Why There Is No ONE Recovery Path

Last week, here in my blog, I did my best to illuminate the narrative around the confusion between trigger and cause. Hopefully by now you understand that while there is no one clear trigger of ME/CFS — there IS a clear cause of MECFS. (If you missed that post you can find it here: Why There is No One Clear Cause of MECFS

This week, I want to take that one step further and talk about the recovery journey itself. Because just as there is no single trigger of ME/CFS, there is also no single recovery path.  Similarly, there is no one path out; but there is a roadmap we can all use to navigate the path

So let's get into it! 

Confusion around recovery stories...

When I was sick with MECFS, and just beginning to learn about recovery, I was absolutely on FIRE with hope (at first). But as I began to listen and learn from those who had claimed to be recovered, that light was quickly dimmed. 

Why? Because they're recovery stories when put together into a collective, seemed to provide no clear road forward. It all seemed random, disconnected, and jumbled up in a messy spaghetti pile of information. 

Maybe you've experienced the same thing in your journey while listening to recovery stories? 

You're watching one story where somone credits pacing.
Then another who says antivirals or functional medicine saved them.
The third story points to trauma work or somatic healing.
and then countless others credit nervous-system or brain retraining for their recovery.

And you're sitting in your bed, sick as heck, going ------ uh, what? How is that even possible? 

Dude, I hear you. I get it. It was the same for me too. It made zero sense at first. Honestly, it even made me wonder if people were (at worst) lying about recovery, or (at best)— dealing with a completely different illness than mine. 

This could have been where my story ended, but luckily it wasn't. Because the recovery stories, sparked a deeper investigation on my part, one in which I sought out a common thread in all of them. And the great news is; I found that common thread - and I built my recovery on it. 

Instead of asking what people did, I started looking at what layers of MECFS they were actually addressing in their approaches. 

And that’s when something became very clear. Something that changed the entire game for me. 

The unifying recovery principles...

People weren’t recovering through a single method - even though some of them were framing it that way. They were working with different, necessary pillars that all supported recovery — it was just that one of them was the one that moved the needle in their health the most, and thus got all the attention when they retold their story. 

Over time, these approaches consistently fell into four supportive categories — what I now call the four pillars of recovery, which my program, The Edison Effect is built around:

• the expansion-contraction cycle (pacing, baseline, expansions) 
• autonomic, neuro-endocrine, celluar and immune support (MCAS, POTS etc) 
• personal transformation work (relational/ attachment/trauma, boundaries)  
• brain retraining and somatic work to balance the stress response (regulation) 

Most people who experienced sustained improvement were engaging all of these — even when they didn't connect the dots as to how they helped them create new capacity in recovery, and even if one pillar felt like the turning point.

Understanding this is where my recovery really began. It was the intersection of these four pillars, and learning how to use each of them at the right moment to create the most capacity and level-up my baseline. 

A roadmap; not a singular solution... 

 Chasing the “right” method, the quick fix, and the cure will backfire on you time and time again. It will leave your finances drained, your hope dashed, and maybe even in worse health.

Because when you try something briefly, don’t see immediate results, and move on - that process can be very demoralizing and destabilizing— until it feels like you've “tried everything,” when in reality nothing has had the time, sequencing, or support it needed.

So what I need you know today, is that recovery really isn’t about finding the magic solution.

It’s about learning when to stabilize, when to expand, and which layer needs support first. 

An important reframe....

So you see, my friend, Sample, there is no one recovery path. 
But there is a recovery roadmap.

And it's available to all of us. It's all out there on the big, world-wide web for you to find and digest. Or if you don't have the energy or desire or detective skills to discover it all on your own and put it all together in a way that makes sense, my program exists. I've already done the heavy-lifting in recovery research and have distilled it into 40 video modules that are easy to digest and implement. You can learn more about The Edison Effect here. 

If this reframing helps you make more sense of your own journey, I've also created a free eBook that walks through the four pillars and how they fit together. 

Download "The 4 Pillars Of Recovery" here. 

I’m rooting for you — always, and in all ways.