Controlling Mania With Energy Medicine

I had a particularly bad manic episode Monday that kept me awake and driving around the city at 4am. I was arguing with my husband and feeling like I would never get better even with the new integrative approach we are taking with my treatment.

This was my first really bad manic episode since starting with my new therapist and in my mania I thought all this energy medicine was never going to work. I was such a wreck that I could not do the energy work on myself and I fell apart. I thought I would go into the office yesterday and prove that when I am this bad energy work will not help and all of this is pointless.

Instead what happened is that I left an hour later totally fine and with a plan of what to do when these times happen again.

I do not understand how energy medicine works. It is all confusing to me and honestly even doctors who use it say we just do not have enough double blind studies to have good scientific evidence. However, they see it work with people and so they use it.

So, we talked a bit about the things in my life that might have triggered this episode but in the end what worked was the meridian work my therapist taught my husband how to do for me.

My husband is a very logical computer scientist and so I was completely surprised that as he was working with my meridians he could tell if I was calming down or not. He could tell if I seemed stuck and unable to let go of anger and anxiety, and he could feel the energy from me and all he was doing was holding onto a few points on my feet.

Yes, we wrote with a Sharpie numbers on my feet for meridian points :-)

For me, the energy medicine seems to be working in a few ways. One is that I can actually feel the energy in my body being off balance and the energy work fixes that and makes me more relaxed and even. Second is that during the energy work I am able to figure out what is contributing to my illness. I have done talk therapy for forever and what I am learning is that all my talking, self analyzing, and trying to have an answer for everything has not helped me very well. The energy works seems to balance everything out, make my mind more clear, and honestly the answers just come to me. Then I am able to work through things and understand what is going on better, but at that point, it almost does not matter. It is as if just identifying the issue lets me release it.

As my husband sees it "You have two completely different systems in your body, the logical and the emotional. Trying to talk through something only helps if the problem is in the logical area. If it is emotional you really need to do the energy work and center yourself to access what is going on."

Third, the energy work is something concrete that I can do as part of a routine but it is also something that my husband can do with me when I can't help myself. It is very hard to find things that our loved ones can actually do to help us and finding something like this that is so concrete and works so well is really a blessing for us.

I am surprised that I walked out of the office with my mania under control in just an hour. (If you have mania you will know how amazing that is.) I am surprised that even my husband can actually feel a difference and feel the energy when he is helping me. I am surprised that I have discovered more of my triggers and understand my illness better in such a short time with this new approach to therapy. I am surprised that this works at all.

I have a long way to go but this type of progress is new for me and I look forward to seeing where this all goes.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie