WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. And this will be our last Wellness Wednesday of 2022. My team is taking a well-deserved break between Christmas and the New Year, and we will pick up again in January.

With that in mind, I wanted to talk about a little bit more of a serious topic today. With the holidays coming up, although this is relevant any time of the year, I have definitely seen an uptick on social media of people posting. And it's oftentimes the same graphic that we don't know what people are going through at this time of the year. And that we should treat everybody with kindness. There have certainly been a couple of events in the US in the last week that have kicked this meme off again, and I have seen it circulating around. And while that definitely is true, and also as long haulers I think we collectively wish people would know what we were going through and treat us with kindness.

When I see this meme, I really struggle, I have quite a negative visceral reaction. Because of what happens when we are in Shutdown or in Sympathetic activation. It's all very well telling people to be kind. But if we are in Sympathetic activation, or if we are in Shutdown, we actually don't have access to things like empathy and compassion, and kindness. And if I think of the hundreds of doctor's appointments that I went to, where I struggled through public transportation to make it to the front desk, and check-in. And the receptionist didn't appear to be interested in my disability and just barked at me to, you know, wait an hour because the doctor was running late.

And in those moments, many, many, many times I became irritable and angry and said things that I am not proud of. And all of those are 100% due to sympathetic activation. There have also been times that I have said things in the heat of the moment to friends or family or my staff team. And the difficulty with telling people that we just have to be kind to everyone is when I see that, I feel shame. I feel shame that I haven't been able to behave in a way that I wanted to. And I know there is a great deal of shame around Long COVID with the way that we have been gaslit, both by the medical community and by friends and family.

I know that the pathology of the illness itself makes us doubt ourselves and all of us have been through moments. "Is this really Long COVID? Is something wrong with me? Should I just put on push on through? Am I just making it up?" And all of these experiences are surrounded by huge amounts of shame. And unfortunately, shame is not a functional emotion. It is enormously triggered by trauma. And obviously, the gaslighting that we're talking about is trauma. Any of us who have trauma histories if you grew up with a critical parent or a critical caregiver, huge amounts of shame that can be triggered minute to minute day to day as a result of those early experiences.

And so I just wanted to talk a little bit today about shame and about how we can get through the holidays. If other people are shaming us or if we get triggered for shame from somethings within ourselves. Unfortunately, shame, unlike guilt doesn't really serve any purpose. And I won't get into the evolutionary background of how shame came about. But guilt is an emotion that is hugely functional. If we forget our sister's birthday, guilt will propel us to buy her a lovely lunch to make up for it or a huge bunch of flowers or some type of gesture that will make up for our falling short. Whereas shame hasn't got any of that attached to it, we just sit around feeling awful. And we don't recover in terms of our illness, we don't be able to work towards our goals. It just inhibits us in every way.

So the thing that I want to share with you over this holiday season, if somebody tells you that you're being inconsiderate by being ill, or that you need to do something right now that you're not capable of like being kind to everybody, or getting up off the couch. And do you notice shame attached to that, the only thing that we can do is pick it up metaphorically and put it down someplace else, and walk away from it. Because there is no purpose in shame. The only strategy with it is to put it down and walk away, let it go. Unlike things like anger, or anxiety, or sadness, that it's really helpful to feel until it dissipates. Shame doesn't have that function. And sadly, I'm pretty sure that at some point over the holidays, you're going to experience shame, I know that I am. And I'm going to do my best. And I'm going to be right there with you to in the moment, just put it down and walk away from it.

Sometimes, and you may have heard this also talked about on social media. One thing that I like to do is if I'm in the bathroom in front of the mirror, I just give myself a virtual high five and say good job well done, as a reminder that I'm doing the best I can that I'm working really hard to reinforce and celebrate myself as a counter to shame. And if you are experiencing shame, as a result of something that somebody has said, you can politely remove yourself from that situation. You can say something like, "Well, you're welcome to think that" or you don't even need to say anything at all, just quietly, as much as your strength permits, get up. And even if you have to crawl out of the room, to go to a safe, quiet space by yourself.

So I hope that has given you something helpful to again, navigate some of the difficult things that are continuing to be in our path over the next couple of weeks. I know it's really lovely that people are thinking about other people and thinking about what they might be going through. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be kind, but we are doing the best that we can and our nervous systems may not let us be in a place where we can access kindness right now. And if that is triggering shame for you, then we're just going to put that shame down and walk away from it.

I look forward to continue to working with you in the new year around Mind-Body stuff and polyvagal stuff and helping you to get your nervous system to a place where it can access kindness and compassion more frequently. And if you're not already in our Facebook group, where we're talking about all of these things, please do go ahead and join the link is down below. We are building together a really lovely community in there and look forward to seeing you there. And also a quick reminder, I do have a workshop coming up January the 12th on Treatment of Overwhelm and how to navigate that in Long COVID. Again, the link is down below, even if you've been before. Love to see you at that workshop. We're trying to make it as interactive as possible within our energy levels. And I hope you can have as tolerable holidays as possible. And I will see you in January. Take care.