By Lynn Rae
For my blog post this month I am going to take you back in time to the 1970’s when I was a teenager. I am going to show you that allergies really are our emotions in disguise.
I was a teenager. I rebelled against authority but only in small ways. My mother still ruled, and I was afraid of her wrath if I did anything wrong. Smoking cigarettes was the cool thing to do. It began innocently enough for me. I was only 12 and a friend came to our cottage with me. I tried smoking but couldn’t inhale. But I was hooked. I kept trying to smoke and I was going to learn to inhale. By the time I was 16 I was smoking regularly, perhaps 2-8 cigarettes a day. Then I met the man, who was to become my husband. He smoked a pack a day; by the time I was 19 I was smoking that much too. I really don’t know why I enjoyed it so much. It is only in the last few years I have come to understand that all my emotions went up in smoke. I smoked when I was happy, sad, mad or glad. I smoked to celebrate the beginning of the day and the end of the day. I smoked on my coffee break and lunch hour from work. If I was angry with my husband or some other family member, the first thing I did was reach for a cigarette. With every inhale and exhale, my problems disappeared.
By the time my son was 3 he was fascinated with cigarettes and the ashtray. One thing I didn’t want was for him to become a smoker. A hypocrite was something I was not! I quit smoking in the spring of 1988 when I was pregnant with my daughter. For 3 days, I lay on the couch in the fetal position having withdrawal. It was tough but I was determined to quit for my children’s sake. Exactly 6 weeks to the day after I quit smoking, I was visiting a farm and my nose started running. It wouldn’t stop. I went through a box of tissues in 24 hours. I went to see my doctor. He said I had allergies. I shook my head in disbelief. How could this be? I quit smoking to get healthy and this is what I get? I took allergy pills and/or a needle for a few years. Every time I walked by the perfume counter in a store I would start to sneeze.
Over a 15-year period my allergies eventually subsided. I didn’t need to take medication for them any more. During this time, I was diagnosed with depression, then bipolar disorder. This is when the real work on myself began. I read over 200 self-help/motivational books, attending workshops and support groups, left my marriage and began to rebuild my life.
Since 2005 I have had very few problems with my allergies acting up. Also, by 2005 I had resolved every issue I had with people in my life to the best of my ability. I knew that getting out of toxic relationships and/or jobs was the key to my well-being. As a side effect, my allergies cleared up as well.
Fast forward to the summer 2008. I met a man and fell in love with him very quickly. However, he was never available. I didn’t want to believe he was married but the signs were all there. But there was something about this man that captivated me. I wanted him more than I have ever wanted a man. But all I got was the leftovers.
A few months later he was going away on business. I told him when he got back, he had to decide; it was her or me. Finally, I had to accept that we would never be together. When I tried to accept this fact, my sinuses started acting up. I hadn’t been bothered by allergies for 4 years. My nose just ran and ran and ran over a 24-hour period. I couldn’t sleep I was so stuffed up. I tried working but had to come home. I could hardly breathe. I took some over-the-counter medication, but it didn’t help. I told my girlfriend how I was feeling. She let me talk and talk and talk. When I finally was all talked out, my nose stopped running.
Now fast forward to 2015. I was slightly hypo-manic and decided to contact him. I hadn’t thought about him in years but for some reason his name showed up on my computer when I was searching for something else. I had no idea I had saved our chat room conversations. Once again, we started up a sexual relationship. However, by this time he had left his wife a year earlier. Of course, I was daydreaming about how we would one day live together. When, once again, I realized he was just using me, my allergies acted up. It was only when I could let him go that my sinuses cleared up again. I have seen repeatedly that when I am really upset about something my nose gets stuffed up.
You see, when we smoke, we are smoking all our emotions away. When I quit smoking in 1988 there was no where for my emotions to go because I didn’t know how to talk to people about what I was feeling. We didn’t talk about problems in our family; problems got swept under the rug hopefully to be forgotten about and go away on their own. It was only when I learned to talk about anything and everything that was bothering me that my allergies disappeared. They still rear up occasionally but don’t last for more than a day or two because I can usually pinpoint what the issue is and talk it out with a trusted friend.
If you are bothered by allergies, go back to when they started. What triggered them? Was it a difficult relationship? Were you in a job that left you depleted of energy? Did you lose a loved one? Or did you quit a bad habit like smoking or drinking or eating junk food to excess?
Drug companies don’t want this secret to get out for fear everyone starts talking about what is bothering them in their lives. If we all open up and talk about our issues, we won’t need to take their drugs.
Do you agree or disagree with my opinion about why we get allergies?