The Field of Flowers: On Complexity, Healing, and power of Choice
Something in me gets activated when I hear statements like:
“Lyme is not real", "Chronic illness is all in your head", "Just think positive thoughts". Ahhh... heavy sigh.
The feelings arising in me - unseen, misunderstood and often even softly shamed. I want to speak about it — not from a place of fighting, we already have too much of it even in therapy field, but from a place of complexity.
Because yes, I can agree that testing for Lyme or any kind of bacteria is not always accurate. You have to know how, when and millions other tiny details and still sometimes is a chance of luck. It’s difficult to catch certain bacteria or virus. The body is not so simple. There are biofilms, hidden processes, things we don’t even fully understand yet.
But at the same time — I have lived experience of being in a healing for over 10 years.
I have seen what something like Lyme can do to a body.
How it can impact the nervous system. How it can create chaos in the mind.
How it can even affect movement, sensation, reality itself. And it’s not only Lyme, it can be other bacteria, or viruses or mold, or toxins.
The world is beautiful, but it definitely has its surprises :)
There is something about these states of illness, they can feel heavy, overwhelming, dislocating, painful, not only physically and emotionally... the whole system is under attack. The nervous system, the immune system, the blood, the brain… everything. So reducing all of that to “just a mental state” or “just karma” doesn’t sit right with me.
(If you feel triggered, please be gentle with yourself, breath in, breath out, look around the room, remember the feeling of being filled with love and I will try to soften a bit.)
At the same time, I also don’t reject the role of trauma.
Trauma influences so much. It shapes how our nervous system responds. It shapes our immune system, even influences gene expression. Fascinating and a part of being just humble human.
Our history, our stress patterns, our environment — they all create the conditions in which the body either becomes more resilient or more vulnerable.
Some people may be more susceptible to certain bacteria. Not because they are weak or wrong - because their system has been under long-term stress, dysregulation, or depletion.
So yes — the inner world matters deeply, but here is where it becomes dangerous in my eyes and experience: when we say that only one thing can heal. Only one type of mindset, only one method, only one belief system. Because the moment we do that, we put a person into a very narrow box. And when there is only one path, something happens in the nervous system.
Choice disappears. Pressure of doing it right grows.
And choice is fundamental for our nervous system's safety.
With limited choice the body may start to feel urgency, pressure to do it right, fear of failure because there is only one way and no other, doubt oneself, shame. and shame is huge one, it sends our nervous systems into freeze or dorsal energy, collapse, shrinking, despair.
“If this is the only way… and I’m not getting better… something must be wrong with me.”
This is not healing, this is old survival pattern.
I have seen people who shifted their mindset, their state, their beliefs — and something opened for them in my Lyme community. There are cases where people experienced deep healing in this way. Miracle isn't it?
And I have also seen people who did everything “right” in that framework…
and they didn’t get better. So how we can we say there is only one truth?
How we can judge others or how we can measure if someone prayed enough? How we can know the depth of buried stories in their psyche and tissues? How many of them do they have? How much support they had in this journey?
How long does it take for nervous system to change deeply engraved pattern? Often times - years.. and it will depend on individual story.
Healing is not one-dimensional because our bodies are not one dimensional. It is a system where everything is interconnected: mental, emotional ↔ physical ↔ chemistry
Your thoughts influence your body.
Your body influences your thoughts.
Your chemistry influences both.
We can’t do all three perfectly, and there is no need for that. But we can learn to attune to all of them with love, acceptance, and patience.
You cannot always think your way out of a depleted, undernourished, mineral-deficient body. At the same time, you cannot ignore the impact of stress, trauma, and emotional patterns on the system. This is not either/or. This is a whole.
I often imagine it like support.
If there is only one narrow support — like one leg of a stool — the body has to hold tension. It’s unstable. It has to grip more.
But if there are multiple supports — two, three, more — something changes.
There is more stability.
More possibility to lean.
More possibility to rest.
You can even feel it in your body right now:
How does it feel when there is only one option? Narrow tiny window?
And how does it feel when there are many? Wider window? Not to big that you would lost in that view, just slightly wider, comfortable for you at this timing.
For me, healing needs to be multidimensional.
It can include many different things:
Nervous system work
Emotional processing
Physical support
Minerals, nutrients, supplements
Reducing toxins
Rest
Environment
Different entry points into the same system.
And each person will need a different combination. What is yours?
And the truth is — it’s not that easy.
It is not easy to find the right support.
It is not easy to understand what your body needs.
Sometimes you don’t even know what is missing.
Allopathic medicine often doesn’t fully meet chronic or complex conditions.
Alternative spaces can sometimes become rigid or dogmatic, one way or no way at all.
Even in the mental health world, it can be hard to find the right practitioner. There are few who can truly connect to the experience of a depleted body if they haven’t gone through it themselves. So people are left searching. And that deserves compassion — not simplification.
What feels important to me is this:
We need to give people options, because options create a sense of safety. Options say - you are not broken, maybe our healing system is broken. And safety is not just a nice feeling — it is a biological condition for healing.
I am sorry if it was triggering to read, I always try not to jump into heavy topics, because... they are heavy. Take a moment to pause, to breath, to notice your own experiences, your own needs, your own thoughts. Hug them all, they all need to be witnessed.
And follow all the tiny signals your body sends you — they are sacred breadcrumbs that show the pathway to your healing. Not one path, one answer. But a wider field. A field of flowers.
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