Hey Darren,
I too have had MAV for almost 2 years now, and all I can tell you is that basically what Scott said is right on target. In November, I decided to change my way of thinking when it comes to MAV. I used search the net for hours on end, get overly frustrated about my condition and I kept thinking of being dizzy soo much that I was putting my real life on hold and was so wrapped up in dizzy thinking all the time.
So in November, I made a self commitment to begin living as a normal person again. I accepted my dizziness and told myself that the searching and thinking about being dizzy for extended periods of time has got to stop or I’m going miss out on life. I’ve already missed a year and a half at that time. But I’ve learned a lot about MAV during that time, I just figured, there’s no more info to learn cause I’ve researched it all and I’d just be wasting my time with it now. I know what I need to do to help symptoms whether it’s lifestyle change, meds or both. There’s no sense looking for new answers when I’ve already read up and researched this stuff. The search is over, I have the info I need and now it’s time to stop searching and keeping my brain locked into dizzy thinking all the time. Although I have had a few vulnerable moments since this change, but only during setbacks. I started to consider trying meds again or chiropractor, but I’d try hard not to dwell on a possible cures or the dizziness itself and then my setbacks would start to lift and I no longer thought about those things. The last 3 weeks I’ve barely thought about my dizziness. So I feel I’m on the right track.
When I say I’ve accepted my dizziness, I have it in my mind that this is what I have and this is how I’ll always be whether I like it or not, and I’m gonna live a happy life with it. If it goes away one day, then that’ll be cool, and if it doesn’t go away one day, that’ll be cool too. Either way, I’m still going to live my life just as happy. No exceptions. No longer will this illness stop me from going out or doing the things I once enjoyed. I’m gonna do the things I enjoyed before, even if I’m dizzy.
Sounds depressing, but I’ve stuck to my plan. It wasn’t easy, whenever I saw myself dwelling on my dizziness, I’d stop and go do something that would get my mind off it. To my surprise, I’ve noticed that when I’m busy doing something, I’m not as dizzy. So fast forward a couple months of thinking this way, and I’m now having many days a week where the dizziness is so minimal that I can’t believe it’s going away. December and January have been the best 2 months I’ve had so far since this all started. I still have my setbacks, but they only last a day or two now and I won’t have another setback sometimes for almost 2 weeks. The setbacks are also less violent. When the setbacks calm down, I feel as if this thing is truly going away. Slowly but it might be. Maybe all I needed to do was stop thinking about it so much.
Another thing that has helped me a lot is also thinking that, I know I’m gonna have a setback sometime here coming up, and I got no problem with it. Bring it on, I’ve been dizzy before and I’m ready to be dizzy again. I DON’T CARE! Being dizzy is no longer new to me. But what’s different now than before is, you won’t catch jumping on the computer or scheduling a doctor’s appt. anymore when I have a bad bout of dizziness. And that kind of thinking alone is what I believe has gotten me closer to remission than anything else has before.
Although a part of me also still believes that the multivitamin Intramax is contributing to my success thus far too. I started taking that in August and I had some nice breakout dizzy relieving moments in late Aug and early Sept. I’m still taking it. I truly believe that it has been a combination of the Intramax and train of thought. When I changed my train of thought on my MAV is really when my success started to take off though.
So just hang in there and try not to think about dizziness so much. I was a victim of that way of thinking for a long time and I believe that caused things to be worse and feeling like I was on a dead end road. Good luck to you!!! Sorry for the long post.
Greg