WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, psychologist, fellow long hauler, and your Long COVID coach, welcome to another Wellness Wednesday.

Today, we're going to be talking about the very important topic of figuring out which nervous system state you are in. Many, many people talk about calming the nervous system, they may even talk about Polyvagal Theory and Polyvagal Strategies. But very few people are talking about how to figure out which nervous system state you are in. And the thing about that is, if we don't know what state we're in, we can't pick the right strategy. And if we're blindly just going around applying strategies, it isn't really going to help our nervous system to come down. And learning what nervous system state we're in, is a long game, it takes a lot of practice and a lot of time. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't start and understand what we're doing. And over time, our nervous system will change. And then with that knowledge, we can apply different strategies, etc. So, in order to know which nervous system state we're in, we're gonna go back to basics and talk about the Nervous System and Polyvagal Theory. And keep watching to the end, because I'm going to share some really important resources that will help you learn how to track your Nervous System and the importance of how to apply which strategy for each state.

So, going back to basics on the Nervous System, you may remember from high school, that's where most of us learned about the Autonomic Nervous System supposedly, there were two states Sympathetic, which was the fight flight or freeze, and Parasympathetic, which was rest and digest. And I was told these two states needed to be in equilibrium, which kind of sounds odd, because that sort of implies that 50% of your time is in sympathetic, which, when we have long COVID, yes, more than 50% of our time isn't sympathetic. But when we're healthy, and we're well, most of us should be at rest and digest 90% or more of the time. So then, you will probably have seen this before Steven Porges' Theory, the Polyvagal Theory, breaks it into the Three States. And this is what we're going to be talking more about today. So you've got your Ventral Vagal at the top, which is sort of Parasympathetic, but I'm going to talk more about that in a moment. It definitely is your rest and digest.

Then you've got fight or flight in the middle, which is your Sympathetic. And then at the bottom, you've got immobilization or freeze or shutdown, as we sometimes call it, which is called Dorsal Vagal. And the reason why we've got Ventral Vagal and Dorsal Vagal is that this is what the Physiology of your Nervous System looks like. And it literally breaks down into those terms. So if you look at the yellow nerve there, which sort of goes down the spinal cord, that is your Sympathetic Nerve, and that deals with your fight or flight response. Then the blue and the red is your Parasympathetic Nerve. But it has Two Branches, what they call the Social Engagement System, which is your Ventral Vagal, which is your rest and digest. So you can see that blue nerve all through the face, a little bit down the brainstem and down the spinal cord, and then into the chest. also linked to the larynx and the inner ear. For those who are interested in the safe and sound protocol. That's where that comes in. But we've also got the Dorsal Vagal, which is the red one, and that is the branch of the Parasympathetic Nerve that is responsible for pulling the ripcord and shutting everything down. And for those of us with Long COVID, we basically spend our time between red sympathetic and blue, shut down, freeze.

And if we want to figure out which state we're in, then we're looking more at what is available to us and what shows up in those different states. And this is going to be a little bit different for each individual person. These are some of the more general ones that most of us will experience in each of the states. And I'm going to go through those. But you may also find that your individual Long COVID symptoms map onto here. And that's super important to figure out. So when we're in that top level there, Ventral Vagal we have access to social connection, gratitude, self-compassion, and acceptance, you may have heard me talk a lot before. And I'll link to a couple of videos below about how we can't use those things until we're in that rest and digest state. Then in the middle, very familiar to us in sympathetic fight or flight, panic, fear, anxiety, hypervigilance, mobilization, diarrhea, and nightmares. And then in the bottom level, which is our shutdown, immobilization, Dorsal Vagal, you've got fatigued, constipation, brain fog. And that is a very, very familiar space to us, right? We are dealing a lot of the time with those intense chronic fatigues, and heavy shutdown experiences, especially when we're in the thick of the most intense kind of Long COVID experience. So how do we begin to figure out which state we're in? Well, I gave you a little clue thereby giving you some information about some of the most common states symptoms that we experience in those states.

And really, the secret is that we have to start paying attention to our bodies. And I know that's tough because we have very intense symptoms. And most of us don't want to spend our time sitting and focusing on our symptoms. And as a result, we probably have done a little bit of cutting off or dissociating, where we don't spend too much time focusing on our bodies, because it's too unpleasant. And yet, if we want to figure out how to calm our Nervous System, we need to know what state we're in. And so we need to know what is going on with our bodies. So first and foremost, you want to start paying attention to your body.

And the thing that I suggest many, many people suggest tracking your symptoms, physicians, there are lots of programs out there that are all about tracking your system's symptoms. Personally, I don't like doing that, because it just makes me focus on them, and it makes them wise. But what I would love for you to track is your Nervous System. And if we come back to this diagram here, just beginning to pay attention to your body and ask the question, What state Am I in right now? And I can give you a little bit of a cheat, that you're probably not in Ventral Vagal rest and digest. Most people when I first asked them this question will say, Oh, I'm calm, I must be at rest and digest. But lying on the couch, completely fatigued, not really able to function. Yes, you're not sympathetic, you're not having anxiety, irritability or mobilization or hyper-vigilance, or any of that kind of angstiness that we feel in our bodies. But that doesn't mean we're in rest and digest. More than likely, we are in shutdown. And if you've got brain fog, if you've got chronic fatigue, if you've got GI issues where your mobility has completely shut down, then the chances are that is your default setting that shutdown state.

And, so what we want to do is begin to track and plot our symptoms and the sensations in our body onto these three levels and pay attention throughout the day. Do I move into sympathetic activation at some point? Do I then come back down again? How long do I stay there? What are the things that I noticed in my body? When I was doing this? Gosh, starting really at the end of 2021.

Slowly over time, I noticed stat for me, a big symptom is chest pain. And that MCAS coat-hanger pain that goes right across your back. And I had gotten to a point where I wasn't having that chest pain 24/7, which was great. But it would come on periodically at times of stress. And I figured out that that, for me was a sign that I was going into fight or flight. And in those early days, when that came on, especially when the coat hanger pain came right after it, chances are it was unavoidable that I was going to go into shutdown.

And for most people, that is where you are that you won't be able to move through sympathetic yet, once you get into sympathetic, you will inevitably begin to shut down. And so it's really figuring this out, where am I? What am I experiencing, so that you know what polyvagal strategy to pick? Because if you're in sympathetic, and you can move up to rest and digest, that's a very different strategy than if you're in sympathetic and you know, you're gonna slam automatically back down to shutdown.

So where can I get more resources? Where can I learn to figure out my Nervous System? Where can I learn what these different Polyvagal Strategies are and how to apply each one, my E-course, which is available for presale right now, will be going live at the end of this month, July 31. So less than 30 days are covering all of this, we go through it in great detail and give you support on how to figure out where you are with your nervous system. We have some tracker tools in there that you can use. And then as we go through each strategy, we're going to pinpoint which one works for what and help you to begin and continue to build out that map of your Nervous System that is so crucial to that process.

If you'd like to sign up for that the link is down below and the pre-sale price is still hugely discounted until July 31 when it will revert back to the normal price. I hope you have a tolerable week and I will see you again for another Wellness Wednesday.