WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your long COVID Coach. Welcome to another Wellness Wednesday.

A little bit of a different setup here, you may be noticing, I'm in my office, but the camera angle is different. And it's very relevant to what I wanted to talk about today. So I have here in my office, a virtual studio. I do a lot of virtual public speaking on Zoom. I have two fancy cameras. I have a switcher. I have several fancy microphones. And because I live in a tiny New York City apartment, I cannot keep that all set up all the time. So, I have noticed recently, every time I come to record a Wellness Wednesday video, which is usually about a 10-minute video. It takes me 30 minutes to set up the tech and 30 minutes to break it down again. And every time I'm dreading recording these videos because it takes so long. And I realized that good old perfectionism is telling me that I need to have these beautifully produced videos with this lovely sound. And you're not going to want to watch it if it's on a crappy Zoom camera. And of course, that's nonsense. Nobody cares how I record the videos, and I'm not getting a gold star for having an amazing camera. And so I've decided going forward that I'm just going to do them a little bit scrappy. And that's going to help me and it's also going to help you because perfectionism is a big deal for most of us with long COVID. It can be part of the reason why we get so sick in the first place, it can be part of the reason why we stay so sick. And surprisingly, it doesn't just magically disappear when we recover.

So, what I wanted to talk to you about today, is not just perfectionism, but I have noticed, we're coming up on the end of June, which is halfway through the year. And I've started having this feeling of, I don't know if dread is the right word. But certainly a kind of disappointment. That feeling that half a year has gone by and I don't have anything to show for it. And again, this relates to our achievement-oriented perfectionistic nature. And I don't know about you, but I came into the new year, and I was 95% recovered. I was doing super well, in December and January. And I very much was thinking just a few little tweaks, and I'm going to be fully recovered. And I'm gonna have an amazing year. I was in January, building back up my running nicely. My heart rate was almost back down to normal levels. And I was just on the cusp of everything kind of blowing up as they say, and full recovery was within my grasp. And then, of course, some things have happened. You may have remembered me talking about the mold situation from the water leak in my apartment. And that's still not resolved. Because to fix the mold, they have to rip up my floor. And if they rip up my floor, they have to relay a new floor in the entire apartment. And to do that I have to move out. And I have to put every single thing that I own in storage for a month.

And not surprisingly, not fully recovered. My body cannot cope with that. I have put it off and put it off and we were going to do it in August. When I came back from Japan and had a crash having come back from Japan. I realized that this is not happening in August and it's getting put off possibly for a couple of years. So that affected my nervous system. And you may remember me talking a lot about the freeze response and some strategies that I was using there to manage that. Interestingly, this is going to be a bit of a personal video today. I've also had some ongoing thyroid issues which are pre-existing for me. I've had a diagnosed underactive thyroid since I was in My 20s and I have taken Levothyroxine. And as many of you probably have a similar experience COVID has fucked that up. And so what is going on with my thyroid levels is super off. And we discovered in I think, February that my thyroid levels were super off, and I needed to take more Levothyroxine. And so I started on a higher dose and not thinking not even paying attention. Suddenly, six weeks later, my heart rate jumps 15 points. And suddenly, I'm not allowed to run again. 15 points is a big deal. When we're dealing with our heart rate issues. I couldn't figure out what it was I spoke to the cardiologist and he said, It's because you're taking more Levothyroxine. But of course, I couldn't take more because of my numbers. So I haven't been able to run since about March. And then recently, something else I haven't been talking too much about, I was able to get Microclot Testing and thinking, having been on Plavix for over a year, April 22. That it would just be a question of them going, Oh, look, your micro clots are gone, and you're good. Oh, no, I've still got huge micro clots. And so they've started me on triple therapy. I was missing that Eliquis, which I hadn't been able to get from any prescribers in New York City. Again, I'm sure you can relate getting people to prescribe the triple therapy has been super hard. But of course, then that's left me feeling crampy. And when you're on triple therapy, you're allowed to do zero anaerobic exercise. I didn't fully appreciate that I was still doing a little bit of weight, and strength work, crashing out feeling awful. So these six months have not been the magical, oh, my final 5% recovery that I thought they were going to be. And I'm sharing that with you. Because first of all, recovery is not linear. And I know so many of us, when we start to do a little bit better want it to just be a straightforward improvement over time. And that isn't what happens. And psychologically, that can be super tough. And so I'm here, normalizing that, to remind you, wherever you are in your recovery journey. If you're having a tough week, that's normal. And we have to remind ourselves to hang in there, it will get better. The other piece that kind of makes sense, given everything that I've been dealing with in the last six months, is I look back at my business. And I think, oh, I don't have anything to show for the last six months, I haven't, you know, any of the big achievements that I thought I was going to action in the new year, also haven't happened.

But as you know, I'm working on my E-course behind the scenes, and we just launched the presale. And that's a huge deal. And we've had lots of people sign up, which is super exciting. I've been working on my book, which is another big deal. So I have been working on things, but then the old patterns of achievement, oriented and perfectionism are kind of drifting in again. And wherever you are in your recovery journey, I wanted to share this because it's very easy to think I'm gonna get my old life back again. And, when I'm working with individual clients, when we first start working together, one of the first things they ask them is what is the dream life you want to put together in the future. And 95% of people say, Oh, I just want my old life back. And sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But none of us is getting our old life back. And that's a good thing. Because being that type A driven perfectionistic person was partly what got us into this mess in the first place. And now that I'm doing so much better, it's very easy to slip back into old habits. And we always want to keep an eye on that. But it's also relevant, whatever stage of our recovery journey we are at when I'm working with individual clients, especially right at the beginning when we start working together, and they're still feeling awful. And yet week after week, I will meet with someone and they will tell me, Oh, I did this research and I did this research and I did this research and what do you think about this and should I think about that and what do you think about the other or I'll meet with them And they're like, I've had 12 doctor's appointments this week, and I've got 15 doctor's appointments next week. And they're just constantly, as you've heard me referenced before, and I know a lot of you relate to this phrase, that rabbit hole of trying to find a solution to our illness. And that is what makes us worse. Our mitochondria are broken. We do not have energy in abundance, and we have to protect the energy that we have, so that we can build it up and move out of the freeze response and move through sympathetic activation, and get back up to rest and digest. But if we're expending all that energy all over the place on all of these things, we're not going to be able to do that.

So, for clients that are working with me individually, I will say to them, you don't have to do that anymore. I am here to do that for you. You can relax, you can rest, you can sit back. But it's hard for us to give it up when historically we are so used to probably from traumatic things that we went through in our life before striving to be that achievement-oriented person. And it takes a lot of work, to work through that and to be different. And even if you're not right at the beginning of your recovery, maybe you are working a little bit or thinking about going back to work. And maybe you're looking at these past six months, and you're thinking I was supposed to be working full time by now. But I'm not. Or I was supposed to have done this by now. But I haven't.

Even looking back over the years that I've been sick, I remember going into 2021 thinking, Well, this year, I'm going to get better, and I got home much sicker. Before I even started to get better. Each new year, it can be very easy as we go into the new year to have these intentions, which are important and wonderful. But then we get to the six-month mark, and we'll oh I'm not as recovered as I thought, Oh, I thought it was going to be different. And I'm just here to say this week, if that's what you're going through, first of all, within the resources that your nervous system has without overwhelming yourself, do allow yourself to feel your feelings, that's important. And then we're going to pivot. Because this is a marathon, not a sprint. And I know many of you are athletes and physically and know what that means. We cannot go sprinting out of the start line and expect to make it 26.2. We have to go at a manageable pace. And we also need to be mindful of what our new life is going to look like. And for me, that is involved a lot of mindset work and a lot of thinking about how I want to show up in my business. How do I want to show up for my clients?

This is not about achievement. This is not about gold stars. And this is not about people giving me all well done, good job! How do I want to be what is the new life that I want to have, that includes how I am daily, how I'm compassionate to myself, how I give myself breaks, how I notice when I'm having an off day, and I give myself space to be able to manage those symptoms because they will remit quicker. And I'll be back and my brain will be functioning more if I don't push on through. So this middle part of the year, I invite you this week to join me and I'm going to be working hard on this to celebrate all the things that have happened in the last six months that we have survived. Again, thank our bodies for getting us through. And that even means that you were just shut down this whole time finding space if we can eventually thank our bodies because that's what kept us alive. That shutdown is a functional state. And it stops our organ systems from failing altogether. You made it through another six months and we don't know what the second half of this year holds.

But I'm excited. I'm excited for you. I'm excited about this course once it goes live at the end of July. Then, that's going to be a game changer for a lot of you because it was for me. I'm excited to share it with you all. And I'm excited about the book, which is also going to build on that later in the year. But again, this is not about achievement. It's about how we are in our lives daily. So we can even think about how we are in our lives today. As you're watching this video. How can you be compassionate to yourself? How can you take care of yourself? How can you model for yourself that new life that you want, that isn't going to be about pushing on through it isn't going to be about getting back the life that you used to have, it's going to be a beautiful new one that has nervous systems support embedded in it. And that is going to be so much better. I hope you have a tolerable week and I will see you again on another Wellness Wednesday.

Take care!