Healing from ME/CFS: How Acknowledgment, Mental Health, and the Mind–Body Connection Support Recovery

In this episode of Thursday Tea with Sami, psychologist Samia Estrada sits down with mind–body practitioner Mel Abbott to explore the reality of living with ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and the path to recovery. Mel shares her powerful story of battling chronic illness for over a decade, the importance of acknowledgment in the healing process, and how the mind–body connection plays a vital role in recovery.

We discuss the role of mental health in chronic illness, how stress impacts the nervous system, and why acknowledgment and support are essential first steps toward healing. Mel also highlights the importance of lifestyle medicine—stress management, healthy relationships, and self-care—in creating lasting change.

If you or a loved one are searching for hope, inspiration, and practical strategies for managing chronic illness, this conversation offers a compassionate and evidence-based look at what’s possible on the journey to healing.

Transcript

Mel Abbott (00:00)
And so that's why it's so important for people with ME to be acknowledged that this is real, it's serious, it's physical.

It's a terrible illness. You're not making this up. I who would make that up? Who would choose to lie in a darkened room for weeks on end with no stimulation? Like, no one's going to choose that. And I wasn't choosing to lie on the couch for the whole of my 20s and not study, not work, not travel, not date. You know, it's not a choice. So it is real. But it's also possible to fix it with your mind.

Samia (00:18)
Right.

Samia (00:35)
Welcome to Thursday Tea with Sami, your sip of wellness and mental health. I'm Samia Estrada and I'm so glad that you're here. This podcast is all about living a healthy, balanced life mentally, physically, and emotionally. Every other week we'll explore simple, practical ways to improve your well-being, we'll hear from experts, and we will learn together. Grab your cup of tea, take a deep breath, and let's dive in.

Samia (01:07)
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Thursday Tea with Sami. I'm your host, Samia Estrada, and today I'm very excited to introduce you to someone whose story I know will really inspire you. My guest today is Mel Abbott, a mind-body practitioner whose journey through chronic fatigue syndrome led her to discover

powerful mind-body healing tools that changed her life. Not only did she recover her own health, but she's gone on to help countless clients through her switch program, which focuses on stress recovery, on lifestyle changes, and on nervous system healing. She's also been recognized at conferences. She has been invited to contribute at a medical school in New Zealand.

and is now developing a new anxiety management webinar series. Today, we'll be diving into her personal journey, her work helping others, her journey overcoming chronic illness, and her vision for a more integrative lifestyle-based future in healthcare. So grab your tea, settle in, and let's welcome Mel to the show.

Mel, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so happy you're here.

Mel Abbott (02:25)
My pleasure. Nice to meet you.

Samia (02:27)
Nice to meet you too. Let's just jump right in. Can you share with us a little bit about your journey with chronic fatigue syndrome and what ultimately led you toward holistic healing?

Mel Abbott (02:39)
Well, I was very healthy, very happy 18 year old having my first year at university and life was the best it had ever been. And then the day before my last exam of first year, I had a head injury in a horse riding accident, which I don't remember. I've never remembered it, but my helmet was smashed. And so we know it was quite a bad injury. And so I was initially dealing with concussion syndrome for

months. I don't know how long that went on. I know I was still sort of rambling and not knowing moment to moment three months later, but eventually that did all come right. I got my memory back and the headaches backed off and so on. But over the months and then years, my health just got worse and worse and worse. So by three years after my accident,

I could barely walk up one flight of stairs. I had to sleep three hours every afternoon just to get through the day. When I was awake, I was just lying on the couch listening to talking books because I was too exhausted to read a book or to watch TV. I couldn't go out with my friends. I couldn't drive anymore. I couldn't study. I just couldn't do anything. And it was just absolutely horrific. And you know,

When I was 21, so we're three years into the illness by this stage, I saw a chronic fatigue specialist and she looked down her spectacles at me and said in this completely deadpan voice, oh yes, you have chronic fatigue syndrome, there is no cure for that, you'll just have to manage your symptoms for the rest of your life. And honestly, that was the worst moment of my whole illness. Just feeling like...

Samia (04:19)
I can imagine.

Mel Abbott (04:20)
hope, all hope was gone and I was 21 years old and yeah that just made me want to die. Like it's like this is so awful I'm in so much pain all the time I have a resting pulse of 118 beats a minute I can't do anything I want to do and apparently this is gonna be like that for the rest of my life and so it was just horrendous and so I mean we kept trying treatments even though we'd been told there was nothing that would ever work we did keep trying because

you know, what's the alternative? Lie in bed and accept it. You know, it sort of felt like I had to keep trying. And so over the course of 11 years, we spent over $100,000 on many, treatments and nothing ever worked as we'd been told it wouldn't, but we kept trying. And then finally, when I was now 29 years old, I'd lost the whole of my 20s by this stage. Finally, I heard about a three-day mind body program.

that my friend had done and she had recovered and she'd been sick the same 11 years I had. And so I traveled all the way from New Zealand to London, which is as far as you can go, but I just knew I had to go and do it. yeah, from the first day of that program, I did not have my afternoon sleep, having had it every day for 11 years. From day one, that did not happen anymore. I was very tired in the afternoon.

But I wasn't so exhausted I had to go to bed and I finally understood why I'd got this sick. They were the first people who could actually explain to me why this had happened. And the essence of why it happened is that after that head injury, which put my body into such a state of shock, my body stayed in shock mode and it couldn't then rebalance and fix itself because it was in such an elevated stress response.

And so when you're stuck in so much stress, all your energy is going to heart, lungs, limbs, because it's preparing you to run away from a tiger. And so my heart was racing all the time. My limbs were charging with restless leg syndrome and fizzing, but the rest of me was completely exhausted because it had all its energy stolen from it. So that's why I had major hormone issues and terrible skin. That's why I had...

like nausea from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. every single day and terrible constipation. It's why I had, you know, just disruption in every part of my body. I'd had a massive goiter as well. Like I just had everything wrong with me because my whole system was in this total overdrive and it couldn't rebalance. And so my job was to then calm it back down, to get it out of that physiological overdrive so that then it could start healing. And so

Once it made sense to me and once I had tools and techniques that I just repeat, repeat, repeat to make that happen, it's amazing how fast I got better. Like having flatlined for 11 years, I think it was one week after the course, I was then in Vienna with my parents and we went to a ball in the town hall and I danced till four o'clock in the morning and the next day I was still okay. It was like...

I mean, I was still dipping into fatigue every day, but every time I dipped into fatigue or into stress, I'd just use the techniques again, turn it off, recalibrate, carry on. But I could do that, you know? And then it was two weeks later that I was in Rome now with a friend, and I realized it was 2pm in the afternoon. I saw the clock on the wall in Pantheon Square.

Samia (07:34)
Yeah.

Mel Abbott (07:45)
And I went, my gosh, we left the hotel at 9 a.m. We have been walking for five hours. I have not sat down once. I have not felt tired once. I haven't thought about symptoms. Everything's fine. Like that was the moment where I just knew I'm all better. I could just feel like my whole body just felt like it was clear. It was like this clear, even balance of energy right through my whole body. And that was where I knew I was all better.

Samia (08:05)
it.

Mel Abbott (08:13)
And that was literally two weeks from that course. it, once I knew the right info and knew what to do about it, recovery was really easy. It just took me 11 years to find the answer.

Samia (08:25)
⁓ What an amazing story. And to think about all that time that was wasted, right? All of your 20s that really you were trying to find something that worked, but you couldn't find anything that worked. And thank goodness that you kept trying because otherwise you may not have ever discovered this, you know.

Mel Abbott (08:30)
Mmm.

Totally.

If I hadn't kept an open mind and kept trying, I would still be flatlined on my parents' couch another 17 years later. You know, I'd be one of those horror stories of where Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME as some people call it, has taken decades away from your life. And the sad thing is that many people in that community have accepted the message that there is no cure. And they even actively get angry at people who say there's a cure.

you know, they're like, no there's no cure! It's like, you know, well, I got better. So if I got better, it is possible. There's thousands of people that have got better out there. It is possible. And getting well does not mean that your illness was all made up or it wasn't real or it wasn't serious. It is a very serious illness. It is a ghastly illness. I can vouch for that. But it is possible to fix it.

Samia (09:30)
business.

It is, yeah, and you're proof of that. And I know that some of the listeners might not know much about CFS. Can you tell us a little bit about what does it mean to live with CFS? What does that feel like day to day?

Mel Abbott (09:48)
When healthy people say, oh yeah, I know what you mean. I was so tired on Friday night last week. I'm like, you have no idea. Like a normal healthy person feeling tired is nothing compared to the best moment that a person with chronic fatigue feels. It is absolutely total exhaustion. Like I can remember lying on the couch feeling really thirsty and my water glass was just arm's reach away.

and I go, I'm too tired to pick up the glass of water and have a drink. And I would delay going to the loo as long as possible because I'd have to walk 10 steps to the toilet and like, I can't be bothered. Like it is exhaustion that a healthy person cannot imagine. And it's like aching all through your body. I had this like really, really hot head that was so...

Samia (10:26)
Okay.

Mel Abbott (10:36)
like we call it brain fog. It's like this intense fog through your brain that you can't even think like I can remember. Like I could barely, I never went to supermarkets because it was too overwhelming just taking in that amount of information to see a whole aisle of food. Like I could never have scanned along that aisle to see what I actually wanted. It was just too much overload for my fogged up brain. But

I can remember one day I just went to buy one item and I'm like, I need something. I'll go into the supermarket and get it. And I got to the checkout and I couldn't remember my pin number. And then I was in tears because I'm like, this is ridiculous. It's my own pin. I've had the same pin for a decade. But the amount of brain fog, I just couldn't do it. And it's that sort of helpless desperation that you feel, like the most basic of tasks of even, for some people, even having a shower is just too much.

Samia (11:15)
Right.

Mel Abbott (11:29)
People have to have seats in their showers sometimes because they can't stand in the shower. For me personally, I still showered. That didn't happen to me, but some of my clients, say, you know, they'd literally wash their hair once a forth night because it took too much energy to do that. And they would sit on a shower seat. you know, so life gets so small. And the thing, I'm a very extroverted person. I love my friends and love socializing, but...

talking to people was the most tiring thing. And so I was so isolated. You're just too tired to talk to friends. And I remember one night I just thought I am so lonely and so desperate to see friends. And I asked two of them to come over and just watch a TV program with me. I said, just watch TV for half an hour. Because I couldn't watch even TV for more than half an hour. Like it was too tiring. But I thought I can't handle talking. I just want someone to come and sit here.

watch a TV program for half an hour and then leave. And so they came around like, but what are they doing? ⁓ Mel, we haven't seen you for ages. How have you been? Tell us how you're feeling. And they talked to me for half an hour, which and I inside, I was just panicking like, my God, I'm gonna be in bed for a whole week because of my friends talking to me for this half an hour. This is not what I wanted. This is not gonna help me. But I also didn't have at that time the boundaries and the communication skills to be able to say,

I actually can't talk. I really want you to just not talk to me, just sit with me and watch TV. I just didn't feel able to do it. And so by the time they left, I was in such a state. I can't do that. I can't invite anyone over because they'll talk to me and that's the worst thing. And I know I had a client last year with long COVID and she was even worse than me. She was literally completely bed bound in a darkened, silent room with, you know, she couldn't handle any light, any sound.

People couldn't even speak in the room. They had to whisper to her or hold up a flash card with a message because any sounds just sent shockwaves through her body and she requested that her friends just came and sat in the room and didn't say a word. They couldn't even read a book because turning the pages was too loud for her. So they just had to sit in the room for two hours and then sneak out and just knowing that someone was there was helped her to ease her isolation. And you think like, you know,

To credit to her friends, they followed the instructions exactly. They came, they crept into the room, they sat down, kind of smiled away, and then they just sat there in silence for two hours and then they left because that's all she could handle. But yeah, it's a level of fatigue that normal people don't understand. And so that's why it's so important for people with ME to be acknowledged that this is real, it's serious, it's physical.

Samia (13:59)
Right.

Mel Abbott (14:13)
It's a terrible illness. You're not making this up. I who would make that up? Who would choose to lie in a darkened room for weeks on end with no stimulation? Like, no one's going to choose that. And I wasn't choosing to lie on the couch for the whole of my 20s and not study, not work, not travel, not date. You know, it's not a choice. So it is real. But it's also possible to fix it with your mind. Like, this is the interesting parody of it. You know, that ultimately...

Samia (14:24)
Right.

Mel Abbott (14:39)
The mind techniques are incredible for fixing the very real physical illness that it is. Because when you understand the need to calm and soothe your system, that's when amazing change can happen. Because all that while when you're lying in bed in a darkened room, you are absolutely cranking your stress because it's terrible. You're hating every minute of it.

Samia (14:59)
Yes, What was the turning point for you when you were going through that training in London where you discovered and the light bulb went off and you said, this is it, this is what I need to do. Managing the nervous system and managing the stress in my body is exactly what I need to do. Was there something that they said or something that really made sense to you?

Mel Abbott (15:25)
It felt like everything made sense to me. was like every concept they said, was like, there's another jigsaw puzzle piece. there's another one. And we were just putting the pieces in all through that time at the course, because every puzzle piece made me understand something else about how I had got to this state, that at a physiological level, how my body had got this at a mind level, all of the thinking patterns that...

I was doing all the time without realizing it that were reinforcing the stress response and the illness for me. All the beliefs that I was running that were maintaining that pattern for me. You know, all those factors. I don't really feel there was anything in there that didn't add to my jigsaw puzzle. So it was just steadily through the day making more more sense. I can remember thinking at the end of day one, like these techniques seemed too simple. How could this work?

But I was like, no, your friend got well, so you can too. I was just like, no, she did it, you can too. ⁓ And then day two, they kind of extended the technique a bit more and then I'm like, okay, yeah, that makes really good sense now. And yeah, I just knew it was gonna work for me. I'd already booked my three month tour of Europe starting a week after the course, before I did the course, because I was just, knew, like my friend did it, she got well. This is it, I can't have a plan B. I'm 29 years old, I cannot.

Samia (16:22)
Yes.

Mel Abbott (16:44)
bare to stay sick any longer. This has to be the answer. It's going to be the answer and I'm going travelling and I'm going to start catching up. catch up I did.

Samia (16:54)
You did

that's amazing and you know, I think about Exactly what you said where that first day you thought this all seems too simple and I think about people like you who maybe have been struggling with that for a decade or even longer and finding out that you can do these things and really change the way that you feel and I wonder if

there is some question in their mind, know, if they think this is too good to be true or this is too easy. And I know that for you, you had a friend who had gone through it and you saw that she got better. And so for you, there was that. But I wonder somebody who doesn't. Did you notice as you were going through the program, were there people who were maybe a little bit more skeptical in that program with you?

Mel Abbott (17:24)
Mm-hmm.

Um, I don't even remember that now. was 17 years ago and I, I don't remember if they were skeptical and I don't remember if they were also there because someone told them about it. I know with my clients, three quarters of them are word of mouth referrals. You know, most people that come is because they saw their friend, their mother, their sibling get well and they went, wow, I can trust that. but there are some people who find me from online sources and

watch enough testimonials and read the principles and go, yeah, that makes sense. I can understand and can get on board. And most people do really well, not everyone. mean, I don't think there'd be a program in the whole world that would work for everyone, but round about 80 % of the people that come to me are getting really great results. So it is high.

Samia (18:14)
Yes.

Yeah.

Great, great. And I think word of mouth is the best way, right? Because when you know somebody has gone through it and has gotten the benefit, I mean, that's the best way that you can get somebody. And I think you're right, the testimonials. But the other thing that I think is if somebody's looking for a program like that, they haven't lost all hope. There's some hope there. Otherwise, they wouldn't be looking for a program, right? So I think that's helpful.

Mel Abbott (18:33)
Mm.

No, they're still looking. Yeah, and sometimes I think, you know, if it had

taken me six months to get better, it would have been more convincing to people. But, you know, it's not the reality for me. It was two weeks. So I'm such an honest person. You know, because I did have a doctor who said to me, why don't you just say it took six months? You'll get more clients that way. And I was like, I can't. Like, you know, this is my reality. I mean, the average recovery time for my clients is

Samia (18:57)
Right.

Mel Abbott (19:17)
two weeks to three months, so it's not always as quick as for me. And then there are some people that take six months or a year, but that's very few numbers. The peak of the bell curve would be two weeks to three months. But there are some people that get well faster than me. I've had some people that are all better by the end of the four days. It's like, wow, you got faster than me. That's awesome. But generally, for most people, you can expect you're going to have to put in a few weeks or months work to get there.

Samia (19:38)
Yes.

Yeah, and I think as long as they've been struggling with this a few weeks or even a few months is nothing compared to having to live with that. Yeah.

Mel Abbott (19:51)
No, totally. If it had taken me

six months to get well, I would still have been thrilled that I got well. You know, I'd been sick for a decade. But yeah, the reality is it's unusual for it to take that long because your body is an amazing healer as soon as you calm it down. It just flips into its healing mode.

Samia (20:04)
Okay.

You know, I talk about lifestyle medicine a lot in this program and lifestyle medicine is a branch of medicine that emphasizes six core pillars, which are nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, social connection, and avoiding risky substances. So for example, alcohol and drugs, things like that.

Do you feel like any of those play a big role in your recovery or in the program that you've created?

Mel Abbott (20:41)
Well, the program that I attended, they don't even feature, they're not in it. It's all just your stress response, your thoughts and your beliefs. But the Switch program that I created, it is wider reaching than that and the whole of day three is exactly what you just said. So, we have one whole day dedicated to addressing the lifestyle factors because I do.

Samia (20:58)
Okay.

Mel Abbott (21:04)
think they're important. The research into the science of wellbeing does show that these are important components. So when I created my program, I was looking at, you know, what does the research show all the different things that might be important? So what day one, because I think the most important thing is calming the stress response. That's the fundamental necessary element for recovery from any chronic illness, not just chronic fatigue. So we have a whole day dedicated to that.

and to the thinking patterns and also the emotion patterns because it's not just your thoughts, it's your emotions that keep your stress response elevated. So day one is all about that and then day two is clearing the deeper emotional trauma from the past because that's another really important factor that wasn't addressed at all when I got well and clearly didn't need to be for me. But what I've seen for many clients is that if there's something from their past that's really, that they're still really wounded by.

that can be a reason that prevents recovery. So we address that on day two. Day three is every factor you just talked about with the lifestyle medicine. And then day four is beliefs because that's like sort of the final clincher for some people is what beliefs are they still holding that are limiting that sort of leap into their full new life.

Samia (22:19)
Okay. Do you ever have any clients who feel stuck or skeptical about the program or about lifestyle medicine? And if so, how do you deal with that?

Mel Abbott (22:30)
Yep, for sure. We have quite a long process before the course. So people apply and then they work through a 30 page workbook or an hour long movie, which is sort of broad education about these concepts to get them on board. And there's lots of preparation exercises that they work through to contemplate blocks that could be in their way. And then we have a chat together and work through those blocks.

For some people, that's a 10 minute conversation. They're so on board, they're so ready to go. Like, yep, you're cool, see you next course. And some people, I could spend an hour in that call because we've got to really work through barriers to recovery. And some of those barriers could be things like, you know, I haven't worked for a decade. If I get well, I'll lose my benefit. I don't know what job I would do. I've been out of the workplace too long. So we have to think about how they would.

be financially safe if they got well or you know I got bullied at school and then I got really sick and if I get well then I have to go back to school and I  hate school I don't want to go there so looking at you know if you got well what would you be doing and do you want that and if you don't want it we have to come up with a new plan that you do want because otherwise your your body is very clever at keeping you safe that's its number one motivation is to keep you safe.

And if your body or your subconscious mind thinks that it's really unsafe to go to school, it's going to find a way to keep you out of school. So we'd have to address those sorts of factors and beliefs. know, if people have heard that belief for too long, that ME is incurable and, you know, if they're still a bit too attached to that belief, that's a barrier. So we'd have to be able to break down that belief so that they're more open, that, you know, if all these thousands of people have got well,

by doing programs like the Switch, there is evidence that recovery is possible. How can you start being open to that possibility? So yeah, and looking through, you know, things like, you know, are you in an abusive relationship? Is that stress of daily dealing with trauma causing you to stay sick? Like, is that something we need to address? So yeah, a lot of pre-conversations to figure out if there are barriers that would prevent the natural easy flow into recovery.

And sometimes that stage takes quite a while, you know, not everyone is ready for the course straight away.

Samia (24:54)
I can imagine, yeah. And you were talking about relationships and it made me wonder what role do support and healthy relationships play? know, you know, toxic relationships can play a big role, but how about support and healthy relationships? What role do those play in managing their chronic illness?

Mel Abbott (25:14)
⁓ I guess over the years I have met some incredible support people. you know, wow, the lengths that a husband or a mother goes to to support their child or their partner. It's amazing. My mother included. My mother dedicated a whole decade of her life to caring for me. And so there are amazing people to help. Sometimes the level of care that they give is actually enabling and maintaining illness.

So one of the things we address in the course is how do you educate your nearest and dearest to stop treating you like a sick person? Like for instance, my mum in the morning, she'd say to my brother, how are you? He's like, all good. She'd say to me, ⁓ how are you doing today? Have you got a sore head? How bad was your sleep? you know, and so every day I'm starting by this massive analysis of every symptom I have and how bad is today and you know.

And it came from a place of love, but it wasn't actually all that useful. so, you know, I had to say to mum after my course, don't ask me in a different way than you would my brother anymore. you know, just expect that I'm okay. And things like, you know, we'd arrive at a new, you know.

hotel or something and she'd pick up her bag and my bag and start carrying them like, mum put my bag down I can carry that now. because she just so used to having to do everything for me and so there was a sort of patch where she had to learn to to expect that I could do those things now. So yeah the whole family had big adjustments to make after so long of knowing that I couldn't do any of those things for myself.

Samia (26:29)
Great.

Of of course, it's a big shift for everyone. First when you get sick and then after that when you get better,

Mel Abbott (26:53)
I know, you know, it's my mother's love that kept me alive through all that, you know, like that was the reason I didn't top myself, was like, I can't hurt my mom. you know, that was, so mom's love is absolutely survival necessary. But in terms of then me getting better, she had to adjust a lot and stop carrying on in those illness patterns because support people get...

Samia (26:58)
of course.

Yes. Okay.

Mel Abbott (27:18)
really stuck in the loop as well and really used to doing life a certain way to try to help but that you need to also step out of that.

Samia (27:27)
Yeah, And caregiving is such a difficult job.

Mel Abbott (27:30)
Totally. I remember this gorgeous story and when I did my training there was this man in my course who was there because his wife had got well and so they he decided to become a practitioner and he had met her he'd seen her across a crowded room and just thought I'm gonna marry her like it was this instant kind of knowing that she was the woman of his future and she had

really bad chronic fatigue syndrome. She was a wheelchair user. Her fatigue was so bad and his friends said to him, you're mad. Like you could have any woman out there and you choose a woman who's in a wheelchair and is probably going to be exhausted for life. And he said to them, I would rather be married to her with chronic fatigue syndrome than any other woman on this planet. And it's like,

Samia (28:17)
Wow.

Mel Abbott (28:18)
Wow, because it's not like he was already with her and then she got sick. He met her in that stage and he just loved her so much. so they were getting planning to get married and and he just accepted that this is going to be my life with this person with severe illness. And six weeks before their wedding, they heard about the same course that I did and they booked in. She did it. She was 100 percent better by their wedding day.

Samia (28:19)
See ya!

Mel Abbott (28:42)
and she walked up the aisle instead of coming in in a wheelchair and the whole audience was just cheering. You it's not the norm that you cheer as a bride walks in, but for this bride, everyone was just cheering when she walked in. And when he said the line, you know, I promise to be with you in sickness and in health, everyone was just clapping because, you know, he had already decided to be in that journey, but they've now been married for nearly 20 years and she's never had any.

any illness beyond the normal coughs and colds ever again.

Samia (29:14)
That is such a heartwarming story. the happiness that both of them must have had, you know, for her to be able to walk down the aisle. So much pride in her work and being able to do that. And for him to be able to see her do that, I can't even imagine. Yeah.

Mel Abbott (29:23)
Totally.

Yeah,

it must have been the most incredible wedding to be present at. what a moment. So, yeah.

Samia (29:35)
Yes. Yes. And these are the kind of

stories that just, I'm sure, make you want to keep doing what you're doing to see these kind of results.

Mel Abbott (29:44)
Totally.

I hear these stories every two weeks. I've got a woman with me, she just had a call yesterday and she's had chronic fatigue syndrome, ME, for 30 years. And she just announced, I don't have it anymore. So, we're just like, yes, it's like week three for her at the moment. And she went, yeah, I just don't have it anymore.

Samia (29:48)
Yeah, that's amazing.

Mel Abbott (30:04)
And she just knew that everything was different. She just knew that it was over. She said she, you know, she's been housebound for years and had patches of being bed bound. And yet she went for an hour's walk around her neighborhood one day. And then the next day she went to a shopping mall and was out for over an hour. And the next day she was in the garden and all along she never had anything more than just normal muscle tiredness because she hadn't done anything for so long.

Samia (30:29)
Yeah.

Mel Abbott (30:31)
And she's just her energy was so steady and stable and didn't she didn't have any of that awful post-exertional malaise. She just knew she was fine.

Samia (30:38)
Yeah,

amazing. You often highlight the nervous system's role in healing. Can you explain a little bit about what happens in the body when stress and when trauma are unresolved?

Mel Abbott (30:44)
Mmm.

When all that trauma and stress is sitting there, you have racing heart, like literally resting pulse of mine was 118 beats a minute. You have cortisol levels that are through the roof. So I had blood tests every three months for 11 years. And every time my cortisol levels would triple the normal healthy rate and the doctor would say, ⁓ that's bad. You won't feel good with cortisol like that.

But there was never any solution, we're just monitoring a problem. Some people then, they go all the way up to the highest point. When you get over a thousand cortisol, that's where you can crash into that real shutdown state where you're completely bed bound, you can't even sit up. And that's when your cortisol drops to just about nothing. And I never quite reached that. My cortisol sat at around 900, so I was just short of the complete collapse phase.

which is why I could still go and have a shower standing up, just. But yeah, so there's a lot of tangible, measurable physical indicators that this is not a healthy person at a physical level. And then you have really racy mind, you know you're just so tired, but you cannot sleep, you know, terrible insomnia, worst insomnia I've ever had through that illness. And you just, yeah.

Samia (31:45)
Yes.

Yeah.

Mm.

Mel Abbott (32:07)
That fizzing in your limbs drives you nuts, like all stress stuff.

Samia (32:11)
Mel, in your experience, why do you think that medical systems often underestimate the impact of stress and emotional trauma on chronic illness or on a human being?

Mel Abbott (32:24)
Well, I suspect it goes all the way back to a researcher and philosopher called Descartes who decided that mind, body and spirit were completely separate. So the spirit was only to be addressed by the church and the body was only to be addressed by the doctors and the mind, we can kind of ignore that because it's not very important. And so there was this total separation and mainstream medicine went down this crusade to reduce everything to its

Samia (32:45)
I see.

Mel Abbott (32:53)
its smallest physical building block, know, micro, micro, micro, down to understanding a body in such small detail. And they completely miss the big picture. It's like the more micro you go, the more you miss the overall picture of a whole organism, a whole being and how everything is working together in that system. And in 1932, Seeley became aware of the stress effect and created a whole model.

around the role of stress and the fight or flight response and so on. So this is not new information. It has been around for 90 years already, but it's sort of, you know, it hasn't flowed through into mainstream medicine enough at this point. And I feel like it's, I mean, I've been a practitioner for 15 years now, and there's definitely been big evolution in that 15 years. I see a lot more interest from doctors than there was before. You know, I get

big audiences at GP conferences, they really want to know this info and are very positive about it and say, this is the missing piece, we were never taught at med school to just see a whole body, a whole person, not just individual organs and systems. ⁓ And it makes sense, it's so logical that stress, we know how stress acts, that it sends all the energy to heart, lungs, limbs. So it must be stealing it from other places, you know, and...

Samia (34:01)
Yes.

Mel Abbott (34:12)
obviously that's going to affect health and other organs if they're being drained all the time. So yeah, I think it's improving. you know, Otago Med School in New Zealand now has a whole module of mind, body medicine, and I'm one of the contributors for that module. And so we're having a whole new wave of doctors in New Zealand who are going to come out of their training already knowing this and already knowing to look at their patients in this holistic way and ask questions like,

what's been stressing you out lately, because that might be why you've developed IBS. looking at, and even things like celiac disease, know, people would say, that's a real physical condition. It's like, yes, it is. But it still has a trigger by something emotional in someone's life. So if they can figure out what happened in their life at this point, or in the past that has caused this destruction of their immune system.

Samia (34:44)
it's

Mel Abbott (35:04)
then they can resolve that. you know, conditions that are physical are not necessarily irreversible if you can understand the emotions and the trauma and the stress response that took someone into that state.

Samia (35:16)
I think that's wonderful that you're helping to train the new GPs, Because it's all in the training, If they've never learned it... there's a saying that we have that says if the only thing you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail, right? It's all about what you've been trained to do. And if that's all you know, then that's the only way you're going to be able to fix the problem, right? Or

Mel Abbott (35:23)
Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Samia (35:41)
⁓ I guess in this case, it wouldn't even be fix the problem, but just monitor the problem. But when they start to learn the difference and know that there's a different way of looking at it and different questions that they can ask and different ways to approach it, that makes all the difference in the world. You've gone from being a patient to then teaching these doctors and teaching at a medical school and speaking at conferences. What has that transition been like for you?

Mel Abbott (35:47)
Yeah.

I love it. Like the first time I presented at the GP conference, I was so scared because I was anticipating a really skeptical, really negative audience who were going to heckle me like hell and it was going to be horrible. Because fundamentally I love public speaking, but that day I was really scared. But they were really interested. And ever since that first day, I'm like, ⁓ OK, this is cool.

And I got bigger and bigger audiences each time until I was voted best speaker two years in a row out of 200 speakers. So, you know, here's a whole lot of doctors that really want to know this stuff. And people come up to me all through the conference to say, wow, your talks were amazing. It's like all the stuff I never knew that I wish I'd learned at med school. And, you know, and someone will come up to me and say, I came to your talk last year and I've sent these patients to you and they all came back better. Thank you. ⁓

So it's very validating going to that environment and feeling like I'm really able to make a difference. I love helping individual clients, but being able to help transform the way that med school and doctors in general are working with their patients is a wonderful burst.

Samia (37:17)
Yes, it sounds like it. Do you think it's the training or what do you think is the biggest gap between traditional medicine and holistic approaches or how the two can better complement each other?

Mel Abbott (37:30)
Well, the two actually work together brilliantly as long as you're aware of the strengths and limits of each. know, mainstream has a wonderful place. It is brilliant for acute care. So, you know, if you break your arm, don't do mind body on it. Go to the hospital, you know, get an x-ray, get it set and get a cast. You know, there's times when mainstream is absolutely the best choice. You know, you get appendicitis, go and get your surgery. Like, there are times when that's always going to be the best approach.

And also for screening, mainstream is really good at screening and diagnosis and all that sort of monitoring. Like there are things that are wonderful. But when we get to chronic illness, that's where I feel that mainstream is missing a big beat. Because they haven't seen the cause in the right way. They're looking at, know, like with, you know, well with chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, they've spent decades looking for

the virus that causes it. It's like, there isn't one virus that causes it. Some people get ME after glandular fever. Some people get it after a bad flu. Some people got it after a messy divorce. Some people got it from too much work burnout. Like there's so many different triggers. How could there be one virus that's the ME virus? You know? And so I think the research when they're only looking for one physical cause that's common to all, that's where

They're not going to find that. If we need to zoom out a little bit and go, the cause that's common to all of these people is that their body is in a highly overactive stress response. And there'd be any number of possible reasons why that happens. Some of it will be viral load. But lots of people catch flu and get better in a week. So why does one person catch it and then stay sick for a decade?

That's because there was already a significant stress load on their system and the virus was the final tipping point that crashed them over the edge. And same goes with long COVID. I've seen a lot of COVID clients and none of them, it's about the COVID. Like, sure, they caught COVID and then they got really sick, but most people get better. So why did these people stay sick? And every single one of them, we can trace to what was the significant stress event in their life.

that meant that when they then caught COVID, their system just fell apart and couldn't cope anymore. And it can be a recent stress or it can be a historical stress, but either way, this person's body was at that point where it was only just coping and then they got COVID and bang.

Samia (39:54)
And that was that. Yeah. So how do you see the future of integrative health care and lifestyle based health care evolving over time, especially with these conditions that are labeled as incurable?

Mel Abbott (39:56)
Mm.

Well, I think it's growing all the time. There's a lot of mind-body programs and I think a lot of people call them brain retraining programs. There's a lot of them now compared to 10 years ago. So it's a growing industry. People have a lot of choices to see which practitioner they feel drawn to and which kind of concepts they're drawn to and so on. And I think there are more and more doctors that are referring patients to them. mean, my first...

Samia (40:21)
you

Mel Abbott (40:37)
client group, three quarters of my clients is word of mouth, but the second largest source of clients is medical referrals. So there are a lot of doctors who do send their patients to courses like this. And that's wonderful. What a great doctor who can be a sign poster. And I feel that's a big role of a GP to be aware of so many things that are out there and be able to be that first port of call to somebody.

to say, look, I agree with you, your illness is super real, it's super physical, it's really bad, you're not making it up, but here are some principles that you could hear about that will help you understand that a mind-body approach could be really helpful to you. We're not saying you're making up your illness, it's real, but, you know, so when I'm working with GPs, I'm saying to them, you must stop telling people this is incurable, that is a...

Samia (41:19)
Yes.

Mel Abbott (41:27)
devastating message to hear and it's not even true. So you just stop doing that and then give them this explanation around the role of stress and how the stress response zaps all the energy from other parts of your body and how that all happens and that there are things that they would be able to do that could help to rebalance that stress response and help them to heal physically. So I think that's a really important role for doctors to be able to explain those things in a way that doesn't say

your illness is not real and that somehow you're lazy or you're making it up and you know to really acknowledge this is real and terrible but this is why a mind body approach could assist you. And if we did that imagine how much we could reduce the hospital waiting times I mean not that you know like the people who are stuck in ME wards for months like the cost of keeping people in those sick states.

Samia (41:59)
and

Yes.

Mel Abbott (42:19)
And actually we could educate those people to be able to recover. Wouldn't that be better for them and for the whole of our societies? And then a lot of other conditions like endometriosis. People have rounds and rounds of surgery for endo and it never lasts because they're having to address the root cause problem, which is a lot of emotional trauma held in their womb area. So if people were given the opportunity to understand that and they could heal the emotional trauma that caused their endo to keep growing,

Samia (42:25)
Yes.

Yeah.

Mel Abbott (42:48)
then they don't need more surgery. you know, there's so many conditions that if people were offered mind-body first, there would be such a reduction of load on the hospital system that people could actually get the surgery that they really did need. You know, and I just feel that, you know, I don't know what it's like in America, but in New Zealand, you know, the hospital wait times are ridiculous when people who genuinely need surgery and they just can't get it for months.

⁓ And that's because there's so little engagement of all these mind-body approaches first. And I just think if healthcare really embraced this, we could solve our hospital waiting times overnight.

Samia (43:25)
Absolutely, I agree. Our wait times are pretty long in America too. And I was just thinking as you were talking about this, how wonderful it would be for doctors to be able to have this conversation with their patients and to reassure them. And I love that you said your illness is real because a lot of times people feel like they get sent from one person to another and nobody really believes.

Mel Abbott (43:38)
I'm of here.

Samia (43:49)
what they're going through or that their illness is real. And I think it's important to say it is real and also this is what's keeping it active, Why don't we address some of these mind-body techniques first and see. I think that would be tremendous. That would make such a huge difference in our medical system. Yeah.

Mel Abbott (44:07)
Totally.

Yeah, because I mean, I was always believed by doctors. I was never told that my illness was not real, possibly because it started with the head injury. So maybe I was bit protected from that messaging that there's nothing wrong with you, which I hear some other people have been so traumatized by being told that. And I can see that would have been devastating.

For me, it was the devastation of being told this is so real that you'll never ever get better. So to me, they've swung from one side of the pendulum all the way to the other and neither is a helpful position for patients to actually find an answer to get well. We have to be able to hit a midpoint that says this is real and physical and serious and it's recoverable.

Samia (44:46)
Yes, I agree. Well, if you could leave our listeners with one takeaway about stress or healing or the body's ability to recover, what would that be?

Mel Abbott (44:58)
I keep reminding yourself that your body is amazing, it can heal. Like really keep that reinforcement. My body is going to heal itself as soon as it's calm. Like it is going to do that. It's quite capable so that you can start taking away that fear and helplessness, which adds to the stress load. So if you can start seeing my body is actually an amazing healer, it's going to manage this. My job is to calm it down. That's an amazing starting point.

and then doing everything you can to be creating calm for yourself. And you may manage that by yourself. That's pretty challenging. I would generally recommend that it's probably worth seeking out one of the many mind-body retraining programs, because that just does help a lot to learn techniques that you can use to keep.

⁓ changing all these patterns and to have a trainer who can help spot your blind spots and notice you know what patterns are you doing that you didn't even know you're doing and and talk you through your barriers and blocks that can be really helpful but even just having the awareness of why this has happened to you and you know even that alone takes quite a lot of the stress away and healing can start happening.

Samia (46:10)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that. And I know our listeners are going to want to know a little bit more about you personally and what you do. You've told us a little bit about your switch program. I'd love to hear a little bit more about it. And I know that there are some other programs that you have. can you tell us a little bit about what programs you currently have in place or any that you're currently working on?

Mel Abbott (46:34)
So the starting point, I guess, for my programs is a free 40 minute webinar called First Steps to Recovery. So that's fairly similar info that from what I've talked about today. And so it's just a sort of taster and an introduction to how your body is capable of recovery and that stress is behind the problem. So you probably listeners here have already bypassed the first webinar.

Samia (46:40)
Thank

Mel Abbott (47:00)
So you can then proceed, there's a two hour webinar called Next Steps to Recovery. And so that one goes into more detail on how to identify thinking patterns and belief patterns to change. And it gives four techniques for calming the stress response and a number of techniques for changing thinking and belief patterns and dealing with fatigue, pain, anxiety, depression.

digestive issues and weight loss, I think are the topics covered in that one. So people can do that one. I mean, it's amazing what change can happen just from a two hour webinar. Some people have actually recovered. had a woman that was hospitalized with long COVID and she watched that two hour webinar from her hospital bed and was then recovering so fast that she went home two weeks later and then was all better within another week or two. was phenomenal just from that two hour one.

Samia (47:53)
Yes.

Mel Abbott (47:54)
For

many other people, the 2 hour one is a good taster. They're getting improvements. They're like, oh yeah, I can see this is working, but I need more actual help from a trainer because that's all prerecorded. So the next step up is the Switch webinar series, which is 15 hours of training spread over six weeks of prerecorded learning. And there's also four group calls.

one on an online with me so that people can have Q &A directly with me and that one I forgot to say that's 297 New Zealand dollars so that's only 130 US dollars by the way ⁓ and so the the switch webinar series is 997 New Zealand dollars I think that's about 580 I think in US dollars so that's the next option

Samia (48:29)
Okay.

Mel Abbott (48:40)
The deluxe option is to go for fully live training with me. So there's a four day program, four consecutive days with 20 hours of training. It's got the most techniques, the most personalized help. It's a small group setting of only eight people. So you get lots of help from me. There's a lot of group follow-up calls and a lot of email support afterwards. So that is the most inclusive package. And that one is the only one of my programs that deals with how to address trauma from your past.

because I really think you need a trainer to be with you live to support you to do deep trauma work. I think it's too vulnerable to get people doing that on their own in their living room without support. So the Switch Live is that really deluxe approach that can be attended online or it can be attended in person. So I get people joining us from all over the world online, but it's still live training. And that program is...

$2197 New Zealand dollars, I think that's about $1200 or $1300 US dollars. And yeah, that one is the one that has the highest success rates because it is the most, you know, all-encompassing support. But, you know, for some people, it is not well enough to do that. They could never cope with six-hour days. And some people, you know, would hate the group environment. They find it too overwhelming to be doing switches and stepping out techniques in front of other people.

Samia (49:45)
Yes, comprehensive.

Mel Abbott (50:00)
And they just don't want that. And then the switch webinar series is a better choice for those people anyway, because it's, it's more spread out. You do it when you feel like it, you've take it, take your time and, you're not sort of in the spotlight in a live training course. So that's the kind of the progression and people can, you don't have to do them in that order. You can just jump in straight with the switch. You don't have to do the two hour one first. That's just.

some people need to test the water a little bit to see if they like it and other people will just go, I'm in and they just jump straight in with the switch.

then I'm just, I've been working for two years on a new series that's specifically for anxiety because I've noticed that, know, there's anxiety is probably my largest client group, even though on the application forms, chronic fatigue is the biggest group, but everyone with chronic fatigue also has anxiety and actually every illness that comes to me, there's always anxiety.

And a lot of people who have anxiety don't identify as having a chronic illness, so they'd never do a course for chronic illness recovery anyway. So I'm creating a separate pathway for people with anxiety. so there's the free 40 minute first steps to calmness, very sort of an entry level kind of just understand what causes it and so on. And then the three hour webinar, that's got two one and a half hour webinars. And that's got 56 techniques for dealing with

anxiety.

And it's not about anxiety management. I don't believe in management of anything. I believe in resolution. So this is about what can you do to resolve the root cause of your anxiety and just transform it so that you don't have anxiety anymore. So that next steps to a calmness program. That's 297 New Zealand, so 130 US. And hopefully it will be

in the marketplace before Christmas. It's been a two year project so far and it's completely different techniques, completely different approach than the switch. So there's two alternate pathways that people can do both because they're so different. They will go together or be done separately. So lots and lots of help options at whatever price point people can afford and whatever amount of involvement they want to have from me.

Samia (52:04)
Excellent, And if people want to learn more about these programs or about you, where should they go to find you?

Mel Abbott (52:11)
And my website is empowertherapies.co.nz. So that's empower being empower and then therapies.co.nz for New Zealand. Or just Google search empower therapies or Mel Abbott, the switch, any of those things you should be able to find me. There's lots of testimonial movies on my website. There's a whole

page called The Recovery Project, which is 26 interviews of people who've recovered from many different conditions using many different methods. So there's a lot of free resources on my website for people to explore and get help, even if they're not feeling ready to sign up for a program.

Samia (52:51)
Okay, perfect. And I thank you so much for this conversation because it has been wonderful. It has been really eye-opening. And I'm sure it's going to be a huge help for a lot of people who have not been able to find a solution yet. So I really appreciate you being here and sharing this information with us. Thank you, Mel.

Mel Abbott (53:10)
I've enjoyed being here.

Samia (53:19)
Thank you so much for tuning in to Thursday Tea with Sami, your sip of wellness and mental health. I hope that today's episode gave you a little inspiration in your journey. Remember, your journey to wellness starts here. I would love to hear from you. Drop me a comment letting me know how you liked this episode or what topics you want to hear more about. Until next time, stay well and keep being your best.