I came across a new to me therapy from a friend. It uses light to help treat fight or flight responses. The theory is that over the years, the accumulation of stress can cause one’s body to constantly be in fight or flight mode and deal with stress poorly. This can lead to a number of behavioral issues and perhaps health issues.
Looking back on my life, I have had a number of significant stressors – a rigorous high school education, a stressful career, 3 pregnancies with a husband going through cancer, that same husband leaving, divorce. After all these years, I feel like I can’t concentrate as well as I could in high school. I have problems organizing my thoughts, organizing life, and I’m tired a lot. I always thought I had mommy brain, then I thought it was all related to my hypothyroidism, but perhaps there is more going on inside?
Fight or flight therapy attempts to reset the nervous system. A sort of tune-up. Once finished with the treatments, I should be able to handle stress better and some or all of my symptoms might disappear.
On the Fight or Flight Therapy website, there is a questionnaire where you rate on a scale of 0-5 how certain behaviors are problematic for you. Once you add up the score, you can see how much stress is effecting your everyday life. I was a 154. Dr. Tessler said this high score indicated PTSD or head trauma. I can definitely say that I have PTSD due to what has happened to me in life.
It will be interesting to see how this therapy can help me. Will it help my other therapies go better? Will it help my health? I have hashimotos and vitiligo. Both can be aggravated by stress. I have been working on treating these ailments for many years with a holistic doctor, but I still have not healed from them. Perhaps this light therapy will “jump start” my system and help my progress? We shall see.
