had become normal. My body was used to the adrenaline & addicted to it. I wasn't good at taking breaks, I always feel better when I've constantly done and accomplished something, otherwise my chronic fatigue (CFS) would cause me to immediately fall asleep from exhaustion. Thank God the customer discussions in sales always kept me awake, I thought to myself. I was just constantly on reception for years without breaks. 

Despite yoga, I was still too unconscious about my own body. My sense of duty, fueled by fear, trumped everything, even my own health. “I have to function in sales & can’t allow myself to be sick.” It was more important that I had everything under control and achieved what I was looking for than trusting my own body. I always thought my body could handle it all & because of the pressure from my boss, I didn't dare stand up for myself. 

I exploited my body and pushed it to the limit for years. That was my normal. I didn't know self-love and resilience and unfortunately it wasn't modeled for me at home. On the contrary: I was recognized more when I “achieved & did something”. Simply being was dismissed as “doing nothing” & “not enough”. 

Belt beatings were normal for me throughout my childhood following a strict Russian upbringing. In addition, 2 years of experience of violence and mistreatment in the 3rd and 4th grades by a nun also had a very strong impact on me. The belief that “always keep going, even when it’s no longer possible” arose because my parents didn’t free me from the situation at the time because of their own fear of “attracting negative attention”. 

This is where my unconscious beliefs arose: “to persevere” and to go far beyond my limits. The roots of our behavior are actually laid in childhood - I only started to believe that after psychotherapy. 

Afterwards there were a few wake-up calls/stop attempts from my body. A fall from the chairlift on my head while skiing with cervical spine trauma, collapse after a massive maneuver by a chiropractor on my cervical spine with sudden radiating burning pain into my arms, legs, head and face which put me in a state of panic (my body was so weakened that the Epstein-Barr virus reactivated, from which I never recovered). My lymph fluid was no longer flowing because i was so cramped & contracted, that my hands filled with lymph water...my body suffered a shock trauma (PTBS) & it was barely possible to move.

2018 Diagnosis of burnout & chronic exhaustion/chronic fatigue (ME/CFS)  

2019 Diagnosis of fibromyalgia (chronic whole body nerve-pain-syndrome after reactivation of an Epstein-Barr virus infection = chronic inflammation of the nervous system) 

I never thought such a painful and neurological collapse exists & such long-term symptoms were even possible. I never thought that it would happen to me like this. I was always the hard-working model example & was so successful in my job... 

There are always signs telling me to stop, slow down & listen more to my inner voice/intuition. It seemed like I never learned to listen to my body & recognize my limits.  

In conventional medicine - only fragmentation of the body - there I found neither relief nor help, only tablets that didn't help & even more appointments + shuffling from one specialist to another,...this odyssey exhausted me even more & all without success. The rat race moved from work to conventional medicine. 

It is our unconscious society & our unconscious system. No doctor recognized my burnout in time - only when it was too late chronicled - not even I recognized him. 

NO ONE considered that JUST REST would activate our own self-healing powers - including me at the beginning. You don't need 1000 appointments and therapies at the same time. The pressure from my work didn't help with healing either. 

I learned here: LESS IS MORE! 

Germany is really well positioned in terms of diagnostics, but when it comes to solutions? When it comes to chronic illness, all you get is “it’s incurable in conventional medicine, you have to live with it.” Alternative medicine is often ridiculed by conventional medicine, but remains the only option for chronic illnesses. When your own suffering is so great, you can't just accept it and simply accept this chronic, constant pain, let alone endure it without losing your mind.

I always looked for the solution outside until I tried alternative medicine, YIN-Yoga, meditation, the right anti-inflammatory diet for myself & started looking within. 

Unfortunately, our fast-paced society, our system, my stressful job & my upbringing were not a good guide, so I started looking for my own answers. I wanted to finally feel “WHAT is right for ME?” ...after years of external control/determination, especially in my monitored job and with my narcissistic mother. 

IT WAS TIME TO RETHINK & take off this perceived straitjacket. Because that's what fibromyalgia feels like, like a straitjacket from the inside & constant migraines all over the body. 

My greatest value & my greatest longing for “FREEDOM” emerged more strongly than ever before. I wore the straitjacket for far too long. 

I went back to my childhood & my curiosity about how healing works led me to many different therapies, people & places that showed me my way forward.

2020 I started working with coaching, inner child healing & EMDR trauma therapie (2 years), but it was only when I started traveling that I could make further progress. I understood I learn the most through traveling & other people's experiences about life.

The camel's back was more than overflowing, breaking out of this “sick” system was the only way. I felt traumatized by everything that happened. I finally wanted to feel my body again - because I could no longer feel anything, it was like I was separated from myself and I was only breathing shallowly. I was in survival mode & my nervous system was in constant tension. I also lost my entire libido after the cervical spine stretching maneuver & due to reactivation of the EBV virus. My marriage suffered greatly under these circumstances. 

07.2021: my first Indian Ayurveda Panchakarma deep detox cure in Madeira was coming up - 3 weeks in a row. There my metabolic type/imbalance was determined (=Vata imbalance) and all measures were tailored to get me down from the high stress level and excess adrenaline/inflammation. Lifestyle, Ayurvedic nutrition, medicine, detox, yoga, breathing exercises, massages and stress reduction measures were taken into account and an individual program was created for me. 

I was surrounded by warm-hearted people for the first time and this feel-good environment gave me space to breathe a sigh of relief. 

I understood: it doesn't have to be that way, life can be “simple”. It's time to break out of the hamster wheel and invite more serenity and quality of life back into my life. I recognized my own beliefs and programming and began to look deeper into myself, my inner world and my sensitivity... 

High Sensitivity:

Vata is the most sensitive type in Ayurveda & in our western society most people have an excess of Vata. This is where I started to deal with the topic of high sensitivity for the first time and read two books about it & completed a 3 month course, in which I found myself 100% and all the answers.

I was really shocked that I had never thought of it before. Personality analysis about human design (including astrology, Jewish Kabbalah & Indian chakra theory) also came to the conclusion that I belong to the 20% of society & as a projector I am different than most. I've had this feeling of beeing diffrent than others for a long time and often in my life and I finally found answers. 

Coincidentally, the 20% in Human Design/Result: Projector coincided with the 20% highly sensitive people in our society. 

Now I started to understood: TO ENJOY THE HIGHSENSITIVITY THE GOAL IS A GOOD STRESS REGULATION! 

To be sensitive is also a gift: a grace that makes life colorful and rich. You feel everything more intensely, both the highs and the lows. From birth we absorb a lot more stimuli and process them differently than normal sensitive people. So finding a middle way for ourself & set our boundaries is more important than ever here.

Furthermore: when we start to trust in our true strength and power, we will always protected by the universe, because instead of having an adult ego, higher ego & child ego according to the Sigmund Freud model, we have an adult ego, a higher ego and a newborn ego which is much more sensitive than the child ego. In this case sensitive people are much more closely connected to the higher self/the divine/the universe. We are more protected & get more signs in life that help us find our way.  

From now on I knew I could rely much more on my strengths of intuition, wisdom and empathy.

I knew it was time for slow living, to rethink my values, to draw boundaries, to take myself back and to finally create space for healing on my own responsibility. 

10.2021 I took time for the Camino de santiago de compostela inner walk about 14 days & 280 km from Portugal to Spain to free my mind - even it was hard with chronic pain. But if I keep moving, I feel the pain less, so I just did it.

03.2022 My pain doctor forced me to get the corona vaccination, otherwise I would no longer be allowed to enter his practice. He threw me out after 3 years of treatment because he could no longer do anything for me & literally told me: As a statutory health insurance patient, you cause me too much paperwork with the medical service, I won't get paid for it & it's no longer worth it for me! I left the practice crying, feeling misunderstood and abandoned. 

It was time to go & to learn my lesson in life!

After the Ayurveda treatment, strange things happened at work: 

my employee card suddenly stopped working and I couldn't get into the building. When I went to work later, my brand new touch call device suddenly stopped working and had to be reordered and I got on the wrong train - which had never happened before - and instead of going from Augsburg to Munich, I went from Augsburg to Würzburg. So 150 km further past Munich. 

The signs were so clear - I finally had to quit! 

How I took my life back into my own hands, quitt my job & start to travel:

04.2022 Termination of my job & breaking out of the system/standard life

05.2022 Solo slow & authentic traveling despite chronic pain, started 15.05.22 to Sri Lanka

06.2022 second indian Panchakarma Ayurveda detox treatment about 6 weeks in Sri Lanka 

06.22 - 07.23  13 months in Thailand with 4.5 months of yoga teacher training in the traditional tantra yoga ashram in the jungle of Koh Phangan: 

• slow meditation yoga for balace the 3-doshas, breathwork & Ayurveda walking massage from traditional tantra

• Thai massage in Koh Phangan 

• YIN-Yoga teacher training in Orion Healing Center/Koh Phangan 

• 14-days buddhist silent meditation retreat in a monastery in Koh Samui to clear my mind

• volunteer work in a yoga-freediving studio in Koh Tao 

• my first online job as a freelancer in the north of Thailand/Pai

• two energy work certifications for relaxation technique Acces Consciousness/Access Bars ® in Koh Phangan

• further trainings & workshops for nervous system regulation & trauma release

• non-violent communication workshops for trauma healing

• dance classes & social partys (Zouk, Batchata , Kizomba & Salsa) as body movement therapy & release of stress. Especially brazilian Zouk is so sensual & helped me a lot to connect to my body, shut off my mind and completely stay in the present moment (=my favourite dance)... 

• cuddlworkshop, Zouk dancing in close embrace & many hugs for co-regulation of the nervous system

I just wanted to get healthy and finally overwrite my brain with new, positive experiences - far away from the German, cerebral, bureaucratic society & all the appointments.

Straight into my heart ♥️ 

In Germany that was simply not possible at that time... 

Sometimes a change of perspective and leaving the toxic situation can often encourage quicker recognition of challenges, rethinking, and offers space for change, letting go and real healing !!!

When I started to travel, I finally understood, that we humans sometimes burn out & have to solve our collected not yet processed trauma, before a new beginning, so my healing journey began.

On the day I let go of everything, quit my job, left my home, my family, my friends..., only when I went out alone to find my answers, clear my mind and free myself from all obligations and social expectations, only then did my true healing and the shift in my personality begin !!! It was a clear call that it was time for an inner change. The frantic maintenance of my old lifestyle was counterproductive to my healing and I understood: I AM ABSOLUTLEY NOT MAINSTREAM...which I always thought ! I have to choose a different & unconventional path to truly heal sustainably. Going my own way took a lot of courage and fear. 

I started in Thailand doing:

• 9 monts of  16/8 intermittent fasting

• 6 monts fruit cleanse (mucusless-diet-healing-system)

• 11 days juice fasting (just liquids) to clean my lymphatic system & my intestines with enemas

• just anti-inflammatory diet without meat, dairy products (cow milk), gluten and sugar

• 1 year fresh coconut water cleansing 1 - 2 liter/day

• practicing more regularly Yoga & Meditation

• practicing acro yoga in Koh Tao & Koh Phangan

• practicing Breathwork since 07.2022

• practicing ice bath for pain release since 11.2022

• practicing slow brasilian zouk dancing as a therapie for my soul

In this 13 months I have been living:

8 months on the spiritual island Koh Phangan

2 months in the north of Thailand up the mountains in Pai with beautiful hotsprings

2 months on the island Koh Tao

2 weeks on the island Koh Samui

1 week in Malaysia/Kuala Lumpur

This gave rise to a new path in life & this is just the beginning... I'm far from finished 

My learnings/resources that I developed as a result: 

⚜ Don't blame the system/others for your situation - YOU alone are responsible for your life, your boundaries, when to say yes or no & when it's enough 

⚜ You don't get what you want, but what you need to grow & become the person you have always been at the core (without social conditioning) 

⚜ YOU alone are responsible for your health & how far you adapt to/bend for the outside world 

⚜ The more you live your authentic self (you are yourself), live your values, know yourself well, know what you want, the healthier you are 

⚜ The less you please people & the more you set your limits, the healthier you are 

⚜ Mistakes & pain are our best teachers (see life as an experiential experiment to find out who you are without conditioning) 

⚜ sometimes we have to go back to the past, understand where we come from/who we are, before we can create the future & enjoy this here & now 

⚜ the best investment is to invest in yourself to get to know yourself better & dissolve old patterns/trauma 

⚜ life always comes with surprises when you do not plan too much in your head, but stay in the present moment -> so I learned to feel safe & surrender to the uncertainty

⚜ Fallacy: People who go to a psychologist are sick/weak. No, these are self-reflective people who begin to understand/clean up their lives, create in a self-determined way, look at themselves & take resposibility, clean up their own shit, instead of judging others

⚜ Life is a mirror: we don't see others/the outside world but a reflection of ourselves/projection of our limitations. What we don't allow ourselves bothers us in others or triggers us (our shadow) 

⚜ During this time I was able to process a lot of things that had built up. Traveling made my patterns appear much clearer & I was able to forgive my parents because they always did their best & didn't know any better at the time. I can now love them with all my heart & treat them with compassion & patience 

So I asked myself the following questions about radical & honest SELF-REFLECTION: 

⚜ How far can and would you like to bend for other people/jobs? When is your personal limit reached? 

⚜ Have you sometimes crossed other people's boundaries and allowed others to cross your boundaries because you didn't know your own boundaries? 

⚜ Have you pushed yourself too hard in the past? 

⚜ were/are you often available too quickly for others? 

⚜ under what conditions and with which people can you best be yourself? 

⚜ When are you ready to create your life according to your needs and values without conforming to social norms and swimming in the mainstream? 

⚜ Do you stay true to yourself & listen to your inner voice/your intuition or do you do people pleasing to please others/belong/belong in/be loved? 

⚜ Do you dare to radically stand up for yourself based on your values & possibly lose people in the process? (By the way, you can't lose anything that doesn't belong to you/doesn't suit you)? 

⚜ Do you already know yourself & your needs well enough & know what you want? 

⚜ Do you recognize the people who stand behind you in every situation, really support you & love you as you are or toxic people, jobs, framework conditions & energy robbers who are interested in keeping you small?

⚜ maybe you were one yourself Energy thieves for others because you were/are dissatisfied yourself & don't know who you are? 

⚜ Do you perhaps take life and yourself way too seriously, forget to enjoy life and don't allow yourself to be in the moment but are more concerned with the past or future plans/future fears? 

⚜ When have you reached the point where you can change something or does it have to really hurt? 

Conclusion 1:

I am grateful for...

⚜ Despite this experience, I am grateful because that is exactly what made me the person I am today 

⚜ I can now perceive life much more consciously and slowly than other people who have not lived through this experience. This allows me to discover things that others cannot see because they live too “fast & unconsciously”. So I can now perceive & discover life on a much deeper level 

⚜ everything we experience has a meaning - so you know what you want & especially what you no longer want. However, you often don't realize the meaning until much later and everything suddenly makes sense 

⚜ Energy never lies - even if your subconscious ensures that things in your life don't work out, it's always for your higher & best good (you won't understand that until later) 

⚜ Life is about having different experiences & learning from them & experiencing ourselves. We learn & grow every day. Mistakes even make us grow & understand faster 

⚜ collect moments & experiences instead of material things 

⚜ I'm finally able to respect my own boundaries & know exactly when my body needs a break to recover/rest

⚜ I would rather live minimalism rich in love, depth, joy, heart connections than superficial and rich in material things 

⚜ I now know my stress tolerance & have created resources to deal with stress better and regulate myself 

⚜ I learned patience, tolerance & compassion for myself (not always just for others), self-love & resilience 

⚜ The illness gave me time & the opportunity to travel and find out what really makes me happy & brings me joy in order to live a happier life with a better quality of life despite pain (without pain I would never have dared to travel alone) 

⚜ I now know that I can always be happy, no matter where, no matter what people, what partner, etc., but the general conditions have to match my essence and my values, because only then am I happy from the inside and regardless of it, that someone else has to make me happy. As long as I can remain me, I can take my inner happiness with me wherever I go. 

⚜ I discovered dancing as a tool for complete freedom from pain because at this moment I am so strongly connected to my feelings that I don't notice the pain at all & dancing just gives me so much joy 

⚜ without my thailand life experience, coaches, online courses, books & a lot of healing examples online, I would never have made it this far on my own. But it tooks courage to take responsibility for my own patterns behind the illness

Through THE JOURNEY I learned NEW THINGS: 

⚜ speak English (I hardly spoke any English before) 

⚜ Ride a scooter 

⚜ 3-doshas Meditation-Yoga, breathwork, pranayama from traditonal tantra & YIN-Yoga for 

my own healing & teachings 

⚜ create concious events & hosting women circle

⚜ Icebath 

⚜ Dancing Bachata, Kizomba, Salsa & Zouk 

⚜ Express myself sexy at Ecstatic dance without feeling ashamed 

⚜ minimalistic living 

⚜ slow traveling 

⚜ 6 months fruit cleansing (mucusless-diet-healing-system) 

⚜ 9 months of interval fasting 

⚜ 11 days juice fasting (just liquids)

⚜ purification with coconut water (a lot electrolytes)

⚜ a total of 9 weeks of Ayurvedic treatment experience 

⚜ Confidence in life & surrender to uncertainty by staying in the here & now 

⚜ to be brave 

⚜ how important occupational disability insurance is (thank God I was an expert) 

So in the end it wasn't just the journey of healing my illness, but in the end I found myself!! 

In the end it was about self-awareness. 

Become aware of who I really am & what I need to be healthy & happy, even traveling with a chronic pain desease was not always easy.

Because many people rarely have the opportunity in life to get to know and understand themselves because they get caught up in the rush of everyday life or are afraid to leave their comfort zone and jump into the “uncertainty”/leave the system. Our family and social conditioning also play a big role here. 

Changing your perspective is one of many changes to break your patterns and completely realign yourself. Leave your comfort zone and familiar surroundings - only then can you clearly recognize your own deep-seated patterns. 

Being free inside is the greatest wealth you can have in our media-controlled, materialistic, performance-driven and cerebral society today. 

We create our external world with our inner world! 

Conclusion 2:

SECRETS OF THAILAND ABOUT HEALTH:

I wonder why Thailand is so relaxed compared to western countries (& Germany)? 

Thailand lives according to Buddhism and economically they are a bit behind, but life there is much more relaxed because they are not as performance-driven and materialistic as we Germans. They are much more connected to the heart and less in the head than we are in Germany. For this reason, Thais live healthier and happier lives. Why still? 

So why do people in western countries/Germany get sick faster compared to Thailand? 

My personal answer from experience in Germany is: IT's CHRONIC STRESS & OUR UNCONSCIOUS SOCIETY !

Despite higher levels of pollution in Thailand, people there do not reach their limits as quickly as people in the West. When the body is at its limit, it is in fight and flight mode, then the nervous system takes over and digestion and, above all, detoxification stops. 

Our stressed body no longer detoxifies properly and many harmful deposits of pollutants from diet, environment and stress hormones such as adrenaline etc. form. The body becomes clogged and our lymphatic system is more precisely physically and energetically blocked. 

That's why Germany also has to offer heavy metal detoxification therapies etc. because our immune system is permanently stressed by chronic stress and no longer detoxifies properly. So the barrel overflows much faster & the body simply no longer tolerates stress in combination with harmful substances. Neuroimmunological diseases occur. 

In Thailand it doesn't even get to this point, so the body copes much better with existing pollutants and doesn't even get to the point where the camel's back can overflow. 

SO THE ROOT IS STRESS & UNRESOLVED TRAUMA IN OUR SOCIETY, IN EACH OF US!!! 

Where does all the stress come from? 

Of course from current life, but also the intergenerational stress that is stored in our cells. 

It is said that we are the generation of grandchildren of the war and therefore the first generation that can psychologically process the things we suffered back then. 

The war generation had to fight for survival. The children of war must ensure reconstruction. And the war grandchildren can resolve the cross-generational traumas. 

And that is one of the reasons why inner work with the soul has been in greater demand in the West for decades than ever before. 

But what do we do instead? 

We run from one doctor or therapy to the next & hope that we can change something externally through a solution. Of course, the dirt has to get out of the body first after it has accumulated there and you have received the neuroimmunological diagnoses such as ME/CFS, fibromyalgia and other neuroimmunological diseases, but the only long-term solution is to START INSIDE YOURSELF & work on it, to work with your own stress patterns, traumas, fear and behavioral patterns by taking personal responsibility for yourself, your mindset and your health.

That's the only way out. I experienced it myself. However, when the nervous system is in an alert state, mindset work is still too early. 

The first rule for healing is: The nervous system must feel safe (emotionally & physically) & needs a lot of compassion, love & patience until the body can heal. 

Healing only occurs when we are at rest and when we feel safe. 

So we can't change the outside world! We can't really change the increase in stress in our society, because we are only responsible for ourselves, so we can just change OURSELVES! 

Our stress patterns, our behavior, how we deal with them, acquire resilience, set an example... only then can we influence our environment and ultimately society as a whole.