Rewriting a Thousand Dreams

“A person who has their health has a thousand dreams. A person who does not has just one and that is to feel better.” Dr. Izabella Wentz, Thyroid Pharmacist

A Sick Person’s Dream

For years, I dreamed only of feeling better. It was more than a dream, really. The idea owned me. The need for answers consumed me. I spent hours and hours reading books and research studies that might lead me to an answer. I needed a path back to the me I used to be.

Even though I’d read Dr. Wentz’s quote, even though it stuck with me, it never occurred to me that I’d lost my ability to dream. Last spring, just after the world shut down, I opened up. I’ve spent the last year rewriting a thousand dreams.

How It All Began

My chronic illness began in 2015 with two miscarriages. I was then diagnosed with thyroid disease, celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, C-Diff, SIBO, “working memory” loss, a myriad of food sensitivities, and hormone dysregulation…to name a few. Between 2015 and 2018, I was diagnosed with a new condition every three months on average. In the first year of illness alone, I saw an OBGYN, general practitioner, rheumatologist, hematologist, oncologist, gastroenterologist, and neurologist. I felt completely defeated. Every time a new diagnosis came, I would try to get a handle on it, only to drastically deteriorate further as a new issue appeared.

Writing Pathways In The Brain

Every day, during those years of deterioration, I asked myself these questions:

• Why is this happening?
• How do I stop it?
• What will I do when x drug stops working?
• Which drug will I try next?
• Why isn’t x therapy working?
• What will my life look like in five years?
• Will I be alive in five years?

The Muscle Memory of Illness

We found the toxic mold. I moved beyond those years of deterioration. Even so, my healing plateaued. In February of 2020, during a meeting with my Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist, we discussed my path forward. So many things were looking up, and yet, spring was coming.

For me, spring had become the season of illness, isolation, pain, and fear.

So there we were, approaching the spring of 2020. We needed a plan; a way over the hump. It was as if my body had developed the muscle memory of illness. My twenty+ weeks spent homebound almost always fell between the months of March and May. I remember begging my FDN, Lisa, to help me break the cycle. I was willing to try anything if only I knew what to do.

Sometimes You Have to Rewire the Brain

She suggested that I buy the DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) videos and walk through the course on my own. The course is designed to break the pathways of sickness that loop the chronically ill from one bad day to the next. Do it before spring, she said. I didn’t really understand what she was talking about. I had heard of the program. Honestly, I didn’t believe that it would work. But I was willing to try anything, so I purchased the program.

The Dynamic Neural Retraining System

The DNRS program was developed by Annie Hopper, an emotional wellness counselor, who herself developed a mystery illness even more severe than my own. At her worst, Annie Hopper lived on a boat in Vancouver because she became so sensitive to mold, household chemicals, and even EMFs, that she could not live in her own home or move about in public without experiencing seizures.

While languishing alone on this boat, she began to read about the brain and specifically, neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change and adapt). She came to the conclusion that her brain must have experienced some form of toxic trauma causing it to loop through the same traumatic path again and again. She hypothesized that if a brain can be rewired and thus healed from physical trauma (using the tenants of neuroplasticity), then her brain could be rewired to heal from toxic trauma as well. Annie Hopper went on to rewire the neural circuits of her limbic system, healing herself from all symptoms of toxic overload. She now travels the world educating physicians and teaching courses to people who have given up on life.

What Is Neuroplasticity?

So at the end of last February, I took Annie Hopper’s course. She begins by explaining neroplasticity so that each client has an understanding of how the brain is capable of healing itself. These two videos are public domain. I found them to be very interesting:

• The Brain That Changes Itself
• Norman Doidge on the Brain and Neuroplasticity

According to the theory of neuroplasticity, you can change or heal the brain by repeating exercises over and over again. DNRS requires the repetition of mental exercises. It’s the repetition that writes new pathways in the brain, and as you follow the new pathways, the old become less dominant.

Tell Yourself a Story of the Past

For one exercise, you are directed to identify three positive memories. You are to include details such as color, smell, sound, and even texture. Then, you are to repeat the memories to yourself, one at a time, in the present tense. Annie Hopper said that her sickest clients, those with the most limbic system damage, often find it difficult to identify purely positive memories. The pathways in their brains are deeply written by pain, fear, and anxiety. I was surprised to find that I was one of those people.

When I sat down to identify just three purely happy memories, I had a very hard time. Going all the way back to our wedding, I found that those emotions weren’t purely happy. That whole week wasn’t just about getting married. It was also about packing up and leaving my family and friends behind. So then I turned to Luke’s birth. Well, Luke was born by emergency c-section. I was hospitalized for five days and wound up with an infected incision site. It was a painful, stressful experience. Every time I tried to use a memory from the house, like Luke’s first birthday, I had visions of all those gifts in the dumpster.

Tell Yourself a Story of the Future

The DNRS program also directs clients to envision future events that you want to happen. This is where I learned that I had forgotten how to dream. Like Isabella Wentz said, I used to have a thousand dreams. They were hopes and goals and ambitions. At the point that I began the DNRS program, I only had one.

The program forced me to dream again. It forced me to see a future where good things happen. Last summer, as much of the country rioted and burned, I lived within my mind, dreaming of good things to come. I rewired my brain to travel pathways of positivity and peace. I rewired my brain for healing.

Broken Free

Because of DNRS, the spring of 2020 came and went without trauma. There was no illness brought on by muscle memory, or a stubborn limbic system determined to walk through old habits. I had broken free. Because of DNRS, and with the guidance of my Integrative GI, I was also able to wean off the steroid that had been critical to my existence for two and a half years. To this day, I can even stop a migraine with two to three cycles of the DNRS routine. It’s a powerful tool.

Rewriting a Thousand Dreams

DNRS awakened in me a thousand dreams. It gave me hope. Because of DNRS, I now purposefully catalog big, important memories where I want them to be. My pathways are consciously written. I used to associate our old home with emotions of anger and betrayal. I blamed that house for the family we lost…the family we would have had. In my mind, that house was responsible for the moments I missed from Luke’s childhood due to being bed-ridden or unable to care for him. I blamed that house for the years of crushing defeat that left me dreamless and hopeless.

I can’t change all the bad memories into good ones, but I can focus on the smallest positive details of the life we lived together. I can write good into that otherwise crushing story. And because I can write the good, focus on it, feel it, make it clear, I can make the old pathways less dominant. They are not my everything.

Now, I dream. I hope. I have a future.