Many people have always mentioned to me that setting goals and having dreams are what change your life from being average to ecstatic!!
I have never been much of a goal setter or a dreamer. I have just been lucky enough to stumble across incredible situations and people that interest and excite me, follow that path for a while until I realise that I need a new direction and go find something else. I have always lived by the belief that I am “looked after by the universe” and I didn’t need to work too hard to achieve greatness as I was doing just fine living simply under the watchful eye of synchronicity and optimism. The glass was always half full – of vodka! As amazing as this was and still is, this my friends in some languages – is called apathy, lack of self-worth, denial – whatevs there’s a few labels for that but I was great at it!
It took a while to put my finger on the reason behind this avoidance to dream and eventually I came to the conclusion when I really sat back and assessed it, that this had to do with an incredible lack of self-confidence about my abilities to achieve greatness which began when I started having Grand Mal seizures at 19. Even though I remained strong in myself over the years to not let the seizures stand in my way of living my life, there was a part of me that sort of believed that I was not a “whole unit” which many of you would know and agree with anyway and that it was a bit pointless to set goals because I wouldn’t be able to achieve them.
Amongst all this subconscious negative self-talk, one itty bitty goal did pop through the radar when I was 28 – 16 years ago now which was to never date a tosser ever again but I knew that goal would never really be stuck to so I made another one and that goal was to one day write a book about my journey with Epilepsy when I had cured myself of this dreadful brain dysfunction that was playing with my imperfectly perfect world.
At that time I had given up on the medical system and became a rogue experimenter of all sorts of alternative healing modalities in the hope of understanding and preventing my brain having electrical meltdowns.
I kept trying new things all the time because as I mentioned just before, my aim was to CURE, not to just manage so I experimented with alternative therapies, herbs, different pharmaceuticals, diet and lots of other stuff which you’ll read about in the book, all for the end result which was going to be my name in lights saying “Lainie Chait the amazing woman that beat all the odds and healed herself of Epilepsy without medical intervention”.
This end result of finding a CURE consumed me so much that I put on my blinkers for 16 years and went on a journey to achieve this at a sacrifice to my psychological health not to mention the massive barrier I erected around my heart to protect myself from loving and being loved wholly.
Read from page 71 in book
“I have tried to avoid having the seizures in front of people at all costs because the negative public experiences kept bringing the concept home that having public seizures is a thing to be embarrassed about. To think people are scared of seeing a part of me that I have to deal with so often, but which I have no control over, really saddens me, especially as I have no idea what I look like in the throes of a seizure. Thus, I have to live it through the eyes of the spectator. The more freaked out they look, the more I want to keep hiding myself away so I made sure I always had an exit strategy wherever I went in order to have somewhere to escape so I could have the seizures. on my own. After years of studying myself and how and when they would come, predicting them and escaping became much easier for me. Myself and possibly many other seizure inflicted people just want to protect YOU from seeing US but in doing this, as I’ve learnt the hard way, hiding away is only going to stop people from having an awareness about what to do and how to assist.”
So people ask before they read it what’s the message of the book? Well I guess one of the messages that I wanted to come out of writing this is that We must make an effort to start to listen to our bodies. We are intrinsically wired in to listening to our minds and as all of us here know, our minds are trouble makers. Our minds are like the naughty kids in the playground that are coaxing you on to do egg a teacher and then run like a wilder beast away from a cheetah in an African Savannah. Our bodies and brains when nurtured, know exactly what to do to keep us healthy but our minds work against our physiology to shut our body and brain down and trick us in to feeding ourselves with poisons and situations that will ultimately end up affecting our health in the long run. Cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, caffeine and on the more intense end Ice, Heroin and even Abusive relationships. In all of these scenarios we indulge in these things because our minds are telling us that we need them. This is ok. Experimentation is ok in my books, I’ve done it alot. However when experimentation turns into abuse, our bodies and brains then start to scream at us with signs and symptoms – a cough, a hangover, sweats, weight gain, bloat, bruising both emotionally and physically but our devious minds say – “BODY you are lifeless without me so back off and leave this gig to me. You just keep up ok!!!”
In my story, my mind was definitely in charge for many years and my body and brain followed our leader. Thing is my mind was in turmoil and I was taking directions from a confused, dysfunctional, stressed and self-loathing leader. So the destination always ended up in a place of dysfunction, stress and self-loathing. It makes sense really when you look at it that way. On top of this I was trying to deal with my signs and symptoms of abuse which displayed as Grand Mal seizures and an overly electrical brain misfiring randomly.
To combat these signs and symptoms I have been on pharmies and off them, I’ve taken herbs, been to many alternative practitioners, tried different diets, dealt with my mineral deficiencies that one needs in order to keep a well functioning nervous system, worked with reprogramming my brain aka neuroplasticity and tried nothing at all…….16 years I have spent experimenting so I didn’t have to be on meds but nothing was going to work fully because….my toxic mind was still at the helm!
That is Until 2 years ago when I decided through methods of using mindfulness and dis-creating some of my limiting belief systems that it was time to put this baby to bed.
You are here tonight to help me celebrate the birthing of this book. I am so proud of my achievement and realise how amazing it is now to set goals and dream. Goals are simply dreams with a time frame and I’m now making 1 year, 5 year and 10 year goals as I see the importance of what can happen when you make magic happen when you set your mind to something.
Writing Electro girl was not for the financial gain, it’s really about sharing a message and mine is to empower people to manage their conditions, whatever theirs may be, holistically and not to accept that there is only one road to health through the medical system. Any condition can be managed, maybe not healed completely in all cases, but managed so that life isn’t battling against it but flowing with the condition. It’s all an experiment so why not be in the driver’s seat of the experiment instead of being a passenger. We have one life, go deep inside and learn more about your body and brain in order to make it count!
Read from page 113 in book
“After studying myself very closely for the past 16 years, reading books on Epilepsy, meditating, listening to radio broadcasts of doctors on the topic, self-medicating, keeping logs of my seizures and triggers, changing diets numerous times and basically trying to really understand how my brain works, I can now sit in a doctor’s office, whether they are a specialist in the field or a regular GP, and feel really confident that I know just as much, if not more about my condition than they do, and that together we can treat this holistically.
Doctors, in fact all practitioners, are a great asset to us, they are in the business to help heal people and I am grateful for their dedication to the rest of us. We however, are an even greater asset to ourselves especially if we get to know the workings of the brain or wherever the condition stems from and can start asking for what will help rather than just accepting what the doctors are guessing will work. The best management plan I could have hoped for was for me to be in the driver’s seat of the outcome.”
So many people to thank
I’ll be signing books and breasts at the table if you want. Thanks so much for all your support it’s very overwhelming and truly humbling.
