The transcript can be found under the video.
Are you feeling stuck? Are you unsure how to proceed?
If you've been diagnosed with POTS or Long Covid you might be feeling overwhelmed. First of all there's the symptoms which constantly seem to change and then there's also the various sources of information. Even maybe two doctors that you're seeing have completely different opinions on what the next steps forward are.
At the same time there's so many programs nowadays and therapies and different things to try just like an information overload so, where do you start? This is the topic of today's video I want to discuss a few more things that will hopefully give you more clarity and help you take actions instead of feeling stuck. The first part of this is awareness. Where are you now? Let's look at some places or something you might be doing at the moment.
You might be doing lots of research, you might be finding and watching every video that you come across on the topic, you might be going into the rabbit hole of looking at the various links between maybe the cardiovascular system and the nervous system and energy metabolism and pathogens and the immune system, etc.
So much so that you actually might feel a little bit more overwhelmed than when you first started the research. What's with all the theories? Why is everyone trying something different? Why are different things working for different people? and what's my root cause and what's the one thing that's going to help me? You might be buying lots of maybe courses, programs, books, videos, Etc. perhaps you have been working with different practitioners at the same time and you might maybe let's say you buy a course or something and you might be watching videos inside of it but it still feels like you, there's something that says "maybe I should, maybe this is not it, maybe I should continue looking, is this really the right thing to do?"
Or maybe you're watching something mostly a lot of the the newer things that have come out and you're wondering "Yeah but I'm not entirely sure what is the scientific reasoning behind this? Do I trust it?" It does really.. It needs to work 100% for me There might be some hesitancy, some skepticism there. You might find yourself looking at other people's recovery stories or their Facebook posts, again, this is great from a whole perspective it's needed and also if you watch enough of these videos you do start seeing common threads but still, there might be that feeling of uncertainty different people have tried different things that worked for them.
Now of course, research is very much needed and it's very useful mostly in the beginning as you're trying to get your head around everything. But there comes a point where experimentation is also needed.
Doing is much more valuable than learning and learning can actually be a bit dangerous because learning comes with very little risk just other than time spent of course. So it's tempting to go in the direction of learning more and it's also harder to fail at learning or you might be in the case where maybe you're not necessarily doing so much research but you're just feeling overwhelmed and you just, you decide to put off making a decision, you'll see maybe there's going to be a better program that's going to pop up or a better teacher or guide or somebody that will inspire you and help you more.
And this is an area that we could stay stuck at for years. Or you might be at the point where you maybe feel like you've given up, maybe there's a sense of "none of these things are going to work for me either way".
"Those people that I've seen online they don't even have what I have". "This isn't going to work for me specifically". "Science does not know enough about my case and I cannot be helped". Do you resonate with any of these? I know personally I cycled through all of them, I spent various times in each of these phases and then again went through all of them. Nothing wrong per se with any of these phases, it's more the question of "Now we know we're here, how do we move forward from here?".
So let's talk about that How do you establish a sense of certainty and a sense of direction, a sense of knowing what step do I take next? First I'd like to talk a little bit about uncertainty. Since talking about it more might actually help you with making a decision that's best for you. First, uncertainty is extremely uncomfortable. As humans we want to control our environment. We enjoy stability, we enjoy predictability, it makes us feels like "we're really the masters of our fate". Ultimately uncertainty is a feeling and even certainly, certainty is an emotional state it's not an intellectual one.
So tune into this, where in your body do you feel uncertainty? As you learn to tune into it, more and more it becomes easier to to sit with it. If something is certain, it might feel comfy but when you cling on to it, it limits your future potential and it also shrinks the opportunity that is out there and oftentimes it makes you realize and do less than you are capable of actually doing. We need to rethink what we know about how we look at feeling stuck at this uncertainty. In and of itself uncertainty again, is not bad, it actually shows that you're pursuing or interested in what is important to you. It's a difficult choice and that's why you're feeling uncertain because this means a lot to you.
And as I'm saying that meaning a lot to you it makes me think of the heart which is why it's important to tune into the heart to tune into the gut. Trusting your gut might seem hard actually when you're at a place where you feel disconnected from your body, when you're feeling in fight-or-flight or in freeze all the time. Here is where tuning into your body is also difficult but we're doing things like deep breathing and meditation can slowly help you with tuning in more with sitting more with the feeling, with your body and in allowing you to see your next steps. Of course your gut or your heart it's not going to give you certainty, but there will be a feeling of "this feels right".
Even if it's not the perfect decision, it will be fine and we'll get to that in a second. It doesn't mean that everything is going to work out. It's only by training and experimentation that you could see the path for even more clearly. When I work with clients I use the word 'experimentation' a lot, because that's kind of all we're ever doing in our work. We're experimenting. Let's try this one thing, does this work for you? Maybe it did, some parts of it did, some parts of it didn't. Okay, let's tweak it around How can we make it different next time? A lot of times when I start working with clients they say: "Okay, well, can you just give me the exact schedule that I need to follow?"
And although, in my program I have a ton of videos that they could watch and they could get more ideas on, it still ultimately leaves a choice to them. For this very specific reason because every single person is so extremely different so often in the first few weeks there is a lot of hit and miss and it's normal. A lot of experimentation, a lot of figuring out does this kind of work for me? and what does and what doesn't.
And also seeing that if it didn't work, that's fine we could pick a part of it and probably next time it's going to work and afterwards you start knowing yourself so well, that a few weeks later, it's easy to know "Okay I know how to make this work, I know how to fit this in exactly and I know what parts of this are not going to work for me". And then it becomes easier and easier to customize it and to really listen to yourself.
I like this idea of the provisional truth. Provisional truth has us looking at things as hypotheses You can always replace them based on your information, it means always looking at our interpretations and our conclusions with the evidence we have found and looking at alternative perspectives the way to change it. So how do you put this into practice? First you really need that stillness to be able to tune in. So find ways that what gets your body being able to tune in whether it's being in nature, whether it's meditating, whether it's doing breath work, whatever works for you.
As you're tuning into your body, you might find that one area comes across more strongly to you. Perhaps you think "You know what I really would like to focus more first on the nervous system". But there's still, maybe of course, a level of uncertainty there of What do I do first? How do I figure this out? Let's say that one of your hypotheses leads you to perhaps thinking "maybe let me try breath work". Setup that's when it's important to set up a system think about your day, think about when it makes sense to fit it in maybe three times a day for 10 minutes each is too much for now, but maybe once a day, every day or every other day and in a week or two come back and see.
You had your hypothesis, you tested it, come back and see what part of this worked for you and what part of this didn't work for you. I or anyone else really cannot tell you specifically what's going to work for you and that's where tuning into the body helps you getting some of that stillness, helps you getting some of that gut feeling of saying "this might work for me" versus "this might not". Because I have seen people try vastly different things.
Things that I really have never tried on my own or didn't think they would make much of a difference for me because, again, that's me and they come back and they say: "Wow, this really helped". And every single person has me very different but in order to find what fits you, you need to tune in and get comfortable with the idea of not knowing. You can handle not knowing, others have been on a similar path that you're on now and you you can do it as well. None of us really know, honestly, what we're doing the important thing is to always adjust and evolve and take a new info and change it as the data evolves.
What comes up for you as you watch this video? How have you felt uncertainty is showing up in your life?
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