The Power of Belief

The Power of Belief from the Evil Alternate Universe, complete with mustache.

The Power of belief can be good, or really, really bad.

I have heard of people whose belief was the only thing that kept them going in circumstances that seemed utterly hopeless. Trapped in the mountains during a blizzard, a POW for months, if not years, on end. Belief is a powerful force. I really believe that.

It's something I cling to right now. I believe that my health will improve, if I keep working towards that goal. I believe that we have found the answer to what's going wrong in my body, or at least most of it. I believe that this diet is better for my children.

But sometimes, opinion and desire have shaped my belief into something that is, well, stupid as a box of hair.

My brain's IQ today

Take my reactions. It's been 10 months now. I KNOW what happens. If I stay away from the foods that make me react (like, everything), then I slowly improve. I stop reacting as severely to the foods that cause problems. I don't lose weight. My reactions decrease to the point that my throat stops swelling up, even if I might feel bad, say, the next day.

But that's part of the problem. The reactions get better. And when they start to improve, when my throat isn't swelling up willy-nilly, the doubts creep in. Because to everyone, including various doctors I've seen, this makes no sense. I shouldn't react to these foods, especially if I'm not allergic to them. Heck, how would someone even LIVE if their body is really like this? And I don't like this diet. I want other foods, even more when I make good tasting food for my family.

So I start to use the power of belief for evil.

Maybe...maybe I have just been so nervous about all these foods that I had some psychosomatic thing going on. Maybe I haven't been reacting quite as bad as I think. So I eat something that I'm not supposed to, and nothing much happens.

Oooh, maybe it WAS all in my head! So I'll eat another thing, and it's okay. And then the next day I don't feel so hot, but hey, that could be coincidence, right? So I eat another 'bad' food, just a bite or two. And again.

And then two-three days down the road, all of a sudden my throat starts swelling up on me all over again to everything and ruins the hard work that I've been doing for weeks up to that point. I start inhaling and having trouble with foods nearby. It's so darn stupid.

I need to have more faith in myself and my own observations, rather than faith in what the generic population around me thinks is happening. Although I truly wonder how much my desire for more food shapes this. I don't want to be this way, so I want to believe I'm NOT this way, and thus do something stupid to prove I'm not. And simply prove that I am this way, only now I'm in pain, too.

I'm so brilliant I hurt my eyes. Seriously.