Jennifer Gladysz’s Lyme Hack:

“Hi, I’m Jen from Solving Lyme with Jen. I’m a health coach and herbalist working with people with chronic Lyme. I got into this work after helping my husband reach remission after a 10 year struggle with Lyme. You know, all other treatments failed and we just had to take matters into our own hands. Tick Boot Camp gave me the opportunity to share our family’s story on their podcast a few weeks ago. Today, they asked me to talk about Lyme rage and how that affected our family and you know how we dealt with it. When Keith was dealing with chronic Lyme, before we even understood Lyme or really knew the scope of what he was dealing with, he would have these over the top angry episodes. At the time we had a teenager living at home which can be challenging in itself, even though our daughter is lovely and was very well behaved. But when Keith would try to talk to her about her behavior, his reaction would just seem over the top out of out of line. And that definitely affected their relationship. It also affected my relationship with Keith, because I just didn’t understand what was going on. It got to the point where I said to Keith, hey, let me take care of our daughter. Let me handle these situations. Let’s give you some you know, let’s let you step back. And, you know, I just didn’t want their relationship to be further damaged. As time went on, Keith’s anger would flare up. More often it wasn’t only directed at our daughter, but anything stressful and sometimes it came seemingly out of nowhere. Finally, we realized this was Lyme related. We were doing more research, his symptoms, other symptoms were getting worse. And we just put the pieces of the puzzle together. And just this awareness alone was a huge help for us. It’s kind of like when you get your diagnosis, finally, you know what’s going on. And there’s some relief in knowing what you’re dealing with. And it can take the pressure off to know where this anger is coming from. So if you are having these outbursts of rage, and you have Lyme, please know that this is related. Before this awareness, Keith would just try to hang with us. And, you know, there would be an outburst and it would do more damage than good. So after the awareness he began to be aware of when he started to feel angry and he would remove himself from the situation and spend some time alone. He also got serious about his meditation practice. And if he would start his day with meditation, then that would help prevent some of the anger from surfacing later and you know, it just made for a better day overall. We also added in gu-tang to our herbal protocol, he was treating with the Steven Buner Herbal Protocol and Stephen recommends gu-tang for Lyme rage. Also, Keith worked with a therapist, which was very helpful in discovering where some of the anger was coming from. You know, the anger can come from childhood trauma or other issues in your past and the Lyme which you know, sets your fight or flight response on high can just ignite this anger. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire. So when you deal with the original trauma, you can get to the source of the issue. So for Keith, what worked best was awareness, meditation, herbal medicine, therapy, and just removing himself from situations as needed. Lyme is very complex, everyone is different. But if you’re dealing with Lyme rage, you know, maybe think about looking into meditation practice. Think about herbal medicine. You know, remove yourself when you start to feel that anger start to build. Find a therapist if you can. If you can’t, maybe just someone that’s a good listener. And please know that you’re not alone and that you know you can get better, there is hope. Just hang in there and keep looking for the things that will work for you.”