147 - Dan Neuffer - How can we build & ensure resilience in our recoveries?

Episode 147 of the Long Covid Podcast is the first of a two-part series with Dan Neuffer. Dan is a coach working with people with Long Covid & ME/CFS. He is also an author of "CFS Unravelled" and has developed the "ANS Rewire" Program which has been mentioned by some others on the podcast previously.

In this episode we dive into 

• How is recovery possible when there is no "cure"? 
• Understanding & education and it's role in treating underlying dysfunction rather than symptoms. 
• Understanding patterns that may contribute to illness and how they help with recovery, resilience & breaking through plateaus
• Societal pressures for perfection and risk aversion - their role in reduced resilience

Part 2 now available HERE

Dan’s book: https://cfsunravelled.com/cfs-unravelled/

Dan’s original recovery stories: https://cfsunravelled.com/cfs-fibro-recovery-stories/

Dan’s YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/@CFSUnravelled1

Dan’s Recovery Program: https://ansrewire.com/info-request/

The "How resilient can recoveries be?" Podcast episode that sparked off this whole discussion

Dan's previous episode on the Long Covid Podcast where we talk more about Dan's story, his program "ANS Rewire" and it's role in recovery.

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Hello and welcome to the long covid podcast. I have Dan neufer with me again today. I'm delighted to have him back, and we are going to dive into the kind of aspects of how to move forward with recovery, whether that is forward from somewhere where you're at, or whether it's forward out of recovery at the end, and kind of what happens beyond that, because I feel like this is kind of not really talked about. So in hindsight, having gone through and tidied this episode up, there are some things that come up that could maybe be a little affronting at first. I urge you to bear with us, because this conversation kind of unravels as it goes through. I think also, just to say that, you know, people listening to this will be at all different stages in their recovery, I think a lot of the themes are relevant to all contexts. So even if it appears maybe not at first, listen to maybe pop it into the context that you're at backtracking a little bit. Very warm. Welcome to the podcast, Dan. It's lovely to have you back.

Dan Neuffer  
Thank you, Jackie. It's my pleasure.

Jackie Baxter  
So we have recorded a previous episode, but was almost exactly a year ago, so I will direct people to that to check that out, because that was really, really interesting. But before we get really started today, would you mind just saying a couple of words about yourself and kind of what it is that you do?

Dan Neuffer  
Well, it's getting a longer journey to summarize these days.

Jackie Baxter  
I know, so hard, isn't it? I was

Dan Neuffer  
ill myself, and after some years running around 2,000,001 doctors, like most of us, ended up being diagnosed with CFS, and then I also developed pots and fibromyalgia. And I was ill for about seven years in total. I recovered after a period of very severe illness, I would say, so when I hit my low point, I decided that I would, in a moment of desperation and maybe slight delusionism, I decided I would work out what causes the illness, because I didn't want to treat symptoms anymore, because it was illogical. My background is not in medicine. My background is actually in science, but nothing to do with medicine. I was trained as a physicist, and then I did a lot of reading researching, and I came up with a hypothesis for the cause of the illness. Published a book. I then did a whole lot of advocacy work. I helped people, sort of in my private time, you know, at the time, that was all pro bono, you know, people reaching out to me over the internet and all that kind of thing and and then my book was discovered by some researchers, the top researchers in the world, basically. And they said they agreed with my hypothesis, and they decided to write the foreword for my book. And I had caused by people for more help. I was the first one to sort of start all these recovery interviews. There wasn't any such thing, and so I had been focused on that because I didn't know that recovery was possible. I never met anyone that recovered, mind you, I had never really met many people that had the illness. I was kind of in my own little cave so but then after I recovered, I met heaps of people everywhere, like literally in the street, at school for my kids, and wherever I went. So I started recording the recovery interviews, and then eventually, because people kept asking me, I I created the ANS rewire recovery program, which is an online education program and that's now being used in over 60 or over 70 countries around the world. So there's many professionals, healthcare professionals, referring to the program. We have a very skewed number of doctors, medical researchers and psychologists in the program. That makes me think that maybe some of my education is too technical. I don't know, but it seems to resonate with them in particular. But look, I mean, you know, education program, we might think, Oh, why are we talking about an education program? And the answer is, because we don't have a cure for this illness. And so the whole first issue is really for people. How can people recover? You know, if there's not cure, and that's a complex answer that needs an education program, right? It's not something you can tell someone on the bus and then they go on and get cured, right? Because there is no cure. So it's a complicated process. So, yeah, that's my journey. I it's, I've been recovered now. I think it's around 12 years. It's been a long time in my life.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and we dived a load into more of your story and ans rewire in the previous episode, which was really, really interesting. But I mean, with. Going off on a slight tangent here, but I think it relates very much to what we're going to talk about today as well. Because you said, if there is no cure, how can we recover? And so, I mean, that's the sort of question that you get asked all the time, isn't it? There's no cure, there's no cure, there's no cure. And yeah, I mean, that's true on some level, you don't go to your doctor and they give you a pill and you become better. So if that's what you mean by a cure, yeah, there is no cure for long covid. There is no cure for MECFS. But also, there are people recovering, millions of people recovering. So how do we match those two up, and I suppose that's where we come into this thing where it's everyone's journey is so different. You know, I think it's built on kind of quite similar principles, but it's a very different journey, isn't it for everybody? Which is why recovery stories are so important, but also why getting attached to one particular recovery story is probably not so helpful. I

Dan Neuffer  
think there's a couple of things here. I think the first thing is that we think they're different when we listen to them uneducated, but when we're educated about how it works, then they're not different, because ultimately they treat the same root dysfunction, and people without understanding how the illness works, wouldn't understand why one person with PTSD going to go and see a psychologist power has not got anything in common with another person who's got severe gut parasites and dysbiosis. Seeing a functional medicine doctor specializing in restoring gut biome, you go, Well, those are completely different things. Well, they are different things, but they both affect the nervous system in similar ways. So whether something is a physical issue or a neurological issue or mental issue or emotional issue, it makes no difference. So that's the first thing, the second thing is this word cure. I don't wanna say it's an oxymoron, but it's really hard to find a proper description for it, that there are no cures. This is a treatment of imagination, like, who gets cured for what? What we get Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. You don't even get cured when you have an ear infection, you know, you might get some painkillers, you might get some antibiotics, but does that mean you're never going to have an ear infection again? It's gone. There's not many cures, yeah, there's often symptom reduction. The only one I can think of that comes remotely closest and antibiotic. But even that can be argued, if someone's got chronic ear infections, antibiotics are not the answer. That's because bacteria don't cause chronic ear infections. Bacteria are the result, not the cause of chronic ear infections, right? I mean, you say, oh, an infection is a bacteria. But why you keep getting this? Why does another person not get this? And it's this deeper way of thinking that it's really missing in western medicine. It's very focused on the outside, which is why post vial fatigue syndrome, or chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, postural systatic tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity. They're all considered to be different illnesses. Then we added long covid. You know, it's really about thinking about things a little bit more deeply than just what's happening on the surface.

Jackie Baxter  
I suppose it kind of comes back to the underlying, what's going on underneath, you know, which is, is different for everybody, because everybody their environment, their body, you know, all of these things are different because everybody's a different person. But at the same time, there are so many similarities in what a body needs, so it's kind of working out what that is specifically for, for your situation, kind of based on what we kind of understand about the body and the nervous system as a whole. I suppose. So. I suppose bringing this back to what you were saying before, why do we need something like an education program? Well, I suppose it's because, actually, we need to kind of understand what these principles are to kind of to start with, what is it that a body in a nervous system needs, you know, in this kind of situation, I suppose so, to sort of bring us back full circle, almost to the beginning of our tangent. Well,

Dan Neuffer  
look, and I think I want to give a distinction here, and I hope people don't think I'm splitting hairs here, but this is really important. So whilst I'm saying, yes, there are all differences, we recognize people have completely different journeys, different even dysfunctions. Many times, even with the same diagnosis, they often have different secondary dysfunctions going on. You know, one person has. As MCAS, the other person has some other autoimmune issue, you know, hypothyroidism. But here's the thing, despite all of the differences or the things that we may want to heal, it's the wrong approach. It's the wrong approach to say, Oh, I have to find exactly what's wrong with me, and then I have to fix that. Because guess what? People have been doing that like forever, and it doesn't work. You can treat all the dysfunctions, and maybe you'll be a bit better, or maybe you won't, or maybe you'll be better for a while, and then this is why people get so angry on the internet when they hear about this idea of people recovering, because they're like, Well, I've tried all that and it didn't work. And that's because we're looking too low on the tree, right? We're looking at like, what is happening with these dysfunctions. We're treating symptoms and secondary dysfunctions. What I'm saying is that every patient who has post viral fatigue syndrome, CFS, parts, MCs, fibromyalgia, they might have completely different symptoms. One has pain, one has, you know, cardiac issues, and one has fatigue and a whole bunch of other stuff, as we know. IBS, right? That's considered another illness that's different, right? But I'm saying no, no, they all have the same root underlying mechanism, and that root underlying mechanism is a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. And the reason why it looks so messy is because the autonomic nervous system takes care of everything. So yes, it takes care of your digestion, but it also takes care of your heartbeat and your energy and your metabolism and and this is why we get the variation in symptoms. But the problem is the same. Yes, it's just the way that problem is expressing itself varies between people. So in a way, I'm trying to when I educate people, my first and foremost objective is the only reason I wrote the book wasn't to tell people the million and one things they can be doing to make themselves better, because we've all tried that without success. Instead, I'm I'm trying to focus them, to say, Hang on a sec. It's you need to understand why this is happening the context of what you're doing. Yes, I mean, I still seek for people to reconnect with healthcare professionals, not to fix the problems, but simply to address them in the context of the overall recovery plan, right? And people will say, Oh, I tried that. It didn't work. Well, you tried it in isolation. But did you try it in combination with all the other strategies, all the physical strategies, all the diet strategies, all the brain training strategies, yes, and so this is very, very important. Now, obviously covid has come along, and given the nature of covid, things can be different. I think there's been a lot of people who basically experienced post vial fatigue syndrome, and then it's called Long covid, whatever that means. I don't think it's it's right to lump everyone together. Okay, so I've had many people recover with what they were diagnosed as long covid. I mean, if they hadn't been diagnosed with long covid in the past that we've just been told they had post vial fatigue syndrome or CFS. But that is not the same as a person who had covid And who's got drastic lung damage or organ damage, or who gets purple toes, right? There's something else going on there, yeah. Now, not saying that they can't recover. In many cases. I think people have some of these other issues. Also have post viral fatigue syndrome, right? And so their recovery might look a little bit different, but it's not like, Oh, I've got to look for this one magic thing here to fix everything. It is a process. And if people have some of these other dysfunctions, which I've also seen, you know, I spoke to one girl where they she was quite young, you know, but she had bad damage from covid. She had the original Wuhan version. And the doctors in England, I think, want to remove half her lung afterwards. Yeah, you know, she still recovered from post vial fatigue syndrome, and yes, she also recovered from her lung issues to the point that she feels fine. But things get more complicated, the long covid side of things, and it's important not to conflate and make everything sound like it's all the same, and we have one answer for every problem in the world, right? But all I'm saying is that, and then we spoke about this at length last time, like, what does long covid have to do? And I would encourage anyone listening to this to to listen to that episode, because I think this is an important distinction. But. So in essence, what I'm saying is, if you qualify for post vial fatigue syndrome, then you know, seeking to normalize ans dysfunction is is probably going to be a helpful step in the right direction.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and it's coming back to what we can do as well. So I found the first thing that helped, which for me was breathing, but which then allowed me to see a little bit of improvement, and I could then kind of see a bit more of what else was going on. Because to start with, there was just so much. It was kind of everything was chaos. I had no idea what was going on. So I suppose that brings us quite nicely onto that kind of first topic of we've got the kind of coming out of illness and sort of reaching the pinnacle of recovery, but maybe before we dive too much into that, you know, the kind of, okay, I found a thing, whatever it was, for me, it was breathing. For someone else, it might be acupuncture or improving their hydration, or, you know, whatever that is, and they see a little bit of improvement, and great, you know, a bit of improvement, that's that's good, but you know, you're sitting on this kind of like improvement, and what do you do next? It's kind of like you sort of don't want to go off your little island, because you might make it worse. But also, you know that you're not all the way there, so whatever it is that you found isn't the answer. It might be part of the answer. It's only bit of it. So how do we approach that kind of moving into the next phase of our recovery? Because I think it can be really difficult. You know, you can feel a bit stuck at various points in this Well,

Dan Neuffer  
look, I mean, I spoke about this at some length recently in an interview with Raelyn ag on her YouTube channel. And, I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record, and I apologize for doing so, but different people are wired differently. You know, some people are very instinctual, and when that works out, fantastic. You know, I'm sort of a very logical, scientific thinking kind of person, and and I suppose I was also, like many of the people listening deeply, deeply, deeply jaded during my years of illness, like, to the point where I was almost militant, like, I'm like, I don't want to try something unless you can 100% prove to me this is prove to me this is 100% a cure will work for everyone otherwise, and there is no such thing. So don't waste my time, right? Because you try everything, nothing works. So if we can understand, for instance, why your breathing helped you, then this is very important. Yes, now, when you were doing your breathing, you weren't really addressing a secondary dysfunction. You were addressing the primary dysfunction directly. Yeah, the ANS dysfunction because you you're training your nervous system to function normally. The breath is direct connection to the autonomic nervous system. The person that you mentioned that might be dealing with the hydration issue. Those are symptoms resulting from the ANS dysfunction. So many ans dysfunctions, you end up having a incorrect amounts of of mineral corticoids. These are hormones coming out of your adrenal glands, and this can mess up your minerals, and suddenly hydration becomes a big problem. Then the lack of hydration becomes a stressor. It affects your metabolism. It affects everything. You're more likely to trigger your autonomic nervous system, and you're round and round. You go right now by you addressing your your minerals, your your hydration, you feel a bit better. Your symptoms are getting a little bit better. Your nervous system gets triggered less, and may also start going the right direction. You're not directly training the brain, but you might be indirectly training your brain. You might be doing brain training without knowing it. It depends on what kind of mind behaviors you engage in as a result of fixing your hydration. And quite reasonable way of thinking might be, Oh, um, this is working. I'm getting better. I don't have to worry about this. I can relax. And so your body becomes less sensitized to the variation in its hydration as well Rhino or any kind of triggers of any type. So this is what I mean by things getting complicated, and by us understanding this in more depth, I think it can not only help us fine tune our recovery, but it can help us break through plateaus. It can help us also deal with relapses. Yeah, I think it's really central to having a robust recovery and and I know that's what sparked you asking for this interview, was when that recent podcast video that I did my youtube channel about how robust. And recovery B, and I tell you, it really struck a chord with people. I mean, it had more comments than any video in five years, you know. And so I can see why you're saying this would be really interesting to people, but I think it is essential, because, you know, I've seen people be recovered, essentially, for what is like it forever, and I've seen people still relapse 20 years later, and their relapse was a mystery. And to me it was really obvious why it happened. And so I think it's really important that we understand that. You have to understand, why did you get sick? Why did you relapse? Why did you get well? I've met so many recover people who didn't really know why they got well. They didn't even want to talk about it, let alone do an interview, because they were like, went to the function medicine. Oh, we did this, and I did this, and I did that, and they kind of got better, and they don't really know how, and they're kind of afraid that talking about it might bring it back, you know what I mean, like they're going to be struck down by lightning or something. And so, yeah, that that's not a great place to be. Certainly, having water under the bridge, I think is helpful. The longer you recover, the more confident you might feel, but I think it's still important to understand to be able to answer those questions. The aim is rewire. Program attempts to do that, but it doesn't achieve it for everyone, right? And that's quite interesting. I mean, there is a lot of information, to be fair, but sometimes things are not clear, but sometimes it's it's totally obvious to me when I speak with people and they haven't got a clue, even though they've been through the program. So you know, the thing is, nothing is easy when we're sick, Nothing's easy when we're sick, and all I can say is, do your best and get help where you can get perspectives from people around you, but education, I think, is central. Yeah, I mean,

Jackie Baxter  
it's really interesting. What you were just saying about understanding what came before in order to kind of understand, well, what is going to help you recover and beyond, you know, I'm talking now from having been recovered for a little over a year, and it's been a very strange year. It's been an amazing year, but it's been very, very strange. But I think for me, part of my recovery was kind of understanding what came before. And I feel like this can be a slightly touchy subject, because some people can get very upset, understandably, if they feel like they're being blamed for their illness. And for me, I don't feel like blame is the right word here. For me, I think it's understanding that the life I was living before, you know, I was in my 20s, I was indestructible, or so I thought, you know, I was living a very high stress life. I was working far too many hours. I was doing far too much exercise. I was stressed out about everything. I was a total perfectionist, a bit of a people pleaser. You know, all of these things that when you put them together into a big melting pot, it's kind of like looking back on it. If it wasn't covid, something else would have taken me down at some point. Pretty soon, it just happened that that was the trigger. But you know, if you'd asked me four years ago, why did you get sick, I would have been like, I don't know. I was living a perfect life. I was completely healthy. There was nothing wrong with me. This came totally out of the blue. And you know, it took me a while to kind of come to terms with the fact that actually it wasn't that I brought it on myself or asked for it. You know, if I'd known better, I would have done better. But kind of understanding some of those patterns and some of those things that may have contributed to that illness kind of helped me to build my recovery on a slightly better foundation and then live a better life afterwards. So I suppose it's kind of understanding, you know, everyone's situation is going to be slightly different, because not everybody's life before covid was exactly the same as me. But how can we kind of piece that together in a way that is non judgmental. Because I feel like non judgmental is a really important word here, I think, isn't it?

Dan Neuffer  
Yeah, look, you know, I'm a bit of a nerd. You can probably see that with how I look at things. And, you know, I think my first video was, you know, all about what causes, you know, people to have predispositions. And I talked about different nuclear in the brain and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I'm talking about the locus coeruleus and all this kind of stuff. And then I talked to people who had recovered, right, just on their own. They did some stuff, they got better. And they were like, Oh, it was a spiritual journey. And I'm like. Like, I mean, rolling the ice doesn't cover it, and that was coming from a place of ignorance, I guess you know, because it wasn't how I recovered, and I didn't feel like I got a great lesson out of my recovery and my years of illness. To me that was just a waste of life, and it was suffering and it was awful. But of course, 10 years of studying hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and I don't know how many people, I've learned a lot, and I've now understand what they were talking about. So the first step it has to be self compassion. Self blame has no thing. Let's say you were thought, but some people might have behaved in a way not like you, where you just go, Well, you know, you can say all kinds of reasons why you might have behaved like that's not your fault, right? But there might be some people where you really could say, you know, you were asking for something, you know, that's crazy. There might be some people who really put themselves into excessive stress, right? But even there, we have to show compassion. Nobody does anything with the you know, intent of then having to suffer. That makes no sense. We all kind of do the best we can at the time on the understanding that we have, yeah, because I could look at my journey and say, Oh, that was stupid, and this was silly, and what I do that for and but, you know, I don't know I did the best that I could as a 29 year old. Yeah, and so that is very, very important when I talk about understanding the reasons, like in 99 point, I don't know, nine or point five or I don't know. I can't really give you an accurate number here, but something like that, we can tie it back to some way where person can seek to take some responsibility. And that responsibility is not a blame responsibility like it was their fault, but we're seeking its empowerment. Let's say you go out to dinner with some friends, and then after dinner, on the way home, you get attacked, and you get beaten so badly, like with an inch of your life, that's not your fault, right? I mean, you didn't beat yourself up. And so we can say, Oh, that's terrible, or you're a victim of crime, and blah, blah, blah, blah, this is all true. Of course, we shouldn't say, well, it was your fault, right? Because that would be, I mean, what an awful, horrific thing to say to someone, right? However, besides the fact that it makes it kind of hard to get on with your life to think that such bad things could happen at any stage, if you can recognize, if you can seek some way, that it was in inverted commas your fault, or another way to saying it is if you can find some way of something that you could have done different that might have prevented this, then you can feel better about the future. You can leave the house again. Yes, if you think this could just happen at any stage, would you ever leave the house? And some people don't. When they have these kind of situations, they they never leave, leave again. So you gotta go, No, hang on a sec. Maybe I could have done something different. Yeah, and that's empowerment, not blame it's empowering because then you go, Ah, I did that wrong, just because you did something wrong, as me, a bad person. I mean, I can probably list five things since breakfast. Okay, it's normal to do things wrong, but we gotta learn from those mistakes. We've gotta be empowered and say, Wow, I can choose a different path. And I think that's self compassion and empowerment, rather than blame, is what we're really seeking with these things. And let me put this into context. Okay, let's start before people get sick as well as after, right? So this is all like viral theory. I call it a theory because it really came to the forefront during the pandemic, where people would say, Oh, covid is strange and weird. Some people are like, they get it and they spread it and they never even get sick. And they were talking like in the media and doctors, and now it's like, what are you talking about? Are you suggesting to me that this is new? Like, we all know viral exposure doesn't mean you get sick. I mean, I'm not talking about rabies, I'm not talking about the Ebola virus. But if we talk about respiratory viruses, since anyone who's listening, since they were three years old, they probably heard an adult saying, Oh, I'm really run down, or I've been. Overdoing working? Oh, I haven't been getting to sleep, I haven't been looking after myself. I'm coming down with something, right? In fact, why do you think we call it a cold? I mean, you know, people used to think that you get sick with a cold because it's you've been out in the cold. Then, you know that's not true, right? It's a virus. Okay? So why did people come to this idea? Why? Because when they went out and it was really cold and they stayed out in a cold, their body would get stressed, it would depress the immune system. And of course, when your immune system is depressed, your ability to get sick from a virus is enhanced. So we've got to recognize that it's not just like that with viruses, but with any kind of onset, like, like people get onset to CFS from all kinds of things, not just viruses, which gets called postfire fatigue syndrome. And we think, Oh, it has to do with the stressor that they experience, because we talk about the autonomic nervous system, which regulates stress and then regulates all of our bodily systems, which is why we got so many symptoms, right? But stress isn't the result of the experience that we have. So if I take five people and throw them all into an icy river, the stress they have is different. If you take five people and they're all on a bus that explodes, their stress is different. If you take five people and they all get dumped by their boyfriend or girlfriend, the stress is different. And if I take five people whose boss is abusive to them, their stress is different, and it's different for multiple reasons. It's not just because of how they think about it or how it affects them, or whether they're sensitive as a person or not, but it's whether they go to work the next day. How bad can the boss be when you're not there? Right? So some people will make choices to remove themselves from a stressor. Some people will make choices to change how they respond to a stressor. Some people will make changes to how they respond to it with everything else in their life as a result of a stressor. And some people don't, and the people who don't end up suffering or experiencing amount of stress that the nervous system can't cope with. So if I get the flu from hell, but I still think I have to work 60 hours per week and don't take time off. Or as soon as I'm off, like after 10 days, I then have to do it. Or I still think I have to do my marathon running training, then I'm going to have a problem. But the other person says, Oh, that's too much. I can't do anything. They reduce the other stresses in their life once they're dealing with the stressor that's come along that's unexpected. So it's a change in behavior, and it used to really the Wilder me, like people used to say, oh, people with CFS or post trial fatigue syndrome, they're weak people, you know, they like complain and they moan and there's nothing really wrong with them and all this kind of thing. And the truth is, it's the opposite. I just wish it for them that they were weaker. If they were weaker, they would have gone, Oh, it's too much. I can't turn up to work. I can't deal with the nasty boss. I

Speaker 1  
can't, I can't go and help the kids get to school because I've got a headache and I can't, you know,

Dan Neuffer  
those people don't get dysautonomia, right? Because it all gets way too much for them. Yeah, they bail out straight away. But all the tough nuts, on the other hand, who can absorb a crazy inordinate amount of blows. They can absorb more than is possible, and they don't even know they're doing it. If you go and ask them, you say, Oh, I have things, you go, not too bad if I took another person put them in their head and had them experience, they'd be like, Oh, this is crazy. This is an insane amount of stress. But they're like, and often has to do with childhood. How did they grow up? What kind of an environment? Yeah, they kind of they minimize what some other people would say, this is insane and intolerable. They just go, oh, it's not a big deal. It's nothing compared to how it was when I was blah, blah, blah, blah,

Jackie Baxter  
blah. It's so interesting, isn't it, because the me of now looking back at the life that I was living before and the life that I had lived all my life, really, you know, is now thinking, How did I do all of that? That was insane, whereas now I I have boundaries, I say no to things, and I'm still still working on the whole perfection thing, but I see it in a way that I didn't before. But yeah, it's that you just take things on without, without really being aware that you're doing them, because that's what you've always done. And. Is because it's what you've always done. You don't realize that it's a problem until suddenly it is.

Dan Neuffer  
Well, the problem, I think, Jackie too, is this is a cultural problem, not an individual problem too, like we are told that it's bad to be selfish. MY CONVERSATION daily with people is being selfish is the most selfless thing you can do right now, right? So I know we live in a very politically correct world, and I'm sorry if I'm opening a can of worms up, but seriously, I just feel like women have got the short end of the stick. Like, now you're supposed to be super mom, super mom, not mom, not like a normal mom who, like, sometimes has good days, sometimes just goes like, you know, just all too much, or sometimes blows her top. No. Super Mom always perfect for the children, because the children are more important than the parents. Now, right? Much more what? What a strange thing to self cost them more important? Yeah, I thought everybody had some value in the world. Everyone was important. Everyone had the right to enjoy their lives. No, no. Children are more important. Super mom. And then, of course, super Mom's not enough, let alone too much, right? You have to be super career woman as well, right? And then maybe a super wife and super daughter and kidding me, like, how is this supposed to work? Yeah, I just think we have some real problems with our society. I think it's and other issues too. You know, our society these days thinks everything should be good, everything should be fair. Idea everything should be fair. I mean, ideally, yes, it's that sounds nice. But if we spoke to our great grandfathers about that, they would just giggle and shake their heads, safe and fair. How many people felt safe and fair during World War Two. Is that fair and safe in World War Two? World War World War One? What about all the other world wars in 1000 years preceding that, and all the pandemics and famines you expected someone to come and raid your village even 1000 years ago, it wasn't fair. And there's nothing wrong with aspiring to things being good in the world. But when we have an expectation, we feel we are, you know, deserving of that it should happen, yes, then when it doesn't happen, like that, which is kind of what's happened on the whole planet, including the last eight years, most of the world, maybe not England, Scotland, Australia, America. But you know, the rest of the world still had famines, diseases and wars, yeah. And as soon as something now happens, because we haven't had the experience of things not being good, not being fair, not being right, then the amount of stress that causes people is inordinate, whereas, whereas other people just go, oh, well, you know, whatever, that's just normal part of life. That's what they did in the past. You know? I mean, if you look at the pandemic, you know, by the time delta came along, there was no real pandemic in Africa, right? I mean, of course, that the virus circulating just the same as here. But there was no pandemic in inverted commerce, you know, you went to the market. People were no longer wearing masks. They were just acting normal. Yes, people are getting sick. Yes, some people were dying. But compared to, you know, whatever else, compared to the Ebola outbreak, for instance, it wasn't so bad, right in the West, we stopped everything. Yeah. Now I'm not saying it's right or wrong, and I know people feel very passionate about such things. I'm just saying by us seeking to have a perfectly safe, a perfectly fair, perfectly good world, that's not reality. That's never how it's been. It's wonderful thing to aspire to, but that's just not how it goes. You know, we don't live a life in a petri dish like where we can control everything. Stuff happens. You know, stuff happens outside of our control of society and as an individuals, and recognizing that there's these ups and downs, and that we have to accept those things and then work through them, is essential for any society, and some societies, our societies have probably become less good at that, and as a result, I think more people end up experiencing more stress.

Jackie Baxter  
So it's almost like, I mean, you know, I mentioned perfectionism as a thing that I've always had, and. Something that I'm trying to work through. And from listening to you speak just then, I'm thinking, gosh, we're doing exactly the same thing for society, and actually in the process, in some ways, making it worse. And we know, you know how we understand about perfectionism in ourselves, that actually, if we're putting all of that pressure to be a perfectionist on ourselves in any way, but particularly in the context of recovery, that pressure that we're putting on ourselves is actually making the whole thing worse, absolutely. And I'm thinking, gosh, is that what we're kind of doing with society? I don't never thought about that that way before. That's really interesting.

Dan Neuffer  
Let me ask you this my grandfather, right? He was born in 1900 now, how many of his schoolmates from the very first year, year four, let's say, or five, how many of them were alive by the time he was 18? How many of his friends had a sibling that died before the age of 18, right? And now such a thing is completely unacceptable. And of course, the numbers have come down like hugely, which is wonderful. Of course. You know, I'm not suggesting we don't strive for these things, right? But now we protect our kids to such an extent that they don't even leave the house. How many I don't know in much of the Western world, if I grab the average 15 year old, how much time have they spent roaming the streets on their own? Now, certainly in some socio economic parts of our community, all the time, right? But in other parts, never. Are those kids more resilient or less resilient? I think I'm hoping that most people listening can recognize that those people might be less resilient, less capable, not more capable. And if your kids are less capable, they're less safe. So in our efforts to protect our children more deeply because we heard some nasty story, we now protect them so much that we actually make them vulnerable because they're we don't want them going anywhere where that because we're afraid they might be attacked them or robbed them, right? But because they're never exposed when they go out and eventually on their own, what skills do they have to, you know, have that tingling on the back of their neck to say, Oh, something doesn't feel right here. They're not having any influence experiences in in childhood, but on adolescence. So I think we are shooting ourselves a little bit in the foot.

Jackie Baxter  
So it's that balance between, as you say, of course, striving for, you know, not having 50% of your children dying in infancy, for example, you know, because that's a terrible thing, and we have the ability for that not to happen. So striving for a better healthcare, absolutely, you know, striving for equality, striving for better working conditions, all of these things absolutely a good thing, but I suppose it's finding the balance between that and actually allowing people to learn through experience, I suppose, and to build up those tools. And that was resilience. So when they are faced with something stressful, whether it's a unpleasant situation with a dangerous person or an illness or a stressful situation or whatever that is, that actually they are then able to deal with that in an appropriate way. I suppose.

Dan Neuffer  
I think it's an acceptance, too, Jackie, I mean, the first step, you know, we're talking about dealing with it and all of this kind of thing, let's say you don't deal with it. Let's say can't deal with it. Let's say it's all bad. But by simply saying, Well, bad stuff happens. That's just part of life, we can kind of accept it and kind of move on. You'd be surprised how effective that is. That simple thing of accepting, well, that's bad, this is what happens. Sometimes bad stuff happens, yeah, but we live in a world now where, no, no, you can't have any bad stuff happening. You have to fix it, yeah? And that is delusional. That's unnatural. That's not based in the reality of the world, for the world ever, right? And this kind of thinking, if you're trying to make your experience of life and the world this kind of thing, you're going to have a crazy amount of stress. Let me sort of, you know, close the topic off. Perhaps with this, it's like saying all the children should behave well and nice at the party. And then I get a the parties for four year olds, and we soup them up on on chocolate cake and jelly and and Fanta, right. Mm. But oh my goodness, they're yelling that one's running around. We he shouldn't be standing up. Yet we haven't sung this song like, Are you kidding? You're going to be in a lot of stress if you're trying to impose that imaginary reality onto that situation. That's basically what I'm saying, and I think it's a bit of a cultural problem. Yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
yeah. All right, so we're going to hit pause, Dan and I will be back next week with the continuation of this discussion. So I want to say a huge thank you to Dan for giving up his time and his wisdom today, and look forward to sharing the rest of our discussion with you in a week's time. Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai