Jen's ME/CFS, Anxiety, IBS Recovery Story | Ashok Gupta | Gupta Program

Hi everyone, it's Jen evans here from womenswellnesscircle.com I'm here today to share with you my recovery story from chronic fatigue syndrome, an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, ibs. The list, it could go on for a while and just wanted to share, share with you also how that's led me into a new life, a new life purpose and working now myself as a coach for people with these kind of chronic illnesses. And one of the main motivations for me to share this with you is that when I was really in my darkest times, hearing the possibilities of healing from others really gave me strength and motivation to keep going, to keep, just not to lose the faith that at some point something would change and that it would get to where I wanted to go. So I wanted to share what the journey has meant to me and a little bit about then, how I can bring that now to other people, to supporting other people through being a wellness coach, an EFT practitioner, a matrix re imprinting practitioner and a teacher as well. So starting at the beginning, this was me, this was my childhood. It was unstable, I would term it abusive. There was a lot of mental illness, sort of rage of abandonment, codependency with narcissism, kind of around kind of a lot. And I, you know, survived that, went to university, got a job and just, just lived quite a quiet life without much self confidence and without really having any alignment to really who I was. I wasn't, I had big dreams, I really wanted to do things. I was really passionate about creativity and things like writing and filmmaking and photography. But I could only let myself dabble in those things and then if I ever really did them very much, I kind of hit a block and then I had to step back and just go back to normal life. I wasn't allowed, didn't feel allowed to really do what I wanted to do myself. So around the time that I got ill about, at about 30 years old is when I really got the chronic fatigue. I've been ill all my life. But that's when it really hit. My life looked like this. I had no self confidence. I had a job that was fine but didn't do anything for me. I really didn't enjoy it, but I didn't have the confidence to look for anything else and to leave that job. I lived somewhere that didn't really, it wasn't, it wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't a choice that was from my heart. It wasn't giving me any joy. I regularly took stimulants, drugs, alcohol, Smoking, caffeine, sugar, you name it, just to. Just to keep going because I just never stopped. I did exercise, but it was always to the extreme. Super, like cardio and hard. And then would have to rest for days because I had to get over and then had to get back out there again. Couldn't ever do it. Couldn't everything do anything in balance? And I got ill a lot. Got a lot. I had a lot of respiratory infections, loads of stomach symptoms, really bad digestion, really on loads of medication, which didn't do anything any good, actually. It made things worse. So one of the main things was that I was really hanging around with people that I just didn't enjoy being around. I felt like I had to. Family members, friends, colleagues that I just felt like I had to be around. I had to. This had to be. This is my world. They had to be my friends. And I didn't have a choice in that. So that was very stressful. And I lived very much for pleasing them and not for doing anything for myself. There was no energy left for myself at the end of the day. So why. Why was I living like this? And now I know through the work that I've done and through all the. All the different breakthroughs that I was living like that because of what I believed about myself and about the world. Now I've written a little list here that I wanted to share, and these are the things that I've discovered through all the work, through all the awareness. Obviously, at the time I did not know this about myself, but now I can see it for what it is. These are some of the beliefs that I held that held me back from living any kind of life where I had any choice or did anything for myself. And see if you recognize any of these in yourself, maybe, or in the people around you. So I believe things like, life is not for me. Everything in my life is limited. I'm fundamentally flawed. So physically, mentally, emotionally, I felt flawed. And I remember a lot of talk in my childhood. People would say, you know, it's in our genes, it's in the Evans genes. We can't live too hard because we get sick and we're weak and we do get stressed very easily or very sensitive. So, you know, just get used to being like this. So basically, I just had resigned myself to being ill and tired and not getting what I wanted. I was also resigned to being alone and that I really believed that people would just leave me, they would abandon me. And I was always desperately trying to people please to keep people around me One of the big ones, there were two main ones that I. That I still. And full honesty, I still work on to this day. But I've had to do a lot of work on to get past a lot of blocks. The first one is, no matter what I do, it'll always end badly. That was a core, core one for me when I realized that, and that was undermining everything that I ever did, even my recovery. Then things started to shift for me. So that was a really big one. And the other really big one was, I'm not safe. I'm never safe. I never will be safe. I'll always be attacked. And that made me so hyper vigilant, so hyper stressed. Just that alone in the world, you know, you're just like this, frightened little mice, constantly just trying to protect yourself. And I developed all of these strategies to do that. Being perfect, being just overdoing everything, pleasing everybody, just everything had to be all or nothing to make sure that I did everything I possibly could to try and protect myself. So these are just some of. Some of the things. I mean, I could be here for days listing some of the beliefs that were. That I'd gained over time. And one of the biggest things that I've learned was that they weren't just things that were patterned or taught to me by my caregivers. It's definitely ancestral. These are things that came down through the lines. And that's, for me, the beauty of doing this transformational work is that we have the power, once we recognize what's going on, to change generations of pain and suffering that have come down to us. And by doing that, we change the world. We can literally change the universe by just saying, no, we're gonna heal this now and we're gonna stop passing this on into the world. We're stop exampling it in the world. We're gonna stop living it. We're not gonna honour that false, horrible, negative thing anymore. That's just one of the gifts, I think, that come from illness. So I got really sick at 30. I had a tooth removed, I had an infection, and that was it. Then I was out, housebound, bed bound, really unable to work. And it took. I did about three years worth of just every nutritional plan, every supplement in the world. Nothing was really working. Everything was getting worse. And then a chance glance at an article on the Internet led me to the Gupta Program, which is a program for chronic fatigue recovery and similar, similar illnesses. Fibromyalgia, ibs, depression, lots and lots of different things. And it's run by a man called Ashok Gupta, who heals himself from chronic fatigue and has now gone on to share techniques that he's learned with others to help them. So I did, did this. I got this, you know, it's a home study course. I got the dvd, I did it. And even within two weeks, I think it was this kind of magical transformation happened that I went from completely housebound to going out for a walk. You know, it wasn't every day, it wasn't, suddenly I'm fixed and cured. But it was a revelation to know that things can shift, things can change, and there are tools and techniques in which we can, we can do to help that. And the program really taught me this direct relationship between the beliefs and emotions that we hold and a physical symptom being manifest because of them. So I worked on these beliefs. I tried to retrain my brain, the way it works, my emotions, the way that I acted in the world. And I got to a certain point and it was going good, but I kind of felt like I'd kind of flattened out, like I've plateaued with recovery. So then I joined a coaching group with the Gupta program. And that's how I, I met Frances Goodall, who runs the Women's Wellness Circle. And through her group coaching, I learned an awful lot more about myself and more patterns that I hadn't quite recognized yet. And was really able to develop things like trust and vulnerability and honesty with others and really develop this ability to connect with others. And that led me onto women's circles and in person and online now. It's such an incredible honor to be invited to be a coach within this Women's Wellness Circle. And working alongside Frances now as a coach is just an absolute gift. So I did the group coaching. I learned things like eft matrix, re imprinting and a few other techniques just alongside what I was already doing. It was all going towards the same thing. It's all about identifying the beliefs and breaking the beliefs and replacing them with a positive. But what you truly are and what you truly want in this world. I learned things like setting boundaries and to say no and to say yes to things. And I just now consider the illness one of the most brutal but essential wake up calls that I could ever have had. I was still surrounded by the people that continued these patterns, had them themselves, were still continuing that behavior and just enforcing them in the world around me. I was no escape from it. And I couldn't now look back, I couldn't see myself escaping that at all. Something big had to happen. And so for me, it felt now feels like the universe. That's what, that's what I needed. That's the message that needed to be sent to break out of where I was. This false self, these beliefs that weren't mine, they didn't serve me. And there was no real. There's just no basis to them. You just don't need to live like that. And it wasn't easy. You know, it isn't easy. It takes time, it takes effort. But that's why I want to work so, so much in this, in this world towards supporting others with this journey. Because I really needed that support and motivation and techniques at certain point in my life and it took me a long time to find them. So the more we become aware, the more we share our stories, the more we tell each other, Hang on a minute. I might know someone that had that and they did this, oh, why don't you speak? To just pass that word around so that we create a healing world rather than a suffering world. One in which we can reach out to each other and connect and truly transform our experience of this life. So I really see this illness as a gift. I see now my past, which before was a burden, was this horror as wisdom. And I see my present now as an infinite set of possibility. Just that I have this power, I have this ability to choose. I'm limitless. The universe has my back. I'm safe. I'm perfect as I am. You know, I just, I take all of my experiences and understand that they're learning even when they're bad. You know, and that's, and that's okay. If we can rise up and then learn from those things, then we don't have to suffer constantly, stay within that vicious circle of suffering. So as I said, I'm continuing this work with my own work and my own wellness coaching. I can do one on one coaching with People for Wellness and working with the Gupta program now training as one of their coaches and with the Women's Wellness Circle, being able to support the women here and share all of our experiences together and to be able to connect and share techniques and meditations and ways of breaking down and getting into these beliefs and dealing with them safely in a safe space for all of us. So I'm offering that support now and I'm really honoured to do that. And just awakening, awakening to this your purpose, awakening to your true self. That's what I had to do to recover from this illness. And it is just my greatest honor and my greatest wish to be able to support others in that journey, too.