Hi there. I found your substack from your comment on a post in the Long Covid Support FB group. The post i read resonated with me so I subscribed.
I've been thinking a lot about brain training programs recently and your post lists a few that I've heard of and some that i haven't. While i know that my long covid illness is physical, I also…
Hi there. I found your substack from your comment on a post in the Long Covid Support FB group. The post i read resonated with me so I subscribed.
I've been thinking a lot about brain training programs recently and your post lists a few that I've heard of and some that i haven't. While i know that my long covid illness is physical, I also know that my reaction to it and how I feel each day is mental. And my mental state often has a big influence on my physical state.
Essentially I'm wondering if i could stop worrying, obsessing, ruminating, going down anxiety rabbit holes, etc... would I put myself into a better position to recover physically (while taking all of my supplements, etc...). If I could figure out how to change my mindset, could it help my body.
Problem is, i recently developed PEM - both physical and cognitive (the cognitive part really sucks). So I'm concerned that I may not be able to do a brain retraining program that requires looking at a screen or listening to videos for a long time each day.
How much time or how involved were the sessions for the program you did? Were the lessons digestable? Can you stop and start at your own brain tolerance?
Thanks so much. Look forward to reading more posts.
Hey Stacy, thanks for subscribing, and I'm glad you found my Substack. Re your question-- I'll try to write a lot more about that in the next weeks/months, but the short answer is, it really helped me with that. It did exactly what you said-- our mental state can influence the physical. The physical illness and hardships of course influences our mental state, too. Learning to shape my mental state irrespective of what was happening gave my body the space to start repairing itself.
The program I did was maybe 30 minutes of videos a day (I forgot how much exactly), plus an hour or so of daily mindfulness practice (which I did anyway), so it's definitely a commitment. But I found it easy to follow along, you can pause, and I tried to watch during times of the day that I was feeling a little more energy and cognitively able (usually afternoons and evenings for me were a little easier than in the morning). I also tailored it to my needs-- e.g. I did breathwork instead of meditation most days. There were days where I wasn't able to watch the video at all and that was fine too, you can do it at your pace. Hope this helps for now, let us know how you do, if you end up going for it! Rooting for you :)
Hi there. I found your substack from your comment on a post in the Long Covid Support FB group. The post i read resonated with me so I subscribed.
I've been thinking a lot about brain training programs recently and your post lists a few that I've heard of and some that i haven't. While i know that my long covid illness is physical, I also know that my reaction to it and how I feel each day is mental. And my mental state often has a big influence on my physical state.
Essentially I'm wondering if i could stop worrying, obsessing, ruminating, going down anxiety rabbit holes, etc... would I put myself into a better position to recover physically (while taking all of my supplements, etc...). If I could figure out how to change my mindset, could it help my body.
Problem is, i recently developed PEM - both physical and cognitive (the cognitive part really sucks). So I'm concerned that I may not be able to do a brain retraining program that requires looking at a screen or listening to videos for a long time each day.
How much time or how involved were the sessions for the program you did? Were the lessons digestable? Can you stop and start at your own brain tolerance?
Thanks so much. Look forward to reading more posts.
Hey Stacy, thanks for subscribing, and I'm glad you found my Substack. Re your question-- I'll try to write a lot more about that in the next weeks/months, but the short answer is, it really helped me with that. It did exactly what you said-- our mental state can influence the physical. The physical illness and hardships of course influences our mental state, too. Learning to shape my mental state irrespective of what was happening gave my body the space to start repairing itself.
The program I did was maybe 30 minutes of videos a day (I forgot how much exactly), plus an hour or so of daily mindfulness practice (which I did anyway), so it's definitely a commitment. But I found it easy to follow along, you can pause, and I tried to watch during times of the day that I was feeling a little more energy and cognitively able (usually afternoons and evenings for me were a little easier than in the morning). I also tailored it to my needs-- e.g. I did breathwork instead of meditation most days. There were days where I wasn't able to watch the video at all and that was fine too, you can do it at your pace. Hope this helps for now, let us know how you do, if you end up going for it! Rooting for you :)