Common on the road to recovery, is the situation of spending a considerable amount of time in your own company. This, in normal circumstances is something that is easy or generally enjoyed, however when you feel it has been forced upon you by your body not playing ball anymore, in addition to feeling like you are dying a lot of the time, you likely don’t want to be alone with the experience.

Reality check! You need to be able to get to a place of becoming as comfortable as you can with whatever is going on in your body, then you can know what you need and how to make nurturing decisions. Being at one with pain, exhaustion and negative emotion, is all knocking on your door to be mastered! Meditation will be one of the most helpful ways to embrace this, but that is another post, so for now lets imagine you are embracing the, “you time”, even if it’s nightmare-ish you time, and you could do with something else other than meditation, listening to music etc. Next step is liberating, motivating, hope-filled books…

Boredom in itself can be unwelcome, although you may not be able to do much about it physically, so entering another world for a while could be just what you need. I remember on a significantly bad day, after three nights of pretty much no sleep and the usual flu that felt crippling, along with red hot Fibromyalgia pain, I was quite full of the blues. I had my usual routine and techniques for counteracting depression but today I needed more. My husband came home with a book from his favourite charity shop that soon helped me feel less sorry for myself. It was the Micheal J. Fox book,”Happy Man”.  Just reading about his life and his illness was so encouraging. It was one of the first books that helped me to claim inspiration from other people who had met their fair share of suffering and lived through it to become, actually quite transformed and somewhat happier, or at least more gifted in another way because of it.

Here I am sharing with you my list of decent reads for when you are trekking your way through this journey:

1. Lucky Man – Michael J. Fox
2. Nothing is Impossible – Christopher Reeve
3. Recovery from CFS: 50 Recovery Stories – Andrea Barton
4. Being Peace – Thich Nhat Hanh
5. Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome – J.Wilson
6. The Highly Sensitive Person – Elaine N. Aron
7. Why ME? – Alex Howard
8. Quantum Healing – Deepak Chopra M.D.
9. Dark Nights of the Soul – Thomas Moore
10. How to be Sick – Toni Bernhard
11. BodyMind – Ken Dychtwald
12. Silent Pain – Helen Germanos
13. The Secret Language of Your Body – Inna Segal 
14. Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Mitochondria not Hypochondria – Dr Sarah Myhill