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Hi everybody,

I just joined this group so I thought I would say hello and introduce
myself by telling you my story. It's a little long but i feel like
sharing so ...

in 1994 I was diagnosed with Graves disease, a disease which I am
convinced is a direct consequence of an extremely abusive
relationship I had for two years before I got sick. That relationship
almost cost me my life many times and living under a life threatening
situation for that long obviously triggered my thyroid imbalance,
regardless of what all doctors say.

I started an 18 months thyroid hormones treatment, which didn't
succeed so I started another one. I went abroad for a year (Spain)
and half way through the year I got so frustrated with my medication
that I stopped the treatment. I came back home (France), went to see
my doctor she did some blood tests and my thyroid was very much
overactive again, I had a goiter, my tsh was unbelievably low, etc etc

she said that since I had stopped the treatment and I was sick again
she only saw one solution and that was to remove the thyroid - I said
I hate hospitals I refuse to have surgery she said well you stopped
the treatment so stop complaining you're not helping yourself

I got mad, started crying, we got into an argument and I told her
that was it - I wouldn't take any more treatment and I would get
better by myself. She screamed at me and told me I was immature,
stupid, irresponsible and my parents were not too happy either. I
told them I didn't trust western medicine.

I was in the process of moving to Paris for school and I decided I
was going to start a new life, far away from the past that I
considered the cause of my disease. At the time I thought my will was
powerful enough to overcome all that and the change of city would
help. So I went up to Paris moved in with my best friend and already
felt better.

A couple weeks later I met a man that I started dating, gradually
falling in love with. I told him my story, he said I had done the
right thing. He himself had survived a heart failure that doctors
predicted he wouldn't survived and was now the most athletic man I
had ever seen. He said he would include me in his prayers everyday
(which is a lot, he's muslim so he prays five times a day) and even
though I wasn't muslim or religious myself he promised I would get
better through my own will and his prayers. A lot of times I was at
his house when he prayed so I would just sit and listen and
immediately all my thyroid-related symptoms would vanish.

3-4 months later I called my doctor up and said I was ready to do
some tests - they came out perfectly normal, and my goiter was gone.
She said it didn't mean anything and I should come back. I went after
three months and three other months, the results were normal each
time.

Unfortunately what I refused to see back then is that I wouldn't get
out of this disease so easily and as long as I wasn't treating the
roots of all this - i.e my abusive relationship - the disease would
come back.

I ended up not being able to keep this new relationship even though
it was great because I still hadn't dealt with what had happened in
the old one. We remained friends though and he said he would keep me
in his prayers.

I was busy with school and I made sure I kept busy, with the
superstitious fear that now that I was single and away from the love,
the caring and the prayers I would get sick again. It actually didn't
happen for a year and half. I was doing fine for a while, and I was
trying really hard to forget that I was even sick once.

I came to Los Angeles for an internship and randomly decided to stay
- again a way of escaping my old reality. Went back and forth for a
while to renew my work visas, school..my love life turning into an
addictive disaster - a man here a man there, desperately hanging on
to romantic encounters that were nothing but somehow meant everything
to me, something was obviously wrong.

Six months before that, I had met a man and we became friends, hung
out a couple times and ended up dating. I really liked him but my
life was such a disaster that I was hesitant about starting something
when I had so many other things to finish.

On New Years eve I decided to end this traveling back and forth
between my past and my new reality, stay in LA and try to figure
myself out for good.

We started going out and our relationship turned out to be growing
into a very serious deep love story. And of course that's when my
thyroid came back to tickle me and the symptoms started again - went
to get checked it was overactive - again got in a fight with the
doctor who insisted radioactive iodine wasn't dangerous

I thought - I am serene and happy for once my thyroid should work just fine !

My boyfriend and I live together now and my thyroid has been
overactive for about nine months, nothing too serious but enough to
get symptoms that affect my life - perpetual anxiety, insecurity,
jealous temper, irrational reactions....

So I finally understood that I needed to look into a more
metaphysical understanding of my thyroid problem. For a few weeks now
I have been analyzing myself, reading books and I think that once I
will have understood what pushed me into a deadly abusive
relationship it will be a huge step towards being cured.

My boyfriend is 100% supportive of my endeavors and has gone out of
his way to help me search for alternative treatments, understand my
symptoms and learn about my disease. He is a wonderful man and wants
to marry me, which is reciprocal so it's basically now or never to
take the time and energy to look back and understand those 10 years
of thyroid imbalance so I can look to the future.

Anyway being a singer I decided to know more about sound therapy as
something I can use to cure myself. It seems to me that sound therapy
makes even more sense for thyroid problems than other diseases
because it's so close to our throat and also it is related to
emotions, the brain, the way we perceive the world...

Thank you for reading and if you have any suggestions about schools
or books please drop me a line...

Best,

Guylaine.