WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. Now, I am not feeling great today. And I share that with you not because I need you to send me lovely messages, although obviously I normally appreciate that when you do. But because I wanted to share a little bit about how normal it is in the process of recovery from Long COVID to have both symptomatic and mood low days and what it is that we can do in those moments, and how complicated it is.

So I have been a little bit low energy for about the last week, more than a little bit low energy. And I put that down to some personal issues in my business that have been ongoing and a little bit stressful. And last week, I was trying very hard to lean into it and I gave myself permission to sit on the couch quite a lot rather than doing other things and allowing what I thought was the freeze response that was coming on to kind of move through. But I've also been dealing with some ongoing nausea, which I had originally put down to starting the SSP again. And also some other GI symptoms, which for me have been ongoing for a very long time.

And what I had been noticing in the last week, 10 days, is also for those of you who monitor your heart rate with a Garmin, you will be familiar with stress algorithm and how orange bars illustrate stress and blue bars illustrate lovely rest. And I've been noticing a lot of the nights this week that I have had go buzz most of the night and waking up in the morning that my body battery has not recharged more than 55-60%. Which for me more recently, I had been getting much close to 100% overnight. So the first thing here to be mindful of is that we are all very good at paying attention to symptoms, paying attention to data, tracking things. And sometimes this can be our worst enemy, that when we see these trends, "What's happening, why what is this? Why did I not do?" All of these things can trigger self-critical thoughts.

And yesterday, I had a really big bout of nausea. And then I had a second one in the evening, which I have not had before. And I fell into feeling very down very defeated, and I noticed a lot of self-critical thoughts being triggered when I woke up this morning, still very low mood. And so I decided, instead of doing a little bit of strength training like I often do on a Monday morning, I would skip that and do some journaling. And many of you have heard me talk about journaling before. The format that I like to use is one borrowed from Nicole Sachs, who is a social worker who works on chronic pain. And she recommends she calls it journal speak. And she recommend opening a blank Word document just typing all the thoughts that are in your mind or the feelings stream of consciousness for about 20 minutes in order to move the feelings and the thoughts through.

So I opened up a blank Word document and lo and behold lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of self-critical thoughts. "Why can't I do this? What's wrong with me? What did I get wrong? What did I miss? But I'm supposed to be doing this?" The word but I'm supposed to came up a lot, "I should be doing this, I should be doing, I should have done that, I should have done the other" and it's very easy. With this Mind-Body stuff, right? We are shifting the locus of control onto us a little bit. We are saying yes this is a biological illness and there's a Mind Body component, link, element, I am not willing to just sit here and passively wait for somebody to invent a miracle pill, I'm going to take an active role in my own recovery.

And one of the pitfalls that that can then pull us into, especially if we're very driven and motivated, is, "It's all my fault. What am I doing wrong, I missed this, I missed that, I missed the other, this person is doing this, this person says I should be doing that this person says". So on that journal sheet of paper, I just got all of those thoughts out. And I was really aware of intense sadness just coming over my body. And of course, I don't like feeling sad. It's really uncomfortable. And the usual, "I've got things to do, I don't have time to sit around and be sad". And I don't know about you, but I have gotten very good in my lifetime, at being busy as a way of managing my mood. And so I caught myself and I said, "No, Sally, you are meant to be sad today".

And so I actually opened up the photos in my phone. And I went back to 2018, good old pre-COVID the good old days, and I scrolled through, and it all made me really, really, really, really sad. And I felt that sadness, and it was really helpful. And I've just been sitting here with the things that I need to be doing for my work this morning, as much as possible, just allowing myself to also feel really sad. And I think this is part of the process for all of us that the more better we get, the more this stuff comes up. But even in the midst of the awfulness, this stuff comes up. And so leaning into our feelings, allowing ourselves to feel, allowing the feelings to shift, and allowing ourselves to journal out all of the self-criticism and anger. And all of those things that are there on a daily basis is really, really crucial that we don't keep it in our bodies, and contribute to the symptoms.

Now, more than likely, what is happening is the ongoing gut stuff, which causes inflammation is interacting with the ongoing brain inflammation that we all have. And it's bouncing up or down. And of course, that is gonna trigger depression and sadness for anybody. And, of course, that is also going to trigger self-critical thoughts and the self-critical thoughts may come first, the sadness may come first, I actually had to cancel hanging out with a friend of coffee yesterday, and that definitely contributed to the thought "I was doing better, I'm not doing better. Why? It's my fault". And the secret is, it's not your fault. This is a natural part of the process, you are doing the best that you can. Look what you have done, look how hard you have worked, look at what you have gotten your body to, from that awful place that you were in before. And you will keep going and you will get there. And in the meantime, it's okay to feel what you feel.

So that's a little bit of where I am today. And in all honesty, the sadness is moving through. And there may be more waves of it. And if there are, that's okay, I'm just gonna go with them. And if that's how you are feeling right now or a few days ago, you have a sense now of that that's valid, and some strategies that you can utilize. And if this comes up for you, in the next few days, or next week, you will also know that it's valid and have some strategies.

This, as I say, time and time again, is an awful illness. And the solutions are not simple. And we do kind of cycle around, we think we've learned something, we think we've got the solutions, and then it comes back around again. And we have to do it again, and that's okay. Because we are resilient and look how far we have come and all of this is a learning process and that I can lean into and as I'm saying that now, the gratitude that I was lacking this morning and I wrote out, "I am supposed to have gratitude. Why can I not have gratitude?" showing up a little bit now? And so that's the thing, right? We can't force it. We can't use positive toxic, toxic positivity. We can't turn that frown upside down. If you're feeling shit, you're feeling shit. And that's okay. But it will cycle back around again.

So hang in there. I hope this has been useful. I hope you have a tolerable week. The usual links are below as always, and I look forward to seeing you at a workshop, in the Facebook group, on a call, or at another Wellness Wednesday. Take care until then.