Five Years of Healing from an Undiagnosed Chronic Illness

Glen Chiacchieri / August 2025

Over the past five years I have experienced extraordinary suffering from the onset of a sudden and undiagnosed chronic illness.

Aware of the prevalence of chronic illnesses and intimate with their brutality, I wanted to share my story publicly. The experience feels too big for just me. In the chance this story reaches someone and helps spark a sense of hope, inspiration, insight, or even a simple feeling of being less alone, then that is my great happiness. I don't write to aggrandize myself or suggest that others may have a similar experience — some illnesses don't get better. I'm simply trying to share my story with a tender heart.

Note that this is a long piece. It encompasses five years of dense experience with chronic illness and recovery that has touched every part of my life. And I wanted to include some detail because so much of the experience is in the details.

Note, too, that if you're a therapy client or potential client of mine, you may want to consider that reading the vulnerable details of your therapist's life can change your experience of therapy. Please consider that possibility before reading.

Something is wrong.

Summer 2020

I knew something was wrong.

I was 30 years old, and I had just graduated from my masters program in clinical mental health counseling. The program's last two semesters had been tough. I was taking classes full-time, working part-time at an unpaid clinical internship, and doing a little software contracting work to make ends meet. In the last two months of my final semester, the initial wave of the Covid-19 pandemic upended society. All my classes moved online suddenly and I was isolated to my house, washing groceries diligently in the chance they carried the virus. I was able to graduate from my program in May, but the state of the world was uncertain as the virus spread. Between all of this stress and uncertainty I needed a break, badly.

I decided to take it easy for the summer, to let myself rest and recover and to see how the pandemic unfolded. I expected by autumn the pandemic might subside to the point where I could get my first clinical therapy job. So in the meantime I worked a few hours a week doing remote software contract work and spent the rest of my time floating in nearby Mystic Lake or reading books in a hammock.

Yet after a couple months of this I didn't feel myself recovering as expected. Something was wrong.

I had persistent, pulsing headaches for the first time in my life and my stomach and lower abdomen constantly felt bloated and uncomfortable, especially after I ate. I was tired and even small amounts of physical or mental effort would cause me to feel exhausted. I had previously been very physically active. What was going on?

I went to my primary care doctor and after a series of normal blood tests and ruling out depression was referred to a gastrointestinal specialist. (For whatever reason, the headaches didn't receive any medical attention at this time.) His tests — including an endoscopy that unexpectedly ended up costing me $1200 out-of-pocket even with my insurance — also showed nothing wrong. I was unable to afford further expensive tests and without those results the GI doctor suggested I might have "functional abdominal pain", a kind of descriptive non-diagnosis with no clear fix. He suggested a so-called low-FODMAP diet but had nothing else to offer. My primary care doctor was similarly perplexed and didn't follow up with useful next steps.

Feeling despondent and afraid of incurring more medical bills I couldn't afford, I felt I had exhausted what the medical system could offer. Instead, I turned to self-observation and books about gut science.

Previously I had noticed that certain foods made me feel worse. For that reason, I had stopped eating dairy a while ago. So I experimented more with foods, first trying the low-FODMAP diet suggested by my GI doctor which systematically eliminates foods based on biomolecules that gut bacteria ferment and turn into gas. Doing this elimination diet on my own was difficult without assistance from a professional and didn't yield clear results — pretty much everything I ate seemed to cause me some degree of trouble and it was hard to pin down which things caused slightly more or less trouble. I ended up removing gluten from my diet anyway.

This was actually quite challenging for me. Bread, cheese, and pasta had been my staples. I ate at least one of them every day for probably my entire life. They were also connected to feelings of security. Without them, I felt lost and confused — if I can't eat these then what do I eat? I read many books about the emerging science of gut health and healing diets, but besides a common suggestion of eating whole foods, I didn't benefit much from these approaches.

Nearing the end of the summer and seeing I was in no shape to work as a therapist — combined with the still-uncertain state of the pandemic — I decided to move back in with my parents while I tried to figure out what was going on with my health.

Something is very wrong.

Fall 2020 - Spring 2021

That autumn felt like the beginning of a long, dark night in my life. Soon after I moved back home, my body collapsed in overwhelming pain as if it had been waiting for the chance.

Here's a typical day:

All of this went on for months with no explanation of what was happening or potential treatment options. I was so overwhelmed by all these symptoms it was hard for me to even fathom for myself — let alone communicate to others — what was happening. As a result, no one close to me really knew what was happening either.

With all these physical symptoms waves of emotions coursed through me — confusion, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety, loneliness, anger, fear. Often I was only half-aware of these feelings, unable to really feel them because I was so buried in them. I cycled especially through waves of desperation — striving to understand and fix my pain — and depression — feeling hopeless and powerless to find relief. One time I remember unconsciously crying out in my sleep for my mother as if I was a newborn baby, totally vulnerable, helpless, hurting.

Every other need or want in my life completely disappeared. The only thing I wanted was to feel better.

When I wasn't desperately trying to figure out what was going on and what I could do about it, I spent most of my time lying on the floor, alone, too exhausted and overwhelmed to do anything else.

Broken dreams
My heart a ship
Long left familiar shores

Tossed in raging waters
Beaten / beating
Washed in warm blood

Coping

Lying on the floor actually felt okay. Even from the beginning of my body's collapse, it was clear that resting was helpful. I learned very quickly that my symptoms were much worse the more active I was, so I laid on the floor a lot. This was one way I coped.

One definition of trauma is when an organism is impacted beyond its abilities to cope. Not only was I experiencing a dizzying array of overwhelming symptoms, but many of the strategies I had learned for dealing with challenges in my life didn't seem to help at all. In fact, many of them made things worse!

As previously mentioned, the foods I had eaten and comforted myself with now seemed to make me feel terrible. Exercising, which is something I have done and benefited from throughout my life, now made me feel terrible. I had previously found a lot of meaning, motivation, and purpose in my work, both with computers and in therapy, but now I was too exhausted to do either.

Because I couldn't work and I had spent most of my money on grad school, I also didn't have the finances to pursue more medical care or continue seeing my therapist of the past few years. And finally, living at my parents' house away from my friend group and being in a pandemic, I was more distant from my friends, especially my girlfriend of three years.

I had a very hard time accepting what was happening, too. So many of my ideas about who I was and my plans for the future felt shattered. For example, a lot of my sense of identity was tied to my work, especially after switching careers to become a therapist. But with my illness and exhaustion, that career possibility was now delayed at best and ruined at worst which was devastating given how much I cared about it. And there were so many other hard truths like this. For one, I thought of myself as basically a happy, joyful person. But during this period I actually felt miserable and maybe never felt joy. Because my identity was tied to being joyful, it was very hard to accept my reality. In retrospect, it felt like I experienced many small deaths, forced to leave the safe shores of my plans and identities to reckon with daunting and overwhelming truth of the present moment.

All of these factors made it extremely difficult to cope with the daily reality of my pain over the course of many months. But I did have some factors in my favor.

One of the most important factors was the love and generosity of my parents. They didn't fully understand what was happening with me, but they gave me all the time and space I needed to do as I pleased. They let me live in their home and never once pressured me to move out, get a job, or do any of the things that other 30 year-olds are "supposed" to be doing. Because I was suffering so much I couldn't appreciate it at the time, but their love, patience, and spaciousness were helpful.

If you had asked me at the time, I would have said that yin yoga was the only thing that helped me feel better at all. Yin yoga is a gentle form of asana yoga that involves holding relaxing stretches for minutes at a time. Because my symptoms would get a lot worse from even small amounts of exertion, yin yoga was the only way I found to care for my body without triggering symptoms. I did online yin yoga classes with a teacher named Holland Sweeney once or twice a week and felt a tiny bit better.

Another factor in my favor was my spiritual orientation. Because of a series of extraordinary meditative experiences a few years before, I had developed a strong faith in my meditation practice and believed that adverse experiences could be catalysts for spiritual growth. Early on in my illness I had the good fortune to read The Life of Milarepa by Tsangnyön Heruka. Milarepa is a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and I felt inspired by his persistence and determination through hardships, as well as his ultimate success in Enlightenment. I tried to view all the difficulties I was undergoing as learning experiences that could be used to deepen my capacities for mindfulness, equanimity, and compassion. For example, through mindful observation I began to understand that my body pain and emotions were interrelated — pain could trigger emotions and emotions could actually trigger more body pain in a cyclical pattern with no single direction of causality. I would also think a lot about how my personal experience of suffering could help me be more empathetic with any future clients I might have as a therapist. Though I was more often submerged in misery than this kind of lofty compassion, the possibility of my suffering having positive outcomes like empathy made me more resilient when things were bleak. When I was in serious pain I would listen to this beautiful rendition of the Medicine Buddha mantra by Lama Gyurme & Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Heart Sutra by Gaiea Sanskrit, or the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra by the Sacred Sound Choir and wish fervently that anyone experiencing pain like mine find relief. I made a habit of singing the Medicine Buddha and White Tara mantras daily. I also spent a lot of time meditating on the subtle sensations in my body, learning what I could from them. Occasionally I would have a spiritually significant experience or dream that helped me feel I was on the right path even though I was struggling so much. I often thought of myself as a microcosm — my struggle was somehow a reflection of the larger struggle the Earth and its inhabitants were going through.

Another factor in my favor was my interest in Ayurveda, a type of traditional Indian medicine. I had done vinyasa yoga for a couple years when I saw a workshop entitled "Yoga for Digestion" in October 2019 by a woman named Haripriya. In the class she gave us dozens of tips and practices for taking care of our digestion as recommended in Ayurveda, including yoga poses, breathing exercises, and lifestyle advice. Most of the practices didn't resonate with me, but I remember when I tried the "agni booster" she had prepared — a mixture of fresh ginger, lime juice, and salt taken before meals to kickstart digestion — my stomach immediately responded. She also gave us a traditional healing dish called "kitchari" — a savory rice and lentil porridge — and I was surprised how much my body seemed to like it. I made a habit of eating it once a week. Even though it consistently gave me headaches after I ate it, I still had a sense that kitchari was helpful and viewed the headaches as a "detox symptom" of my body cleansing itself which was confirmed the day after when I felt a little better. I also read Kate O'Donnell's book "Everyday Ayurveda Cooking for a Calm, Clear Mind" which had many great recipes and lifestyle suggestions for cultivating a calm mind and body. From Ayurveda, I began to understand that my daily routine and diet played an important role in how I felt during the day, and started introducing small, gradual changes like going to bed and waking up early and eating more freshly cooked easy-to-digest foods.

The final factor in my favor was that I had hope I could get better. Why? When I was an infant I had many chronic health problems related to my immune system, sinuses, and digestion. I had ulcers, asthma, allergies, and got sick a lot. But over the course of years I had gotten better and lived a relatively normal, healthy life. So despite the daily ups and downs of hopelessness, doubt, or murkiness I felt about my present-day illness, somewhere deep in my mind there was also a feeling that it was possible for my body to heal.

Help is Here

January 2021 - Summer 2021

With all the resting I was doing I felt like I was getting better very slowly, but I was still struggling with extraordinary pain to the point where it was affecting my relationship with my girlfriend and we were starting to have conflicts. This was good motivation for me to get help.

In the first months of 2021 I think it was my girlfriend that suggested I might qualify for Massachusetts' low-income health insurance program, MassHealth, since I didn't have any income. I applied and was accepted with very little effort or paperwork needed. This MassHealth insurance plan required no monthly payments, premium, or copays. Additionally, my dad suggested that with no income I might also qualify for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps in Massachusetts. I applied and was accepted, again with little effort. I no longer had to worry about buying food, which was my biggest expense. With SNAP and my new health insurance plan, I was able to re-engage with the medical system without as much fear of financial ruin. But where to focus my limited energies?

I was very fortunate that my friend John Gesimondo recommended I read James Nestor's book Breath about the science and practice of breathing. There's a fascinating chapter in the book where Nestor researches the importance of nasal breathing and even experiments on himself. As part of an academic study, he intentionally plugged his nostrils for 10 days and recorded biometric data. He shares in detail just how bad he felt — his sleep was terrible, his exercise performance fell precipitously, and his resting blood pressure and stress levels were as high as they had ever been. Some of this felt similar to what I was going through.

When I was reading this chapter I asked myself this question: "When was the last time I felt a clear breath through my nose?" I couldn't remember a time, which meant that it had been many years at least. Nestor talks in the book about a common form of surgery to correct a deviated septum and remove nasal blockages. I thought maybe this surgery could help me, and because of my new insurance I was able to get a referral from my primary care doctor to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. John Jameson. During our first appointment he took one look in my nostrils and immediately confirmed, "Oh yeah, you're really blocked up." We scheduled surgery for April 2021, the earliest time available. I had high expectations that this surgery would completely fix whatever was going on with my health. When the surgery was pushed back a month to May due to a scheduling error I burst into tears — I wanted relief so badly and any setback felt heartbreaking. Still, the surgery was scheduled and after the initial disappointment I felt hopeful.

In the meantime, I tried to apply for federal disability payments. I'm still shocked and upset by how burdensome the process for applying for disability is. The forms were long and complicated and required a lot of documentation from different kinds of medical providers as well as back-and-forth communication with the disability agency. In my state of exhaustion I found it incredibly difficult to coordinate all of this. Ultimately, because I had a small amount of savings in my bank account and because I didn't have an official diagnosis from my doctor, I was unqualified to receive disability. The process to arrive at that conclusion was tedious and disheartening.

In February 2021, my girlfriend and I started seeing a couples therapist that we found through psychologytoday.com's therapist finder. For me the therapy was a mixed bag. It was good to have a professional to help clarify our conflicts and patterns of disconnection, but I consistently felt unseen and was starting to have feelings that weren't being addressed in the therapy. I needed additional help.

I began to see my previous therapist, Hilary Graham, again. She was shocked by all that I had been through since we stopped meeting and we began to process all the impacts of my illness. I felt so much less alone. Even though I had to pay out-of-pocket, I saw Hilary by video chat once a week and she lowered her fee given my circumstances. We did a lot of experiential Internal Family Systems therapy, a popular type of therapy about connecting to psychological "parts" of ourselves that have been wounded or habitually neglected. This work touched on parts of myself that I had never encountered before, parts that were deep, raw, and bleeding. I'll explain more later.

Since my girlfriend was using her insurance for our couples therapy, and I was paying for my own individual therapy out-of-pocket, I realized my insurance might also cover an individual therapist for myself. Feeling I could use as much support as possible, I found a therapist on psychologytoday.com that took my insurance and listed Buddhism and somatic therapy on his profile. His name was David Barry. He was warm and empathetic, and whereas my work with Hilary often felt very deep and emotional, my work with David felt a lot more practical which provided a good balance. I'll always remember his beautiful explanation of how depression spirals can happen.

He told me that for a person with depression, activities that previously provided a 7 out of 10 in terms of enjoyment might only provide 3 out of 10 when they're depressed. And so that person might think "well what's the use?" and stop the activity completely. But in that case, David pointed out, they're not even getting a 3 of enjoyment, causing them to feel even more depressed. This made sense to me and I felt more empowered with this understanding to choose my activities and not give up completely on things that may not feel as good as I hoped. I came to see the value of even little bits of enjoyment and intentionally practice appreciating those moments, especially given how miserable I was feeling. I saw David weekly through August 2022.

By the spring of 2021 I was seeing three therapists, each providing support for a different aspect of my life. It didn't feel like it helped my physical symptoms significantly, but at least I was not alone and had some practical and emotional support. This alone helped me feel better overall.

In May 2021, I got the deviated septum and nasal blockage surgery. I woke up from the anesthesia with tears running down my face in the recovery room. A warm-hearted nurse gave me a hug. The surgeon told me that "things were really deranged back there!" regarding my nasal cavity. Yes, he actually used the word deranged. He told me this kind of problem was congenital and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. After a painful but short recovery from the surgery, I could get more air through my nose and my sleep improved. I also think I felt less anxious in general and had a little more energy and less overall pain. It wasn't the complete cure I had hoped for, but it was definitely a noticeable improvement to my quality of life, which, given my desperate situation, was a welcome relief. My insurance completely covered the cost of the surgery.

In the beginning of June 2021, I got a referral from my primary care doctor to see a neurologist about my headaches, Dr. Katherine Wang at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After some standard tests and an MRI that I asked for, she said my headaches were not considered migraines and were instead "cervicogenic". She prescribed medications that ended up making my headaches worse and also made me feel very angry and agitated. She also recommended doing neck stretches dozens of times throughout the day. These didn't seem like very effective options considering how much pain I was in. Dr. Wang was also a specialist in using Botox to treat headaches, but told me that my insurance wouldn't cover that as a treatment unless at least two other methods failed. Feeling despondent, I stopped seeing her.

Later in June, I tried out acupuncture. Even though I was feeling slightly better after the nasal surgery, it was clear I was still in bad shape. I was struggling with fatigue, poor digestion, headaches, fragile emotions, and body pain. I had gotten acupuncture sessions a few times before my illness and felt it was helpful so I was interested to try it again. My impression was that acupuncture was able to help with many seemingly unrelated problems, especially those that weren't well-addressed by speciality doctors. Unexpectedly, I found a clinic close to my house that took my insurance, a place called Acupunkture, cheekily referencing the practitioner's punk background. The practitioner, Crystal, was unusually kind, gentle, and accepting. I was low-key shocked when I told her about everything I was experiencing and she just nodded empathetically and asked more details. Most of the medical professionals I had previously told about my varied symptoms had been overwhelmed and couldn't integrate everything into their speciality, but this acupuncturist seemed able to hold all the different things I was dealing with. In addition to acupuncture, Crystal also offered cupping during the session, a way of releasing tension and stagnation in the muscles using suction cups. When she put cups on my chest I felt a lightness, ease, and spaciousness around my chest that I hadn't felt since I was a child. Crystal informed me that my insurance covered unlimited sessions with her. I saw her weekly.

So by the summer of 2021, I had insurance, SNAP benefits, nasal surgery, three therapists, and weekly acupuncture. It had been around a year since I started feeling sick and I was still struggling, but I finally had some help.

Trauma Processing

April 2021 - August 2021

I mentioned earlier that our couples therapy was bringing up intense feelings that weren't being addressed. In one couples session my body began shaking uncontrollably and I felt a burning sensation in my abdomen. I white-knuckled through the feeling and after the session felt like I had run a marathon — I was completely exhausted. In another session, I suddenly realized how much pain there was for me around the issue of separation and I began to cry deeply. After the session, all the colors in my visual field appeared brighter and the world seemed more beautiful. What was going on?

I took these feelings to my individual therapist. She suggested that even though these feelings were intense, it may represent an opportunity to address feelings that had never been processed before. The thought of confronting the unknown in me was scary, but I agreed. Hilary suggested we try EMDR, a type of therapy that uses bilateral stimulation of the nervous system to release traumatic memories. I wasn't aware of any traumatic memories but when I started doing it I felt a huge amount of sadness, grief, anger, and powerlessness pouring out of me.

I learned that being chronically sick as a child had left deep emotional wounds in me. All of these feelings were things I had felt as a helpless child, a victim of ill health and the physical pain and discomfort that went with it. Those feelings still lived in me and were being dragged up by the ill health I was experiencing now.

Additionally, I learned that when I was under 2 years old I had a throat endoscopy in which I was sedated, physically bound so I couldn't interfere with the procedure, and separated from my mother. I have no memory of this incident, but my body remembers it as an assault, a forced intrusion. My infant nervous system was facing a life-or-death threat, unable to move and helpless to defend itself, fighting to stay awake against the effects of the sedative, and utterly alone and abandoned by my attachment figure. My mom told me she could hear me screaming "bloody murder" from the waiting room. The traumatic memory of this lived in my body below conscious memory, and was being triggered by the thought of separating from my girlfriend. The psychologist Stanislav Grof describes the concept of a "coex system" where a set of thematically related experiences revolves around a powerful core emotional memory.

Over the course of several months of therapy, the emotions from all this early childhood suffering came in waves. Initially I felt flooded and overwhelmed, but Hilary and I did a lot of work "titrating" or taking intense emotions slowly so that they wouldn't overwhelm me. It was around 6 months of crying and letting go, but the result was I slowly started feeling lighter and more peaceful in my body, a fragile blossom opening after a lifetime in the dark.

At the end of August 2021 my girlfriend and I agreed to break up. I felt so lonely and depressed. In my therapy I remember a part of me saying with heartbreaking vulnerability, "Please don't leave me." I told this part of me, "I am here for you and I'm not going anywhere". The tears flowed.

A Sacred Dream

Fall 2021

In our culture, most people consider dreams fanciful, random, or nonsensical. And sometimes they are. But dreams can be more, too. Dreams can be prescient, shepherds of wisdom beyond what we know in waking life.

I had many dreams while I was ill. Some were terror dreams — reliving my early childhood trauma triggered by sleep paralysis. But some were wisdom dreams, showing me something important I needed to know. Dreams about mold exposure, relationship issues, or a symbolic explanation of something I had experienced during the day. I received these with immense gratitude, clinging to them like a life raft in stormy waters. I'd like to share one dream in particular.

In my dream, I was mixing up a doughy batter in a bowl while flashes of media I had seen in my life played. The dough went into a toaster oven that was completely stuffed with the batter I had just made, to the point where it was touching the heating elements and getting burnt, causing smoke to pour out of the top of the toaster oven into an electrical element whose wires glowed visibly, overheating. I woke up from the dream with a perfect understanding of what the dream represented in myself and a noetic sense that it was very important that I know this.

The doughy batter represented my history of consumption, both the foods I ate throughout my life (wheat, sugary foods, meat, and cheese with almost no vegetables) as well as the media I had consumed. The toaster oven represented my digestive tract, where food is "cooked". The batter overflowing the oven represented a history of overconsumption. When my digestive system or metabolism "heated up" through exercise or when eating it burned the batter touching the heating element. The "smoke" produced from this traveled to my brain, causing it to overheat, representing headaches, fatigue, and emotions like frustration and desperation. I later learned that the vagus nerve directly connects the brain and our guts — when there's stress in the gut there can be stress in the brain and vice versa.

The dream was almost cartoonish, but it elegantly and non-judgmentally explained how previous habitual actions over my life had caused my digestion to be chronically impaired which resulted in downstream effects like fatigue and headaches.

I was later told that this dream is exactly like "phlegm" in traditional Chinese medicine or "ama" in Ayurveda. Food, especially food considered "sweet" and heavy (like bread, sugary foods, cheese, fatty foods, and meat), when eaten in excess or not digested well, tends to cause a build-up of undigested stagnation in the digestive tract (maybe analogous to unhealthy fat formation or cholesterol build-up in western science) which eventually hardens into "phlegm", a sticky, hard-to-remove substance that causes impaired digestive ability and many other secondary effects and diseases depending on the particular person. Surprisingly, this dream also indicated that overconsuming media can have a similar energetic result of phlegm formation. Pornography consumption especially can destroy your body.

With practice, phlegm can actually be felt subjectively in one's own experience, though it may be subtle. It feels like a persistent heavy, dense, cold, numb, stagnant, sticky, or blocked sensation in different parts of the body. With my practice of meditating on subtle somatic sensations, I could verify this feeling in many parts of my body, but especially in my abdomen, legs, and shoulders. I told my acupuncturist this and she said it was a helpful clue in the overall picture of my health.

You can see how helpful this toaster oven dream was! With a very succinct metaphorical image it made sense of a lot of different experiences I was having and how they were related. In combination with concepts from Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine it also suggested gentle ways to start reversing the damage that had already been done. I'm very grateful to this dream.

Our culture doesn't value this sort of wisdom, the kind that is mysterious, personal, unreproducible, that comes from within. In fact, we are taught to doubt it, to doubt our subjective experience. And there are good reasons for this, but when we reject it wholesale we lose something precious. We need access to this wisdom if we want to survive as species. It can help us understand our place in the world, especially in this fragile time, and act in ways that reduce harm and promote healing. What lead up to this moment? How do we proceed from here? We can't just rely on our pre-conceived ideas — we have to be open and listen deeply. There's an intelligence that can know and synthesize far beyond our intellect. We need to honor, respect, and integrate the wisdom that comes from within.

The Slow Walk Toward Healing

Fall 2021 - Summer 2022

In the autumn of 2021 I spent a lot of time in my office. Here's a picture of my office:

A boulder on top of a hill.

It's a big rock on a hill. I called it my office because it was where I did my "work", my healing work of doing absolutely nothing. I spent hours lying on that rock feeling the sun and wind on my skin, watching the leaves dance on tree branches, listening to the birds and insects, and trying to let my body and mind relax. Much of the time my mind was extremely active, my thoughts racing, but occasionally it would slow down and I would feel more peaceful and connected to my physical body and the environment around me. I yawned a lot, releasing some of the stress and exhaustion of being chronically ill. One time my mind relaxed to the point where I watched a leaf fall from a tree and was so present to its beauty and gentleness that I was moved to tears.

I undertook this healing "work" after being inspired by some of the videos and writings of Thich Naht Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who helped popularize mindfulness around the world. His "dharma talks" on Youtube spoke to the experiences I was having with chronic illness and I began to practice mindful walking, mindful breathing, and yes, mindful lying on a big rock.

Here's an excerpt that inspired me:

Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing. When animals in the forest get wounded, they find a place to lie down, and they rest completely for many days. They don't think about food or anything else. They just rest, and they get the healing they need.

When we humans get sick, we just worry! We look for doctors and medicine, but we don't stop. Even when we go to the beach or the mountains for a vacation, we don't rest, and we come back more tired than before. We have to learn to rest.

Lying down is not the only position for resting. During sitting or walking meditation, we can rest very well. Meditation does not have to be hard labor. Just allow your body and mind to rest like an animal in the forest. Don't struggle. There is no need to attain anything. I am writing a book, but I am not struggling. I am resting also. Please read in a joyful, yet restful way. The Buddha said, "My Dharma is the practice of non-practice." Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest.

Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest. Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing. Individuals, communities, and nations need healing.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Resting while walking was one of the harder practices for me. I began by walking excruciatingly slowly around my neighborhood. When I noticed my mind running away I would stop moving completely, breathe, rest, and begin again. It took a long time to get around my neighborhood this way. I would walk like this every day for months, slowly increasing my mindfulness and concentration. And over time I started to enjoy walking mindfully, feeling a pleasant stimulation and enjoying the natural world around me. Normally while walking my mind was constantly worried and trying to figure out what to do about my illness. But while walking mindfully, aware of each step, I was less focused on the imagined future where I was free of illness and more on the present moment where I could actually feel relief immediately. Short moments of bliss and well-being began to arise in my body. Thich Nhat Hanh's invitation — "Healing is possible with every step" — started feeling like a reality instead of a far-off fantasy.

In addition to resting and walking, I also tried anti-depressants. After breaking up with my girlfriend, I felt a lot of intense loneliness and depression. I found a psychiatric nurse practitioner that took my insurance, and he prescribed me Wellbutrin. We experimented a little with the dose until we found a fairly low, helpful dose. Wellbutrin felt like it helped stabilize my emotions. I was not carried away as easily by depression or loneliness and I also felt a little more energetic overall.

With all the healing conditions, I decided it was time to take a risk — ultimate frisbee. I had played casually before I got sick and wanted to try again. It was pretty overwhelming. The first several games I played for a few minutes before needing to lie face down on the ground and recover. I had terrible headaches for days after, but it didn't matter. I needed the social connection and play and I noticed that my digestion and overall enthusiasm were better after, too. I eventually felt less overwhelmed during games and could play for longer.

I was still depressed. I was still overwhelmed easily. I was still in intensive trauma therapy. I was still isolated. I was at least 16 pounds below my baseline weight and swinging between constipation and diarrhea. But I was feeling... better. In December 2021, I told Hilary that it now felt possible for me to enjoy visual beauty and pleasurable sensations in my body. She remarked that this made sense to her, that when we're in survival mode we're always oriented toward danger, and there's no space for beauty and pleasure. She suggested that this was a sign that healing had happened. I agreed.

Breaking Point

Summer 2022

I was feeling better, but a storm was brewing that summer.

Over the course of July 2022, I began isolating myself, from ultimate frisbee, from friends, even from my parents. For whatever reason, it didn't feel great to be around people. I guess it was the lure of spiritual attainment masking deep unaddressed pain. I would spend all day in isolation meditating on the lines of energy in my body, especially around my root chakra. I was eating less and less and was now 30 pounds underweight. I looked skeletal and felt weak yet had so much tension in my body. My headache seared and pulsed. It was like I was a tea kettle at full boil. Seeking relief, I began taking some of the leftover Wellbutrin I had.

One night in the late heat of summer, I reached a breaking point. Between the isolation, powerful energy meditations, and especially medication, I became so delirious with fear and aggression that I had to be hospitalized.

In the ambulance I was finally able to calm down. They gave me a sedative and at the hospital a kind social worker took down my story, helping me understand this episode as a product of the medication (Wellbutrin can sometimes cause aggression). I was held in the psychiatric unit for a few days and was incredibly lonely, but mentally stable and safe.

When my parents came to pick me up, I felt ashamed at what had happened. They told me it was really scary seeing me in so much pain and that they loved me no matter what. For a couple days, I was filled with incredible gentleness and softness.

The episode made it clear. I needed more help.

I immediately stopped taking Wellbutrin and reached out to my Tibetan doctor who gave me helpful medicinal herbs. Within a month I gained back 10 pounds and a further 20 the month after. My mom, who has never tried or been interested in "alternative" medicines was shocked at the progress I made and praised the doctor and Tibetan medicine.

I reached out to Dustin DiPerna, a lineage holder in the Tibetan meditation tradition I began with. He strongly recommend I stop the energy meditations and not isolate myself, to stay connected with the Sangha, the meditation community. Following Dustin's suggestion, I connected with local meditation communities: The Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, Wake Up Boston, and The Path of Peace sangha in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Practicing meditation together noticeably changed the quality of the meditation. I felt calmer, more connected, and the effect was much more powerful than meditating alone. I also began to make friends.

I got a session of private instruction from a qigong instructor who was able to help me understand the energy imbalances in my body and recommend gentle movements that would help me slowly bring myself back into balance — I practiced a little bit every day and unlike most exercises found it very relaxing and pleasurable.

And finally, because both acupuncture and medication had failed to alleviate my headaches, I was now eligible for my insurance to pay for Botox injections in my neck, shoulders, and temples. Dr. Katherine Wang administered the shots and was very kind. When the Botox kicked in I saw my shoulders visibly drop several inches and my headaches softened. Surprisingly, I also felt so much calmer and at ease in my body when the Botox was at its most effective.

The mental break was one of the lowest moments of my life. And looking back, it was also a turning point, an alarm clock buzzing angrily to wake me up from a nightmare — "this pain is too much to bear, you need help." And luckily help was available.

In fact, several years later, Tibetan medicine, meditation communities, qigong, and Botox continue to benefit me. So much good ended up coming from my mental break that it's hard for me to label it as simply "bad". Even my parents remarked to me once, "maybe it was a good thing that happened."

I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone, but looking back now my mental break was like a storm before the break of dawn.

On The Move

Spring 2023

Adam was sitting across from me, naked in an outdoor hot tub in the middle of winter. "You should come to contact improv." Adam was my old roommate and we were catching up after a few years apart. They were telling me about a very unusual dance form. "Yeah, there's no particular kind of movement. There's usually not even any music, either. At a jam, some people might be running around making animal noises while others are slowly rolling over each across the floor. It's really open." Adam saw my shyness. "And you can just sit on the side and watch, too."

I went to my first contact improvisation class and jam. I was anxious and tight in my body. In one of my first ever dances someone wrapped their arms around my chest from behind, something no one besides a romantic partner had ever done to me. It felt shockingly intimate and more than a little uncomfortable.

I stood on the side and watched what other people were doing. They were mindful and in-the-moment. They had to be since every dance was totally improvised. They were connecting with each other in an open and non-verbal way. They were playful, creative, joyful, even loving. They were... happy. And it was rubbing off on me. I relaxed.

It was the spring of 2023 and I was falling in love with contact improv. Every week, I went to the Cambridge Contact Improv jams, an hour drive each way into the city and back from my parents' house. I didn't care how long the drive was. I didn't care that it gave me headaches and I had to be constantly vigilant about overdoing it. It was worth it. Here's a video of two very skilled dancers.

It had been almost three years since I had gotten sick, three years of enormous pain and isolation, and I needed to be in the world again. I needed to move. I needed to connect. I needed to travel.

In June I went to a Wake Up retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery in upstate New York for people under 35 years old. It was like spiritual summer camp. There was a lot of meditating but there was also a lot of time to play and connect with others. I even found some people to do contact improv with.

In August I traveled to London, Paris, and Denmark with friends from college. I felt a particular joy doing slow, mindful walking in the airports and subway stations where everyone was rushing around — I felt so peaceful and at ease and to be honest a little smug at my quiet rebellion. I went to contact improv jams in London and Denmark and was delighted to feel the same sense of warmth and connection I had felt back home — a worldwide family of dancers.

In October I went to Earthdance for the first time, a Mecca for contact improv in western Massachusetts. After one particularly joyful morning dance, several people were shocked by the electric shade of blue my eyes had turned.

Finally, in February 2024 I went to a contact improv retreat in the jungles of Costa Rica. Moti Zimmerman has been organizing an annual retreat there for 10 years. I'd never traveled to Central America or been in a jungle before, but I'll never forget the other dancers, the cries of the howler monkeys, or the incredible and sometimes overwhelming vitality of the jungle itself. I dreamed in psychedelic technicolor, like the jungle must dream.

All these trips felt like test runs. How would my body hold up to the stress of independent living? It wasn't all bliss. I was still feeling a lot of pain in my body. I tired easily and felt overwhelmed a lot. But even so, I was managing. And not only that, I was sometimes feeling a sense of aliveness, connection with others, and loving presence that I was not feeling while living at my parents'. I was feeling ready to live on my own again.

But I needed money.

Not long after I first got sick, in December of 2020, I got obsessed with the idea of "indie hacking", creating solo online businesses. Since I didn't know if I was permanently disabled, I figured I needed a source of income that wasn't tied directly to my energy. I poured over the Indie Hackers website, getting inspiration and practical tips for creating successful solo businesses.

I had probably less than 30 minutes of usable energy in a day and my body hated it, but I used that energy to make ExtensionPay.com, a service that helps browser extension developers add paid features in their extensions. I had no idea if people would actually use such a service, but I knew that when I myself had tried to add paid features to a browser extension it seemed outlandishly difficult. At the time, Google also announced that they were shutting down their own Chrome extension payment system, so it seemed like the perfect timing. It took a month for me to build a "minimum viable product," and I sent it to developers.

On February 14, 2021 I made my first 15 cents of revenue. It wasn't much, but it was exciting and validated the idea could make money. I continued to add features developers requested and wrote search-engine-optimized marketing articles to attract new developers. Slowly the revenue began to grow.

In the summer of 2023 I found a Python script that helped people delete their Reddit content. Since Python scripts are too technical for most people to run, I looked for a browser extension that would do the same thing. I found that there used to be one but it had been removed from the Chrome extension store. Seeing that there was a market, I quickly built my own and used ExtensionPay to add paid features to the otherwise free extension. It eventually began to generate a steady but modest amount of income.

So by the early spring of 2024 I was surprised to find that between ExtensionPay and my Reddit extension I actually had just enough income to live off. I looked for sublets that I could move in to immediately in order to find something more permanent. Surprisingly, it was a listing by an ex-girlfriend from 10 years ago. I asked her, "Would it be weird for me to sublet your room?". "No, I want you to have it," she replied. On the day I was approved for the sublet I went for a walk around my neighborhood and saw a hawk doing flips and spins in the air and screaming seemingly for the sheer joy of it. I felt like that hawk. A new sense of freedom and possibility was alive in me.

It had been almost four years living with my parents. Four years of pain, unexplained illness, depression, confusion, isolation, and hard healing work. It was time to move.

Freedom

Summer 2024

I didn't waste any time.

After I moved in I immediately helped organize The Boston Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas hackathon, an annual tradition before Covid. I had come back from the jungles of Costa Rica two months prior with an image of a toilet on a child's merry-go-round that made me laugh. So I made it with the help of my co-organizer Jeainny Kim.

A week later I flew to Mexico City to attend the international Hakomi conference, the mindfulness therapy modality I had trained in and loved. Arriving at the conference I cried instantly when I felt the love and compassion the attendees had cultivated in themselves. The heat in Mexico gave me intense headaches throughout the conference until I got food poisoning that caused me to have diarrhea for a week and left me frail for weeks after.

I continued to see Hilary weekly for therapy. Every week we did deep work attuning to parts, listening, and holding them in compassion and love. Our sessions reached a beautiful rhythm, where parts started trusting that I was there, attuning to their every subtlely with openness, something they hadn't received when I was a child. I was slowly rewiring my brain and nervous system from a state of trauma and isolation to one of peace and connection. I cried nearly every session as parts began to receive the nourishment of a loving and attuned presence they had needed for so long. I also started discovering that one component of my headaches was emotional — certain protector "parts" would get activated during sessions and my headache would worsen. When those parts received the love they needed my headache would feel more relieved.

I went on a meditation retreat, sang kirtan with friends, danced contact improv every week and ecstatic dance regularly, went on dates, and intensified my practice with White Tara, the Tibetan deity of compassion. I visited my dear friend Michael Nagle in LA who started me on the path of spirituality and had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. I continued to work on my software businesses, feeling unsure of where I was going to live after the summer and fearful about my ability to hold a job as a therapist with my lingering health problems. I eventually found a place to move in September, living with friends from my meditation and dance communities. I enjoyed all this activity a lot in spite of my constant headaches and body pain.

But by the middle of the summer I was starting to feel exhausted. The walks I took around my neighborhood that used to feel refreshing and invigorating now left me sad and tired. Every day I became overwhelmed after lunch and needed a nap. One day I dreamed of myself as a lotus flower closing. Another day I got a reiki session from a friend and then immediately slept for three hours in the middle of the day. Yet I tried to keep up the pace of activity.

Until August 23, when I felt a sudden radiating pain in my leg while weightlifting. An MRI confirmed I had herniated a disc at the L5 vertebrae in my spine and it was impinging on a nerve. The pain was excruciating and made walking an activity I endured with gritted teeth. Somehow, through exquisite slowness, patience, and will power I moved my belongings from my sublet to the new apartment on my own.

Despite resting every day for a month at my new apartment, the pain from the herniated disc continued to intensify. Physical therapy, acupuncture, and NSA chiropractic all exacerbated the pain. Eventually, I couldn't even walk short distances or cook meals for myself and had to go to the hospital for morphine and later Oxycodone. Seeing this, my parents suggested I move back home so they could care for me. I accepted.

Back At Home

October 2024 - May 2025

After a summer of freedom, I was back at my parents', incapacitated with pain. Despite the eerie resemblance to the onset of my illness in 2020, it felt... different. I didn't struggle. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to rest. I felt so much gratitude that my parents were there for me and I had the ability to rest which so many people don't have.

In my best moments of being bedridden, I was inspired by Greg Boyle, author of "Tattoos on the Heart" and founder of "Homeboy Industries". His stories of unconditional love and healing while working with former gang members had me weeping from both beauty and laughter. I was also inspired by the book "It Didn't Start With You" by Mark Wolynn about ancestral trauma. I asked my parents to tell me about their parents and our family's history and it helped me understand the context for some of the patterns I had observed in myself. Being bedridden, I noticed my digestion was slow and switched to a fully plant-based diet which I had been moving toward since the beginning of my illness as suggested in Ayurveda. I watched Survivor with my mom.

In my worst moments of being bedridden I felt depressed and isolated, falling into long Youtube rabbit holes to fill my time.

After resting for two months the pain from my herniated disc diminished and a steroid injection into my spine eliminated any remaining pain. I began to feel refreshed at last from the summer exhaustion. I tried venturing out but felt a nagging pain in my back that I didn't want to exacerbate. I stayed in bed and stagnated.

With a lot of time in bed, I reflected on what really mattered. I started to feel that my time last summer working on my software business, whose motivation was essentially just making money, was a mistake. I can't explain it rationally, but I felt that by avoiding my aspiration to help people through therapy, I had contributed to the election of Donald Trump in November 2024 and the rise of greed, ignorance, and intolerance that he represented.

When he took office in January and began to create chaos, something in me woke up. I felt a rising tide, powerful and a little scary. And it wasn't just me. I felt a connection with the collective energy of the world. A courageous love stirring in the hearts and minds of people. "We don't want this. We want a better future. And we will work for it with determination despite our fears."

Spurred by this energy I moved back into my apartment in the city. It was emotionally turbulent and somehow brought up an even deeper level of fear than I had previously experienced before, a fear from my childhood of being abandoned while my body was destroyed. I went from weekly sessions with my therapist to daily sessions while the fear was most acute. With a lot of support from Hilary and my friends, I stabilized and was no longer incapacitated. Surprisingly, physical therapy for my back seemed to help release some of the feelings of fear.

Apart from the childhood fear, there was also a disconcerting sense of mystery around my health. Could my body handle living in the city? What about my spine? What level of activity could I sustain? How could I ensure I wouldn't burn out again? I couldn't tell if I was walking on a tightrope, a sidewalk, or something broader and safer. If I fell, how far would I fall? It was impossible to know. I took it slow and experimented gently. I began to feel better.

One thing that became clear is that I was feeling a sense of sadness and boredom. I realized it was time to fulfill the promise I had made at the beginning of my career transition and find a job as a therapist. It felt like a deep act of love to myself to look for jobs, knowing it's something I've been yearning for. Unsure of my abilities and on the advice of several friends, I applied for part-time outpatient therapy jobs, hoping for a case load of around 15 sessions a week and otherwise financially supported by my tech products. I applied for 14 positions over a couple months before I finally got an offer in May. I started in July 2025.

Conclusion

It's now been five years since I got sick, five years of intensive training in pain, mindfulness, and compassion. Five years of connecting with a body in distress. Five years of experimenting with food and observing its effects. Five years of weekly experiential somatic therapy, learning to attune to the parts of myself that haven't gotten acknowledgement, love, or compassion. Five years of training to maintain mindfulness of my thoughts, body, energy system, and surroundings. Five years of acupuncture, qigong, Tibetan medicine, and mantras. Five years of loneliness, discovering community, and dance.

It now feels like I have a firmer foundation as I re-engage with the world. Not fully healed, whatever that would mean, but with more tools, more compassion. I still have headaches. I still have poor digestion. I still sometimes have intense floods of feeling, depression, or anxiety. But I also feel so much better most of the time, have a lot more energy and joy, and all my symptoms are headed in a good direction. I'm so grateful to the many healing conditions I've been able to receive. I don't know what will happen next. I hope I can share some of what I've cultivated with others and keep learning the art of healing.

Thank you for reading. May all beings swiftly find healing and the conditions of healing.