WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. So today, I wanted to talk a little bit about something that I saw on a post in one of the Facebook groups over the weekend. Somebody had posted that they were feeling incredibly grateful for Long COVID that it had changed their life for the better. And they were inviting other people to comment whether or not they had had that same experience. And hundreds of people commented, some people agreed with the person. And the vast majority said, "No, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. What are you talking about?" And I just wanted to talk a little bit about this today, because this is an issue that comes up a lot. It comes up a lot generally in chronic illness, and it comes up a lot in Long COVID.

I was first kind of getting into the Mind-Body stuff, I guess, January 2021, I started trying some of Suzy Bolts' Yoga for Long COVID Recovery. And various people were mentioning things like the Gupta Program or Lightning or Dynamic Neural Retraining System. And I was taking a look, I wasn't really interested. That year 2021, I was really at the worst point in my illness, horrific chronic fatigue, barely able to function, very low mood, quite helpless, quite hopeless, and it was a pretty dark time for me. And I share that because I know that you know what that feels like. Some of you might be there right now, some of you might have been there recently, even very recently. And in that time, interestingly, as I had been sick for a long time. Coincidentally, it also started to be the time when acquaintances and friends and people I barely knew, suddenly took it upon themselves to tell me that there was a silver lining to this cloud, that I should just think positive, and all of those lovely cliches. And I could not hear any of it, and it made me very angry. And I cut off a lot of friendships or modified them as a result of that.

And yet, here I am doing better in my recovery on the other side of a lot of polyvagal work, that I now experience gratitude that I now experience self-compassion. And I can wholeheartedly say, although typically I only share it within our community, that this has absolutely changed my life for the better. As you know, and I think I've spoken a lot about this before, I used to be one of those people and maybe you can relate to this, who was always pushing through. Always doing more always when I was at maximum capacity, still finding space to do more, not paying attention to my body not paying attention to my nervous system. And particularly with regard to my business, just running myself ragged. I used to have a group practice with gosh, I think five or six psychologists working for me at its height, I had a huge office space in midtown Manhattan that I sublet to lots of other therapists. And both of those things were very stressful. I didn't really enjoy them. They caused me a lot of annoyance. And yet at the time, they felt like the natural things that I should be doing. When you get big enough in private practice, especially in New York. It is really standard that you then start hiring other people to take on the patients that you don't want to see. And if you have the opportunity to find an office space, the only cost-effective way to do that really is to take on a space that's bigger than you need it sublet it to other people.

And yet those things are both very stressful. I didn't get training in grad school for managing stuff, I certainly didn't get training in grad school for managing a very small property empire. And it did cause me a lot of burden and a lot of heaviness in my body. In all honesty, the things that I wanted to do with my life were really prohibited by those kinds of chains hanging around my neck. And the last three years since I have been sick, have been a tremendous opportunity to reexamine basically my whole life and rebuild it piece by piece from scratch. And although I am not at full recovery, I'm now in a place where I am doing the work that I want to be doing. I am not running a group practice anymore, I am not subletting office space anymore. And one of the things that I do like to do is travel for work, and I have the opportunity to do that so much more with telemedicine and online working. So I am truly grateful that this happened, I wouldn't pick it, I wouldn't choose it. But to have this opportunity at my age to reexamine everything, and rebuild my life from scratch has been phenomenal.

And yet, again, I say this with a big caveat, because this is where Polyvagal theory really comes into its own. If you're not in Rest and Digest, you are not going to have access to gratitude and self-compassion and acceptance. So if you are bouncing between Immobilization, and Fight or Flight, as many, many, many of us are for a very long time, you cannot find the silver lining. And therefore when somebody says "Oh, you just need to accept that you're ill. Oh you just need to have gratitude for this situation". They can do one because you're not in a place where you can access those experiences. And also, as a psychologist, the phrase "Everything happens for a reason" is one that frustrates us a great deal. This world is random and chaos and uncertain. And when we try to make meaning out of things in that "Everything happens for a reason" way, we are invalidating our emotions. And we are invalidating that uncertainty and trying to convince our bodies, that there's some lovely order to the universe, which just isn't true.

So whilst I am grateful for this experience, I don't believe that it happened to me for a specific reason. It happened, the pandemic happened, it was shitty, and it still is, and we can't deny that. Millions of people died, millions of people are disabled, and I still lost a life that I thought was pretty decent. I am managing to experience much more gratitude and self-compassion. If you are not in a place yet where you can, that is perfectly fine. And even if you do get to a place where you can, and you still don't see your silver lining, that's also perfectly fine. You can have gratitude about lots of other things. It doesn't have to be about Long COVID.

So I hope that's given you some thought today, some caveats around sometimes what becomes a little bit bullying ask where people try and convince us that we need to feel better about something that really is just God awful. And yet from the awfulness, sometimes we can make something beautiful, and whether that's your Phoenix analogy or the butterfly coming out of the Chrysalis analogy or whatever resonates for you. And I am sure that there are opportunities coming to you to rebuild the dream life that you want for yourself in the future. And if you are interested in talking to me about us working together to do that, which is a big part of what I do with my Long COVID coaching, feel free to book a call. The link is down below. I hope you have a tolerable week and I will see you again for another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.