WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hi, folks, welcome to Wellness Wednesday, and I am Sally Riggs, psychologist, fellow long hauler and your long COVID Coach. And before I get started today, I just wanted to share with you a forthcoming workshop that we have coming up November 3rd, because I keep forgetting to mention it. And forgive me if I read the name off the screen because it's a long one. And I always forget it, pesky ongoing memory issues. A Mind-body Pathway Out of Overwhelm, and Treatment Decision Fatigue for people with Long COVID. So essentially, we'll be talking about overwhelm and treatment decision fatigue, we will be talking a little bit about some treatment options, but more about the process of how we pay attention to our bodies and make decisions based off of that, rather than up here, which I know you've heard me talk a lot about. If you have been to the workshop before you are more than welcome to come again, if you have not been to the workshop before, please come. And you can sign up at the link underneath this video on this email.

But coming back to the Safe and Sound Protocol. So I started the protocol in I think the end of September, so around a year ago. And also important to note the company that I utilized, and I'm deliberately not mentioning them by name, take a slightly different approach whereby they allow you to download the app on your phone. That's how the SSP is delivered, and just listen to it all by yourself 15 minutes day, and then check in with them every two weeks on the phone. Now, I do not recommend this, I do not recommend this because of the experience I had with that. And now that I have gone ahead and done the practitioner training, I do not recommend it because I also understand the theory behind how it works and why it works. And also what it's doing to our nervous systems. If you have a sensitive nervous system like we do, you cannot go too fast. And you definitely need another provider with you who provides co-regulation. So if we think back to that mother, and that vocal prosody, the other thing that the mother does is the big over exaggerated smiley face and the cooing and the arring and all of those things. And when you take that away from the baby that also overwhelms the nervous system. And so it's really important, especially as I have learned through using this with clients for hour one and hour three to be done in person or on a Zoom call with somebody providing you that lovely co-regulation, they're smiling, the warmth, someone who's in rest and digest themselves, so that your nervous system is not being overly stretched by the listening.

So I did have a little bit of a wild ride. They told me "Oh, you probably won't feel anything until about hour three. And then you'll just have a little bit of fatigue". And I said, "Well, what do I do at that point?" And they said, "Well just sleep a bit more". Now, bear in mind at this point, I had chronic insomnia for probably about 18 months, as I know many of you do. And I'm thinking, "Well, I'm not going to be sleeping a little bit more. I'm not sleeping now" . But anyway, I started and I did two days worth of 15 minutes, and I have never been so fatigued in all my life. And I called them and I said "Listen, this is not right, something is wrong here". They put me in touch with the boss lady and I had a call with her. And she explained that those of us who have a very reactive nervous system, sensitive nervous systems, potentially trauma history, and even in the context of Long COVID. Even if we don't have a childhood trauma history, the trauma of the novel virus to our bodies, is what puts us into fight or flight initially. And so we are also in that category, in that case. Those people are going to be even more reactive and even more sensitive to the Safe and Sound. And so we need to go much more slowly and much more gently.

So, my experience to begin with a little bit with fatigue, some other autonomic nervous system symptoms, tingling in my arms, irritability. Just generally a bit off but very quickly and really just sort of a couple of weeks, then I also started having dramatic shifts. So within the same conversation, I would go from irritable, "Don't want to be near you, oh my goodness, get away from me" to the most connected conversation that I've ever had with a human ever in my lifetime. And then I'd go from just feeling very despondent and helpless to overwhelming feelings of gratitude, like I've never experienced in my lifetime. And as a psychologist, gratitude and acceptance are big strategies, are a part of interventions. And for the longest time, I remember just feeling like I don't really understand those concepts. And now I get why, because my body wasn't really capable of those things until I had gotten more flexibly into rest and digest. As time went on, these things increased. And I really started to notice improvements in my brain fog and my focus and my concentration. And it was really the turning point for me from forcing myself through work a limited number of hours, to beginning to be able to build back my business, my private practice to full time. So huge shift. In terms of the weird and wonderful, strange symptoms, they slowly subsided. And I was left with things like gratitude and acceptance and social connection in a much stronger way than I've ever had before. And then also slowly the insomnia over time, I was able to wean off some of the sleeping aids that I've been taking, and get back to a solid, very easy eight hours, which I now continue to maintain without anxiety at all.

It was a repeated process. So, the Safe and Sound Protocol, actually now comes in three components, shall we say. The first one is called Connect, which is just gentle, calming, classical music. The main intervention is called Core, and that's the five hours. And then there's a now a step down version called Balance, which is the same music as the core, also five hours, also frequency modulated, but in a smaller way, and it doesn't vary across the five hours. It's now recommended that you use that for about six months or even longer, after you've done Core. When I did Core that was not available, and so I did go back and repeat Core again a second time. And that was enormously beneficial to me. In our practice, we are offering to do Balance for six months. And then if you would like to come back and repeat Core again, we have options to do that, at that point. I now utilize Balance. And I have been doing so since about January, and maybe a little bit later, maybe February, March. And I use it two or three times a week just to keep going. And also on days when things are particularly stressful. I had an episode earlier where my brand new phone just suddenly stopped working. And I'm going on a trip on Wednesday and I noticed my body started to go into the freefall of the shutdown, which we know so well. So I will definitely be doing balance this evening.

But that's my story with the Safe and Sound Protocol. It was such a pivotal turning point for me in my recovery journey, in terms of being able to get back into Rest and Digest, in terms of the Brain Fog lifting, being able to work, having more energy, being able to sleep. That it just was a no brainer for me that I would go and get trained and begin to offer it in my practice. And we have a few options. If you would like to book a call and talk to me more about those, again, the link to do so is on a button further down on this email. We offer it in a group format, small group with five or six people with Long COVID and two providers. That is not facilitated by me that is facilitated by two wonderful coaches that I have hired, who both have a background of chronic illness and both recovered using the Safe and Sound Protocol and then trained to be able to utilize it with their own clients. We take admissions to that once a month. So if you're interested in that that's the most affordable price point point. And then we also have options to do it individually both with either Amy or Robin, with the providers I mentioned, or with myself.

So, that's my story. That's what I wanted to share with you today. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out, as always. And I'm very excited what we're going to learn about the Safe and Sound Protocol at this conference Thursday through Sunday and watch this space, I think potentially next week's Wellness Wednesday video, we'll be talking more about that and potentially also answering some of your questions. So if you have a question about anything that you've heard me talk about today, and I didn't cover that today, pop it in an email and I will try and get to it in next week's video. Wishing you a tolerable week and look forward to seeing you soon. Take care.