Liz Ingate is part of our recovery community and has been working on rebuilding her health. We are so delighted with how brilliantly Liz is doing we felt it only right to share this with you, to inspire you. Recovery is absolutely possible. Liz, you are doing brilliantly and we are cheering you every step of the way. We hope you enjoy Liz's Recovery Story so far..............
Easter 2018, my friend was cooking one of his wonderful pasta dishes and I was feeling on top of the world after a very dark time. Instead of leaving a ‘coaching programme’ with a new career I had walked away with Complex-Ptsd. Recovery was going well and I was planning to train for a care job. Meanwhile I was failing miserably at standing at the kitchen counter and chopping an onion. Perhaps I would need to brush up my cooking skills first.. and standing at kitchen counters.
I had no idea just how much peeling of that onion I would be doing over the coming months.
It was around this time I saw my first Chrysalis webinar - perhaps I could be a practitioner! - when a very uncomfortable penny dropped. The message came loud and clear; you ain’t even started kid. You have relapsed with M.E. Big time.
I joined the recovery programme, and the next two weeks of dipping into the webinars shook me to the core. They explained my whole entire life.
Starting around the age of 12, the M.E had become me. I grew up with the shame of my poor concentration, severe sweating, anxiety, weakness, trouble swallowing, being off balance, clumsy, dizzy.. these all became very large stones in my shoes, requiring a lot of energy in my attempt to not look 
like a crazy person! By the age of 17 I could barely walk at all, in my stone filled shoes. I crashed, sleeping eighteen hours a day. I experienced the relief of resting, mixed with the harrowing sense of looking down a dark tunnel, all wrapped in that drugged-like haze of exhaustion. The doctor said ‘wait and see’ for 6 months. A well meaning physiotherapist put the last nail in the coffin of my shame by telling me there were people far worse than I. Honestly, I felt left to die.
I started to walk a little again, down the footpath by my home. On one of these walks I told God, ‘If it gets any harder than this I will have to resort to drugs. Otherwise, I will just keep going. OK?’ On that perfectly still day God sent a gust of wind so fierce it nearly lifted me off my feet. It was a taste of what my body would feel like again, before sinking back into painful reality. I cried. Something had my back.
I got through life with a mix of pacing and pushing; ‘A’ levels one hour a day, two gap years, my degree, and into part-time teaching. I got into yoga, meditation and buddhist retreats. I started to feel better.
The oasis wasn't to last and I’m actually grateful to have relapsed. I could have skimmed through life for many more years, the deeper issues creating realities I didn't want. I had hit bottom and I was finally ready for TCE.
I needed every thread of CE knowledge to unravel myself from the illness. Working with Liz Hancock helped me retrieve my inner child who felt massively overburdened, searching for the ‘good parent’ I needed to finally become. Working with Emma Chapman Sharp gifted me understanding of the symptoms going back nearly thirty years; I no longer needed to beat myself up for them. I felt spurred on by the forty sessions, reminded to be patient, reassured my sensitive nature was to be celebrated.
By the New Year I was sleeping well (hallelujah!). I could handle breakfast, shower and dressing without a rest. It was amazing to walk twice a day. Peace and optimism grew. Then the next penny dropped. I could finally admit to myself I had been a victim of a sex cult, with opposite intent to everything promised. If the M.E webinars could be so confronting at first and benefit me so, so much, I could face the equivalent cult recovery. The Soul retrieval began.
Easter 2019 and I'm a different person. Proving my worth and crippling perfectionism have been replaced with peace, play and tenderness. I have my CE family to keep me on track and perhaps in future I’ll be the one cooking dinner and friends can chop the onions! I have a way to go, but the best piece has begun - intimacy with my own Soul. I hope my story inspires anyone in that dark pit to keep going, one day at a time. Rise to the heights equal to the depths. I will meet you there, oxygen tank ready ;)
Thank you Liz, we are inspired by your honesty, we cannot wait to see what the next 6 months brings for you.