Guided Meditation Helped Ease My Anxiety During an MS Flare

“Take a breath and give one away.” — Marisa Peer

Recently, I started doing guided meditation by Marisa Peer, a rapid transformational therapy trainer and best-selling author. Her meditations are freely available on Spotify and cover a range of topics to help with anxiety, sleep, fitness, relationships, weight loss, and other things. 

She is amazing. I’ve listened every day for about a week, and I feel my confidence building. I’d heard that guided meditation is tremendously essential to personal growth and development. Meditation can help to reduce stress and therefore MS symptoms. 

Previously, whenever I tried to meditate, I would sit quietly and try to clear my mind, but it wasn’t effective. Since discovering guided meditation, the results have been much better.

Ongoing anxiety challenges

Anxiety has always been a significant factor in my life, even before MS. Maybe it was an early indication of the disease, I’m not sure. But what is anxiety?

The National Health Service here in the U.K. defines anxiety as “a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can be mild or severe.”

The majority of MSers have anxiety. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Anxiety disorders are three times more common in MS than in the general population.”

According to the MS Trust, up to two-thirds of people with MS reported having anxiety.

The reason anxiety is so prominent in MS is that the disease is so unpredictable. Having just had an MS exacerbation, I can relate. One of the big challenges is the uncertainty about what new symptoms may mean, how long they will last, whether they will worsen, or whether it means the disease is progressing. It’s difficult not to worry about the body when experiencing this. 

Living with MS, I have found that people outside of the MS world don’t understand the disease’s unpredictability and the emotional impact it has on the sufferer. When my hands started experiencing a burning sensation and my body was going numb from the neck down a few weeks ago, my husband didn’t understand why I was anxious. 

“It’s just numbness. It’ll come back,” he told me. 

But to me, it wasn’t just numbness. To me, it was a reminder that MS is ever-present, lying dormant in the back of my mind and finding ways to take me over and win the game. 

At that point, I was the most anxious I had ever been. I lost confidence in myself and my abilities. I needed some serious help, so I turned to Marisa’s meditations.

I also reached out to a hypnotherapist, and am excited to get started on our first session next week. I’m not afraid to ask for help when I need it now, which is something I’ve learned with MS.

Does your MS give you anxiety? Please share in the comments below.

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