Why was I banned from HealingWell?

? All my posts are gone too.

This was the comment that I had made, I don't see why it got me banned:

LOWERCASE_GUY said...
I understand your frustration, but I'm more worried about you than the awful doctors.

I'd like to ask you something because I'm concerned about you. How sure you are that you have all those things in that list?

As an example, when you stated you have gallbladder pain, is it that you are in excruciating pain in that area?

Or, and please bear with me here, is it possible that you are in so much fear, which is totally understandable by the way, that you feel more worried that it might be severe?

Hi, lowercase_guy_. I saw those posts this morning when I woke up, and you're right, they were very diplomatic and well within forum guidelines. Not sure what happened there, but I didn't ban you. I think asking about anxiety is something that many of us could benefit from, myself included! But someone responding defensively does not make your question inappropriate, and even inappropriate questions don't get people banned unless they are persistent harassment or some other willful, egregious rule violation. If I figure anything out, then I'll let you know.

While I understand your feelings about "At this point I really regret even having signed up for this website," I hope you don't decide to leave. There are so many on this site, definitely myself included, who deal with anxiety - from Lyme and co-infections and also simply from the worry of another symptom coming on.

Your experience and, obvious, compassion for others is appreciated.

I agree astro,

So I usually stay out of these thing but it's starting to get a little frustrating how these things keep happening.

Like for example, our 12 page long Ivermectin thread was deleted, have we ever even received an explanation for that?

Several of astroman's threads were deleted, I still don't know why that happened either.

Now we have a power hungry moderator threatening to ban astro? Seriously? The guy has provided this forum with so much helpful content and that's what he gets in return? A threat?

The only thing I know is that it's not Girlie or Saraeli.

And the person who is doing it won't reveal themselves, but would rather just hide.

There are more examples but my point is that it's starting to get really frustrating.

You can even read her story online.. she has podcast. Her whole family got Lyme and all had over 300 symptoms, her brother unfortunately died from Lyme disease .

https://anantahealth.ca/

If you have more than one co infection than multiple symptoms is possible especially if you’re picking up other infections on the way like Mold, Candida.. and if you have parasites .

Despair, I never said you don't have Lyme. I simply asked you a question on whether it's possible that some of your symptoms are a result of anxiety. Next thing I know, this was your response to me :

Despair said...
"I also am insulted about how you’re questioning how ill I am. I no longer am interested in furthering a conversation with you. I cannot stand people who question me as I experience too much trauma and PTSD. so I’m setting healthy boundaries. @LOWERCASE_GUY."

So again, after you said that, I told you "No problem" and "I wish you all the best".
That was the end of it. Do you really think I should have been banned for that? And now you come in here and have the nerve to say to me that: "I do believe that you should become more aware of Lyme."

So my questions to you are these:

1) You said you don't want to talk to me anymore, so why are you talking to me again?

2) Why do you question my knowledge on Lyme when you got so upset at me for asking if some of your symptoms might be the result of anxiety? That seems hypocritical that you can question me, but I can't question you.

.

Post Edited (lowercase_guy_) : 1/25/2022 10:11:27 AM (GMT-7)

Lowercase guy,

I didn’t see the original post. I can understand why you posted in response to Despair after reading his/her posts. I believe you were genuinely trying to help.

I can also relate to Despair’s response to “asking if some of your symptoms might be the result of anxiety.” That’s basically suggesting that symptoms are psychosomatic. One online definition I found of psychosomatic is “Of or relating to a disorder having physical symptoms but originating from mental or emotional causes.”

In the Lyme world, we call that “gaslighting.”

In reality, we experience a very wide range of symptoms that we are told are related to inflammatory cytokines as well as the downstream effects of dysregulated body functions that occurs due to the actions of stealth microbes.

Anxiety is absolutely a symptom that probably everyone with tick borne infections experiences at some point during their illness. Many of us have experienced a physical anxiety that is not an emotional response. It’s hard to wrap your head around unless you’ve experienced it. I called it feeling like I had chills on the inside (internal tremors) and feeling like I had toxic soup cooking in my insides.

That was my analytical description of very physical sensations I was experiencing in my body. It was not the result of being nervous, afraid, apprehensive, thinking negative thoughts, imagining worst case scenarios or anything of the sort. The only emotional angst I had was frustration, incredulity, and anger at the doctors who had no clue what was happening to me, why, or what caused it and moved at snails pace in response to what felt like an emergency to me.

I won’t get into the argument about whether emotions can cause physical symptoms, but I can confirm that our symptoms can very often cause anxiety. Those who experience this the worst are often cognitively aware that their symptoms or treatment is causing or exacerbating anxiety and try to find ways to mitigate the anxiety or else back off treatment. This seemed to especially be the case for many who treated with Disulfiram.

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 1/25/2022 10:23:46 AM (GMT-7)

WalkingbyFaith, I am aware what gas-lighting is. I have been dealing with Lyme for nearly a decade. I have been through all the doctors who told me "it's not real".

I've also dealt a lot with anxiety. I've seen people, including myself, work themselves up (in terms of anxiety) so much, that every little thing seems to be a lot worse than it really is.

Where the reality was actually that some symptoms ARE indeed that bad, and some AREN'T. I was merely trying to help her, knowing myself how paralyzing anxiety can be.

Your assumptions about me that I'm "gaslighting" and telling me that I'm "basically suggesting that symptoms are psychosomatic" are not helpful and I would appreciate it if you would not make judgments about me like that. That's not appropriate.

I'm actually closing my account now because this is starting to get really upsetting. Thank you to the members in this thread that could see where I was coming from.

LCG, I'm sorry this happened. Trying to help people is a good thing.

Chronic Lyme+ is an extremely difficult, confusing disease. It can be totally encompassing, and many with it can be on a hair trigger at times. It's inevitable that there are going to be occasional misunderstandings. I hope everyone here can chalk this up to that and leave it alone. And I hope you don't leave.

I think it would be good for the site to reset itself so that mods can only moderate their own forums. That would at least eliminate the problem of outside mods with too much time on their hands involving themselves in this forum's affairs. That doesn't seem to be the issue here, however.

Girlie said...
LCG isn’t banned if he’s posting here now.

i think LOWERCASEGUY's original account was - and he is now posting as another account this time" lowercaseguy" if you see what i mean.

without going over all the rest of this thread

if it was the forum owner who randomly dips in and deletes stuff i guess there is little we can do

if it is some other mod from another board who is hopping over deleting something and disappearing again with no explanation or reason and leaving us guessing and frustrated.
then in this circumstance would it be possible to highlight the issue to the forum owner as something
1- he might not wish to be going on - as it causes frustration and loss of his users and therefore revenue
2- is easily remedied via permissions settings on the forums ( restricting mods to mod only their forums - something which happens all over the internet)

failing that can you make me a mod and i will spend some time hopping on other forums deleting what seem like perfectly good posts and then highlight it on the mod forum - so we can raise awareness that if the plonkers don't stop doing it we will do the same