WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. Today I wanted to talk about the importance of boundaries and how boundaries are very much a part of taking care of our nervous system and Polyvagal theory.

So, my guess is that you may well be somebody who is used to doing things because you have to. And my guess is that because probably, I am the same. I have, goodness, I've had a small business since 2015. And actually, that's more than one small business, I have a private practice. I then develop that into training other mental health professionals in the therapy that I do. It then became a group practice where I had a lot of other psychologists working for me. I also had an office sublet business where I had a big office space and would sublet the rest of the space to other people.

And let's just say, as a small business owner, I was very used to just doing things because I had to, and not just the things that are required of a business owner, but also the developments that are seemingly assumed. So as someone who had a private practice, it's just assumed that if you want to grow that it becomes a group practice, if you have office space that you don't use, it's just assumed that you're going to sublet it to other people. So all of these things that I used to spend my time doing that I'd never really given any thought to whether I wanted to or not, I just did them because they were things I had to do.

And I'm guessing that you can relate to that. Whether it is a job that has a bunch of responsibilities that you don't really enjoy, but feel like you don't have an option to request out of. Or that you're also running your own business and can really relate to it growing in a way that you were never really thoughtful about from a nervous system perspective. But now that I live with Long COVID and I have to put my nervous system first, I am trying to be very different. And boundaries are a huge part of that.

And because I don't want to, has now become the only and more than good enough reason not to do something. And the reason this is on my mind, over the weekend, I was chatting with some colleagues who are also small business owners and I had mentioned something in my business that I'm troubleshooting right now. And they had some very legitimate and extremely good ideas about how I could solve a particular problem.

And old me would have immediately taken that idea and ran with it, literally right there and then on Saturday. Which means on the one hand getting quite excited, but on the other hand, kind of frantic nervous energy. All of that is sympathetic activation. And the old me would have just pushed on through and kept going until I had set up this whole new scheme within my business completely from scratch. And continued until I got very burnt out and very exhausted and completely crashed.

Well, a little bit of that happened on Saturday that I thought wow, that actually does seem like a great idea. And I was doing some work on my taxes anyway, on Saturday afternoon. And so I spent a little bit of time exploring more about how logistically I couldn't make this work and how I could restructure things in my schedule in order that I could accommodate this new project. But I was mindful that I kind of sort of felt uncomfortable, throughout with the whole logic. And I kept cognitively trying to explain to myself, no, no, but this is the perfect solution. And it makes sense, "I know you don't really want to do it, but you know, it won't be so bad. Once it's done, you'll have this and you'll have that and that will be great".

And then I woke up on Sunday morning, really mindful of how uncomfortable I felt in my body. And I realized, "No, I don't want to do this". Even if it's the perfect solution, even if it's the best solution in the world, even if every other person with the exact same business as me would pick this solution. My body is telling me that it's not right for my nervous system. And so "No, I don't want to do this". And I reached out to the particular colleague who had originally suggested the idea and I said, "I've sat with it, I've given it some thought, and this isn't going to work for me." And they were completely fine with it. And we're now looking for a different solution.

And I share this with you, because whether you're working, whether you're not working, whether you're on medical leave, whether you're thinking about going back to work. And even just in your personal life, there will be things that people expect you to do, and the old version of you would just get on and do them. And I challenge you to take a different approach now, to pay attention to your body to see what your body is saying. And if your body is saying, "I don't want to", that you don't do it. And that's the only justification that you ever have to get.

Because our nervous systems have given us all a huge hard stop, wake-up call. And if we don't pay attention, and we don't learn how to support our nervous systems first, we might recover from long COVID But the chances are, we'll just crash with the next post-viral syndrome or the next stressful thing that we encounter, and be back at square one. And I for one, definitely don't want that in my life. This has been a fabulous opportunity to rebuild things from the ground up. And if I don't want to, I'm not going to anymore.

I hope you have a tolerable week. We have a couple things below that there are links for including coming fairly soon, a YouTube channel. Now right now that's really only going to be material that you've already seen on these videos anyways, but just letting you know that the link should be down below if you would like to follow along and have opportunities to watch videos from me in a slightly different format. I look forward to seeing you on another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.