WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID Coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. This week, I wanted to piggyback a little bit off of what we were talking about last time, and start to cover the topic of grief. Grief is a huge topic, we could talk about it for weeks, even months. But I just wanted to kind of lay the groundwork and talk about some really important things that we need to keep in mind when we are starting to think about feeling our grief.

Now, I don't know about you. But when I was pretty sick back in 2021, everybody seemed to want to talk to me about grief. My therapist, my doctors, other people that I mentioned Long COVID to. Everybody was, "Oh, it's all about grief, or it's all about loss". And yet, of course, as we know, nobody really has any pointers on what we're supposed to do with that information. As a society, we are particularly bad at talking about grief, and also knowing what to do when we're experiencing it or when somebody else is experiencing it. So it was very helpful of those lovely people to keep pointing out to me that I had all this grief. And yet, I didn't really get any practical tips on what to do with that feeling. And that's really where I wanted to start today. Because you may also have had that experience. And particularly around your anniversary, which may have been last week, maybe this week, maybe coming up sometime soon, everybody is going to "Oh, it's all about the grief, you need to feel your grief". And yet, probably no one is going to tell you how to do it.

The first thing that I want to say is that I know on these videos, we have touched before on the importance of feeling our feelings. And I want to add something very important to that as a precursor. Going back to the nervous system stuff that you have heard me talk about many, many, many times that we have these three levels, Parasympathetic, which is our Rest and Digest. Sympathetic, which is our Fight or Flight. And then this bottom level where most of us spend most of our time with Long COVID, Shut Down, Immobilization, sometimes also referred to as the Freeze response or Dorsal vagal. And one of the really important things that we have spoken a little bit about is how we get from sympathetic to dorsal vagal. And that's because the body is functionally shutting down various systems to keep us safe. And our body is not meant to stay in sympathetic for long periods of time, potentially, that can do damage to our organs and other parts of the body. And so the body has this fabulous ripcord that it can pull to shut everything down and plummet us into freeze.

And one of the things that can cause the body to pull that ripcord is being overwhelmed by emotion. And I am sure that you have experienced this. I certainly talked about it a lot again, with my therapist back when I was really chronically fatigued and 2021. She would say to me, "Yes, but Sally, you need to feel these feelings otherwise, they're going to get stored up in your body". And I would say "Yes, but if I do feel them, then I'm going to be really symptomatic for the next few days". And that's why because when we get overwhelmed with emotion, the body naturally pulls that ripcord and pulls us back into what many of us sometimes call a crash or relapse. Basically, we don't get out of bed for a week. And I certainly don't want you to keep experiencing that. And I don't want to keep experiencing that. So how do we prevent that from happening?

Well, if you have all of your Polyvagal strategies, cues for safety, nervous system supports, we can make it so that the body doesn't feel overwhelmed and it doesn't slam us into the freeze response. And so if at this point you want to pause this video and go back and look at one of my earlier videos and if you're watching this on YouTube, hopefully, my system has been able to link it for you. One of those earlier videos where we talk about how to support your nervous system, minute to minute day to day. If you can go through all of those strategies, find the ones that work for you. And when you're thinking about finding a time to sit down and feel your feelings, you want to do it with all of those supports on board first, then the other thing that we really want to do is think about just feeling our feelings in little doses, we don't want to go all in where we again, get totally overwhelmed by that wave of emotion and then go into the crash. We want to just practice feeling it a little bit and then using a regulating exercises to come back, feeling it a little bit, and then using another regulating exercise to come back.

And slowly, particularly with grief, where we want to just slowly over time process at all, you can just dip your toe in a little bit and come back, dip your toe in a little bit and come back. Now, this may be sounding very strange to you. And you may be thinking, Wait a second, never in my life, have I dipped my toe into an emotion. I've always gotten totally overwhelmed. And I hear you, I think I was exactly the same as that until I discovered all of this Polyvagal theory stuff and these Polyvagal strategies. And I promise you with practice that there is a way just to dip in a little bit, and to feel it a little bit. And then to come back to safety again. And if you're feeling like you maybe need a little bit more support with that, feel free to book a call with me. We can talk through ways in which I might be able to give you support in terms of coaching, or in terms of the Safe and Sound Protocol.

So if you are struggling to feel your feelings this week, I challenge you to think about two things. First of all, keeping your nervous system safe. What are those supports? What are those cues for safety that work for you, that you can use first before you even start to feel your feelings? And second of all, how can you begin to dip in a little bit and then come back to safety, dip in a little bit, and then come back to safety. And just to say because I felt enormously validated when I found this material out. That really and truly my body knew what it needed, and I continue to have that experience. The more I learn about nervous system stuff, the more I learn about Polyvagal theory. All this time I've been thinking "What's wrong with me, why can't I do this? Why is my body holding back on this" and it turns out it was totally the other way around. That there wasn't anything wrong with me at all that my body was taking care of me and it was keeping me safe from more freeze response from more overwhelmed from more shut down.

And so if you find yourself having that very same experience with your feelings, especially grief, especially at this anniversary time of year for us with Long COVID. You are not alone, but you are also not wrong. Your body is taking care of you. And you can take a moment and say thank you. I hope you have a tolerable week. We have a new workshop coming up on April 6. Again, the link is below. I look forward to seeing you there and if not again on another Wellness Wednesday. Take care.