189 - When Your Brain Keeps Telling You to Buy Salami - Natalie's Recovery Story

Natalie Gould shares her journey from severe Long Covid to full recovery, revealing how nervous system regulation transformed not only her Long Covid symptoms but also pre-existing chronic conditions like psoriatic arthritis and migraines.

• Life before illness included working as a CFO and living on a small farm
• Initial Covid infection in July 2021 was mild but led to severe post-viral symptoms
• Main symptoms included PoTS, tachycardia, severe insomnia, cognitive impairment and sound sensitivity
• Within six months, she was essentially bedbound but continued working remotely
• Stabilized symptoms through extreme pacing but remained severely ill for over a year
• Found hope after hearing recovery stories and trying the ANS Rewire program
• Leaving her stressful job was a turning point in her recovery journey
• Used play and creativity as powerful tools for nervous system regulation
• Created characters to personify stress patterns and developed dialogues with them
• Recovery process led to healing of multiple pre-existing conditions
• Now enjoys swing dancing and a fuller life than before illness
• Continues nervous system regulation practices not out of necessity but enjoyment

Check out "Farm Stories" for more insights on recovery techniques & nervous system regulation.

Links:

https://www.sparrowcrowfarm.com/

https://sparrowcrowfarm.substack.com/ - Farm Stories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2pSH8og5Ho&t=1981s - self recorded recovery video

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

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Chapters

• 1:51 Meeting Natalie and Her Recovery Story
• 3:05 Life Before Long COVID
• 4:51 Initial Illness and Symptom Progression
• 10:44 Recognizing Nervous System Dysregulation
• 17:29 Stabilization and ANS Rewire Program
• 24:17 Creating Characters and Embracing Play
• 39:19 Finding Freedom Through Recovery
• 44:39 Maintaining Health and Final Reflections

Transcript

Jackie Baxter: 0:56

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long Covid Podcast. I am so delighted to be joined today by Natalie Gould, who is here to share her recovery story. So, as with all recovery stories, this is inspiration, it's ideas, it's maybe reinforcing hope and belief that, however bad things are, that it can get better. So I'm really excited to hear what worked for you, natalie. It's lovely to have you here today.

Natalie Gould: 1:27

Jackie, it's such a pleasure. You were a voice in the darkness for me and the first recovery story I heard was on your channel and it made all the difference in the world for me. So I'm just excited to be able to be on the other side and being able to pass on that good, hopeful news to other people.

Jackie Baxter: 1:48

Wow, that's amazing. So how wonderful that you have come full circle and that you're now here to share your story. I absolutely love that. So before we get kind of into this and the story and what worked and what didn't and all that, can you just say a little bit about yourself and what life was like before you got sick?

Natalie Gould: 2:11

like many people, I didn't realize it, but I was in a dysregulated high alert nervous system state before getting ill. I couldn't see it for a very long time, but now that my nervous system's back in a calm state I can see the difference. But I had a good life, a great life. I live on a little farm two and a third acres next to the land that my grandparents own, so I have aunts as my next door neighbors. I had at that time my cat and a chicken and I just enjoyed life on this lovely farm and my neighbors.

Natalie Gould: 2:46

I got sick in July 2021, so the pandemic was still going on, but things were just opening up, which felt exciting. But I can see that my subconscious probably didn't quite trust that things were okay and I worked remotely for an Italian company. I was the CFO of a micro multinational, so kind of high responsibility job, even if it was a smaller company, was pretty intense. I worked probably only 40 hours a week, but what I see now is I wasn't in front of the computer more than 40 hours a week, but my mind was working on it all the time and kind of a lot of pressure I put on myself to do a great job there.

Natalie Gould: 3:30

I loved my farm life. I had a hobby of swing dancing and I couldn't do that very much. But a week before I got sick I went out for the first time and it was such an exciting night to be out dancing again after a year and a half, and so I was really looking forward to my world opening up again. I was fully vaccinated and I just felt like, yes, this is it. And then I got sick.

Jackie Baxter: 3:58

Yeah, and it sounds like you. You know everyone's experience here is different, um, but when you got unwell was just as. A lot of people were kind of like, oh, thank goodness that's all over. Um, that sucked. You know, things are opening up and the world is going back to normal and we're hey, um, and you were sort of thinking that until you weren't, until I wasn't. Yeah, can you kind of talk us through that kind of initial illness a little bit? You know what did that look like and what were sort of your main symptoms and yeah, that sort of thing yeah, I definitely was in that phase.

Natalie Gould: 4:38

I was very hesitant and I tried to do a couple little things, but I, I was not in a rush and I finally, at the end of June, decided I'm just, you know, this is it and I, you just have to go forward, and I did. I had such a good time for two weeks and I went out that night dancing and I, you know, I had this really good time. And then I got COVID and I consciously was very concerned about having passed it on to friends who had kids who weren't vaccinated, or a friend who had chosen not to be vaccinated, and so I had a lot of fear about that. But consciously I thought I had heard of long COVID. I had a friend who had it, but I didn't know enough. Then I thought, well, it's about the severity of the illness, right, so the vaccine will help me there.

Natalie Gould: 5:27

But I had a mild illness and once I knew all my friends were okay, I relaxed into it. I just slept and was really tired for seven days. It was not the worst flu, like the flu I'd had been much sicker in my life, but about seven days in, like, I woke up in the middle of the night and my heart was just racing and it felt like I'll probably talk about it more. But one of the things that I now know influenced it is I had unresolved trauma from wildfires and that had taken place in my community from years before and I had felt that sensation of the heart like a panic attack before. But it was very odd because I didn't have the mental part that came with the panic attack right, it was just my heart was doing it alone and I was calm in my mind and I thought, well, that's strange, but no big deal. And then, as the days went on, I just didn't get better and more symptoms started accumulating. So I tried, as in any other kind of illness, to really slowly start.

Natalie Gould: 6:29

I had another chronic illness, psoriatic arthritis, and I'd been living with that for 16 years. I had it well managed, but I knew that, like stress and worry exacerbated those symptoms. So I assumed that I needed to be as calm as possible and slow and to pace myself to recover. But even in my slow pacing what I thought was slow pacing but long, covid taught me I didn't know anything about what slow was I just I just spiraled down. So doing the same amount the next week got harder to do and I was trying to build and I was just actually getting worse. So in those first six months I just spiraled pretty quickly down. I was still trying to do work from my bed because eventually I couldn't sit upright. So some of the symptoms would be chest pain and palpitations, a pounding heart and tachycardia, really disordered sleeping, insomnia. That was really severe and looking back on it now I don't know why I didn't ask for something for that, because that was just making it worse. I had a lot of.

Natalie Gould: 7:39

So orthostatic intolerance, or POTS, was kind of my strongest symptom. I didn't feel like I had fatigue, but I just couldn't do anything because of how bad I felt after I had been sitting or standing. So by six months in I pretty much had to be flat for the majority of the day. I could be up for five minutes at a time, but then it would take me an hour and a half to resolve the symptoms from those five minutes. So I slowly pieced together from some different YouTube channels this overlap with chronic fatigue syndrome, pots and fibromyalgia.

Natalie Gould: 8:59

So within six months it was clear to me that it was nervous system related. However, I didn't really know what to do from that. So I felt like they were all the same thing because I looked at their symptom list. But I was able to stabilize myself with that language, with that knowledge. But for another year I was in that severe state, still working, which is bananas to me now because I had severe cognitive impairment, sound sensitivities, and I just I start each day feeling kind of okay and by the night I was just sobbing because it was so unpleasant to be in my body and my brain that I didn't. I didn't want to keep doing it every day but I, I did for some reason.

Jackie Baxter: 9:44

So yeah, and it's. It's amazing, isn't it? You know, you said you know, looking back on the sort of the continuing to work despite how incredibly unwell you were, but like I can really relate to that, you know, you, like you, like you, you, you don't feel like you have a choice, or for me, it was like the one thing I had left. I can't do anything else. This is one thing that I can, even though I really couldn't actually in hindsight. So it's really like hindsight is is incredible, isn't it? Looking back on that, like I definitely have some kind of like is incredible, isn't it? Looking back on that, like I definitely have some kind of like, what was I?

Natalie Gould: 10:25

doing moments of like yeah, and I had to offer myself a lot of self-compassion because I didn't. I finally left two years in, and I finally left when I was actually starting to get better, which I didn't understand that I just thought, what, why would I? Why did I finally realize it? Now and with time I was able to forgive myself for that, because, one, we have these personality patterns that we're totally unaware of, subconscious coping patterns, and then the illness itself. We can't think straight, so of course, we're not making great decisions and there's a lot of fear, as you said, of like this is the only thing I have. And also, I couldn't acquire new knowledge, new information, learn new things very well. I had severe cognitive impairment but I could kind of not well, kind of do my old job because my brain already knew those people, knew the system, so I, but the idea of having to learn a new job was terrifying. So I just wanted to hold on to this for, like, financial reasons.

Natalie Gould: 11:27

And you, I just heard all this news. I Googled long COVID news every day and it's doomsday for. For I didn't think ever until I heard your podcast, to Google long COVID recovery. Right, I just kept Googling long COVID news and the.

Natalie Gould: 11:43

The news was not good, like you know, the news reports that people's brains are shrinking and you know all this bad news and I thought, if I can't get better, I need to hold on to this job because people are being denied disability claims, my doctor's offering me nothing I've got you know. So it was just this fear of holding onto it. So I think if you get to a point where you finally realize, like, what have I been doing, allow yourself the space to forgive yourself for that, because you were just doing the best you could and people around you have. No matter how much we try to explain it, I don't think that someone can really understand what you're going through it, um, until they've experienced it. So I thought I was telling people how severe I was and and subconsciously figuring they would then try to help me, um, but they couldn't understand and and I probably didn't clearly ask for help because of my own personality stuff, that which is part of my recovery figuring out how to clearly ask for help when you need it and it is.

Jackie Baxter: 12:50

It's very hard to ask for help, and even if you've worked out that you need to ask for help, it's pretty difficult when you are that unwell and everything has gone completely down the toilet to actually know what to ask for. You know it's like I need help. Okay, how can I help you? I don't know. You know it's like you know. And then people don't know what to do either, or if they, you know, they try to do the wrong things, sometimes with the right intentions, because nobody knows what you need and you don't know what you need. Yeah.

Natalie Gould: 13:25

And I felt so trapped because my processing speed, so talking with people was so exhausting and so painful. Actually, I'm very social. I love people, so I wanted desperately to be with people. But it was like poisonous to me to have to have a conversation with people. It was so hard and then I developed pretty severe sound sensitivities. So, even having people come to help me in my house, I ended up having someone clean my house once a month and the time that she was there for three hours I tried to sit outside if the weather was okay, but just her being there and the sound of the vacuum cleaner it almost made it was I.

Natalie Gould: 14:06

I did was grateful for the clean, having the clean house, but the trade-off was almost like, is this worth it or not? And um, so I felt really trapped because asking for some help, it didn't feel like it was beneficial. I asked people who deliver because I couldn't cook for myself. Um, so friends, to just please drop it on my, my porch food, food for me, and and and don't just message me like I can't, I can't talk, and that sounded very strange to people, I'm sure.

Natalie Gould: 14:39

Um, and also that could you please bring me like five to 10 meals, not one meal at a time, because the effort to arrange it, the time and pick it up and put in the fridge. I'd rather do 10 than have to do that. I couldn't do it every day to have food delivered to my house, so it was a very trapped place. Even when asking for help, even when I got beyond my ego or pride, I didn't know how to get help because people staying with me, they tried to do that and eventually got easier. But that felt just as painful as crawling on the floor for me to get food in the microwave on my own.

Jackie Baxter: 15:21

Yeah, it's such a difficult one, isn't it? Because, like you say, there's that trade off, that kind of balance of it being difficult enough to ask in the first place and even once you've got over that, you know kind of hurdle it's. You know, okay, knowing what to ask for, but also making sure that the people who are willing and able to help know exactly what you need, because otherwise a helpful helper becomes an unhelpful helper and they actually end up making things worse, even though they have the best intentions, and then you end up feeling guilty. Such a delightful spiral. I know it's wonderful, isn't it? So you said that I think around about the six month mark and you'd sort of worked out. Okay, there's something hinky with my nervous system going on here, but it took you some time to kind of work out what to do about that. So what did that kind of look like, what did you find that helped you, and maybe things that you find that didn't help as well.

Natalie Gould: 16:24

I didn't really pursue any medical interventions. I wasn't offered anything from my doctor and I listened to different things people were doing and I like with the oxygen, hyperbaric oxygen and these, and I wasn't willing to spend the money on it unless I knew, and more so the energy of even getting to these places. I wasn't leaving the house, I was very, I was housebound, and so to do any intervention I really felt like I had to have some kind of belief of why, and so I listened to reports and people would do some treatments and it would just the benefits seem to last be short term but not long term. So I didn't try a lot, but I did definitely change things with pacing. I thought I knew how to pace from this other chronic illness, but I realized it was a much smaller pieces that I needed to do and taking micro breaks of things, and so I was able to kind of stabilize. So I think that that's the other thing is, I was so unaware of how unwell I was. When I finally left my job I said I'm about 65%. Within a few months I realized no, you were at 30%. Then, like it was really shocking to see how I thought, where I was in my ability. So I think that my lowest point is probably 15%. I was still barely able to do some work, but nothing else, and my symptoms were so severe.

Natalie Gould: 17:53

And so for the next year and a half, with these little bits of pacing and trying to just calm the nervous system, I also was taking a few supplements. I think bees gave me a little boost. It didn't solve anything, did that? Did seem to to help the b vitamins, um, but I still was between 15 and 25 percent that whole year and I would. I didn't have. Some people I know have days where they felt better and they could go do something. I never had a good day, um, but I definitely so my ups and downs were just very low level ups and downs and it was hard in its own way because I couldn't see any progress and it was just miserable. So in that first year at least I got something stabilized and I think that that was helpful. But new symptoms kept.

Natalie Gould: 18:46

The brain symptoms got worse, I think, and I had a lot of what I didn't initially have, a lot of mental anxiety. I had physical anxiety but not mental anxiety, but that came later and then I ended up with a lot of obsessive and repetitive thoughts, and they could be repetitive like of boring things. They weren't even worries. It was like you know, know, I remember one time it just kept repeating you should buy salami, you should buy salami like it. It was nonsense, like what is who cares about salami?

Natalie Gould: 19:18

But I couldn't stop my brain from just doing that loop, so that first year, for a year and a half very little in the fall, however, I finally my I couldn't get my doctor to kind of give me advice. I think they're just afraid because I didn't know, and so I couldn't get my doctor to kind of give me advice. I think they're just afraid because I didn't know, and so I just decided on my own to take low-dose aspirin because I had a sensation of feeling in my lungs. Often it felt like I had just run, like a burning sensation, and I said, oh, this seems like it could be a low ox. You know this blood clot, a clotting theory, and I got a boost from that.

Natalie Gould: 19:51

I don't know if it's placebo, though, but whatever happened is with that boost, I decided and I think this is a key learning point to reinvest whatever bump you have into your recovery, and so I thought I'd been listening to a couple YouTube channels and I thought maybe there's some other channels out there, and so, in December 2022, I found a couple podcasts and started listening to them, including yours, and I listened to a couple, I remember, on creativity and your end of the year summary, and then, as I went backwards, I got to one that was done in October of that year, in January, and that was Joanna, and I identified with her story and she did the ANS rewire program and that matched what I thought the root cause of the illness was.

Natalie Gould: 20:42

But I just didn't know what to do about it, and so that it took me six weeks.

Natalie Gould: 20:47

I doubted about paying an online course from some guy in Australia, right, but I watched enough of his recovery videos that I just decided it's not that it wasn't thousands of dollars, his program is a few hundred, and to just try that.

Natalie Gould: 21:05

So that really was what, even though I made some progress before that really hearing the recovery, getting the belief that I could get better, starting the program, seeing some evidence of improvement and it still was very little.

Natalie Gould: 21:20

Between February and June, when I left my job, it still was probably only 5%, but it was much faster than I had experienced, but it was much faster than I had experienced and once I had the belief that I could get better and the evidence that it was happening, it allowed me to finally see that staying in my job was just keeping me in what I'm going to call a red zone. My nervous system was always overtaxed and that I wanted more than anything even if it meant selling my farm, which I love like getting better. I could do it, but I needed to give myself the space to do it so that that belief element, the tools that I'd learned from the program as well as things that I adapted later, mattered. But that belief and seeing the first evidence really made the difference that belief and seeing the first evidence really made the difference.

Jackie Baxter: 22:17

I mean, finding that first thing or that first kind of evidence that things can get even a tiny bit better is such a powerful moment in recovery, isn't it?

Jackie Baxter: 22:20

I mean, I talk about this all the time. You know, for me it was breathing, for other people it's different things, but you know, when you find a tool that actually works, you know it's probably not going to fix everything all in one go, but it works. It helps you, it makes you feel that little bit better, or it helps diffuse a situation that maybe you wouldn't have been able to diffuse without it. Um, you know, you prevent that crash or you come out of it a little bit quicker. It's like wow, it's amazing. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about the ANS rewire. I mean, we've had Dan on the channel, other people have mentioned it as well and I haven't personally done it, but he described it as kind of a mix of education, so understanding, of kind of nervous system regulation and of brain retraining. But it would be lovely to hear if that is actually true and kind of what your experience of it as someone who used it was.

Natalie Gould: 23:25

Yeah, and I want to say and if Dan ever hears this maybe he'll laugh I didn't realize I had a pride that I needed to get through. So when I first started the program and I thought, oh, the video quality isn't very good, and I got embarrassed for having taken it and this is just ridiculous. But it'm someone who likes programs, I like to like do checklists and what the program has delivered maybe 30, 15 to 30 minute videos delivered once a day, and this was really important. You can't skip ahead. It's just one little segment a day for maybe about 30 days. Those first segments come through and I think this is really well designed and I for my brain, you know I couldn't take in very much, and so to have those little segments delivered and it's right. The focus first is on education, to really understand the root cause of the illness, as he theorizes and and maybe my theory is now slightly different than his, but it's still essentially the same and that it's a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, probably involving the whole limbic system as well, and that I guess that education piece is so important because then I could, he gave you tools and I used his tools, but it took me.

Natalie Gould: 24:51

I was kind of a slow recovery and I had to work on my achiever when I. You know, from starting the program to ending it probably took me over two years, but I was making progress, so I didn't, it didn't matter. But at first I was kind of wanting to be like, you know, the superstar student, a plus student. I know exactly I'm going to show and then I can tell everybody. Well, I get to tell. But it's two years later and you know, I was a slow learner. But the fact that it focuses on education and the why I think is so important because he gives you tools. But then I could start collecting other tools Later in my recovery when I needed to not be so focused on symptoms, because at some certain point I am aware of the symptoms and I was using his rewiring process to calm my system. But then later I needed to still do healing things, but maybe less illness associated. So I did a book called the Artist's Way. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's for creative recovery, for people who have creative blocks. But I could see why that was going to help me, because it was going to be calming and healing and so I could anyways. So Dan's program is great. He even says that anyone that does his program they don't do the Dan Neufer program they do. I did the Natalie Gould program Right, so you use his knowledge.

Natalie Gould: 26:17

But it's not rigid, it's giving things on diet as well, because that was something that helped me to, not in a strict way, but to help my body was having a lot of trouble with blood sugar regulation way, but to help my body was having a lot of trouble with blood sugar regulation. So how could I aid my body to remove that physiological stressor through my diet? So it's physiological things he talks about, as well as mental, emotional things, and I think that helped me that I could do things from the top down or the bottom up to rewire my system. It wasn't just that I was going to think my way out of it, but the thoughts were really important. But I could do things with my posture, how I was holding my body, um, other kind of somatic based practices, uh, would also help calm that nervous system.

Natalie Gould: 27:04

So I don't know if I've covered it enough, but, uh, I thought it was what I needed and I could watch the videos over again. It's very calming voice and that was helpful for me with my sound sensitivities and very low graphics, which I at first was making fun of, but actually in the end you don't want a lot of movement or graphics if you're having. I had visual issues too, so I don't know if that covers it enough, but it was the. It was definitely the foundation that allowed me to continue to find my own recovery journey based on that, that strong foundation of what was going on in my body.

Jackie Baxter: 27:44

So it sounds like that program gave you kind of knowledge and understanding so you were able to understand what was going on in your body. It gave you kind of knowledge and understanding so you were able to understand what was going on in your body. It gave you some tools to kind of get you started so you were able to start implementing them and then you were able to kind of, because you had that understanding, you're able to go off and freestyle um, you know, and make up some of your own or, you know, add to your toolbox of practices with other things and sort of increase that kind of learning or understanding or whatever you want to call it.

Natalie Gould: 28:18

I like that freestyle thing because one of the concepts I realized was so important was how play and fun can impact your nervous system, and so if I could make my recovery playful, I realized that's going to help my nervous system be calmer.

Natalie Gould: 28:37

In fact, dan has a thing that he calls like. It's like we're retraining a frightened puppy and I kind of loved this analogy and I thought, oh so, even our frightened child, however you're going to look at it, that play would help relax a puppy or a child. And so I just started talking to my brain as if it was separate from me. I kind of think it is. You know, I had over-identified with my brain, but we're not in control of like 95% of what's going on in our brains, and so instead to just talk with it and be like, okay, we're going to go do this thing and it's fun, and just making that the recovery as playful as possible for myself which sounds crazy when you have horrendous symptoms, but there are little ways that I could like incorporate a sense of joy, play and fun and into those those moments yeah, I love that.

Jackie Baxter: 29:36

I mean, I'm a very silly person, so I'm all about play and fun and silliness, um, and I agree with you, you know, when your entire world feels like it's fallen apart, you know, and someone says, oh, just crack a smile or just have a laugh, or you know, see if you can make it fun, and you're like, well, you know you're not gonna really be on board with that, um, but actually there are ways of doing it, but it's got to be very personal, because I think, you know, fun and play is a very personal thing, um, and it, you know, depends on, maybe, who you have around you or what you enjoy doing, or what you're able physically to do. Um, but I agree, you know this, this idea of play. Play is amazing, and and so is creativity, which you mentioned as well. Um, you know, it's such a powerful thing and you know, again, there's overlap there too, isn't there? Between play and creativity.

Jackie Baxter: 30:31

And you know, certainly, for me, you know, as a, as a musician, I'm a creative, but as a trained musician, like my perfectionist came in, oh well, if I'm going to do that, I have to do it perfectly. Therefore, creativity doesn't work for me. So it was finding a way to do creativity badly and be okay with that, and when I did that, it was surprisingly liberating to be creative for me rather than to be creative for other people, which is effectively what you do when you're a professional creative, and it was quite a nice way of being able to let go right yeah, yeah, and definitely challenging.

Natalie Gould: 31:14

You know what dan had pointed out, these like stressful thinking patterns, and the first time I heard them I picked one, like, like I had, like it was a personality test. And then I re-listened to them like, oh no, I could have all of. I have all of those. So like the controller, the perfectionist, the helper, the worrier and the achiever. And so I started recognizing when they were coming up and talking to them like characters, and, um, desperately, when I was creating, I saw that perfectionist coming out and saying like no, what we're doing now is we're gonna waste some art supplies or you know, that was the gonna be because of my achiever, like these goals, right. So I started setting goals that, that, uh, I knew would help me. But with meditation too, I would say really helped too, because then I could get some distance between my thoughts. So one of the things that was very memorable is I did a recovery collage and I was on the floor and it took me a week to do it because I just get so tired but cutting out these images and putting them on the paper and I was just trying to enjoy it and I'd have these thoughts that kind of say is this how you should be spending your energy? Like you can't even cook your own, I'm still relying on people to cook my own food. And I had to re keep telling my mind like no, that's exactly what we need to be doing right now and to just let yourself you know.

Natalie Gould: 32:38

I realized through this process that I had just this exaggerated sense of responsibility, of taking care of other people and being a responsible person. And so I, a friend in Germany. I told her about how I was talking to these stressful characters who I now like, talk nicely to. Like hello, helper, I see that you're trying to help me keep us safe, but this is OK, we're going to take care of ourself and not other people. So I told her this and she suggested I also create characters for who I wanted more of in my life. And this became so fun.

Natalie Gould: 33:13

This was quite late in my recovery, I would say so. It wasn't in those very early days. But then I just would say, like you know, perfectionist, the playful child's here and she gets to lead right now, and I would literally just. You know, it became a play and sounded silly, but I just talked to them and I had because I'm a rule follower, I created one that was the Rebel. And so the Rebel like returned library books late, and this was, like for me, a really big rule. We don't even have fees anymore for returning books late. But I gave myself opportunities when I felt a little panic of, oh I don't, I'm breaking a rule and that, no, this is the rebel, she gets to have a time. So, just doing things like that and I had I did so many things. I still do them to keep that playful, relaxed spirit and to not take myself too seriously.

Natalie Gould: 34:10

But yeah, the perfectionism my creativity before was very perfectionism oriented and now that I have worked on it, I actually found that my creativity is better because I've allowed myself to be. I'm going to write. So one of the things I let myself do is decide to write a book, and when I left my job, I had to have something to say I'm doing this and I said I'm going to write a book while I'm recovering. Well, I couldn't really do it for six months, but I allowed myself to do that and learn to really relax and just let it be. And my first goal was to write an adequate book like, rather than like, the best book ever, and that freed me to do it in a fun way and the book's coming along. I think it's a pretty good book and I'm excited about that. But allowing ourselves to use creative projects to get into that playful space and just see, you know, like we did when we were kids, what can we make up and do, um and and uh.

Jackie Baxter: 35:20

Probably spending time with kids is also helpful in your recovery too yeah, and embracing that kind of inner child, um, you know, maybe that inner child that wasn't allowed to have fun as a child because of the expectations that was placed on her. Speaking for myself, um, you know, and um, you know, now I'm like, huh, yeah, I can be a kid, this is great.

Natalie Gould: 35:43

Um, yeah, you know, and like, that's not the story for everybody, but certainly for me, you know, I've grown down instead of grown up, and I love that about myself yeah, it's great and, and I will say, when I first heard a few different recovery stories after Joanna's, I didn't relate to some of them because they had come from pretty just. It happened to be the ones I heard they had experienced some pretty severe trauma in their childhood and I didn't. However, I realized with time I had wounded messages that had especially about doing the right thing and how I would feel safe. And I felt safe when everybody else's nervous system was regulated and so then I would this is subconscious I would fix everything for everyone else, which is an impossible task, so a lot of burden on my nervous system, and then that's when my body felt safe and so that's all subconscious, but I saw it in my recovery. So I just want to speak to someone.

Natalie Gould: 37:10

If you've heard stories of and you think I had a good childhood, this isn't what's affecting me. You can have a good childhood and loving parents and still get some wounded messages because of their you know your interpretation of what they were modeling to you or other things in your life that it doesn't have to be these big T traumas necessarily to have something really impacting how you're operating in the world and I don't know. Hopefully that's helpful for someone because that was a block for me. I knew I had trauma from the fires because that was uh in my adulthood, but I didn't see that I had anything in my childhood that was affecting me but that with time I saw, uh, these personality patterns that I could let go of and still be me. I think that was.

Natalie Gould: 37:57

That's a fear. Sometimes, you think, do I have to change so much that I won't be me? And I feel like I'm more me now than I ever have been. So by letting go of certain thinking patterns that were causing me stress, I actually feel like I'm more myself. So, yeah, I like this. What did you say? I've grown down instead of grown up.

Jackie Baxter: 38:17

Yeah, and I think you know that's such a good point about. You know things that happen. You know it could be little things, and actually, if we are able to let go of some of those patterns, those patterns are things where we are basically trying to be someone that we're not because we think we should in order to be safe. So actually, as you say, the more that we're able to let go of some of these patterns if we we have them the more authentically us we're actually able to be, and then we don't waste all our energy trying to be someone that we're not um. So that was a total light bulb for me as well, and it's it's still work in progress. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not perfect and I never will be um. So, yeah, it's. It's fascinating, isn't it? You know, I think, when we kind of dig around in there, what we can find.

Natalie Gould: 39:06

One thing that helped me with that meditation helped to distance thoughts, but also paying attention to sensations in my body. And I remember I had these like obsessive thinking about things going wrong on my property and my mind would just loop on it. And as I started listening to this, realizing the sensation, like this tree, I just decided this big tree was dying and it was my fault. I hadn't watered it and I should have watered it, and you know so many shoulds. But I realized the sense in my stomach when I thought the tree was dying was like a little when I was a little girl and I thought I was bad or had done a wrong thing. And so by kind of paying attention to how, where the reaction to certain things happened in my body, I started to piece together like, oh, this is this wounded child of, like I've done a wrong thing and it's my fault, but this tree the tree, by the way is totally fine, there's nothing wrong with the tree.

Natalie Gould: 40:04

Oh, I know it was a really important tree to me. Um, but just to kind of also listen to how your body's reacting. Or tension in my shoulders when was that happening that I was tensing up and kind of seeing what that might say about some old patterns. So the meditation for thoughts is important, but also noticing when my body was reacting to certain situations and why that might be.

Jackie Baxter: 40:28

Yeah, what are those messages telling us? And it's really hard to decipher them sometimes, and sometimes it's really obvious. Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, the more we do it, the more we practice it. I mean, the reason we call it a practice is because we have to keep doing it in order to get better at it. So, yeah, it does get easier and we still misjudge it sometimes. I mean, I still misjudge it sometimes now, but the consequences are slightly less catastrophic than when I was ill. But the body still sends messages, you know. So you've talked a lot about the things that kind of helped you. What did it look like? That kind of final move into full recovery? So how did you know that you were finally recovered?

Natalie Gould: 41:19

So it was from leaving my job through for the next, just like a 18 months plus. It was progression forward at that point. So it was just slow, slow, slow. So I didn't have like a single moment.

Natalie Gould: 41:33

But I think, being able to go back to swing dancing again, which was a late night, because nights were very hard for me to go out for a late night the dances sometimes start at 930 at night and so I wouldn't get home till one or something, which is which I don't do often. But the fact that I could do that and dance the whole night, and sometimes not even wearing my concert earplugs, and swing dancing Lindy Hop is a fast dance, it's not a, it's not a slow dance, and so this is a very athletic dance. And so to be able to do that, um and just enjoy it fully and the next day be sort of tired because, of course, but not have any reactions in my body and I guess I'll probably mention it too but I had that psoriatic arthritis. I had chronic migraines before long COVID, chronic migraine, chronic back and neck pain and basically all of those things are resolved. I get little symptoms and signals but through the work of learning to regulate my nervous system. They now are just little whispers to regulate my nervous system. They now are just little whispers. I pay attention to them, I decide to. You know, if maybe this is a I'm doing a little too much in a row and by too much it's actually a lot. You know, it's not the long COVID version.

Natalie Gould: 42:53

I just had family here for this big camp out 30 people between the three houses here and it was five days of family eating together and I was tired after that. But it was right. You know, you should be tired after being with family from 8am to 9pm for four days straight. So then I listened to my body and I thought, okay, my sleep's a little bit funky, a little bit funky. I'm gonna, you know, take some of these to-dos off my list and give myself that rest. So basically, like you, I get some my body's talking to me, but they're just little and I've learned to listen to them rather than pushing through it.

Natalie Gould: 43:35

Yeah, so my life is, my health is pretty good, in that being able to dance again really was the the thing. And a friend of mine who I knew before said you're better than before, but I could dance better and I I think I agree, because I'm more present and more relaxed. Uh, and that perfectionism side was blocking me from being able to really um flow in the dance. I was good before, but now it's. It's just easier and smoother, you feel kind of freer.

Jackie Baxter: 44:04

I think certainly that's how I feel. I feel freer and lighter and easier, and, um, I still get caught up in things that don't matter, but a lot less than I used to. And I notice that when it happens, and I think you know, like you say, it's like what is normal. You know, if you stay out all night dancing and don't get enough sleep, it's totally normal, right, to feel tired the next morning. It's not totally normal to be in bed for two weeks, um, but it's totally normal to feel tired. And it's certainly for me.

Jackie Baxter: 44:39

That kind of moving out of illness and into wellness was this kind of like experimentation phase and trying to really sort of normalize. You know what is normal, what isn't normal, because when you're ill for that long, you forget what normal is. Plus, you've also got all of this new understanding, new awareness, so you are noticing more things than you did before. So you know, if you're feeling tired or you're noticing little whispers, it doesn't mean that you're still sick. It means that you're actually listening to your body, whereas you didn't before. And you know, I think it's one of the sort of silver linings of this illness, isn't it? That you know it's an absolutely horrendous experience to go through, but you are better than you were before. So I guess, certainly for me. I sort of feel like I have to take that as positive, even though the experience of it was kind of sucky it was the worst of my life and the best of my life.

Natalie Gould: 45:45

Sucky, it was the worst of my life and the best of my life. Right, I don't know that. My first experience with chronic illness taught me a lot, but not as deep as this, and so I'm not sure what else would have shown me things about myself in the same way. So I'd never want someone else to go through it, I wouldn't want to do it again, and yet I wouldn't trade in what I gained from it either. So, yeah, it's very strange to say I'm grateful for it, and I know that if old me was hearing this, I would probably be swearing at my little phone podcast. It is, it is true on the other side. And so, yeah, my goal right now in the work I'm doing is, I hope, to help prevent people from getting to this state through helping them, you know, try to create and build more balanced lives, self-compassion and learning about their nervous system, and my hope is it'll.

Jackie Baxter: 46:44

It'll help people to not get to the place that that we both experienced. So, and I think you know that kind of prevention is important, and so is the maintaining health. So one of the things I was really terrified of when I got better was that I might slide back into some of those old patterns that contributed to me being unwell, and I thought how easy it would be to slip back into that, and so it was like, okay, I've done all this work to get better, I've done this, I've done that, I've done that. You know, I've learned all these lessons I need to build the life that sort of supports me, the life that I want, what's important to me, and making sure that I do maintain that health. Now I've managed to get it back, and I think that's kind of like you were saying prevention, maintenance. I think that they're quite similar, aren't they?

Natalie Gould: 47:41

maintenance. I think that they're quite similar, aren't they? I agree with that, yeah, and I wanted to say that I did a lot of practices in my recovery and I still do a lot of them, but I don't have to do them every day. You know, I didn't do meditation every day that my family was here and it was okay. I still go back to those practices, though, so to know that it is you're not. You know, I don't know what it's gonna be like for everyone, but I'm not the same that I was before and I but I enjoy the practices and it enriches me too. So it is not a like a pill that you're going to take and then you're just fixed and you go on. It is a life change too, so that the maintenance it. But maintenance sounds kind of like um, uh hard or something like it's broken, but it actually is a joy for me to to be noticing these things and um and continue the practice. I guess that's a nice word that's used for meditation too. The a life practice to keep ourselves in health.

Jackie Baxter: 48:40

Yeah yeah, absolutely. And knowing as well that when life does get stressful because it will that we have those practices, those strategies that will support us, um, and knowing that, actually, we are more resilient as a result, um, so we will surf life's waves rather than getting overwhelmed by, you know, overwhelmed and sinking for sure. So I guess, finally, what advice would you give yourself now? So, with that benefit of hindsight, what would you tell Natalie from when you were still unwell?

Natalie Gould: 49:25

Natalie, from when you were still unwell I guess you know, just going back to that inability to let go of my job. Just you can let go of more than you think you can and that it will. You know you get kind of your mind stuck into certain ways of doing things but you can get better and so be. Have that willingness to just really let go and trust that, that this is temporary, so that you know it would have changed my, my mindset of what, what to do, what steps to take. So.

Jackie Baxter: 49:56

But it's very hard to know that if I could have heard that message then yes, and I definitely think you know what, if I were to ask myself that question, you know I would give myself all sorts of great advice. Would I have listened to it back then? No, probably not, you know, I think, certainly for me. I think sometimes I had to make all the mistakes that I made in order to learn from them. But you know, I think some of it I maybe would have listened to, just not all of it.

Natalie Gould: 50:25

And maybe I would have been in the back of my mind and then it came out later. I'm like, oh, that I now which happened with certain things, that I understood things I did want to share one more thing, jackie, if that's okay. I, as I mentioned before, we started recording no-transcript to spend a lot of money, so I just wanted to offer that it's a free resource that I think is enjoyable, and I'm recording it each month so that I knew I couldn't look at screens very long. So if you, if that's something that might be helpful for people, I talk about my characters in one, uh, those those stressful characters and how I use them. Um, and this last one was a bit on meditation, but I just want to give that as one of the things that I hope will give back to the people who have, uh, you know, sort of pay it forward to those who have have helped me.

Jackie Baxter: 51:40

Absolutely, and I think you know that that's important as well. You know that kind of yeah, giving back, or very much resonates with me because I felt the same, so I will make sure that I put a link to that into the show notes. So if anyone wants to check out Farm Stories, I want to go hear the one about the characters because I think it sounds hilarious. It's going to be amazing. So thank you so much for coming along today for sharing your story. It's been really exciting hearing what worked for you and hopefully people listening will have some inspiration, some ideas and, if nothing else, some hope. So thank you, natalie.

Natalie Gould: 52:24

And thanks for having me, Jackie, and for giving me hope in my darkest time.