A Journey of Healing

On pain, the nervous system, and the courage to be yourself

I was only thirty when I was diagnosed with rheumatism. I was considered “lucky” because my pain threshold was high. Even though my blood tests showed worrying results, I didn’t feel much pain, so I didn’t need medication. Regular check-ups were enough, with the possibility of preventing flare-ups before they began. For 8–10 years, I managed with occasional mild episodes and short-term treatments—until the inflammation settled in the lining of my heart and led to pericarditis…

June 20, 2021 — A page from my Pericarditis Journal…

“I think I need to become friends with pain. You know how a beloved guest comes over, the conversation is sweet, it stretches, and you say ‘why don’t you stay the night since you’re already here?’ Maybe you had other plans for the evening, or the next day is full—but their presence is still welcome. Plans shift, you adapt somehow.

I feel I need to treat this painful body the same way. Not like someone I can politely say, ‘that’s enough for today, maybe another time,’ but like a dear friend I open my heart to, no matter what, saying ‘come, you are welcome here.’

My body has already accepted it, down to every cell. My arms no longer feel like they are hosting the pain—it’s as if the pain owns them. The pain in my chest sits like a matriarch in the corner, giving orders. ‘Go further down, reach the abdomen… don’t leave the shoulders and back empty—spread, spread!’ it commands the molecules of pain. They obey instantly, speeding up, colliding into one another as they rush to the assigned corners. In that chaos, waves of heat wash over me. Sweat pours from my neck, my nape, my forehead, my arms.

At some point I notice: this body is no longer mine, it’s under the command of pain. The matriarch has invited the drops of sweat too; they’re all dancing together. When they are so settled and content, how can I say, ‘please leave’? This is my home… how can I ask them to make space for me?”

When I wrote these lines, it had been only two weeks since my diagnosis. The pain in my heart—my “matriarch”—stayed with me for about nine months. The visits of those “pain molecules” lasted nearly three and a half years. What had once been something in the background—something I knew was there but never took seriously—became a reality I had to name out loud: “I am a rheumatism patient.” It became an identity, a presence, a form of existence.

It is no longer visible now. I don’t think it is completely gone. From what I’ve read and observed, autoimmune diseases have an intense relationship with stress. When we feel sadness, fear, or disappointment, emotional load can increase inflammation in the body, and instead of fighting external threats, the system may turn against itself. So yes, the “matriarch” may still come to visit from time to time. But I am certain of one thing: she will no longer take over the house.

Why am I so certain? Because when I was first diagnosed, I did what I needed to do—while I was still inside the experience of pericarditis. I turned toward my illness and asked: “Why are you here? What are you trying to tell me?”

My journey toward becoming a Reiki master, my work on body awareness, and eventually my training in systemic constellations and ancestral healing—all of it began not with a desire to heal others, but with the need to heal myself. I had read many books, but the answer became clearest to me in When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté. Illnesses like rheumatism—where the body inflames and turns against itself—often carry a message: the suppression of one’s true self, the hiding of identity, the fear of social rejection.

This inner conflict leaves behind two dominant emotions:

fear — If I am not accepted, I will not survive,

and anger — the anger of betraying oneself.

When these emotions are suppressed over time, they intensify. A person who cannot give themselves permission to be who they are becomes increasingly frustrated, increasingly enraged. And that rage burns through the heart.

Ben de kendi gerçekliğimi, var oluşumdaki özü, ilişki kurma biçimlerimi, ruhumun çekildiği yaşamı değil, herkesçe kabul gören, olması gereken hayatı yaşamaya çalışıyordum. Aslında bana göre olmayan hayatı yaşamaya çabaladığım yıllar boyunca başka hastalıklarla da bedenim isyanını ifade etmeye çalışmıştı ama baktı ki hiç akıllanmıyorum öyle ufak rahatsızlıklarla, içimden kendimi yeniden doğurana kadar yatırdı.

Doktorlarımdan biri perikarditin üçüncü ayı civarında bana “neden katlanıyorsun?” diye sormuştu. “Bitirebilirsin bu acıyı, dinlenebilirsin.” O gün ne demek istediğini tam anlamamıştım. Ancak birkaç yıl sonra sinir sistemine dair aldığım eğitimler bana yaşadığım deneyimin ne olduğunu anlattı.

Sinir sisteminde bilinen üç savunma mekanizması var:

1- Saldır modu: karşımdaki tehdit benden küçükse sağlıklı bir öfke yükseliyor, kalp atışım hızlanıyor, kollarıma, bacaklarıma kuvvet geliyor, gözlerimi hedefe kilitliyor ve o tehdidi alt etmeye çalışıyorum.

2- Kaç modu: karşımdaki tehdit benden büyük, saldırmak bir çare değil; kuvvetlenmiş bacaklarıma yüklenip koşuyorum, saklanıyorum, uzaklaşıyorum.

3- Donma: saldıramayacağım kadar büyük bir tehdit var ancak kaçacak yerim yok ya da tehdit benden hızlı… ya da insani olarak sosyal bir ortamda ilk iki opsiyon geçerli değil. Donup kalıyorum. İçimde hâlâ o aktivasyon var ama hareket edemiyorum. Tehdit bir boşluk yaratsa aniden harekete geçip, kendi gücümün de birkaç katında bir hızla sıvışabilirim ama bekliyorum.

Bir de memeli hayvanların ve haliyle insanların da deneyimlediği bir mekanizma daha var: çökme Artık yapacak hiçbir şey kalmamış, çözümsüz bir yerdeyim, çöküyorum… Bedenimdeki her sistem yavaşlıyor, kan bedenimin merkezine çekiliyor, sinir uçları ve kaslar gevşiyor, hayatı bırakır gibi bir hâl. Çökme hâlinin bir mekanizma olduğunu bilmediğim zamanlar hayvan belgesellerini izlemek zor gelirdi. Yakalanmış bir avın ne kadar acı çekeceğini düşünürken içim çekilirdi, halbuki o teslim olma halinde acı artık yok.

Meğer insan bedeni öyle bir mekanizmayla donatılmış ki, acı çekmemek için önden o çöküş moduna girermiş. Yüksek ağrılar olduğunda bayılmak ve komaya girmek de böyle bir şey. Perikardit ağrılarıyla başa çıkmak yerine öyle derin bir uykuya geçmek de mümkünmüş yani. Hastaneye yatsaymışım mesela, uyuturlarmış uzun uzun…

Ama o zaman yolculuğumun bana katacaklarını öğrenemezdim.

Saldır – kaç – donma – çökme modlarının bir de hayatla bağda kalarak deneyimlendiği hâller var. Saldır-kaç aslında bir sempatik aktivasyon hâli ve hayatla bağdaysak bu hâlleri dans etme, araştırma yapma, öğrenme, yaratma, spor egzersizlerinde kullanabiliyoruz. Donma-çökme kısmı ise parasempatik sistemin aktive olması. Hazmetme, dinlenme, meditasyon deneyimleri de bu sistemle bağlantılı.

Perikardit deneyimi bir çökme deneyimiydi benim için ama öğrenme ve kendimi kendim gibi yaşama hasretim onu bir teslimiyet olarak deneyimleme fırsatı verdi bana. Kendimi anlamaya, sezgilerime, yaratılışın bir manası olduğuna, bir arada olduğum kişilerin tam da beraber olmam gerekenler olduğuna, içime doğan hayallerin gerçekleştirme ihtimalim olan geleceğim olduğuna teslim olmamı sağladı.

I, too, had been trying to live a life that was considered acceptable—rather than the one my essence was drawn to. For years, my body had tried to express its resistance through smaller illnesses. But when I didn’t listen, it finally stopped me completely—until I could be reborn from within.

Around the third month of my pericarditis, one of my doctors asked me:

“Why are you enduring this? You could end this pain. You could rest.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Years later, through my studies on the nervous system, I finally did.

There are three well-known defense mechanisms in the nervous system:

1. Fight mode: If the threat is smaller than me, a healthy anger rises. My heart rate increases, my limbs gain strength, my focus sharpens, and I move to confront the threat.

2. Flight mode: If the threat is greater, fighting is not an option. My legs carry me away—I run, hide, distance myself.

3. Freeze mode: The threat is too big to fight, and there is nowhere to escape. Or socially, neither fighting nor fleeing is possible. I freeze. The activation is still inside me, but I cannot move. I wait.

There is also another mechanism—experienced by mammals, including humans: Collapse. When nothing can be done, when there is no way out, the system shuts down. Everything slows. Blood is drawn to the core. Muscles release. It feels like letting go of life itself. Before I understood this, I struggled to watch nature documentaries. Seeing prey being caught filled me with distress. But I later learned that the body is designed in such a way that it may enter collapse before pain is fully experienced.

Fainting, losing consciousness, even coma in extreme pain—these are all part of this mechanism. I could have escaped the pericarditis pain by being sedated in a hospital.

But then I wouldn’t have learned what this journey had to teach me.

These modes—fight, flight, freeze, collapse—also have life-connected expressions. Fight and flight are forms of sympathetic activation; when we are connected to life, we can channel them into dancing, creating, learning, movement, exercise.

Freeze and collapse relate to the parasympathetic system—rest, digestion, meditation.

My pericarditis was a collapse experience. But my longing to learn, and to live as myself, allowed me to experience it as surrender. It opened a space for me to trust my intuition, to feel that existence has meaning, that the people in my life are exactly those I am meant to be with, and that the dreams arising within me are possible futures waiting to unfold.

I like to call that period not an illness, but a healing process.

Over three and a half years, I didn’t heal from rheumatism—I healed from not being myself.

It was a long journey of understanding, accepting, loving myself—and then expressing that truth to others. Doctors, friends, guides, therapists, books, and meditations all supported me. Looking at inherited patterns from my family and ancestors, and transforming them, helped too.

In Staring at the Sun, Irvin Yalom writes: “As long as you believe that the cause of your unsatisfactory life lies outside yourself, and assign responsibility to others who have wronged you, no meaningful change will occur. You—and only you—are responsible for the crucial aspects of your life, and only you have the power to change it.”

The strength with which I fought myself in anger showed me something: I had that same strength to live my life differently. And more than anything, it was the dreams I held for myself that helped me move forward.

It has been two years since the flare-ups ended and I began living in a way that truly satisfies me. There are still difficult moments. While writing my thesis, meeting deadlines, navigating changing relationships, grieving losses, missing loved ones far away… there are days when the “pain molecules” return, dancing again with the drops of sweat. But they leave within a week.

Because I am grateful every day. For being able to walk outside even in the wind. For moving my body regularly. For being honest with myself and others. For feeling free. For having the courage to see my potential and follow it. For being able to support my clients and accompany them on their own journeys toward their essence. For being able to write and share these words.

And I am grateful for discovering love. For understanding that love is not a fleeting emotion like others—but a source I can remain in contact with at any moment. For realizing that I am here to love—myself, all living beings, and existence itself