100 - Michelle Irving - Emotional Empowerment in chronic illness

Episode 100 (yes - 100!!) of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with the fabulous Michelle Irving, a coach working with people with chronic illness to help them to feel empowered. We talk about her own experiences with chronic conditions and how she is using them to help guide others.

This is a wonderful, inspiring discussion, always focusing on what we can do, rather than what we can't.

Emotional empowerment map

Sarah Marie Ramey (the Lady's Mysterious Illness)

Michelle's website

Career & Chronic Illness

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

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

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Jackie Baxter  
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the long COVID podcast, I am absolutely delighted to welcome my guest today, Michelle Irving, who is a coach working with people with chronic illness to help them to feel empowered. So I'm really excited to dive into a bit more about what this means and how it can help us. So a very warm welcome to the podcast. 

Michelle Irving  
Thank you so much, Jackie. And it's, it's a real pleasure to be with you. 

Jackie Baxter  
So would you mind just saying a little bit more about you and what you do? 

Michelle Irving  
Absolutely. So all of the work that I do, is really my souls work in the world. And it's not that I woke up, you know, at 18, or 25, and said, I'm going to work with everybody with chronic illness, and I'm going to help everybody in the way that I have worked things out for myself. It's really evolved over time. 

So I live with two chronic conditions, one life threatening, which is an autoimmune condition where my blood cells attack my liver cells. And that cannot be cured, but has to be managed with medication. The other condition I got later, which is somewhat more debilitating, which is a vertigo condition. And while that's well treated with medication, now, it's taken many years to get to that point. And I will still wake up with vertigo, you know, once a month, a couple of times a month. And what that means is that I can't read, I can't write, I can't listen to anything, all of that gives me vertigo, I will have it lying in bed 24/7. And so both of these conditions have had me in bed for many, many months at a time in the dark.

And the work that I do really comes out of the internal work with myself, which is how can I be with this experience of myself and use it to connect to my deepest power? And what I do now is teach women how to do that for themselves. But I teach it in a very distilled way, so that you don't have to spend the 18 years working that out. I've done the research, I've tested it, I've got some really clean, very free resources that you can get, but also programs you can do with me. And what they teach you is how to do this step by step. 

And in the last few years in particular, I've worked with a lot of people with long COVID. And the work that we do there is we work with the emotional empowerment map for chronic illness. And that's what we can also talk about today. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, because I think, I mean, something certainly that I noticed while I was unwell was that suddenly, you become unwell. And it's like your whole life is turned upside down, this experience that you never asked for, you didn't want. But suddenly you're kind of thrown headlong into this kind of thing. And everything has changed almost overnight. 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. 

Jackie Baxter  
And it's very tied up with identity, I think isn't it, you know, our identity is very much on like, what we do for work, what we do for pleasure, our relationships with other people, and many other things as well, that I'm sure I haven't thought of. But as soon as you become unwell over a long period of time, then all of those things change. You maybe can't work, you can't do your hobbies, you can't do what you did with your friends and some of your friends maybe don't want to hang around with an ill person. And you know, this completely changes everything, doesn't it? And it's, I think it can be very, very difficult, well, obviously, it's very, very difficult to kind of work your way through it, isn't it? 

Michelle Irving  
it's extremely difficult. So what happens is that being physically unwell, is really difficult. And it's almost equally if not more difficult, the emotional and mental stamina and process that it takes to be with the physical experience of illness. And so I can't help you with the physical process, but I absolutely 100% can help you with the emotional process. And that's really what I'm dedicated to. 

So what you're talking about is when I was in these spaces in bed, and for me, it was particularly not knowing if I was going to move into organ failure or if medication was going to work, not knowing what life was going to look like. I decided that I would just ask myself some questions. And the question I asked myself was, what does this stage feel like? What does it feel like? 

And so it felt like being at sea, in a little boat, and you cannot see land and you've got sort of doctors around you, and maybe a little bit of help. But it's you with yourself for hours and hours and hours a day.

And what I did is over the course of my experience with illness is I kept asking this question. And then what I tried to work out is with each of these questions, what actually helps. And so if you like, we can go through the four emotional stages of chronic illness. And we can have a conversation together about what those stages entail. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I think that might be really useful. Because that picture you've just brought up for me, you know, it's that uncertainty, it's that kind of feeling like you're, you know, being dragged places that maybe you don't want to go, and you don't know where you're going next. And it's very kind of, you know, and if for people who are experiencing nausea, it's probably even more appropriate. It's this sort of, yeah, uncertainty, foggy, misty. I mean, you know, there's so many things that are scary about this, I think, you know, it's partly, you know, you might have physical symptoms that are really scary, you might have mental symptoms that are scary. And also, you just don't know, which is pretty terrifying in itself, isn't it? 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. And so the four stages emotional stages are, one is you're out in the sea of the unknown. That's the first stage. So that is, you may or may not have diagnosis, but your body is in a state where it's like, okay, I really don't know. And you're adrift. And you cannot see land.

The second emotional stage is actually where you might have diagnosis, or you might have treatment, or you might suddenly be feeling a little better. But only marginally. But it's like you wash up on the beach. And it's at that point where you have a little more capacity, that everybody who's been around for the patient in crisis process usually disappears, because it's like, oh, you're better now. When in fact, that's the stage where it's like, Ah, okay, what am I doing?

The third emotional stage is what I call making your way through the forest. So you've got a little more capacity, and you can just do the next thing in front of you. For me, I could walk to the letterbox or I could go to the market and get some food, I could just have a bit more capacity to do a few more things. 

And then the final emotional stage is what I call sharing the wisdom or return to the village. And it's like you come up over the hill, and you're like, reintegrating back into inverted commas, normal life. 

The thing about these is they have some correlation to the physical process, but they are emotional stages. And we all know, one blood test, one symptom, you can go from being in the village back to out at sea, you can go from being at sea, you can get the right medication, you like, Oh, I am good. We bypassed washing up on the beach, I've got energy, I've got capacity, I'm now making my way through the forest. 

What this does, and everybody is more than welcome, this map is 100% available. And I know Jackie will put the link in, you can get the map, and you can get the workbook to go with the map. And there's a video that will take you through these stages. 

What the map gives you is a psychological space. So you can put all the feelings and all the processes and understand where you are, and understand what the emotional stages are of what you're going through. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I mean, I'm very visual. So I love this map. Because you can literally see it. So yeah, I'll put that in the show notes so people can can have a wee look at that. But I think yeah, and what I find really interesting is the physical and the emotional side. I mean, yes, they are two separate things. But they also are very linked, aren't they? 

Michelle Irving  
They're very, very linked, because your emotional process is often in response to your physical experience. And once your emotions get involved in your physical experience, then your physical experience can riff off the emotions. But I want to be super clean and clear about this. What happens is that everybody else will try and jolly you up around what you should be feeling, because they're very concerned about the stress that you're under. When you are living with chronic illness, it is stressful. That's just a given. There's nothing to jolly you up over. What the map gives you., and this we can talk about is what to do emotionally, physically and mentally at each of these stages.

So if we start with the being at sea, which you've already indicated, like for you like oh yeah, I know that space. I know what it's like. Often what happens when we're emotionally at sea, because we don't know what treatment is, we don't know what's going to happen to our finances, we don't know what's going to happen to our relationships, we don't know what's going to happen to work. What happens in that space is we go, okay, everything seems to have disappeared, I cannot see the land. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and map this out and work this all out. So I can get back to work. And I'm going to do everything in my mind. And I'm going to try and work out right now from this position, what to do about working or relationships. 

And we run out of energy into the ground. Because when you're at sea, you literally cannot work out how those things are going to happen. Your only job when you are at sea, is to be at sea, and take care of yourself while you're at sea. What that means is, what do I need while I'm at sea? That means I need water at my bedside table. I may need somebody to get groceries, I may need to work out how to order food. I need to work out how to go to medical appointments, or I need to work out what questions I'm going to ask at the medical appointment. Because you are at sea. So emotionally and mentally in this process, we have to say, in reality, I'm currently at sea. So this is what helps me at sea.

Now the key to this is that where you are now is not the end of the story. And that is why there's a map. Because it feels like when you're at sea, I will be here forever. And if you have been living with long COVID for a year, two years, three years, it can feel like forever. That is absolutely true. That feeling is real. What the map does is give you ways to work with this. 

And I want to give you a really clean example. There's an extraordinary woman. And I will give Jackie the link so that you can all follow her and find her. Sarah Marie Ramey. Her book is The lady's handbook for her mysterious illness. Sarah lives with MECFS along with a range of other conditions. She is an extraordinarily talented songwriter. She's also an author. And she worked on Obama's 2008 campaign when she first came down with symptoms.

What Sarah has done in her experience is she has managed, even with her physical capacity not really shifting or changing, and you can read her book, you can watch interviews, she's extraordinary. She will tell the truth. But she has worked out how to move through the other emotional stages of the map, regardless of the physical experience. You do not have to do this at all. What I am sharing with you is that it is possible to move through the emotional stages, regardless of what is happening physically. And we can talk about that as we go through the other stages. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, because I think I mean, like you've just said, you know, when you're at sea, I described myself as sort of flailing you know, it was like trying to find anything, trying to do things that didn't work, but I kept trying them and this kind of like, you know, kind of like manic almost slightly, you know, frantically trying to do things. And I think part of my recovery process was - people call it acceptance. I don't like that word very much, because it makes me feel like I'm giving up, but once I accept that actually, in that moment, the flailing is not helping. And actually, what I maybe need to do is kind of sit, that did kind of helped me, whereas the flailing, all it did was exhaust me and make things worse, really. So I think, yeah, what would be really helpful would be to try to work out I suppose, firstly, what is best to do when you are in that space? And then what you potentially could do to try to move out of it? 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. So the first thing, the question you ask yourself in this space is what helps? And your first answer is going to be well, not being sick helps, that's what helps, okay. Yes, that would help that would help. However, the reality is, I am in this experience. So what helped me was to have a visual and to think about it's like, Okay, where am I? I'm at sea. Okay, what helps, I can feel like I'm in a little boat, and I've got my water bottle. And there actually isn't other things for me to do. I'm sleeping a lot. I'm trying to manage insurance. I'm going to appointments. But my number one question is what helps here. And you can break that right down to what helps on my bedside table. What helps if, with food. 

You will have people who will potentially offer to help. And some of them are what I call unhelpful helpers. They are the people who have the unsolicited advice, send you the articles, talk about somebody they knew - very unhelpful helpers. And you will have some people who are helpful helpers. Again, if you can work out, what do the helpful helpers do? We pretty much always know what the unhelpful helpers are doing. 

So what the unhelpful helpers get is either we fire them, or we give them helpful jobs. And to do that, we say, what would really help is. And then we say, what would really help is for the bed linen to be ready and washed on Sunday, so at least I can feel like I start a new week, whatever it is for you. So this is inner work. That's the stage. 

What I did in that stage was like, when I was in the liver process, in bed for many, many months, I was like, Well, I can't work. I can't get groceries. But what I can do is, what would I like to do with my time, even if this is the beginning of me passing from life? And I thought to myself, I'd really like to read the Odyssey. And that's what I did. I used the time to read the Odyssey.

And so you can use the time and say, Well, what do I want to do with my time. Now you may not be able to hold up the book. Because you might not have the physical capacity. But you're like, what helps? What helps is the pillow? What helps - unhelpful helper? Could you research getting something that I can put the book on? Could we work out what helps on the lighting of the Kindle or the iPad? Or whatever it is? Could you go to the library and get me this book. Now the unhelpful helper has a task, or the helpful helper, whatever it works out. But you have a little project then for yourself. And that's what you're doing at sea, is you're using the time in whatever capacity you have, it is a very creative time that you can use creatively. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I love this. Because I think when I was at sea, I didn't really know what to ask for. And I was doing all the wrong things. And nothing was helping and things were getting worse. And all of this stuff that I'm sure people can probably relate to. And actually looking back on it now, I'm thinking, well, obviously, what I needed was someone to make some meals for me, someone to maybe just like talk to me and distract me from all the, you know, other stuff, or you know, all these things, or, you know, can you please maybe not crash around at 6.30 in the morning, because that is really not helpful. 

But at the time, I don't think I really knew what I needed. And I suppose that's possibly because partly Hindsight is great, isn't it? But I think at the same time, I hadn't really, genuinely thought, what do I need? I think I'd been more sort of concerned with, I need to get better, rather than what do I need in this momen. Which might have been more helpful. 

Michelle Irving  
Correct. So what this does is shift you into, we're not in any way saying we don't need to feel better. Like we don't, we're not saying well, we're just gonna lie around and say what helps, but we're not going to go to the doctor or we're not going to do the research, whatever it is. That's not what we're saying. We're saying that the first question to your own emotional empowerment is what helps? And it will be particular for you and it will shift between days. But if you get that toolkit, you now have something to ask the helpers to help with and all of a sudden we're on what helps. We're not on what doesn't help or that I'm stuck here eternally.

So what this does is set you up as a routine because now you're getting practice. What you're doing when I'm at sea is I'm practicing working out what helps. I'm practicing asking for help. I'm practicing my skills about how I do that and how to do that in an empowered way. I'm also practicing not apologizing. That's what I'm doing here. And I want you to think of them as these are the foundational emotional skills for the other stages. 

Jackie Baxter  
I mean, definitely asking for help was something that I struggled with before I was ill and I struggled with when I was ill. And I probably am not a lot better at it now. But I'm at least kind of aware, I think now that it's something that sometimes you do need to do. And that is okay. I think before it was all this kind of like, asking for help. That's, that's giving in, that's showing weakness. We can't do that. Which is completely wrong. But I think that was what I thought at the time. 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. And so just on that, what being at sea does is it will show you all of your thoughts, right. And it will show you, for me, it was like I have failed as a human, if I have to ask for help. That's what it showed me. And so I was very fortunate that some of the people who were helpful were really clear with me that I was in shame. And so the being at sea was a place where I got to be in my vulnerability. And I actually got to shed the shame. Because I had to ask for help. And I had people who I could share that with, and I got to experience being helped. 

And the one thing about this is, we think that if somebody has rejected us, or we have parents or guardians, or somebody who has said, You need to work this out yourself, we're not going to help you. We think that everybody thinks and feels that way. It's not true. There are other people, and it's likely you, who are like, I like to help, I don't want to see somebody suffer, if I can do something I like to help. 

And so there's a lot going on emotionally here that you can actually practice with and work with, because you don't have the capacity to put up the veneer. So you get to work with your vulnerability. You don't like it. But it's an exceptionally good skill for a human to have. And so we can move to the other stages if you like now, Jackie, because that's your foundation. And I want you to think of it as a foundational skill set. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. And I think you touched on something that was a very big thing for me was the, the not really liking it thing. You know, the kind of inner world that I thought, oh gosh, the I don't like this, and I don't like these feelings. And I don't like, you know what I'm thinking about all of this. And, you know, I think my natural reaction was to try and sort of push it away, which wasn't really helpful. But I suppose it's probably quite an understandable reaction. So actually kind of having to sit with it was definitely something that was useful to have to be kind of forced into doing, because I wouldn't have done it otherwise. 

Michelle Irving  
Right. And so what this does is it gives you a connection to yourself. So the time - this is why, for me, it is not the doorway we wanted. But I absolutely fundamentally believe, and see day in and day out with people. Chronic Illness is a doorway into your power. It looks like it's a doorway into being disempowering. But the reality is it is a doorway into your sovereignty. If you do not have boundaries before chronic illness, you absolutely will have them through chronic illness, because you just don't have capacity to be a people pleaser anymore. You don't have the bandwidth. 

And so this process of for me, it was always like how can I use this experience to be more connected to myself, including the parts of me that I don't like - the vulnerability, the feeling of being victimized. And then what I would say to you is, what is so beautiful now about the Instagram community or about Facebook or about wherever you go. All the podcasts, there are now people talking about it. And there are now people talking about the resources. So whether it's through listening to the podcast, whether it's through popping over to my website and grabbing this heaps of free resources. I have a podcast called The Pajama interviews. I've interviewed a whole lot of women who have their own resources, you are in community. 

So it might feel like you're alone in the sea. But that is because you're alone in the realm of the other people around you. But we're all in the sea here together. We're all in our little own boats. So you're not alone. And we have ways that can help you, we can say, here's what I did. Here's what I gave a go. And that's why sharing is so important. So you get to resource yourself through connection with people who are in your cohort. And that's a very important thing to do for yourself. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yes, yeah, absolutely agree on that, yes. Should we move on to our next stage? 

Michelle Irving  
The next stage. So what happens is, after you've been essentially the patient in crisis, if you get a little bit of capacity, or you emotionally start to get more capacity, you will essentially wash up on the beach. This is the point where if it's happened a bit physically people like, Oh, you're good, and they disappear. It's also the case where you're like, I've got a little bit of capacity, I want to run full bore with this capacity, and then you're in a flare, or then you toppled over and you're like, I ruined it. These are the emotional parts of this process. 

So firstly, washing up on the beach is, what will happen is the emotional backlog and the stress from being at sea starts to also wash over you. That is a normal part of the process. What you have been keeping at bay, often the grief will wash over you at this point.

So the question is, again, what helps? Well, the first thing that helps is, when you wash up on the beach, you're not running a marathon, you're washed up on the beach, you've been at sea. This is why the visual helps. And then it's like, well, what helps here. So what helps here is more sustainable nourishment. It is okay, to spend the energy and to spend the days in bed for five days, you have not failed, all you are doing is testing your limits. 

This is normal for a child who learns to walk, the child runs face first into the lounge, and doesn't say - I've ruined walking, walking is over. I'm never gonna walk again. The child looks at that and says, Lounge. Hmmm. Okay, let me give this another go after I've worked out how to get up off my bottom.

And so it's the same thing, you've washed up on the beach, you might try and run the marathon and then you will learn your physical system, your mental system and your emotional system. And you will get to say - I can spend my energy that way. And what's happening at this point is you're working out limits and how to work with limits. because prior to this, you haven't even had the limits, right, now you've actually got a limit. 

And what you use this time to do is work out how you work with energy. That's what the time is for. Because on any given day, I know that if I work too long, or say for example, I'm going to give a public talk next week in another city. So I know that there's a plane flight, I know that I will need rest, I will need about 24 hours rest after a plane fight for the vertigo. I will need to make sure that I'm in a hotel where I can have food pretty quickly. So I don't have to spend energy to go out and get it. I know what I need to go give the 20 minute talk. And I know that I can't run from there onto an airplane, that I will need the time to rest again for airplane.

All of that is me knowing my system, the skill to know that I learned washing up on the beach. That's what the time is for. And so everything you're learning are life skills. You might sit there and think but what about my friend who runs a marathon and she's so great at this or whatever. That's okay. That is the capacity she has. We're working with our capacity. And in that capacity, we're just noticing if there's a longing. If I long to do something. 

And you can capture that, at this washed up on the beach stage, you can just notice it. Because when you get to the other stages, even emotionally, you might be able to fulfill that longing in a different way. So longings are a normal part of this process. It is not coming up for you to feel wretched about yourself. It's coming up for you to notice, because in the other stages, we can work with that creatively. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and I think that was a big thing for me, you know, I was a very active person. So suddenly not being able to do that. It's suddenly - it comes back to identity. You know, I couldn't do the things that made me me. I couldn't do the things that I did with my partner. I couldn't, you know, do things that I enjoyed. I think it took me a while to realize that actually, maybe it was kind of grief for this life that I had before that I didn't have anymore. And it was it was a real struggle. And I think yeah, maybe I just didn't really know what to do with that. It was just this kind of like overwhelming kind of like, I don't know awfulness of just not being able to do things, you know, things that were important, I think.

Michelle Irving  
And feeling like I'll never be able to do them again. And that's where we move from a grief to a hopelessness almost, because grief is a normal and natural part of the process. It's very easy, normal, natural to move into hopelessness. And so now what we have, even in this moment, because this is part of the process, for me, it's like, okay, now I feel hopeless. How do I love and care for myself when I feel hopeless? 

And so the question, it's like, Well, can I accept myself feeling hopeless? And the answer was, No, absolutely not. I can't accept it. Well, can I accept that I can't accept feeling hopeless in this moment? Okay, I can kind of work with the fact that I can't accept that. And so now I'm on ground again. And I don't have to ruminate about it. It's just like, I just know something about myself in this moment. And what I know is, I can't accept the fact that as a human, I feel hopeless.

But also, I know that feeling hopeless is a normal human reaction. And everybody feels that at some point in time. And so then I'm just with myself going, it's also human to not be able to accept it. 

And it looks like a labyrinth. But what you're doing is building your skill in your human-ness. And what that means practically, is, you can shift for that into what helps? What helps either with the feeling of hopelessness, or what helps me feel a little more connected. Because hopelessness is usually connected to loneliness.

So what helps me feel connected? And if that is scrolling your phone, watching the outtakes on Instagram, from Taylor Swift's Errors tour, and that lifts your spirit - beautiful, you have found a piece that helps. And that's your only job. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and I guess what, it's such a lovely thing, as well as that that's going to be different for different people. Because we are so individual, aren't we? 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. What helps when I feel washed up on the beach is to know that I don't have to do it all today, to know that I'm recovering my energy. That's what I'm actually doing. To know that there's a map and there are other places that I'm going, and to notice the things that I feel grieving about or longings for, because they're clues for what I want to do in the future. That's what helps. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I'm kind of tangenting here. But it's this kind of thing, where you don't realize quite how much you want something until suddenly you are told that you can't have it. And I'm wondering if maybe this maybe as a way of bringing up some of that stuff. I mean, it's not a very nice way of bringing up some of that stuff. But you know, when suddenly you're ill and you can't. 

Michelle Irving  
Yeah you've got the time to work out what's really important to you. That's a beautiful life skill. Because these are life skills, you get to learn through it. It's not the curriculum you wanted to take. But given you're in the classroom, you absolutely can rebel. I'm in no way do I say you have to take the curriculum. But you can use the time to connect with yourself.

So the next stage is you've washed up on the beach, you've sort of got the grief, you've got a bit of hint about the longings and now you've got a little more capacity. It's like, Huh, because I paid attention to my longings. Because I know what my limits are a little. Now I'm testing more. And I know that what I really longed for was to be able to go to the market and pick an orange that I liked, because the helpful or unhelpful helpers just weren't getting the oranges that I really liked. And it's a silly example. But the autonomy of being able to pick the thing you like, the way that you like it, is extraordinarily nourishing.

And so when you're making your way through the forest, you're starting to normalize and work out what works for me, what do I have capacity for? What might a little bit of work look like? What might a little bit of socializing look like? What might it look like to stay up a little later? What might it look like to expend a little more physical energy? And you've got a bit of there's almost a joy about the life, it's like, oh my God, have you seen this thing life - like this is amazing. I can go pick an orange and you start to see that excitement. So the emotional energy is now starting to gather pace.

The final emotional stage of this process is that you end up with even more capacity, or you start to integrate into your new normal. And what happens often in this process is that you want to share the wisdom of what you've learned. Sometimes that's self initiated, often it's people come and ask you. What that can look like is I went back to work five hours a week spread over three days, that's how I returned to work. I was still well and truly on steroids, I was still had a lot of fatigue. You know, I had a lot of brain fog. 

What that looks like, though, is that people would come to me at the photocopier. And they knew something about that I was grounded. And quite still in my energy, I was also really connected to life. I wasn't connected to the gossip or the drama, because it didn't exist in my psyche. It's like, I don't have the bandwidth. So people would ask me, how did I go through this and have such a more positive or headed I seem okay, emotionally.

Often, if people are going through divorce, if people are going through redundancy, you have built the emotional skills to be with yourself and others in very difficult places. That is an extraordinary soul gift in the world. You do not have to share it, you do not have to do anything about it. If you do choose to share a little bit of advice, or a little bit of encouragement, good, that's up to you. 

So what this stage is about is you get to choose whether you share the wisdom, but you get to reintegrate into This as my normal, this is my limit, this is my social limit. And what happens is your capacity physically, emotionally and mentally expands. And it will also contract on different days. And you come to know your expansion and contraction capacity.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, this is very, we were talking a little bit before we started recording and this is kind of the place where I am. And you know, I am now considering myself recovered. But integrating back into, quote unquote, normal life is an experience that I didn't really expect to be as strange as I am finding it. 

Michelle Irving  
Super strange. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, it is really weird. And it's yeah, it's learning under the banner of, you know, normal, of what I can do and what I want to do. And understanding this kind of like, every regular "healthy person" has limits, they have boundaries, they have good days and bad days. So you know, if I wake up, I mean, I woke up this morning feeling quite tired and thinking, Oh, my goodness, I have to get on zoom by nine o'clock. Like, whoa, and I'm thinking well, okay, why am I feeling so tired? This is, you know, is this bad? 

And then thinking, well, actually, no, this isn't that this is completely normal, because I did tons at the weekend. You know, this isn't bad. This isn't long COVID back, this isn't, you know, the world's biggest disaster. This is just normal. And the idea of finding normal and finding that line, and what life is now for me. It's a process, I think, and it's not a process I expected.

Michelle Irving  
It is. And so what happens at this stage is just as you've been through a whole physical journey, often you get to this stage and you're like, Ah, I thought I was going back to who I was. But I've had a whole identity shift. And now we're in the emotional stage, and your identity can actually feel at sea, even though you're physically returning to the village. So now you're at sea and identity, you're like, what's real? I can't see land. I don't really know what I want, I certainly don't, you know, want that. I definitely don't want that. And so you often have worked out what you don't want because you've been through a process of making a lot of little choices about what you do want. 

And I want to give this to you again, in a visual so you understand it. So we've got the map, and we've had a bit of a chat about that. What happens when you're unwell, if you think of normal life, it's like horizontal. You do these lockstep things. You know, you go to school, you might go to uni, you go to work, you might have relationship, you know, there's this - we go linear and it's very horizontal and that's what normal inverted commas life looks like. 

You have an experience of illness - you go vertical. And the place you go vertical is down into yourself. And what the illness does is it strips off the identity, it strips off the status, it strips off the ways in which you feel power. And you get to the bottom of the well, and you feel like nobody. Now, but I can tell you about this is this is a normal part of transition in psychological development, which is the reason I read Odysseus, because the whole thing is about that. 

But that is not the end of the story. You then get more capacity, particularly psychologically, and you start to put on the identity that you choose, you start to put on the choices that you choose. And it looks like you think you've come up vertically at the point in which you went down. But that's not true. You've come up 100 meters, 1000 kilometers, because you've been in the under inner world and you sort of shoot back up horizontally further along. 

Now to everybody else it looks like you went back to work, but to you, it's like, oh, no, I'm a completely different person in where I've been psychologically. I can hold so much more of my own emotional process. I can feel what is honest and true more, and I have a detection for BS like you do not believe now, because I've been part of the medical system. So now you've got an emotional shift. And now you're integrating and this is what I really call a transition to wellness toolkit. Because identity is fundamental here. And you have grown, and you get to make new choices.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and it's almost like you can build your new life from the ground almost 

Michelle Irving  
Yes. 

Jackie Baxter  
Which is, I think it's both very exciting and very scary at the same time. 

Michelle Irving  
It's terrifying. 

Jackie Baxter  
But like you say, you have choices. And those choices are going to be different for everybody, given their circumstances. But I mean, I think I sort of had this kind of feeling where I was like, Oh, my goodness, I feel like I can do anything, which was amazing. But at the same time, it was just like, Oh, my goodness, I can do anything. That's - what do I pick? What do I - What do I do? What does this mean? What do I feel? And you know, yeah, I mean, I was I was saying to you beforehand, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm moaning because I'm absolutely not, it's a wonderful position to be in. But it is much, much weirder than I was ever expecting it to be.

Michelle Irving  
Yes, because this is you've been through a psychologically developmental process, you haven't been doing nothing. You haven't been doing nothing. You've been with yourself 24/7 in some of your deepest emotional fears, you have held your own hand, even if you thought you held it poorly. You have had a pity party, which I absolutely 100% am all for. 

I'm all for a really good pity party. And I know exactly how to do it now in a way that really works for me. I also know that I can, if I do it really well, I usually last about three days. And I'm usually a bit over myself then, like there is something on the other side of a really good pity party. And so you know yourself in ways that most people don't know themselves. And you know you have choices, in the ways that most people do not come into realization through, until they're at least in their 40s and 50s. If not when they retire. But you have this skill of knowing that everything is a choice.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I do love this. And, again, I think it can be a sticky subject, because there are all sorts of people that will say, Oh, my illness was a gift. And it gave me all of these things. And you know, that's great if you can feel like that. But I'm looking back at my last, you know, three and a half years and thinking, Well, that was three and a half years of my life that quote unquote, I wasted or, you know, that I wasn't able to experience. And you know, I don't like that either. 

So I'm thinking, well, actually, maybe what I want to do is to say, right, well, it was awful. I'm not going to deny it wasn't awful, because it was and I didn't want it. I didn't ask for it, and I didn't enjoy it. But, what I am maybe able to do is to say right, well, I learned quite a lot through it. And that is stuff that I can take forward into my new life now, that is going to be better than the old life. So you know, although I didn't enjoy it or ask for it or want it or any of those things. At least I can take something from it. And I think maybe that's where I'm going to sit.

Michelle Irving  
Yes. What you take forward is yourself, because you now know yourself in a much more deeply aligned way. And you know, what choices are important to you. And you know how to make choices within a range of very limited options. That's a skill. So when the vista opens up, it can feel overwhelming, it's like, and then you're like, I have to make all the right choices. Because like, which is what comes from being unwell. It's like, I've already got so many spoons, so like, this choice I'm going to make today will affect the next six weeks. But that's not the case when you're returned to the village. 

And so to close you out, I want to give you what this all looks like, because what does it look like holistically? So for me, this was years of like, what does it feel like to get the map, right? And then I was like, Okay, I know what the four stages are emotionally for myself. Great. And then it's like, oh, then I got vertigo. And back, I was at sea. And then I had to, like, test the map. And I was like, this sucks. And then I got what I call my refresher of Buddhist boot camp, in order to say, can I be with myself? Does this work here? Well, I can tell you meditation works with the liver condition. Meditation does not work if you've got vertigo, you can't do it, because you're watching your own body in sense, it doesn't work. So I had to work out other things. 

Then what happens is, I was like, Okay, here I am, can I use this to be close with myself. I don't want to, but here I am. Then once I moved through that process, I'm like, I'm going to build the map, everybody asks me, so I'm going to build them a map, and I'm going to share it with people, then people keep come asking. And then I ended up in this transition of a career where I left my job, and the salary, to come and do what has become my dream job. 

And here's what makes it the dream. I spend my time with these incredibly magnificent women who are in a very difficult experience. I share with them some of the tools that I learned. And we listen for what works for them in their sovereignty. We get super creative about how things can still be possible, even if you're very unwell. And we see the sort of so luminous results. 

An example of this is I have a beautiful, beautiful young woman, we'll call her M, she is early 30s. She got Lyme disease when she was still finishing college. And she's never been able to go to work. She was dux of her school. The most of her capacity is that she can put her feet on the ground, on the stoop in the sunlight. But most of the time, she has severe headaches, she's in bed. 

She's an incredibly beautiful writer, but she can't hold the pen to write. And so what I did is I always know that there's a way for the creativity to be expressed. The one thing M is good at, she can tell a story. She can tell it like you would not believe. And so I said to her, okay, dictating it. It's not working, you know, that doesn't feel good. But she's a natural storyteller. I said, Well, could we tell the story, the novel that you've got mapped out? And she's like, Yeah, I could tell it, I could just feel myself a little. And so now we've got a way for the creativity to have a go. 

And the next week, she had ordered, you know, the paint color for the wall to be painted in a different room, she had ordered the costume for what she was going to be sitting in. And she was already in her emotional empowerment, ready to do the thing that she could do. Now she might only be able to sit and speak for 10 minutes, but we're on a path here now, the creativity can find a pathway. 

So you would say physically she was at sea; emotionally she's returning to the village. There's always a way forward for your energy. You just might need a little bit of support guidance and to be with somebody who can see more options than you. Because where you are now is absolutely not the end of the story.

Jackie Baxter  
That's such a beautiful story. And I think like you just said, what we can do is so important, because there is so much that we can't you know, and maybe our physical symptoms are all over the place or we're not feeling too good. But what can we do? Well, okay, maybe we can work emotionally. And you know, see if we can do something there. And even if that doesn't help the physical symptoms, at least it's doing something and helping something, isn't it?

Michelle Irving  
Yes. When we take off the stress, of I'm at sea, how do I work out my career for the next 10 years, when we take - like that is not helpful. So it's like, when we take that stress out, and I just get to be at sea, and I get to work out some things for myself here, I can do that bit. Now, the extra stress and mental load, we're starting to release, then I feel both better physically, because we've reduced a little bit of the stress. And I will feel better emotionally. 

It doesn't mean tomorrow, I won't wake up with the symptoms, I still wake up with a chronic condition. But on the days that I have vertigo and can't walk and can't get out of bed, that is a day at sea. And I know exactly what will make me feel better. And I also know I'll be anxious, because being anxious is a normal response to being at sea. But I also know what will help is when I say to myself, it's totally normal to feel anxious. And I'm with you. We're going to be okay. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you. And I've learned lots and I'm sure everybody listening will have as well. So, thank you so much for giving up your time and energy, and your evening as well.

Michelle Irving  
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Jackie.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai