What I Learned About Patience from Three Months of Dizziness
Image by Jeff Golenski/Unsplash
If you have ever experienced severe dizziness or vertigo, you will know it’s not much fun. I now consider myself an expert in this subject, because I have been suffering from daily dizziness for about three months. It started suddenly – one morning I woke up and the room was spinning, I felt extremely wobbly and very nauseous. It was like the worst hangover I’ve ever had. This acute phase lasted for about a week and then morphed into a long, rollercoaster ride of dizziness, vertigo (feeling like I was falling through the floor was a new and unwelcome experience), headaches and brain fog. Not pleasant.
It’s getting better now, thankfully, and I finally have a diagnosis. It’s something called BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) and is caused by tiny crystals in your inner ear moving from where they should be to where they shouldn’t. This infinitesimal change causes all kinds of chaos in your inner-ear/balance system, hence the last three months. As I emerge from this rather strange time, here are some of the lessons I have learned.
The body is miraculous, but fragile
You probably don’t think much about your inner ear. I certainly didn’t, before this episode. But an experience like this teaches you just how miraculous the body is – and how fragile, how the tiniest change or malfunction can have major consequences. We take so many things for granted, many of which have been extremely challenging. Take walking, for example. I love walking – in fact, I adore all forms of exercise – but there were days where any kind of motion, especially uphill or upstairs caused intense sensations of dizziness.
Loud, echoey environments = not good. Busy places, bright lights, any kind of strong external stimuli = also not good. As a self-confessed and proud highly sensitive person, these things have always been tricky for me. But, as I joked to a friend this weekend, I have been a highly highly highly sensitive person recently. And these many and varied challenging experiences have made me so aware of the mindblowingly remarkable thing that is the human body. The fact that you and I are even alive right now depends on an infinite number of improbable occurrences, from the Big Bang until this very second.
Every atom in our bodies was created in the white heat of an exploding star, billions of years ago. Ponder that for a moment. Think about the almost preposterous likelihood of those atoms happening to coalesce in living, human form, at this precise moment in the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history. Making you, you and me, me. And we just take this stuff for granted, as we amble through our lives. Let’s not do that. Instead, let us remember that life is wondrous, miraculous, delicate and finite. Let us be grateful for and enjoy every moment, even if we are suffering, because whether we are anxious, depressed, dizzy or in pain, we are alive. And that is a truly remarkable thing.
Patience is an Underrated Virtue
In some ways, I am a very patient person. Bring me a highly traumatised person, who is struggling in every conceivable way, and my patience is limitless. I have no problem with inch-by-inch progress, weird, confusing and emotionally turbulent sessions – and everything else that often goes with helping someone who has been so profoundly hurt that ‘normal’ life and behaviour eludes them. I specialise in working with people like this and it is an honour to help them make slow, incremental progress back to a life worth living.
But in other ways, I can be so impatient. Snail-paced drivers or pavement-cloggers when I’m in a hurry. People who can’t seem to do their jobs, when I need them to, even though they don’t appear to be that hard. And feeling dizzy, day after day, with no diagnosis or end in sight. That definitely tests your patience. But it’s also a great lesson, because if you are struggling with something – and it’s here, whether you want it to be or not – you can either fight it and be grumpy every day or find your way to a mindful, patient acceptance.
I have found myself often listening to beloved and familiar mindfulness teachers, such Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield and the wonderful Vidyamala Burch, author of Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide for Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing. She has been a constant companion through times of chronic pain and illness. Listening back to her meditations recently, she helped me remember that the more I fought against my dizziness, thinking ‘I am so tired of this! When the hell will it get better?’ the worse I would feel. And the more I accepted the physical symptoms, unpleasant though they were, not only would I feel better (calmer, steadier and more at peace) but my physical symptoms would also reduce, because my ENT specialist confirmed that stress and anxiety were proven to worsen inner-ear/balance problems.
The long road to health
Thankfully, I now have a definite diagnosis and know that I am on the way to recovery. I will soon start a ‘vestibular rehab’ programme, designed to restore function in my left ear’s balance system, which is ground zero for the dizziness. I’m feeling better, day by day, and have been back to the gym, which makes my heart very happy indeed. And this is another helpful lesson from all this unpleasantness: that healing and recovery are a slow, steady, step-by-step process. This is a lesson I constantly teach my clients, especially when they get frustrated or impatient with the pace of progress. Healing cannot be rushed.
As so often, I find myself thinking, ‘Ah, perhaps I need to listen to my own advice’. Easier said than done, as any medic or therapist will tell you! And I hope some of this rings true for you, if you’re struggling with your mental or physical health. Most things can be healed, in time. But that often requires a great deal of patience, with many false starts and wrong turns along the way. Keep trying. If one approach doesn’t work, persevere until you have done all you can, then try something else. Your mind, brain and body are a gloriously complex, health-seeking system. If you find the right guidance and support, everything will naturally unfold over time.
Take it from Dizzy Dan – be patient but determined, keep working hard and there is light at the end of the tunnel, however long and dark it may be.
Love,
Dan ❤️
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