144 - Dr Sarah's Long Covid Recovery

Episode 144 of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with Dr Sarah about her recovery from Long Covid.

Sarah tells of her experiences with Covid and her route to Long Covid, as well as some of the things she found that helped.

Sarah takes us through her "6 pillars of wellness" that she developed to help her recover - these 6 areas which she thinks are important to address in some way.

As with all recovery stories, this is one person's experience and not medical advice.

Sarah's written resource & social links: https://linktr.ee/drsarahlongcovidrecovery

Sarah's Instagram @DrSarahLongCovidRecovery

Other things mentioned during the discussion:
Sensate app  (Apple store)
360MindBodySoul - Suzy Bolt yoga
Yoga for life project
Insight Timer free app
YUKA app (for scanning food)
Tapping solutions app on Apple and Play store
Joe Dispenza YouTube channel

For more information about Long Covid Breathing, their courses, workshops & other shorter sessions, please check out this link

(music - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Transcript has not been checked - sorry!

Jackie Baxter  
Hello and welcome to this episode of the long covid podcast. So I am delighted to welcome today Dr Sarah, and we are going to be talking about recovery. So this is a recovery story. So Sarah's going to share her experience. And I think the best thing about recovery stories is, well, there's two things. For me, it's partly that we are sharing ideas, things that have helped, that might be worth looking into, but possibly even more importantly, it's that fact that another person has recovered. So I'm really excited to dive into this. So a very well welcome to the podcast today. Sarah,

Dr Sarah
thank you. Thank you for having me. Jackie,

Jackie Baxter  
it's my pleasure. So to start with, would you maybe just say a little bit about yourself and maybe what life was like before you got ill?

Dr Sarah
So I'm a medical doctor. I trained as a GP, and I mostly do dermatology, actually now I had a three year old, two or three year old child just before I got long covid And life was full, but I felt like want to say that living in my prime, you know, I had a lot of plates spinning, but I was a busy working mum, working part time in the NHS and exercising a lot, going jogging with a dog every day, and playing badminton every week, and socializing with friends a full life. Yeah, yeah.

Jackie Baxter  
It sounds full on, but it sounds lovely. Things just seem normal. I think, you know, in that context, don't they, until, obviously things change quite dramatically. So what happened? Maybe talk us through your kind of initial illness and how that kind of happened. So

Speaker 1  
I got covid infection in autumn 2020, but didn't feel very well at all, and didn't have any real fatigue after that. I remember on reflection, having a lot of fear around oh gosh, am I going to pass this on to somebody? I felt some sort of like guilt that I'd got it. I was so careful everywhere I went. I was going into work still, but we were doing most clinics remotely. So I wasn't seeing patients, although there was, you know, lockdown, and then it would, it would lighten up, and then you were allowed to. But I was being so careful. So I was I felt really frustrated and a bit like guilty that I got it, but I wasn't unwell with it, and it wasn't until I actually had my vaccinations, and in the NHS, we were the first lot to have the vaccinations, January 2021, and I started feeling unwell after those and then I sort of pushed on through that summer with sort of mild, moderate symptoms, still able to go to work, but other things were a bit of a struggle. And then I got another virus in the autumn 2021 and that's when I really sort of crashed, we call it so, really severe fatigue that I was housebound, you know, really difficult to stand up and cut my own lunch, that sort of thing. Really severe brain fog that I struggled to follow sentences or construct sentences myself, this weird sensitivity to sound and light and temperature, like I really struggled with being cold a lot of the time, like really cold down to my bones, I felt like I needed to be in a hot bath. It was all very strange. My tummy just felt bloated all the time, like I couldn't digest the food. That was all really weird. You know, I sort of looked pregnant, really, that really bloated, and I wasn't able to go to work. I wasn't able to look after my child, who was three. My husband works abroad for weeks at a time, and I wasn't able to look after my three year old during the day, and even in in the evenings, I'd have to get so I'd be in childcare during the day, and then I'd have to get a babysitter at evenings to put into bed. I didn't have the energy to put my son to bed, which was a really low point, you know, that sort of deep maternal instinct that you just want to care for your child, and I felt pretty hopeless that I couldn't put in to bed by myself. So that was when I was at my worst. Yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
and we talk, a lot of people talk about the kind of and I suppose it's different for everybody, isn't it, the kind of the things, the things that we lose when we become unwell. And, you know, a lot of people can't work, and that's a loss, both emotionally and obviously, a huge financial toll as well. And you know, a lot of people really suffer because they can't do the sort of social. Things or exercise is a big one. But maybe we don't talk so much about child care and how difficult that must be to be not able to care for your own child. I mean, I don't have kids, so I can't possibly understand that, but I can just tell from you kind of speaking about it there, I'm thinking, Gosh, I can feel that how difficult that must have been. Yeah,

Speaker 1  
emotionally, that was very difficult. Like you say, I couldn't socialize with friends, and I got lots of friends. I love seeing friends. I didn't have the energy even for them to come around for cups of tea. I couldn't follow sentences, so I couldn't really talk all those things. But yeah, there was something really deep about not being able to care for my own child that felt really awful, yeah? And I

Jackie Baxter  
think, yeah, it really is a sense of loss, isn't it? You know, whatever it is that you feel like you've lost and, you know, there's all sorts of big emotions that come up with something like long covid, you know, and that guilt that you were talking about that, that you've got it in the first place, the kind of the grief and the loss of what you want to be doing, what you, you know, see as your life being before you even talk about any, any other sort of emotions. And, you know, I bang up on about this all the time, the kind of emotional side of it, because it's so emotionally tough, and I think it's not talked about enough, because we focus so much on the physical side, which is obviously horrendous as well. But they do very much go hand in hand. I think, yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like, for you, it was this kind of like build up, almost of kind of like, the initial infection that didn't seem too bad, and then the vaccination, and then, boom, the sort of other virus that you caught where the body sort of finally went, Alright, I'm done.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, I think that's it. I did actually see a cardiologist at one point privately, and he talked about the fight flight and freeze. A lot. A lot of people with long covid Go into the fight or flight stage, and their heart rate's really fast, but I actually went into this freeze state where my heart rate dropped to like 40. My blood pressure was really low. I couldn't stand up. I'd feel too dizzy to stand up, and it was because it was so low. And it seems like it's a very sort of deep reflex of of mammals that it was meant to be for when a, you know, a line was cheating you in the in the Savannah, and you play dead, and my body was doing this play dead thing, essentially, that's what this freeze state is all about. And I couldn't wake it up. And it was so weird. It's like, as I explained, like all my systems in my body weren't working, like my hormones, my gut wasn't digesting the food, my heart rate, you know, everything was affected. My thermo regulation, my you know, my temperature. I my autonomic nervous system, my body just could not control itself, and it's all on a subconscious level. It's this autonomic nervous system that we don't have direct control over. So it's not like you can talk yourself out of it and go, come on, pick yourself up, get off the Savannah. You know you're safe. Now, it just doesn't work like that. And I think that the skill to recovery is working out how you get out of your certain situations?

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is the difficult thing with recovery, isn't it? Because, as you say, everyone's body is different. Everyone's nervous system is different. The things that will help, the things that will not help, things that will trigger. It's not the same for everybody, because everyone's situation is different, you know, whether that's their personal or their financial or their environmental or, you know, whatever the example I always give is, you know, cold water was hugely important in my recovery. You know, that was one of the things that helped me the most. But the thought of doing that for some people is just like, oh my goodness, no, that sounds horrendous. I'll quite happily throw myself into cold water, but the idea of acupuncture for me, that makes me feel really funny to think about it, and I have actually made a promise to go and try it. So, yeah, I'm working on that one.

Speaker 1  
I tried the cold water when I was about, you know, 40% improved, and it really made me so tired for the rest of the day, really unwell. And I tried it quite a few times because I really wanted it to work, and realized it just wasn't for my body. And then left it a year and tried it again when I was about 90% recovered and I could cope with it better. But it's, I don't think it's brilliant for my body, like you say, it's so individual. I can cope with it for really short lengths of time, but I think my body still struggles to warm up. Yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
absolutely. And I think, as well, like you just kind of alluded to, it's not just individual for the person, it's actually where you are in your stage of. Recovery as well. You know, by the time I started doing the cold water, I had done a lot of work on my breathing. I'd found some other things that helped. I wasn't better by any means, but I was a lot more stable, whereas if I'd tried it a year and a half earlier, I think probably similar to you, it would probably have made things worse. And I guess the difficult thing is that a lot of it is kind of down to trial and error, and we can do that in better or worse ways, but in the end of the day, I think a lot of it is kind of having to kind of explore what works for you individually. And that's that's tough, because it can be really overwhelming. I think you know, so many different things that people talk about that help, but you know, they're not all going to work for you, but like, where do you start?

Speaker 1  
And I sat down recently and thought about all the things that helped me, and tried to group it into six pillars of wellness. And I think possibly each person needs to think about each six pillars, but the things they do within those might be different for different people. So I talk about farming the nervous system. So whether you're in fight or flight or freeze or wherever you are, I think harming a dysregulated nervous system is quite key, and for quite that's probably almost the number one thing to do initially. And then I I talk about the pillar of nutrition, and then sleep, and then hormones, then exercise, and lastly, a healing mindset, which I think is really important, our mindset throughout our recovery, but the way people deal with each of those, you know, different think tools will work for different people, and I've written a resource about all the different tools that work for me, and I'm happy to share that, and like you say some of those will work for some people and not for others, but I think it's great if you listen to a lot of different recovery stories, because then you can find different ideas or different tools, and hopefully find things in there that that relate to you. But I think this umbrella of, well, I've called them six pillars of wellness, but you know, looking at all of those facets is probably worth it.

Jackie Baxter  
And I guess you know how much difference each of those pillars makes to a person individually is going to depend on who they are and what their body's doing already, you know, if you eat very well and your nutrition is quite good anyway, then you probably don't need to pay that much attention to that one. Whereas, if your diet is horrendous, then, you know, or maybe you've developed a whole load of new food intolerances, or something like that, then maybe that one's going to be a lot more work,

Speaker 1  
very individual. Well, initially I thought I need to eat really, really healthily, and I went to this really healthy diet, but I actually realized my body couldn't digest it. So I've sort of almost been full circle, and I don't have all the the fiber and all the fruit and veg that I sort of thought I needed initially, because it just doesn't suit me. And like you said at the beginning, it's so individual, and I think you just have to find your own way with it. Like I've realized I have to cook all my vegetables. I can't have, you know, anything raw, and I have to have carbs. I've tried cutting out carbs. That's not good for me. And, you know, I've tried doing the fasting, and some people think that's brilliant, and I've read a lot of research about why it's really good, but I feel more Dizzy on it, you know, I can do a 12 hour fast, which is basically, you know, overnight kind of thing, eat an early dinner, and then I still have breakfast. But, yeah, it's very trial and error. And I think through your recovery, things will change as well. You know, as your digestion improves, or your body can cope with more fasting, or whatever it is and it's it's listening to your intuition a lot, I think, with your recovery, and that's probably one of the biggest things I've learned through this process is learning to listen to my own body. I, I think modern life we, you know, rush from one thing to the other, and perhaps don't listen to the warning signs our bodies trying to tell you, you know, got a headache today, maybe I'm overdoing it, or, you know, that's just those little niggling things that happened before I had long covid. I would never listen to that, whereas now I'm bit more in tune with my body, a bit more aware of what's going on, a bit more aware of my stress levels than I ever was before. I would just push on through before, but now I'm like, hang on. That doesn't doesn't get me to a great place. So let's, you know, take a pause, use those tools that I know help me. So for me, getting out for a walk in nature is is really calming. And I found some meditations that I do in nature or that are really calming. I do meditations at night before I go to sleep, because I think that. That's a nice way to drift into your sleep and get deeper sleep. Yeah, it's finding your own tools for each different pillar, I think, is important. Yeah.

Jackie Baxter  
And I think one of the things that really, I think it helped me while I was ill, as well as obviously, beyond, was realizing that these skills I was learning were going to be skills that were going to be helpful beyond as well. You know, for me, obviously breathing exercises being one of the main things. You know, actually, when I find myself getting really anxious, I use some of the same tools that I learned while I was unwell or, you know, if I'm feeling stressed, okay, let's take a moment and breathe. Okay, we're good. So it's like, you know, you still use some of these things. It's not like you're just learning them to get better kind of thing. So, yeah, let's talk about the things that kind of helped then. And I know that's quite a wide open question, but I'm just going to kind of throw that one at you. What helped

Speaker 1  
for regulating my nervous system, which is the thing that I thought I needed to do. First, I listened to relaxing music, you know, the ones with like binaural beats, and they're meant to relax you more deeply. I actually found an app called the sensate app, which had really lovely music on that's meant to be calming. And, well, was calming. And I also found some long covid Yoga groups that are, you know, very gentle. It's not like a normal yoga class, and they're specifically for long covid So I did the 360 Mind, Body Soul with Susie bolt, which was brilliant, and also the yoga for life project, which was also brilliant. And there was a lot of breathing in those and a lot of very gentle movement with pauses at the end to reassure your nervous system that you know you weren't going to push it. And the other thing that came with those is a community, because you feel very isolated. I think when you get long covid, chances are you, you're good mates around you don't have it, and you know you, you, it's very good to find a community that has these other weird symptoms. I don't know about you, but I just found these symptoms so weird, they didn't really fit into any particular box. And being a doctor, I was like, hang on, I can't diagnose this neatly into some sort of box. You know, they were very strange. So hearing that you weren't alone with these strange symptoms and this unknown illness that no one knew how you were going to get better, if you're ever going to get better, very scary place to be in. I think finding a community was key. So those yoga classes as well being you know, good for movement, were very supportive, and they have Facebook groups associated with them, where you could keep in touch with people. So that was really helpful. So certainly that's for the sort of the calming aspect. I also did those. We've done those vagus nerve stimulation, where you rub your ear, and you can find those on YouTube, and this sort of makes you yawn. I mean, they're a bit strange, but I actually find that that's one of the things I do if I'm feeling stressed. It's quite good way to to calm you down. I also like mindfulness meditation and use various apps like Insight Timer, which is free because, you know, you're not usually not earning when you've got long covid. So you kind of want to find all these apps and resources that are free. And like I said, being in nature was really calming for me. So even when I couldn't move very much, I'd sit in the garden, or I'd drive, or get driven to the local woods and just sit on the bench. And then as my tolerance got a bit, got a bit more I do, you know, very short walks and things like that, and breathing exercises, like you say that was key, and that's all part of what I call the nervous system calming aspect. And then nutrition, like you say, it's finding your own way with with food. I don't I think it's this is all very individual, like you say, I think trying to avoid Ultra processed food is quite a good idea, because I think they're quite inflammatory. Um, and I find a really good app called Yucca app, y, u, K, A, so, you know, it's really tiring making food from scratch all the time. This has like a barcode scanner. You can go to the supermarket, or, you know, your online shop, and find out how healthy that jar is or that packet is, and it scores it and tells you all the additives that are in it. So. Brilliant. It also does personal care products. So if you're wondering, you know the moisturizer you're putting on the on your face, how many additives, or whatever, then it tells you. So that's been really useful, and saves you having to cook from scratch all the time, which takes a lot of energy. So I use it for like finding myself fresh soups at the supermarket and things like that, because it's quite time consuming to make things like that. So that was a cool little thing. And yeah, supplements, initially I thought, oh, supplements are going to be the way forward. But I don't think they are. I mean, I think maybe taking a vitamin D supplement in the winter, that's the sort of national guidelines, anyway, that we should all be doing that maybe taking omega three tablets meant to be anti inflammatory, but, you know, taking this vast arrange of supplements that I was buying and spending so much money on, and the more you read, it's like a rabbit hole, isn't it, you go, Oh, I need that. Oh, someone's written that on a blog. I better by that, and then after a month of taking it, you don't feel any different. So that that perhaps isn't so helpful, or I didn't find it so and then sleep, I think is, is really important, because it helps our body to rejuvenate and to repair. And I know some people with long covid Find sleeping all through the night really tricky and getting off to sleep really tricky. Um. What helped me with that is wearing blue light blocking glasses and not looking at your screen for an hour or two before bed. And I also bought this blue light blocking light bulb for my bedside light. It's actually red, which I think the neighbors are wondering what's going on. I put this red light bulb on every night, but it's really helps. It's, I know it must be some ancient sort of tribal thing of looking at the fire when you're a caveman, but the red light really helps put you into a sort of trance of sleepiness. And I do find that that really helps. And I personally listen to meditations to help me get off to sleep, you know, really calming ones that are positive. And so I can easily go into sort of overthinking, worrying mode while I'm just lying there in bed, especially when you're not feeling very well. You know, am I going to get better? And you know you're thinking about your symptoms that you're feeling. But I think if you can change your mindset into a calmer place, maybe a bit more positive place, before you go to bed, because if you think about it, you've got eight hours in bed, and whatever you listen to at night just before you drop off is probably going to set the tone for that whole eight hours. So to help with your mindset, I think it's really helpful to listen to something more positive before you go to sleep.

Jackie Baxter  
Now your fourth pillar is hormones, isn't it? And I'm sure you said that you had consulted with a long covid and menopause hormone sort of specialist. Is that right?

Speaker 1  
Yeah, absolutely. My pillar four was hormones. Everyone's different, but I being in my 40s and knowing that therefore I was in the perimenopause, and reading about some of the symptoms of the perimenopause being fatigue and brain fog. And I thought, even if 5% of my symptoms are down to perimenopause, that would be useful. I thought about the risks and benefits, and I actually decided to go on HR team. It's difficult to know how much help that did, because I went up really, really slowly on my doses, because I think you're very sensitive to things when your bodies and in this dysregulated nervous state, so I went up on my doses really slowly. Probably took me a year to go up on the dose, and that year I was improving anyway, so it's hard to know what was down to what, but I think there is a percentage for me that that helped a little bit with that. I'm not saying all my symptoms were perimenopause, not at all, but I think perhaps it helped to kick start my own body in producing a little bit more. And then the fifth pillar I talk about movement or or exercise. And I think that can be quite triggering when you've got long covid, because you worry about the post exertional malaise coming on. And that's obviously something that happens when we're at our worst. Well, you know, until you start pacing yourself, you have these peaks and troughs, you have these crashes when you push yourself too much. So I think it's really important to pace and and what I realized was, if I had a walk in nature and I was in a more positive frame of mine, I thought, you know, I'll listen to my body. I'll be intuitive with this. I'll stop when I feel like it's time for me to stop. That helped me, rather than this fear mindset of, Oh God, I'm walking 10 more yards today than yesterday. Is that going to trigger something? I actually think your mindset while you're doing that walk or that movement or that exercise as a part to play. So, yeah, listening to intuition whilst not, you know, going from zero to hero, but doing a little bit more with a positive frame of mind. Yeah, carefully is good, because what I was finding is I was just staying at my baseline that I knew didn't, didn't upset my nervous system, but wasn't really going anywhere with it, so it wasn't really progressing. So that was quite helpful with me. Initially, I thought, oh, there must be a heart rate that I need to look at. And I bought, you know, a a watch that told me what heart rate was. And I found online, oh, if I stay within 30% of, you know, going up from this. And I worked it all out. And then I found I was getting really fearful and looking at my watch all the time and my heart rate all the time, and that wasn't very helpful. So I actually ditched all of the smart watches and just listened to my intuition. And that seemed to be a better way for me, because then you're you're not in that fear mindset, and I think that helps. And then lastly, my sixth pillar is, is the healing mindset. Like I say, I think it's really important how you approach it, and it's so hard because you're feeling hopeless and your life is completely different to how it's been before, and you're isolated, and it's so easy to lose hope. And if you can find little ways that you can keep some hope alive, or little bits of joy through the day, or remember the things that make you light up like I've got a dog, and I love stroking the dog, and that actually brings me a bit of a bit of joy and realizing that at the time that, oh, this is, this is nice, you know, instead of ignoring it, I guess it's trying to appreciate those little things that you can do, even though you've lost so much. I can still, you know, go out into the garden, smell a rose. Do still, you know, have a house. I do have a hot shower. You know, being grateful every day, writing gratitude lists or saying gratitude things out loud. I think there's quite a lot of evidence now to say that that's really helpful for overall well being and possibly healing as well. That just helps your body to heal. The way I thought about it was, if your cells are surrounded by all these stress hormones and all this fear and negativity, then it's not a very healing place for your cells to be bathed in. But if you can bathe your cells, you know, with no, none of the stress hormones, but more, you know, positive emotions, oxytocin and dopamine and all these things that you your body releases when you're thinking of more positive things, things that you're grateful for. Then, you know, my mind was thinking, well, that that's surely a better environment for recovery of my cells and just each day, just trying to remind yourself each morning of that message. And it's very hard, because you often wake up feeling really negative, and the only way I could get myself more positive was with a meditation. I think it's very hard to do it yourself. So I would, I would find some meditations that seem to speak to me, and I've got a list of them finding something that resonated with me, and it'd be different each day. I found this Tapping Solution app where you sort of tap on your pressure points and say sort of positive, positive affirmations. And I'd find the one that spoke to me that day, you know, calm your mind, or whatever it was a gratitude one, or change your energy, whatever it felt like was there was the right thing. I think that that was all really helpful as well. And listening to recovery stories to see that people can get better and keep the hope alive. Because maintaining hope, I know it's very difficult to do, but I think it's really important.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, I think, as you say, it's very, very difficult, especially if you're having a dip to say, Oh well, just do some gratitude, you know, just do this, just do that. And it's like, I have never felt worse than I do in this moment. And you're just telling me to be positive, like, you know, sawed off, but at the same time, you know, it's, I guess it's that balance between allowing yourselves to feel whatever emotion it is that you're feeling, you know, if you're feeling genuine. And grief and sadness, then allow yourself to let that out. But also, once you've allowed that out and processed it, it's then, okay, right? Maybe now I can handle I'm grateful for my jumper that's really cozy, or your dog or your stuffed toy elephant, or, you know, whatever it is. And I think one of the things that I found the hardest when I started sort of hearing about this and how it could help was, you know, whenever anyone said to me, Oh, well, what makes you smile? What makes you happy, I would always think of these big things. I'd be like, well, I like being at mountains, I like going running, I like cycling, I like, you know, all of these things, which obviously I couldn't do. And then it was realizing that actually, you know, those big things are totally important, but actually in that moment, it's the little things that are going to make the biggest difference. So it's going to be your nice smelling candle, or your, yeah, something that's soft and, you know, a hug from somebody, or, you know, those little things that seem really insignificant to like, you know, the you of before, but it's the sort of thing that I really notice so much more now, even, you know, post recovery, I noticed them more, those little cozy moments. And you know, when the sun comes through the curtains, and, you know, there's, you know, yeah, little, seemingly insignificant things that suddenly just really come into their own, I think

Speaker 1  
I completely agree. And yeah, it's not being that toxic positivity, trying to be positive all the time. It's, it's not that. It's like you say, acknowledging where you are and acknowledging your feelings, they're all very valid. If you're feeling really crap, you know it's all really valid. You've probably got a lot of reason to be feeling like that, and it's all balanced, like you say, if and maybe you'll have a morning where you think, I just can't get myself out of it, and that's completely normal to feel like that. But if you can aim, at some point of the day to to find some little thing, like you said, just to try and balance all that out. And I think the more you practice it, it can get a bit easier. Or find a friend that you can text three things you're grateful for every day, or write them down in a journal or something, just what, what works for you? But I yeah, I completely agree, when you're feeling rubbish, it is very hard, and it you shouldn't invalidate your feelings. So very valid, yeah.

Jackie Baxter  
And I guess actually, like you were just saying, you know, about having a friend that you text. Or it's that kind of accountability, almost, isn't it? You know, if you join a breathing program, for example, and you know, you're getting topped through these exercises in these sessions, and you're getting kind of told what to do, or there's this some sort of structure you're going to do it, whereas if someone says, go do a breathing exercise, you know, you'll be like, Oh yeah, I'll look on YouTube later. Or, you know, it's much harder to kind of, you know, G yourself up to do that, I think, especially if you're unwell. And I think, you know, coming back to what you were saying earlier about that sense of community that's so important, because we do feel that sense of isolation and that, you know, community that is fundamental to our nervous systems. You know, that social connection, finding that and then having that kind of accountability with people, where you can say, right? Have you done your breathing exercise today? Have you looked out the window today? Have you drunk enough water today? What is it that's going to make you smile today? You know those sorts of things. And you get inspiration from other people as well, don't you? I think you know, on a day where you're really struggling, maybe you're finding it very difficult to find something that's going to make you smile, and then someone else says, I just had this wonderful experience where I ate chocolate for the first time in three years. And it's almost like you can be grateful for that. You know, it kind of helps as well, I think, doesn't it?

Speaker 1  
Yeah, absolutely. And if you can find some people who are going through a similar situation, perhaps you've got more in common with them to connect to. And because it's hard for all of you to find you know, things you're grateful for, or whatever, I actually did the Lightning Process in I think 2022 there was a group of, sort of four or five of us, and then we kept on the WhatsApp after that. And would, sort of, you know, not do each other on, support each other, and, you know, say How you doing, and, you know, like the accountability, like you were saying, in a supportive environment, it's not a toxic positivity. It's a sort of, you know, where you at with things. It's okay if you fall off the wagon, you know, Let's support each other, if we can finding some commonality there, and finding a tribe that you know speaks to you. And maybe you've got a few different, you know, maybe you've got. Group from the yoga group, and another Whatsapp group from something else, and that's really nice to find other people in a similar space who want to sort of try and support each other, because it can get very negative. I know some Facebook groups I found a bit too negative, and dwelling on the negative side too much, and it brought me down, so I had to delete myself from some of the groups and only stay on the slightly more supportive ones.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. I think it's about what we put into our bodies, isn't it, whether that is nutrition, whether it is hydration, whether it is the air we breathe, and then what we feed our nervous system as well. And yeah, I found a similar experience with just, you know, every time you open your Facebook app, which is more often than you probably should. You know, you just get bombarded by awful, horrible stuff that you're probably experiencing too as well. And it's I find that just too much, I had to kind of remove myself or unfollow some of them so I could dip into them when I wanted to, but I wasn't getting, you know, constantly bombarded by it all, because it was overwhelming, I think. But yeah, yeah, some, some are better than others, for sure. And it's tough, isn't it? Because, you know, people do need that space, but I suppose it's up to us whether we put ourselves in there or not. Yeah. So I suppose the next question is, how did you kind of know that you were there? What did that kind of, like, unrecovered moment look like for you? You just mentioned that you had done the Lightning Process. Was that part of that kind of final step kind of thing?

Speaker 1  
No, I was still pretty unwell. You know, I don't know, maybe I was 30% better or something, but that definitely helped me to look at this sort of mindset picture talk about looking at yourself limiting beliefs, which we all have that we're not aware of. So it made me more aware of those and those sort of subconscious programs that we tell ourselves that are very negative to try and change those into a slightly more positive pattern. And I think it's all really useful to learn. And then I continued on that journey of my own reading of you know, how Mind Body interacts and listening to people like Joe Dispenza on on YouTube, who I found, you know, quite inspiring. And people were healing themselves from various things. I just thought I'd read about all that sort of the side of things. But I would say, after two years from when I was worse, I thought at that point I thought, I think I've pretty much recovered. But on reflection, I was probably 90, 95% but I like to think I'm like 100% now I've one of the pinnacle moments for me. I guess the last few months was climbing Snowden in the in driving rain and 50 miles an hour gusts, and the whole idea is sounded quite romantic. It was going to be like going up there at sunset and seeing the sunset and coming down in the dark. And I was like, wow, I can do that. And it was just horrendous weather, harder than you can ever imagine. And then we came down in the dark, and it was so slippy and the driving rain, and completely soaked, you know, down to your underwear, and it was freezing. It was like below zero at the top of Snowden. This was in March. But you know why I feel like I conquered the world that day, I felt like, This is it. I've conquered the summit of this mountain. I've conquered long covid. And it felt the most amazing feeling. So that I think it was, it was that, that I was like, I can trust my body again. I don't know about you, but it was like, I lost trust in my body, which is a strange thing to say, but you can feel very insecure losing that trust. And I finally thought, I can trust my body. It's done this for me. I can, I can do it. And it's a, it's a daily reminder. I have to keep saying that to myself, that like you said before. It's not just a, oh, you go through it, and then you recovered, and you're always going to, you know, be on this high I think I've learned life lessons now that I'll continue forever. I think it's important to regulate our nervous systems. It's important to keep thinking about the things you're grateful for, and I will take those through now. And, yeah, it's a sort of, I don't want to go back to that place. I want to stay healthy. I don't want to be you know, a mindset of fear. I don't want to go back there, but certainly looking forwards. I'm going to, I'm going to continue all these practices. I

Jackie Baxter  
was laughing while you were telling me that story about Snowden, because I'm a hill Walker. I I know that feeling, and it's almost like you. Know, when you're doing it in bad weather, everything is so much more difficult, and you're trying to eat your sandwiches through your like massive mittens, and they're getting soaked while you're doing it. And, yeah, and I think you know that there are some experiences where, when you come out of them, you do, you feel like you could do anything. You know you could do literally anything, and it's such a wonderful feeling. And I think when you're unwell, you cannot imagine firstly being able to do any of those things, but ever having that feeling, ever having that trust in your body where you just know that it will handle, you know, whatever you throw at it. It might not enjoy it, but it will handle things because it functions. You know, your nervous system is functioning again, which means that it is able to move between all of these states in a way that is healthy, because a healthy nervous system isn't always in the happy zone. You know. You know that that's not how it works. So, yeah, yeah. That feeling is just Yeah, I guess, for anyone who's listening, who hasn't recovered, which is probably in significant proportion, I suppose it's just kind of however improbable it feels right now, knowing that that is possible to get to that point where you're like, I'm good, I can handle the world, whatever the world throws at me, kind of thing,

Speaker 1  
yeah. And it was also something that I said to myself when I had long covid, when I was, you know, bad with it. I was like, I said to myself, when, when I get better? Not if, when I will climb a mountain. So that was me doing it. And, you know, that was two and a half years in the making of doing that, and all that emotion went into it as well. Yeah. And it was such an analogy for long covid, if I'm honest, climbing that mountain, you know, it's the recovery is, is two steps forward, one step back. It's not a linear whoosh. You know, you're getting better at this linear rate. It's, it's not it's you feel worse some months than you did, you know before, and then better. And then a day will be bad. And then, and you know that climb in that mountain that sometimes the wind actually knocked you sideways or almost knocked you off your feet. And the driving rain in the face was so painful, it hurt your skin, and it just really reminded me of long covid. The analogy was amazing. I was like, Yes, this is what days with long covid was, like, it was unrelenting, and it would knock you off your feet, and so that year, it was really amazing to do it, especially because I'd had that vision for two and a half years of I'm going to climb a mountain once I've done once I've got through this.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, yeah, you climbed your long covid Mountain and then you followed through and climbed your actual mountain. Yeah. I think that's, that's a perfect analogy, isn't it? The one, one, I like, I don't know if, if anyone's in The Simpsons episode, but the one, it's one where Homer has to climb the mountain, he gets challenged or something, and he's like, Oh, that one. Oh, that's not too bad, because I think, you know, when you get long covid, you think I'll be fine in a month or something, or maybe even your doctor will tell you that you might be fine in a month. And then, you know, then he's like, no, no, no, the one over there. Oh, that one's bigger. So that's when they say, oh, okay, well, maybe it'll take you three months. And then it's like, no, no, no, no, further back, and, you know, instead of looking further and further up, and it's like, the longer you're ill, you know, they keep extending the deadline, isn't it? That you know? And then maybe someone may even tell you that, that you won't you know, that maybe this is for life. And it's like that, that mountain that goes so high that it goes into the clouds and you can't see the top, and it's so, so tough, but maybe that's where the Simpsons analogy ends, because actually you can get to the top of your mountain.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, I think it's so crushing when someone else in authority, or a medical professional says to you, you're not going to recover, or you won't recover fully. Or what I've realized is people in Western medicine aren't always right. And I'm a Western medic, and I I've lost, lost a bit of faith in western medicine. Do I say it? You know, Western medicine doesn't have all the answers. It doesn't have any answers, really, for long covid, it doesn't understand fatigue, conditions, I think these wise Eastern medicine traditions, you know, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, and the old Egyptians, you know, they, they had a lot of wisdom. They've been around for 4000 5000 years, and trying all these alternative we call them alternative therapies, don't we, because or Eastern, but I would say, try them. You're not really going to get many side effects from acupuncture, or, I don't know, all these other things that you can try. And I looked into Ayurveda and using the spice. And looking at what energy type I was, I just was open to anything. And I think it's really hard if someone in authority tells you that you're not going to get better. It's all about that healing mindset. And if you can try not to believe them and try and think I'm my own person, I actually I'm, I am capable of this. I know that sounds really hard when you're feeling rubbish, but I think that might be quite valuable in recovering.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, how dare anyone tell me that I can't. I will believe I can until I'm shown that I can't. Kind of thing, yeah. I mean, I think I get, I get that from you a lot, from having just spoken to you that, yeah, that the can, the can, rather than the can. We know, we know the can't. We're getting bludgeoned with that day after day when we're unwell. So, you know, focusing on the can, even if it seems pathetically small, the things that we can do actually the more, the more we can, the more we can, I guess. Which sounds really silly, doesn't it? But I think it's true.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, I think you're it snowballs. You just got to have that start off with that first little thing, yeah. And then more you say to yourself, I used to have, well, I still do post it notes on my mirror of little things I wanted to remind myself of, like, positive affirmations, or, you know, I trust my body, or these little things that spoke to me at the time, and then I might change them after a few weeks, and think, oh, I don't need to read that anymore, for whatever reason. But it just reminded me to, reminded my mind to get into that mindset that I felt was right for me at that time, because it's so easy, because you're surrounded, like you say, with things that are pretty negative, and you can't do a lot of things. So having little reminders around the house was quite useful for me, on the fridge, or, you know, whatever I'd have, like Reeve written on the fridge, and hum and things like this, because I'd read the humming was really good for the vagus nerve, and just these little reminders dotted around.

Jackie Baxter  
I love that, because I also have a lot of post its around the house. But I still, I still do some of them are still there because, actually some of them are still useful. So, yeah, absolutely. So maybe just finally, what would you have wanted to know, kind of a bit earlier on, and I think we've covered a lot of this anyway, but if there's maybe, like, one thing that you could have said to Sarah from a couple of years ago, what would you have said,

Speaker 1  
but through all of it, it's balanced. It is all balance, and finding your own individual way with it, because we're all different. But one of the key things I read was where focus goes, energy flows, so where your mindset goes, if it goes to that negative place, it gives that area more energy, if that makes sense. And that just stuck with me. That's one of the post its that's up. So remembering that and that whole I can but it's very difficult to feel that when you're at your worst.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and I guess to add to that, to give ourselves grace when we find it hard because we do

Speaker 1  
yes and getting over those perfectionist tendencies, which I have. So yeah, that's a massive one, like you say, giving yourself grace, yeah, oh, yeah. And thinking I was, I was getting towards the being more aware of my inner critic, my voice in my head of you know, you're rubbish. You can't do this, although trying to, it's very hard, isn't it, but trying to replace that with a more supportive, self compassionate voice of it's okay. You you have made yourself a cup of tea. Today, you have sat outside in the garden. Today you have had a shower. You know, at the beginning, I really struggled having showers, having the energy to stand up and having a shower. So, you know, it's those small wins, trying to change your inner dialog to the supportive one, then the one in lack, that's you haven't done that. Change that to a one in abundance. You know, you have, you have done that.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I think that's a really good point, and it's totally the opposite to what I naturally do. And I think that's probably not just me,

Unknown Speaker  
absolutely. I

Jackie Baxter  
think that's quite common. Yeah, yes, work in progress. There for me, I think. But yeah, it's excellent advice. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming along today and sharing your story and giving everyone a load of hope, as well as some ideas to try as well. So you mentioned your list of wisdom. I'll make sure that we put a link to that in the show notes and anything else that you've mentioned as well. So yeah, thank you so much. Thank

Speaker 1  
you. Thank you. I've really enjoyed being on here, and I. Just really passionate about helping other people in any way I can, having gone through it myself. So yeah, thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai