WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, Psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your long COVID coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday. So it looks like the video that I recorded last week is a bit of a long one. And so as we usually do when that video is a bit of a long one, we chop it in half, because I know that we all struggle with attention and concentration and cognitive stuff. So I just wanted to jump on here to introduce part two of the video. This will be a continuation from last week. And as always, if you have any questions or thoughts that you want to share, put them in the comment section. Or if you're watching this on the email, hit reply, and pop them in an email back to me. Here's the rest of the video.

The other kind of concept that's part of copter similar to DNRs is that you also have a sheet that you put on the ground. I don't think you're necessarily meant to stand in that though maybe some people do. But again, it's about catching your thoughts and trying to pivot them to positive ones. Now, you know, my background, I am actually a CBT therapist, you also know that I don't use CBT with people with long COVID because it is not warranted. And I can say wholeheartedly and I actually worked with Aaron Beck for many years before he passed, who you may know was one of the people who founded CBT in the first place that trying to override our nervous system through our thoughts does not work. Trying to change our thoughts is not easy. And the subtleness of CBT, if you are using that as an intervention is very different than toxic positivity, which is that turn that frown upside down, take that thought and make it into a positive one in authentic incongruent doesn't work. So if that's the read you're getting from these programs, and I think sometimes people can if they don't understand the subtleties of the subject area, again, that's not going to be helpful. And it can lead to self criticism, which can be very difficult for us, and is definitely something that we need to work on. But also, if we think about the brain, and the central nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system, there's some really important things that we need to know. The autonomic nervous system and my sense of safety is exactly that autonomic, automatic, sub conscious. It doesn't matter if I am sitting in my apartment, and intellectually, I know that I am safe. And I put my hand on my heart and I say I am safe, I am safe, I am safe. If my body internally is getting cues for non safety, and that can be anything and everything. The cognitive process is not going to override that. And I know that it isn't because I've tried it, and it doesn't. And I've also worked in CBT for many years pre COVID. And that type of an approach also doesn't work, regardless of what type of thing that you're dealing with.

Polyvagal theory is about strategies to make our bodies feel safe from the inside out. And that is the powerful thing. Once you know those strategies, you don't need to physically or intellectually or cognitively tell yourself that you're safe, because your body is sensing that from the inside out. And those strategies are enormously powerful, very effective and quick once we have gotten to a certain state with our autonomic nervous system. And that's my worry with these brain retraining programs, that they're sort of missing that element that the polyvagal stuff is very important and also, to some extent, quite straightforward once you've learnt it and it doesn't involve stepping on a piece of paper and waving your arms about and doing a silly dance and It also doesn't involve saying certain mantras to yourself, which, again, are also not helpful. The other really important thing to know and again, this is something that I'm just learning having not done a ton of biology in school. If we think developmentally, developmentally, when we're born, we don't actually have a parasympathetic nervous system, we have sympathetic. And then we have the dorsal branch, which is the shutdown that we all know incredibly well. And as we grow, our bodies are organizing through attachment through nurture through environment, in order that our parasympathetic comes online and starts to do that soothing and calming process for our bodies. And if we think about the order with which our bodies develop, we're born with all of the brain neurons that we're ever going to have in our lifetime. But they're not organized in a way that our brains and our bodies can do all the things that we're going to do. As you know, babies cannot talk, they cannot walk, they cannot feed themselves, they cannot really do anything at all. So there's a lot of organization of those neurons that needs to happen. And that's why we talk about developmental milestones, it's really important that the baby has the right support from the right caregiver at the right time in order that those processes develop. And the order with which they develop is also really crucial. The autonomic nervous system is developing first, the limbic system is developing after that. And then higher order processes in the brain are developing after that. So basically, what happens, the more so called rudimentary stuff is happening first I polyvagal, and then the CNS stuff, and then the rest of the brain from the back forward into the prefrontal cortex, which is the most complicated. Now what this means is that if you have deficits in various parts of development of your brain, and I am learning this stuff, it is more than likely that we do have the way in which our brains were formed, our nervous systems may be more reactive, our limbic system may be more reactive, other parts of our brain may have deficits etc. And we find this very commonly in people with chronic illness. But the way to fix that is not to try and work on those brain areas directly. It's always to go back and support us developmentally. And it's almost like you can redo your developmental milestones from when you were six months or 12 months, again, through somatic and polyvagal practices that support the nervous system to be develop that support the rest of the brain to do what it needs to do.

Fascinating. For years, we all thought that you fix the brain by working on the brain. Turns out you fix the brain by working on the autonomic nervous system. So anybody who tells you that your limbic system is broken, and that you need to fix it, that may be true. But my guess is that 99% of those people, if they're not trained in polyvagal, theory and somatic practices, I'm gonna give you the wrong intervention to try and fix that part of your brain. And if that intervention intervention specifically involves you telling yourself that you're safe, whether that's putting your hand on your heart, or something that I've heard a lot recently, in a mastermind group that I'm a part of, which is incredibly well intentioned, and very much again, grounded in mind body practices, that we shouldn't be speaking negatively about ourselves. And there's a particular person in the group who if anybody says anything negative about themselves will say, cancel, cancel, cancel, now I get where they're coming from. But every time I hear those three words, and you may have had this happen to you, as I said, it just that my nervous system goes, Oh, I don't like that. And it doesn't make me feel safe. So if I speak negatively about myself, what I need to do to undo that is polyvagal, or somatic practice, to make my body feel safe. And also, I can sort of take back the criticism and turn it into something, say what you want to see. And obviously that does work visualization and intention and saying things out loud. Definitely don't fix our limbic system, but do help us with perfectionism and self criticism.

All of those are the things that also contribute to some of what we're experiencing. So I hope this has given you some answers and some clarity, especially if you're someone who's thinking about one of these programs and hasn't invested in them yet. I see this very commonly in the Facebook groups, I'm thinking of purchasing this, has anybody taken it? Did it help? And, obviously, these type of things are not often talked about, because polyvagal stuff isn't often talked about on Facebook sadly.

If you have any questions, feel free to pop them in the comments below. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit reply, if you've got this on an email, or if you're seeing it in my Facebook group, again, put them in the comments underneath. If you are looking for a Facebook group that does talk about polyvagal things, the link is below to join my group. And we definitely talk a great deal about polyvagal strategies there. And then I just wanted to give you a heads up. I have been writing a book about all of these polyvagal strategies. And I know people are very commonly asking me, How do I do this strategy? How do I do oh, but which particular strategy do you mean, and in all honesty, there's so much that it's hard for me to fit it into all of these videos. So I've put it on a book. And we're hoping that that will be coming out later this year. And to go along with the book, I'm also putting together an ecourse. And that will be available soon for presale. And the fabulous thing if you get in at that presale stage is that you will get a huge discount. So link is not live yet. We are working on it over the next week or two but watch this space. If you are interested to learn more about polyvagal strategies and how to recover using that approach. Maybe you've tried one of these other programs and it didn't work for you or you're looking to invest in something and you're more curious about the polyvagal stuff. Watch this space. Presale link will be going up soon. And I will be working very hard behind the scenes with my team to put the course together as soon as possible. I hope you have a tolerable week and I look forward to seeing you again on the Wellness Wednesday. Take care.