WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. I am coming to you from another different location this time I am in London, spending time with family over the holidays. I typically come here for about a month, and I work from here in order that I can spend time with my family over the holidays. And with that in mind, and I'm sure you may also be thinking about similar. I wanted to talk today about boundaries, and how we can use boundaries to support our nervous systems, over this festive time. You may have whatever you're celebrating over the next couple of months, you may have been invited to many family and friends social gatherings. And really thinking about our nervous systems, and how our nervous systems are responsible for flare-up in symptoms very frequently. How we can keep our nervous system safe? How we can keep ourselves in Rest and Digest, as much as possible, in order that we don't have additional symptoms that we have to deal with over this period? And using boundaries to do that can be incredibly helpful.

So I know that the festive period can be stressful in so many different ways. And there may be things that are out of our control. For example, when I flew here on Saturday, my flight took off an hour late it therefore landed an hour late. Then when we got to Heathrow, we sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half waiting for ground staff to connect our plane to the jet bridge, then the bags were delayed for a long period of time. By the time I made it home, it was almost midnight, and I didn't get to sleep until 1 am, which is not ideal for someone with Long COVID and definitely not what I had planned for. And in those types of situations, obviously, all that we can do is in the moment, use all of our strategies to keep our nervous system grounded to try and prevent us from going further into Fight or Flight. With deep breathing and all of the other techniques that you have seen me utilize in some of the workshops that I run.

But in terms of boundaries, I'm thinking more about the planning ahead type situations, there may be all kinds of things over the festive period that can be stressful for our nervous systems. It may be loud noise, it may be emotional stress, it may be particular locations, it may be the length of time that we spend with people. And so we can be thinking ahead to know what we need to optimize the likelihood that we stay in Rest and Digest as much as possible so that we can enjoy this period and also not jeopardize our ongoing recovery. For example, many of you may have heard me mentioned that I had a very stressful Christmas Eve last year. And as a result on Christmas day, I was incredibly symptomatic and spent most of the day lying on the couch, even though my family was celebrating Christmas all around me. And that was not a fun experience. And I'm very keen not to go through that same experience this year.

So what are some things that we can preemptively do in order to protect the time that we want to spend with our family or with friends? If Christmas Day is your priority, can you make sure that you only arrive in the place that you need to be on Christmas Day? So that if there are other stressful things going on, you're not there and you're not party to it and your body does not experience it. Can you be thinking about how you get to places? If you typically take the train or you typically drive? Can you treat yourself to a cab instead? Or somebody else to give you a ride that isn't going to trigger your nervous system so that you can get there and back without the additional stressor of the journey? Can you think about the length of time that you're going to be staying in a place, maybe two hours with a social gathering is your absolute maximum? And maybe somebody's invited you and there's an expectation that you're going to stay for five hours or six hours or several days, in which case just ahead of time letting them know this is the amount of time that I'm going to be there or it will be probably from here till about here. And then you can honor that and leave at the time.

Now I know that many, many people have experienced gaslighting from friends and family. And I'm not suggesting here that you need to get into long descriptions of why you need what you need. That's not what we're talking about here. Boundaries don't need an explanation, they just need you to know what you need. And then let the other person know what is relevant to that. So if they are serving lunch at one o'clock, and there's an expectation that you will be there from 11 until midnight, you can let them know that actually, you will be there from 12:30 until 2:30. That's what your nervous system can handle, then that's great. And you can just say, "I know that you know, I've been dealing with some things right now I can just manage two hours. I'm gonna be here from this time to this time". And yes, that person may be upset. Yes, they may express that upset to you. And you are not responsible for their feelings, you are only responsible for your feelings, and your nervous system. So again, if you're in a situation where you explain a boundary or state a boundary rather, and somebody expresses upset about that, you can just politely say, "I'm just gonna step away from this right now. I look forward to seeing you on whatever day", and then in the conversation.

So you are really keeping in mind your nervous system as the ultimate priority right here. "What do I need? How do I communicate it, et cetera?" Are you somebody who will be visiting with people who are right now high risk for transmission of COVID, and all the other viruses that are going around? Would you feel much more comfortable wearing a mask at that gathering? In that case, you don't even need to ask permission, you can just show up wearing a mask and wear a mask. I wear a mask a lot of the time. And I also wear a mask with my family a lot of the time because I don't live with them, I don't spend the majority of time with them. And if I'm coming to visit, and I know that they've been in and out of school and doing all the things right now. Maybe they've had some viruses in the last few weeks. I'm just gonna keep my mask on, and nobody cares. Nobody says anything, it doesn't matter. And again, I appreciate that you may have friends or family that would ask you questions about "Why wearing masks still? Didn't you hear we're not allowed to wear those anymore, aren't you stupid?" You can either just step out of that conversation, or the one that I frequently just say if I am challenged in public for wearing a mask, "My immune system is super weak. Unfortunately, I do just still have to wear one". And then I leave it at that.

So I hope this has been helpful to give you some ideas about how to get through this season. We don't have to get into long discussions with people. We don't have to get into long explanations. But the most important thing is that you know your nervous system, you know what it can tolerate and what it can't. And you are available for what it can tolerate. On your terms, with a plan, with the support that you need that may require you to treat yourself to things that are slightly more expensive than you normally would invest in. And yet you're investing in yourself, you're investing in your health, and you're investing in your ability to enjoy this holiday season. Which enjoyment is gonna support our nervous system, being connected to others having social connectedness and closeness is beneficial to our nervous systems. So don't isolate yourself completely if you don't have to, just think about what are the parameters that you need and putting things in place to make sure that you get them. I hope you have a tolerable week. I look forward to seeing you soon on another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.