I knew that getting Chronic Fatigue/ME was my body trying to communicate something to me and I knew it was something to do with how I dealt with experiences.

I am a sensitive person, and since I was small I had a tendency to get more emotionally involved in things than I needed to; found it difficult to say ‘no’ to demands made on me and got unduly anxious; I would repeatedly play potential and past scenarios in my mind – what I should have said, what they might say, what I should do.

Working in a particularly difficult environment overseas brought all this to the fore. I could feel the ongoing pressure and the squeeze on my personal time slowly draining me of the energy and spiritual resources I normally used to buoy me up.

Even before getting ‘ill’ I could feel I had very little left to give. I had stopped going out, stopped enjoying the things I used to do to keep me sane and was truly ‘burnt out’.

Getting ill (though difficult and scary when you don’t know when you’re going to get better) was a relief in some ways. It meant I had the space (and time!) to work out how to redress some of the imbalances I had become aware of. The question was how?

I could enhance my understanding of the effect of the mind on the body; how changing the way we think about things can change the way we feel; but I knew I needed TOOLS.

My belief was such that I was confident that with time my body/ mind would find a way to ‘heal’ myself; my fear was that once better, I wouldn’t have sufficient tools not to slip back into the same stress-creating patterns and start the whole cycle again.

5 months after getting ill, I came across Amir Norris’s website. I decided to ensure there wasn’t still a tropical lurgy lurking in my blood stream (the catalyst of me getting ill) before pursuing what Amir had to teach me. Once I had the ‘all clear’ from my doctors, I knew I should go ahead and contact him.

My abiding fear then was: ‘Am I ill enough?’! A ridiculous thought were I to think about it, but one loses perspective after being ill for a long time. I had come so far; I felt that perhaps with time I truly would shake this thing. Many of the people who’d done what Amir teaches on his ME/CFS recovery course seemed to have been really ill and I didn’t want to seem like a fraud.

My predominant symptoms were fatigue, a persistently foggy head, continuous thirst, intolerance to alcohol, muscle ache, dizziness/ lack of balance, and a general lack of joy. I wasn’t able to work, but I wasn’t wheelchair bound or in pain. It took courage too to face the fact I truly had something I needed to address, that I couldn’t fully solve on my own. As well as the excitement, there’s inevitably a fear of the unknown, of what you might learn about yourself.

I took the plunge and contacted Amir and he was brilliant. He reassured me that many of the people who do the course are 70% or 80% better, but can’t seem to shake the last symptoms and that what he taught can help them do this.

The training with Amir Norris was everything I hoped it would be. It filled in gaps in my knowledge about the mind/body connection (it was good for a dreamer like me to learn the hard scientific facts…!). It opened up the world of NLP to me and made me realise my brain is infinitely powerful and that I have the power (and now the skills) to use my brain to my advantage.

Life is magical; what Amir teaches in his recovery course lets it be more so; one can create the reality one desires. There is no need to passively wait for the ‘right’ things to happen and those long sought after feelings of happiness and joy to manifest themselves; you can go out and have all of it in THIS moment.

I write this review to inspire anyone concerned they ‘aren’t ill enough’ or anyone wondering how they can better deal with life’s experiences. My dis-ease was not just about Chronic Fatigue or ME; the physical illness is your body’s signpost; and (if you let it), the journey of recovery, the catalyst which can show you a shiny new door of opportunity and a whole new way of being.

Kate