216 - More Than Just Covid: Stress, Grief, and Jacqui’s Journey to Recovery

I talk with Jacqui from New Zealand about dropping from a high-energy, ultra-active life into severe Long Covid, then building her way back to running, swimming and full work. Mel Abbott joins us to explain why calming the stress response comes before increasing activity, and how tools like breathwork, visualisation and emotional processing can change the trajectory. 

• Jacqui’s pre-illness pace as a high achiever and endurance athlete 
• Catching Covid during grief and prolonged stress, then dismissing the risk the second time 
• The slide into dizziness, dysautonomia and post-exertional malaise after pushing through 
• Hitting a severe crash, insomnia and becoming bedbound with full-time care needs 
• The first shift: education about the nervous system, threat responses and prediction loops 
• Practical regulation: frequent calming exercises, breathing, meditation and timers 
• Using visualisation to rebuild safety and confidence before returning to exercise 
• Gradual return to normal life: walking, driving, swimming, cycling and running 
• Handling setbacks and symptom flares by reducing fear and regulating stress 
• Maintaining wellness long-term with compassion, flexible movement and emotional tools 

Links:

https://www.curablehealth.com/ 

https://thesteadycoach.com/ 

https://unlearnyourpain.com/mind-body-syndrome/ 

Alan Gordon - The Way Out, 

Mel's website: https://empowertherapies.co.nz/
The webinar that Jacqui talked about: https://empowertherapies.co.nz/pages/webinar
The Switch Programme: https://empowertherapies.co.nz/pages/the-switch

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

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Welcome And Meet The Guests

Jackie Baxter 0:00

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long Covid Podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by two guests from literally the opposite side of the world. I'm joined today by Jackie, who's going to share her recovery story, and Mel, who's here to share some of the why and the what, and just be here because she's kind of awesome. So a very warm welcome, both of you, to the podcast. I'm super excited to hear the story and to dive into all of this today. So uh it's good to have you here. Nice to be here,. So perhaps we could start out with you, Jacqui, because it's your story. Um, and it is super cool to have another Jackie on the podcast. So perhaps you could just say a little bit about yourself and maybe what life was like before you became unwell, and maybe kind of when that was.

Jacqui Barber 0:50

Hi, I'm Jackie from New Zealand. Um, I'm 39, and I guess my friends and family would describe me as someone who's never slowed down. Um, since primary school have always been that little miss extracurricular with lots of sports on the go, musical instruments and other activities like dancing and drama and art and sewing and everything. And that's just been the story of my life. So I continued in the same veins through high school, university, and then into adulthood. Um I represented New Zealand in underwater hockey of all things for a few years, and um until uni got in the way and won several world championships. I sat all my solo diplomas in piano and I taught as well on the side of uni. Um, I completed a PhD in chemistry, learnt German, took up kickboxing, and at the same time was doing running marathons. And yeah, I ended up in Japan for a couple of years, then moved to Australia where I ran drug trails and then back to New Zealand. And I was still up with all the sports, all the trail running, all the Muay Thai. And I'd done my first Ultra just before the COVID pandemic hit. I was, I don't know, I was just having a great time, renovating my house, working in a little startup medical device company, and just generally having a really fun, creative, active life.

Jackie Baxter 2:11

Amazing. And like, I mean, I I get that we're quite similar people. Yeah. Again, it's not everybody, um, but I don't think I've ever done a recovery story with someone who started off their interview by saying, Yeah, I was super chill, wasn't really doing anything in my life. Um, and uh I I get that from you as well, like um overachiever much. Definitely, definitely. I want to hear more about your story in a minute, but Mel, do you want to just say a little bit about yourself and um who you are and what you do? Maybe let's start with that.

Mel Abbott 2:47

Um yeah, I'm Mel also from New Zealand. Um, I am an overachiever too, funnily enough. Um yeah, always going hard right through school with you know academics, and I was a competitive horse rider, you know. So um, yeah, busy, busy go, go, best year ever in first year uni. And then I had a major head injury, and that started my 11 years of hell. Um, chronic fatigue syndrome, everything going on for 11 years. Um, it was absolutely hideous. Um, on an's benefit, nothing worked. And then I got well when I was 29 and a half, so that was just amazing to get well in time for my 30th, which I spent in the UK and I stayed over there for a few years and doing lots of training and being back in New Zealand for 16 years now, um helping thousands of other people get well too. Because yeah, it just having heard so many terrible messages through my illness that it's not possible you can't get better, and being devastated by that, it was just really important to me to work in this field and really help to change that mindset. So I love presenting at GP conferences and and lots of medical events to help doctors to understand the bigger picture of chronic illness and to stop giving people these terrible messages that are not true and ruin lives. So, yeah, lots of mission and purpose since I got well and never a relapse in sight. It's just been easy to be well once I knew the right info.

Jackie Baxter 4:24

I love that. And, you know, I think I completely agree with you. You know, you've you've been ill and then well and working in this space for much longer than I have. But there's something about an experience like this that changes everything, I think. And again, for me, it was that kind of narrative of you can't recover versus, oh, but hey, that person did. Um, you know, and starting to hear those stories of recovery and how important they are. And then, you know, a lot of people who do then go on to work in that space because they realise how important it is. And uh, I think what I forgot to mention when I was introducing you guys was that Jackie, you actually heard my recovery story on, I think you said Raylan's channel. Um, and how cool is that that we've actually kind of come full circle that you are now sharing your story here. Um, and I can, you know, whether it was my story or somebody else's that you heard, you know, I think it's that importance, isn't it, of hearing that there are other people that are getting better and how important that message is, that it is possible, even if it's a difficult and often painful process to get there.

Mel Abbott 5:37

Totally.

Jackie Baxter 5:38

So Jackie, going back to your story, um, do you want to say a little bit about your kind of uh illness, maybe what your main symptoms were, if there were kind of like main points throughout that, um, and just kind of briefly what that looked like for you.

Jacqui Barber 5:54

Sure. Um, I guess it'd probably be helpful to go back to the first time I caught COVID, which was in June 2022, which of course is quite late in the pandemic, but that's simply because New Zealand didn't have community and transition until January, February that year. And it was pretty awful circumstances because I caught it from my dad's funeral because he just suddenly died out of the blue when he was quite young, or relatively young. Um, although thankfully at that point it was quite a mild infection, and it was winter, and I was very much in mourning, so I just sort of hunkered down with my flatmate and good friend of many years, Brian, and

COVID Hits During Heavy Grief

Jacqui Barber 6:34

we went for walks on the beach, and we I got over it within a week. And the next week I was sucked into work with no issues, although I did take up you know about four weeks off running just to be you know sure about things. Um, and so that was COVID, and I thought, okay, well, that's easy, that's fine, it's it's nothing more than a cold, you don't really have to worry about anything. Um, and then over the following 18 months, a few things happened that I think really primed me for a poor reaction the next time round. So really sort of set my nervous system on high alert. Um, one of them being that my intrafamily relationships got really tense following dad's death. It was, and I sort of felt cut off from one of my brothers. Um, one of my best friends committed suicide a couple of months later, which was really, really, really awful. Um, and then another issue which um sounds kind of humorous, but I adopted this as a way of trying to get over the whole dad thing. I adopted this high-energy and very anxious ex-farm dog who was very lovely, but he was incredibly sensitive to sudden loud noises, which wouldn't be an issue normally, except my house is quite close to Wellington Airport, which is by the beach where there's lots of seagulls. And so they'd shoot these flare guns off at whatever time of day, which would send Wall into the slobbering panic, um, running around the house, jumping out of the things. Um, and they'd play the siren before the flares, which then he became sensitized to. And it got to the point where he nearly hung himself a couple of times because he was trying to jump the fence and he'd get caught and just random things like that. And um Brian and I both got incredibly sensitized to this whole thing as well because we knew how it reacts. So it's just sort of like an extra sort of level of anxiety that was just um hanging around me. Anyway, um 18 months later, I caught COVID at the end of 2024. Um, it was peak summer in New Zealand, and I really didn't want to be sick. Um, and it coincided with the first anniversary of my friend's death the year earlier. Um, and I was still reeling from that and a few other things that had happened in the last six months. So um, and then there was all the family issues as well. So I was just really not in a great space. I also then proceeded to do everything that one shouldn't do um because I was like, oh, it's just a cold, it'll just just be just like last time. And um COVID, or rather, my brain really hit that card. So I was taking the dog out for vigorous hour-long walks twice a day. I was sewing cushion covers, I was doing interior painting, I was, you know, going, I even went for bike rides, maybe like two or three times during the initial infection because the weather was so lovely outside and I couldn't bear to be stopping. Um, I was also working two roles at my company at that stage, um, and I didn't really feel I could take time off because things were so busy, and it was all a really big mistake because the fee fatigue just set in like I'd never experienced before. So it was just that whole thing of having your body just been sucked into the ground because you're so leaden-weighted and you can't move. Um, my pulse wet haywire. And around day five, debate when it is worse, I just developed this driving dizziness that just wouldn't let up. Um, and then that peaked at about day 10 when I was testing negative, but I still felt incredibly ill and had stupidly gone for a bike ride that morning because the weather was so nice. Um, and all of a sudden I just felt like I was in this washing machine and I could barely sit up, let alone stand or walk. Um and so I finally listened and thought, okay, right, I'll take next week off work. I'll just do it. And I I'll cut the dog walks down to once a day. And um at the end of that, I sort of just felt like I was gently rocking in this boat. Um and then the following week I tried working half days, um, which felt okay. And I went to see the doctor. Um, and I was because I was still dizzy, but then for some reason I kept on walking this dog two to three times a day, which just obviously wasn't helping either. Um, the doctor I saw diagnosed me with labyrinthitis, which is an inflammation. In this case, I thought it was viral, of the small crystals in the inner ear, which controls your vestibular system or your balance system. And he was, he just sent me away with the belief that it was going to resolve within a couple of weeks. Um, with the power of hindsight and a whole bunch more knowledge, I actually think the dizziness from the get-go was just my brain trying to slow me down. Um, just like fatigue when you're sick, it's not the virus that's making you tired, it's your brain trying to make you rest and recover. Um, so that's I think what the dizziness was from. And um I certainly wasn't listening to it. Um, so I went back to work about two weeks after the infection, and in my third week, I was like, oh, I'm I'm better now. I might still be dizzy, but I'm better. That dizziness is going away. Um, so I started trying to go for a run at lunchtime, which was on top of the hour-long dog walk in the morning and then biking to and from the office. And it was just utterly disastrous. I just felt these massive lurches of vertigo crashing out of the balloon, which was, of course, my brain trying desperately to protect me by making me stop. And then I experienced the fatigue crash that for the first time that night as I arrived home on my bike, and I remember sitting on the sofa, just feeling pinned to the ground, like the life force is being sucked out of me. Um, and I sort of struggled along for about a month. Um, and then my partner and I went for a short but really lovely holiday down to the South Island without his kids. And while I still had a few issues because I was still recovering on the trip, I generally felt really rejuvenated and like I was finally healing. Um, however, that all evaporated within about 24 hours of returning home. And then I finally went to see my GP because she'd been away previously, and she sort of sat me down with this graduated return to work, which was initially four hours a day for a couple of weeks, and then up to five, and then five and a half, and I finally got to about six hours a day where I just sort of plateaued. Um, and I was still filling two roles at work, so um, I guess to say thank you, my just my employer just topped my salary up. So I wasn't, you know, as I was still getting paid full-time, which was really helpful at the time. But after three months, I was still struggling. Um, I couldn't bike, my energy was fluctuating within a day, and then from day to day, and I'd get occasional heart pain, and I certainly couldn't run, which for many people um wouldn't be an issue. But for someone like myself who'd been so active, and given particularly given all the grief for the last 18 months, I'd really relied upon it for emotional regulation. But the worst thing was that I was still dizzy and it was relentless. It didn't really follow a pattern, it might be there as soon as I woke up, or it would start an hour or so into the day, or it would go away for a bit and then it would come back. So it was all just immensely frustrating, anxiety inducing, just basically really scary. Um three months in, it was my birthday, and then a couple of days after it was the two-year anniversary of my dad dying, and I'd officially crossed into the long COVID classification. I was sad, I was frustrated, I was stressed, I was grieving, I was grieving the people who died, but I was also just grieving my life because I didn't feel like I could be myself, and I wasn't sure if that was ever going to return. And I just really wanted everything to end. Um, but at the same time, I was thinking, well, I mean, if this is my lot, then I mean, is it really that bad? Like, you know, I'm working six hours a day, which is okay. I can walk, I can do some gardening, I can play the piano for as long as I want. Um, just if this dizziness would go away, that would be it would be fine. Um but then it just rapidly went downhill within the next couple of weeks, three and a half months after the infection. Um, so the little company I work for, we had a certification audit. It's a sort of the piece of paper which allows us to manufacture and um distribute around the world. And so this was a big deal. And the role that I was acting in was the quality role. So I was responsible for leading the audit response, and I was utterly terrified. Um two weeks before the audit, I'd had this crazy experience of just sitting at my desk after lunch and then suddenly feeling like all the energy was draining out of me, and then suddenly my arms were feeling on fire, and my flatmate just came and picked me up and took me home, and I sort of went to bed and slept it off and then went to choir practice at night. Um, but I was fundamentally just terrified that something like that would happen again in the audit. And then to top it all off, I just overnight lost the ability to sleep. I'd be utterly exhausted and then I'd doze for maybe 30 minutes, then I'd wake up, and then I'd just not be able to sleep. And it was just every day was the same. Um and then a few days out from the audit, it was Thursday, the 12th of June, I took the dog for a walk first thing, and then I did a bit of work at home, and then I started biking into town to go to the office. And I got over the first little hill from Kilburney into Newtown, if you know Wellington. And all of a sudden I just felt like I had this electricity pulsing through me. And I thought to myself, oh, this is bad. Um, but for some reason I just kept on going because I sort of felt it was easier to go down the hill towards work and go back up the hill, maybe. I don't know. Um, but the pulsing kept returning and abating all the way to the office, and then in the end, my 70-year-old godmother came into town and picked me up

The Crash Into Severe Long COVID

Jacqui Barber 16:11

in my bike 30 minutes later and took me home. Um and then this feeling of electrocution mixed with just wanting to vomit whenever anyone spoke to me or made me laugh, um, discontinued for a week. And by the end of it, I could barely get out around the house. Um, I couldn't sleep, but the dizziness had gone, which was great. Um, because my brain had just replaced it with this earth-shattering fatigue. Um, and at that same time, my mum finally arrived back from the US, where she'd been for the previous three months helping out with my brother's new baby, um, which was great because, and lucky for her, she'd had so much recent practice feeding an infant because all of a sudden she had to start feeding me, her 38-year-old daughter. So a week or so later we had a telephone GP consult. Um, and but by that point, I'd made the connection between long COVID and MFCFS, which is not great. And I'd also realised that the week of electrocution was my version of a full-blown post-exertional malaise. It also then read somewhere that stressful events like GP consults could cause post-exertional malaise. So, of course, I spent that whole day before the consult worrying about conserving energy for the consult, which meant that the consult went fine, but um exactly two hours afterwards, that sort of anxiety and fear and everything just kicked into gear, and I another crash came on. Um this time I was on fire for about four or five days in a row. Um, and that night, that's that first night of the second crash is probably my lowest point in the entire experience. Um Brian was helping me go to the bathroom. Um, I vomited, I passed out a few times, and at one point I just came to on the bathroom floor, just sort of wondering where I was, with Brian sort of looming up over me. Um and then all of a sudden, you know, it just came flooding back. And I just recall sort of stating quite sadly, but you know, calmly that, oh yeah, I've got long COVID and I'm having a crash. Um and yeah, so mum and Brian called the paramedics the next morning. Um, amongst other things, they diagnosed me with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or POTS. They ran an ECG and then they just left. Um, and I refused to go to the hospital, stating that the stress of being in the ED would make me even worse. So mum and Brian were just stuck caring for me at home, which um was pretty harsh of me, I guess. Um but because I I couldn't even send or answer text messages. I didn't even have the energy to look at the wall at times. So um they were doing everything for me. Um after a few days, I'd sort of woken up sufficiently that my partner was able to visit me. And I hadn't seen him for nearly two weeks since my first crash had started because he tried to come around and I just kept him vomiting. So um didn't really work. Um, and it was just an incredibly difficult situation as none of us really knew what was going on, and I was utterly terrified with the little that I've been reading that really strong emotions would make me crash again. So I was terrified of seeing him, but I really wanted to, and it was just, you know, just so many things are just so unknown, so scary. Um, and I recall I got these really buzzing, icy sensations in my arms exactly two after hours, two hours after he'd left, but thankfully nothing more. And that sort of gave me the confidence that it would be okay. Like I wasn't going to have a full-blown crash every time he came by, which was really good. Um meanwhile, my flatmate Brian was just doing all these hours of research outside of work and helping them care for me and coming up with all these sorts of resources, including the CFS Recovery Jumpstart Program. And he found Jesse Mettinger's long COVID podcast and book. Um, he put together this sort of basic recovery outline from all the materials he'd assimilated, which was based on pacing with breathing and meditation to help me tackle the dyssautonomia. I didn't like the sound of it because I just wanted a pill to make everything go away, which um I heard about was Neltrexone, and um I requested a script and ways that was waiting for it to be formulated. Um, but I started doing the breathing and trying to meditate, so I had nothing else to do. Um and yeah, it was just a really bleak, really, really bleak period. Um I was bedbound for about five weeks with Mum and Brian doing everything for me, taking me to the bathroom, preparing food. Mum was showering me. Um, and then they'd frequently take turns eating um feeding me in bed most nights because I would have run out of energy to either sit up or eat. Um and then during the day I'd just be lying there and watching the clouds outside my window and the sky gradually change colour because I just didn't have the energy to do anything else. Um a great group of friends would come by every week to drop off food and walk the dog. Um, my aunt would come by every Wednesday to spend the day there so that both mum and Brian could get a break and go off and do things that they wanted to do. And then um one of the friends who was always sort of dropping food started to come by on Thursdays and working from my house for exactly the same purpose. Um her brother in the US was you know buying us food every week. Um, and then another friend was sending off all these food vouchers. Um, so I was incredibly lucky with the support network I had. Um but I guess I was slowly getting a little bit better because at some stage I started progressing to the sofa. Um so I was there for about another three weeks. Um, and I'd occasionally go to the bathroom by myself, but I was still mostly lying everywhere. Um, and but the real change came um, well the the first glimmer of hope came when I was still in bed, and a friend of my brother um happened to get in touch asking how I was because he'd just been visiting Felix in the US and Will suggested that I might like to talk to his partner Rebecca about her long COVID experience the year before. And I immediately felt awful because I hadn't realized that she'd even been sick. Um, but Will and Rebecca, while they were off doing this massive cycling trip around Europe, um Rebecca was sending me voice messages at least once, if not multiple times a day, um, which really filled me with hope because I suddenly saw this example of someone who'd been so low and in such a bleak place herself. And she was now cycling through the Balkans and climbing up, you know, the dolomites and everything. So I thought, right, okay, maybe there is something that can get me out of this. And she called me told me about this course that she'd done, which was of course the switch run by Mel, who's on this call, um, and which completely changed things for her. And she'd heard about it from another friend of hers who'd also recovered through the same course. And so, of course, I I immediately wanted to do that. But at that stage, I could, there was no way I could attend a four-day course. And Rebecca suggested that I look

Finding Hope And A New Framework

Jacqui Barber 23:24

at the um a two-hour webinar that Mal offered um through her um website. And I sort of thought about it and eventually signed up for that at the start of August, by which point I was on the couch and I could go to the bathroom a couple of times by myself, and I could read a couple of pages of a book and do a little bit of light stretching. So I was progressing, but that was, you know, that was where I was at. And I remember I just watched this webinar in 10-minute chunks repeatedly over a couple of days and found it so incredibly informative. Um, and it's particularly strong chronic pain because the neurology is a lot more concrete. But a lot of the same concepts around pain can be transferred to other symptoms. And so in watching this, I just had so so many light bulb moments about my own condition and what I was doing to keep myself in it. Um, so key points in the webinar was sort of Mal explaining the difference between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, the sort of stress-fair cycles, um, the way in which we can keep ourselves trapped by anticipating, predicting symptoms based on our previous experiences, the behavioral shifts that we go through, where we're just acting and thinking that we're sick. Um, but then a really big one, which became like the central point of my recovery, was the power of visualization to rewire your brain. Um, and the effects over the weekend were remarkable. And I I just set myself the challenge of acting as naturally as I possibly could within within the house, you know. And so it was basic things like I will sit up instead of lying down, and I will feed the dog when I get up in the morning to go to the bathroom. I will make my own breakfast as opposed to having someone else do it for me, and I'm gonna talk in a normal voice and just like it was incredible, and like for the first time also, I felt hope and I was just filled with conviction that it'd be fine by the end of the year, which was about four months away at that point. Um and other things that happened, I requested a painting set, and suddenly I was instead of lying down on the sofa, I was sitting or standing and I was painting all day, every day at through nine or ten o'clock at night, as opposed to going to bed at six. Um and Brian and I started going for short walks up and down the street, only about 200 metres, that we'd do it initially once a day, and then it'll be twice a day, and then it'll be three times a day, and so which is which is incredible for someone who's struggled to get to the bathroom only a few weeks before. Um I remember my partner took me out for dinner to celebrate because I could just do that then, and I was really anxious, but it was fine, and it was just so nice to be somewhere normal that it wasn't inside my house. Um and um from then on, sort of taking messages from Mel's webinar, whenever I felt some sort of symptom, instead of lying down to rest and protect myself, I'd take a break and I'd go for a visualized run or a bike ride. And I did that for about two hours a day for the best part of about six weeks, and I really feel the effects were utterly remarkable. And something I learned later on was that the cognitive framing or the intention behind your action is also really important. So if you're lying down to rest, that implies to your brain that you've done too much. And instead, I was consciously making the effort to lie down and visualize an activity I couldn't yet do. So yes, I was resting at the same time, but I was telling my brain that I could actually run or I could bike. So I think that was um I I feel like that was a really powerful part of my recovery. And then about a week later, I applied for the switch course and I had a conversation with Mel, and it was a spot for me in a course at the end of September, so about six weeks away, and I could attend by Zoom, but I needed to prove to her that I could handle the screen time. So she challenged me to tackle my fear of phone calls and screens, which was of course residual from the crash after the GP teleconsult. And so I picked up the phone, I phoned my brother in the US the next day and just talked to him for an hour straight. And it was just so incredibly great to hear his voice. Um, and then I started playing the piano, which I didn't miss so much initially just for 10 minutes a day, but within a week I just jumped it to an hour, and then it was two or three. Um, and to test the screen time thing, I just started watching some probably not very great British comedy, murder drama. Um, and then and then I just decided, oh, I'll just so this quilt that I've had sitting as a side project for years. So I was doing that while um, yeah, testing out my screen capacity. Um and I'd started reading books, you know, initially just a couple of pages a day, but for soon, soon I was reading for hours. So my cognitive function was really coming back online, which was amazing. Um and then shortly after that, my partner was able to start visiting with his kids, which was also amazing because I'd really miss seeing them. Um and then within a couple of weeks, so by the end of August, I was going for walks around the block. Um, and then shortly after that, I was going during the hour-long walks that I wrote that I'd done with the dog only a couple of months earlier. Um I started driving and going to the shops by myself around the same time. And then my aunt Mary started taking me to the pool. Um, and she somehow coerced me into getting back on the bicycle by um suggesting that we put our bikes on the back of her car and we'd park 500 meters away from the pool and then we'd bike to the pool and we'd do our swimming and then we'd bike back to the car. Um, but that was sort of it just got me back and sort of kept me from fearing the biking, which of course I felt had sort of caused the initial big crash. Um, but the swimming was also amazing because I hopped in thinking I'll do a couple of lanes of aqua jogging or something. And then before I knew it, I swam a kilometer with no issue whatsoever. So um which again, because six weeks earlier, I'd still been stuck in bed. So it was um like just it was it just seemed incredible to me. Um and in the background to all of this in prepared preparation for the switch course, Mel had me working on emotional trauma issues and beliefs that I might have felt was would be holding me back. Um thankfully I hadn't been sick long enough to have reasons to stay sick, but I did have a lot of emotional burdens. So I wrote things like letters to friends and family members who were both dead and alive, which of course I never sent, but they really helped me cloth clear these emotional backlogs. Um I also had to actively decide just to leave a couple of things behind and move on, as the emotional baggage just wasn't worth it. Um I identified the anxious dog as being a significant barrier to recovery. So another friend helped us re-home him to a lifestyle block, which was far away from the airport, and apparently he's having a really great time. Um and so by the time I came to the switch course starting the 30th of September, I was pretty much fully recovered. I was going for hour-long bike rides, I was doing one and a half K in the pool, I was going for one to two hour walks, and it was generally two of these things a day. I was gardening, I was having dinner with friends, I was hosting people, I was um playing football on the beach with my partner and his kids. Um and um the thing that Mel got me doing that first week of the switch, well, actually many things, but she got me running because that was um we had to set ourselves challenges every day of the course. And my first one was to go for a run around the block, and that was that was terrific. And then um, but within a couple of weeks, I was going for like 45 minutes to an hour. It was just I was off. Um and then I started back to work in October. Um, I took a graduated return mainly because I didn't want the the holiday to end, because it had become a holiday by then because I was actually well enough to do things and enjoy things. Um but I didn't really need

Returning To Life And Handling Setbacks

Jacqui Barber 31:26

to because I was already fine. Um and then in January 2025, sorry, 2026. Wait a minute. 2025, I completed my favorite trail run in the Terror Ros, which is a mountain range north of where I live, which is very rough terrain. Definitely wasn't my fastest time, but it was just incredible to be there. And I signed up for a local trail running series and really, really loved it. Um I had a bit of a hiccup midway through last year. Um, I just moved house um and with my partner, and I we caught COVID at the start of June, um, just after my birthday. And about a month later, um and the infection was fine. Um, like there was no because I'd finally learn how to rest and actually how to treat myself when I was sick. Um, but it was audit time again at work, and um about midway through the first day of the audit, this the vertigo was suddenly back. Um it was like my brain had learned somewhere along the line that it needed to be scared of audits. Um and I immediately did what I shouldn't have done, which was catastrophize everything, and I went into a tailspin about how I was going to go end up in the back in last year, and um I, you know, just hysterical about things. Um but I had a catch up with Mel, which really helped me back get back on track, and I revisited my switch materials, and at about the same time I discovered the curable app, um, which gave me additional tools to work with. And um what the thing I would say about that app-based platform is that it's incredible having such an educational and mentoring tool in your own pocket. Um, and one of the podcasts on the app led me to the Steady Coach YouTube channel, which was also really helpful because it's focuses on using the same materials but specifically for um neuroplastic dizziness symptoms like I had. Um I came across Howard Schubener, who's a MD in Michigan, and bought a secondhand copy of his book, Unlearn Your Pain, and then followed all the exercises on journaling and such, which was building on the work I'd done at Mel's suggestion the previous year. Um I took up daily Yoga Nitra, which I've been which I've maintained for the last year, and gradually built back up to where I had been over the next three months. Um and a year on, if I get a bit stressed, I occasionally feel a little bit giddy. Um but I could either switch it using Mel's really powerful approach for training your subconscious brain out of undesirable things or practice thematic tracking um to sort of remind my brain not to fear the sensation. Um both of these just lead to a reduction and elimination of the sensation. And just I guess to come full circle a year on, we've just had it our annual audit last week, and it was totally fine. Um I was a bit anxious leading up to it. Yeah, it was great. Um, but I prepared by doing nightly visualizations for the couple of weeks leading up of everything going fine, that I'd make jokes with the auditor, and if anything did make me stressed, I could just calm myself down. And during the audit, I did exactly that. I just did some balanced breathing whenever I felt stressed, and everything was fine. So yeah. So you know you're good now.

Jackie Baxter 34:49

Yeah, yeah. And I I think, you know, I mean, everyone's story is different, um, and everyone's story is incredibly powerful. And I think, you know, you appeared to have quite a dramatic kind of about turn from what sounds like was your sort of rock bottom, um, where you know, you'd sort of got basically worse and worse and worse to the point where you could really do very little for yourself, but then you found the right thing. And in your case, the right thing was Mel.

unknown 35:23

Yeah.

Jackie Baxter 35:24

And actually things switched around. Switched, there we go. Um, actually, surprisingly quickly to the point where you were quite quickly able to do a lot of things that must have seemed kind of impossible to you. Uh and then that kind of progress was able to sort of build sort of quite steadily over time. And um, I'd I'd love to bring Mel back in here because you know, you you saw this from the other side. Um, and I would love to hear your sort of your perspective.

Mel Abbott 35:54

Yeah, I think um, you know, Jackie's the classic high achiever, which I see a lot of. Um, and also there were things that went wrong in her life right before she got the COVID. I mean, you know, dad's funeral, you know, flatmate, uh friend killing themselves, like, you know, and that's what I see over and over. It's it's not about the COVID, it's about what was happening in people's lives around the time they caught the COVID that meant they were already in this very physiologically heightened stress state, and then COVID pushed them over the edge, and that's very apparent with Jackie, um, but with you know, with everyone else as well. Um, and uh I think you know it's amazing how much change she got just from the intro webinar. And you know, when I created that webinar, I only created it to be a stepping stone to help people, you know, tied over when the waiting list was long, and then I'm getting you know lots of people like Jackie who had these colossal changes from it, and some people even full recoveries from it. I'm like, wow, that's not what I had expected, but that's awesome. Um, but yeah, I think Jackie's so committed, you know, everything in that webinar, she just put it in place and made sure it happened, so she got a lot of change. Um, I think the the key thing with all of these things with with the intro webinar and with the switch is to only build up to doing more stuff when you can feel your stress response is calming down. Um, you know, if if you do more when you're still in a heightened stress response, you will cause a post-exertional malaise, as Jackie previously had

Calming First Then Building Activity

Mel Abbott 37:26

done, you know, when she's talking about those electric shock feelings through her body and so on, you know, that's massive, you know, stress response going through the roof because she did more on a heightened stress response. So partly, you know, when she was saying about how she, you know, used the webinar to change her perception of what would happen, that's part of calming the stress response down and only being able to safely do more when you can feel that you're getting karma. And I think that's an important distinction. I wouldn't want people to listen to Jackie's story and go, right, I just need to do more. You know, that that could backfire. Um, but if you're calming the body first and calming your responses and thoughts so that things don't feel so threatening and you're not expecting such big reactions and you're genuinely karma, that's when you know you can do more and not pay consequences for it. And once the body is calm, you can build up exercise fast, you know, as Jackie was talking about, you know, but it's calming that needs to happen first.

Jacqui Barber 38:29

If I can jump in quickly, I just remember Mel reminded me the thing that I also did after the next webinar is I set a 20-minute timer on my phone, and it would, when it went off, I would do a calming exercise. Because the thing you'd you'd been hammering home in your webinar was that you needed to calm your stress response. And I thought, well, how am I going to do this? I'll just set a timer. And I just did that and every day, day in, day out, for you know, the best part of two months.

Mel Abbott 38:57

Which is such an important step because you know, the the story you were telling of of how you change the thoughts and you could do more. I'm like, you know, wow, that's impressive. And and it could go wrong if people aren't also doing the calming, but it's great to hear that you were massively doing the calming as well, which is what allowed you to be able to build up that exercise. Because um, yeah, otherwise that can go wrong.

Jackie Baxter 39:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and I think, you know, it comes to that thing of listening to our body as well and starting to trust our own body. And certainly for me, I mean, you know, I recognize a a lot of what you were saying, Jackie, in your story, in the sort of, oh, well, you know, I rested for an hour and then I tried to go for a run because why not? kind of thing. And like, you know, we we're sort of having a little bit of a laugh about it because, you know, it in hindsight, it just seems, you know, like completely the wrong thing to do. Um, but at the same time, you know, we didn't do it because we thought it was the wrong thing. We did it because we thought it was the right thing. And, you know, obviously with the hindsight now, we're thinking, yeah, that that definitely wasn't helping. Um, but it's yeah, it's it's not necessarily that movement or exercise or activity is the wrong, you know, is is the enemy. It's doing it in the right way at the right time, in the right amount. Um, you know, and that's different for everybody. But I think one of the things that I found was that having relied so heavily on exercise and then not being able to exercise, or every time I did try, it ended pretty badly. That then rebuilding that kind of trust in my body that actually I could exercise and I could push myself, or I could start to exercise and start to push myself. Um, that that I found it quite difficult to kind of rebuild that trust. I don't I don't know. I I don't know if you find the same thing.

Mel Abbott 40:51

Well, I think, you know, even as a healthy person, I judge how much exercise to do based on how calm my nervous system is. Like, you know, some days I'm like, right, I'm so ready for exercise. I want to like, you know, burn it out of the pool and go hard and get my pulse really pounding. I want to go to the gym and and get on the cross trainer. And other days I'm like, oh, I've had a bit of a stressful day. What my body needs is a really gentle walk today or a very, very slow pool swim where I'm just doing it to enjoy the feeling of water moving over my skin and relaxation. It's not about fitness. Um, and so I think that's important for a healthy person, but even more important for someone recovering. And this is why I don't really understand the mindset of oh, you know, do a fixed amount more each day. You know, that to me doesn't work because some days you're better than others. And so being able to know your body and know when you're calm and stable enough to do more, not like, oh, I've got so much energy, I'm bouncing off the walls, that might mean you're flipped into adrenal mode and you're just running on adrenaline energy, which is going to cause a big crash. But when you have that feeling of calm, steady, stable energy, and you know that feeling because your heart is calm, your mind is moving nice and slowly, and can have little patches where there's nothing in it at all, your sleep is good, your digestion is good, then you know you're calm. And when you're calm, your body is safe to do more.

Jackie Baxter 42:19

And I think, you know, I mean, I think that's a beautiful thing to say as well, because you know, part of it is getting well. And, you know, obviously we are desperate for anything when we're in that place of being in, you know, possibly the worst place we've ever been. And, you know, we will do anything and you know, we do it because we want to get better. Um, but you know, there then becomes this time where it's like, okay, well, now I am well and it's an amazing place to be, and I'm so grateful to be here. And, you know, I want to go and live the dream. I'm gonna do all the things they've been stacking up. There's this tendency to sort of go at 150% because we've been missing out for so long. And one of the things that I've had to learn is that a lot of the tools that I use to get well are the same tools that are going to keep me well.

Mel Abbott 43:08

Exactly.

Jackie Baxter 43:09

So, you know, for me, it's like a breath practice every morning is how I start off every day. Even this morning, despite how early it was, I had to get up to speak to you New Zealanders. And uh, you know, things like that. And as you were saying with exercise, Mel, it's like knowing, knowing when to really go for it and when your body actually has had a really hard week and maybe it just wants to do something gentle for the sake of moving and kind of understanding, you know, goals and ego and all of those sorts of things that I'd never had any awareness of before. And I think you know, this kind of maintenance kind of stuff is so important, isn't it? And it's not that I'm doing these things because I'm ill, I'm doing them because I want to be good to my body so it treats me right, I guess.

Mel Abbott 43:57

Yeah, it's a more compassionate approach, which I feel. Like high achievers don't always have. It's like, how much more can I do? And somehow there was like a need to do so much because that was my validation. And I've you know had to learn a different sort of um internal sense of I'm okay, whether I'm out there achieving heaps or I'm having a cruisy day because something's going on, you know, and just being gentler with myself and my health, I think.

Jacqui Barber 44:25

Yes, yeah, yeah. I think a a powerful concept that I came across, and I only just thought of it now, but um was one about strategies, um, what your needs are, and then what your strategies are to fulfill the needs. And so you um when you're saying before, like your body needs movement, and so typically your strategy to achieve that might be going for a five-kilometre run every morning and then going for a swim in the pool or whatever, and recognising that on certain days you might still need the movement, but be it because you haven't slept well or because you had an argument with someone, or you're, you know, whatever it is, you're more tired going for a gentle walk might or doing some yoga might easily equally fulfill that need without stressing your body out as much as the other ones would have. Um, and that's something that I've been trying to incorporate into life, and certainly I'm still a pretty active person, like particularly compared to you know, some of the people I know. Um, you know, I'll be typically be doing a couple of hours of something or other each day, whether or not it's biking an hour each way to work or going for a run or going to the pool or what have you. But then other days I'll be actually rethinking action and what I need to do is just instead of going for a run, I'll just go for a walk in the bush and I'll just take it nice and slowly and I'll listen to the birds and I'll watch the water dripping off all the ferns. Um, or I'll just do some yoga on the deck in the sun. And um yeah, I like you both were saying, part of maintaining your your wellness after, you know, being sick or just generally trying to maintain wellness anyway, is just recognizing when your body's requirements change and how you can meet them on a daily basis, I think.

Mel Abbott 46:13

And your emotions. And I think you know, I I've never had a relapse of fatigue. I've been well, you know, for for the 16, 17 years. Um, but I still use the switch techniques for managing just life, you know. Like if I'm feeling stressed about an email or, you know, grumpy about something, then I use that technique to deal with the emotions so that my nervous system can get calm and regulated again. And that's part of my you know, ongoing wellness strategy. It's not like living in fear of a relapse. I don't have any fear of that. Um, but it's just how do I want to feel right now? And I have cool tools that help me to be able to get into the states that I want.

Jackie Baxter 46:58

And I think, you know, that that's actually quite a beautiful way to sum up, isn't it? You know, what are my body's needs and how can I best meet them? And that is how you are going to recover because, you know, presumably you have unmet needs. Um, and how am I going to stay well? Because life is stressful and shit happens. And I think, you know, for me, one of the things that I took from this illness is that resilience and the tools to deal with whatever life throws at me. And sometimes it's really great stuff, and sometimes it's stuff that's much more challenging. But having gone through something like long COVID or chronic fatigue or one of these horrendous health challenges, everything else becomes a little bit easier, I think. So Mel, Jackie, thank you so much. Um, it's been amazing hearing your story, Jackie, and you know, it's got a happy ending, um, which is always good. Um, and Mel, thank you so much for coming along and for connecting us and for just, you know, being that kind of amazing beacon of hope that you are. Um, it's been amazing chatting. So thank you so much.

Jacqui Barber 48:07

Thank you, Jackie.