Suzy Bolt's Blog
Suzy Bolt's Top Ten Tips for Promoting Recovery - 8. Managing Fear
Managing Fear, this is a biggie.
There comes a point in the journey of recovery when much of your thinking is based around fear. The fear of relapse, the fear of post exertional malaise and the fear of new symptoms emerging. The fear is there for a very good reason, the body has been very unwell, its possibly been for many people quite traumatic, at the very least its been deeply upsetting and life may have been changed for an indefinite period of time as the body simply does not want to do living the way it used to any more. The symptoms are real, the fear is real and so the individual becomes stuck in an ever decreasing version of their life. It’s a downward spiral that is difficult to arrest. The brain adapts to think like someone who is unwell, constantly checking, fretting, assessing, stopping, panicking etc.
This is neuro plasticity in action. It doesn’t take much to switch the focus of the brain from thinking like you can do anything to thinking like you can’t do anything. The brains primary job is to keep you safe, not help you live a fulfilling life! Once the brain has shifted into these fear driven neural pathways, they can stay there unless you deliberately do things to begin to unpick the stitching and help it develop new ones that allow your focus to not only on keep you safe, but to experience joy and gratitude again.
Start by deliberately making yourself look for joy around you in the smallest of things. Keep a gratitude diary and write in it a the end of each day some of the simple things that you are grateful for. Get outside into nature when you can, just sit and notice the air around you, the birds, the trees, experience small glimmers of joy and contentment with where you are in that moment. I encourage what I call my 5% stretch protocol. Do things you love at 5% of what you used to do. Let the brain begin to practice things you might love like, for example: running. Try simply visualising yourself running and enjoying it. Then put on your running shoes and just wear them in the house for an hour and think about running in them. Imagine yourself running on a route that you really enjoy. The next step is taking a walk outside in them. 5% each time if it feels right. Or, visualise yourself taking a walk in a place you love and imagine yourself feeling good there. Letting your brain remember how much your body likes to do physical things is a good first step to slowly getting up and about.
Top athletes do a huge amount of visualisation in their training to help their bodies understand what to do. It’s the same for helping a body recover from illness. Maybe put on some music that you love and wiggle around the kitchen for a few minutes and remember a time that you had a huge amount of fun dancing at a friends wedding or some other such party. Then rest and smile at the memories. Help your brain remember that life can also be quite fun.
