Coach Kyle

Opened my messages this morning to another big client win!

35-year-old woman with intense POTS, dizziness, and neck pain. Months ago, she was mostly bed-ridden as any amount of movement or standing would cause intense symptoms. This forced her into moving back home with her parents where she felt trapped physically and emotionally. We've been focused on exploring the emotions of her situation and gently challenging her physical symptoms to get back to movement. In her message this morning she had to share that she had walked an entire mile for the first time in 1.5 years! Walking across the room was extremely difficult and scary only a handful of months ago.

It is so important to celebrate each milestone in recovery from chronic symptoms. It is these wins that build confidence and momentum, which is so extremely valuable in a process where you start with so little of both and have to endure that for quite some time.

I wanted to celebrate this client win because it demonstrates that progress is often less attached to outcomes and more attached to shifting mindset.

A 69-year-old woman with chronic pain in her back, knees, and hips, along with a host of health challenges attributed to long COVID. In 7 months, she has experienced a lot of improvement in pain and overall health. The win I want to celebrate though is that she came into our last session in a lot of pain and visibly bruised up. In spite of her state, she had a huge smile and couldn't wait to share the win from the last week. She was unloading some heavier groceries from the trunk of her car, got a bit too confident and fell backwards, tumbling a bit down the driveway. While all of this is obviously not ideal, the win was in her reaction to it all. As she lay in the driveway looking up at the sky, groceries scattered about, she laughed a deep belly laugh like she hadn't had in a long time. She was able to avoid falling into the old patterns of fear, worry, defeat, and shame that would have paralyzed her only months ago. She shared that before, an event like this would have stopped her in her tracks and likely set her way back, but today she is able to see it as a result of improvement (carrying groceries and going to the store was impossible not so long ago) and an opportunity to get better.

In recovery from chronic symptoms, mindset is the most important tool you have. Things don't always work out as you would like and that is always ok. It is your mindset and how you react that tells your brain what it should be doing.

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