u/7121958041201

I just thought I'd share an insight I had on a recent mindful walk.

I was feeling somewhat stressed after a day of work so I decided to go on a walk to get some fresh air and to practice being mindful. And as often happens I found myself trying to think my way out of feeling stressed. Or, put another way, I was trying to think of a way to be present instead of being gripped by my thoughts about work, chores etc. Which unsurprisingly does not help very often.

What I realized was that every time I engage with a thought, I am training my mind to value the contents of my thoughts. So by trying to think my way out of thinking, I was actually increasing the grip thoughts have over my mind.

Instead, the useful approach is to stop focusing on your thoughts (or stop thinking to whatever extent you can manage without creating tension) and to start trying to cultivate interest in the present moment. Look for what sensations, emotions, or thoughts you are aware of rather than analyzing the contents of your thoughts. This primes your mind to care more about the present moment than your thoughts.

As usual, it is also important to see if you can be OK when thoughts do grab your attention and with any stress you have. The purpose isn't to make the thinking or stress go away even if it does manage to do that sometimes. The purpose is to practice being present.

Which really is actually very simple and feels like something I should have already seen. That's basically just doing my regular seated vipassana practice while seeing and going for a walk. I guess I never made that connection before, though.

And for a part two, I also thought about the best way to actually release that stress once it has built up. Just being mindful doesn't make stress that has collected over a day dissipate right away. I think for now these are my conclusions:

• The best approach is likely to not allow the stress to build up in the first place. Maintain your practice as consistently as you can using whatever methods work for you.
• If you can, do whatever you need to in order to relax. Lay down, read something, listen to something calming, watch nature documentaries, meditate etc. If you can't, just do whatever you need to do with as much presence and acceptance as you can muster.
• Something I only learned recently, but you can also use a compassion practice with yourself. I have found acknowledging when things are hard and feeling compassion for myself allows me to keep a relaxed and open heart rather than tensing up around the stress and making it worse.

If anyone has any comments or questions I'd be happy to hear them!

I have noticed I often feel very relaxed during the day, but once my medications wear off I often start to feel tense and stressed. Which I think is how I probably operated 24/7 before I was diagnosed at 33 (I'm 39 now). I think I basically just learned to run off of stress instead of allowing myself to relax. Which means every evening and every morning I usually feel tense.

I have also noticed most of the people I know that were diagnosed when they were younger do not have this problem. They seem to "crash" when their stimulants wear off. Which is what seems to happen to me when I manage to relax, too.

I have found a few things that have helped, but never very consistently. Usually they basically involve softening my focus, relaxing my body, seeing that being tense or stressed is not a problem that needs to be solved, and doing a calm activity (usually watching a show or reading). Meditation helps sometimes too.

Actively "trying" to relax never works. It just makes me more tense.

If anyone here has managed to find solutions to this, I'd love to hear them!

It has taken me a while to notice this, but it is starting to appear like many of my long COVID issues are likely related to my gut health. Things I have noticed:

• I always feel better on vacation. I thought that was probably just due to a lack of stress, but now I am starting to think this is also because I don't try to control my diet as much so my gut gets all the sugar and carbs that it wants. I also feel way worse when I get home and go back to my usual (far more strict) diet.
• Even before LC I have always felt similar when I drank alcohol. Once I stop drinking I get ravenous and feel anxious/uncomfortable until I eat a ton of food. The only time I don't remember this happening was when I was on a very low sugar diet.
• Antihistamines have been a huge help for me. Well, apparently a dysregulated gut can release tons of histamines. I would guess especially when you also have MCAS or something similar (which I pretty clearly do).
• Food often makes my symptoms worse. I generally get my worst symptoms in the evening a few hours after dinner, which is generally my largest meal.
• In the afternoon I often crave pop, and I basically feel bad until I get some sugar. I have literally had symptoms since yesterday evening, I just drank a can of Mountain Dew, and now I feel better.

This all makes me think that a lot of the symptoms I get are probably from "bad bacteria" throwing temper tantrums when they are starving, which apparently can lead to increased histamine/cortisol/adrenaline levels in your body, increased hunger, and vagus nerve issues. So I'm thinking I'll start working on my gut health and see what happens. Probably going to get it tested too.

Just curious if anyone else has noticed anything similar! Or what people have found that helps with this.

Four times I have gone on vacations for a few days this spring. Each time my HRV shoots up (from around 40 to 50+), my heart rate goes down, my respiration rate goes down, and it seems like I can do almost anything I want and it doesn't really matter. I can exercise more, socialize more, eat whatever I want, stop most of my supplements, and even drink some alcohol. Nothing bad happens.

Then I get home and immediately I go back to normal. Or often even worse than that for a day or two.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or found a way to keep that state going at home?

To me it seems pretty clear that this is probably a stress response. I think my mind just finds being at home and working stressful, so it stays in more of a fight or flight mode, and that makes resting well difficult. So I'm trying to see if I can find ways to make being home less stressful with things like meditation, spending more time relaxing, taking better breaks, and my own custom designed "brain retraining protocol" (since I don't feel like paying $500 for a "professional" one haha).

I haven't had much luck yet, though. I find it very tough to get my brain to relax at home and to stop worrying about all the things it "needs" to be doing. I'm going on a 7-day meditation retreat tomorrow so I guess we will see if that helps.

And to be clear, I am not saying this is all long COVID is. I have had periods where I felt terrible on vacations too. I think this is probably a sign that I am doing quite well right now (I have had LC for 26 months now).

For the last several springs I have noticed some rather extreme agitation in spring, even including some akathisia symptoms (restless muscles). Until this last week I had no idea what caused this issue (I thought it might be related to bipolar or to my ADHD medications) but now I am starting to feel pretty certain that this is just my overactive sympathetic nervous system from long COVID combined with my regular energy levels increasing in the springtime (my energy levels crash in fall and jump up in spring very regularly, sort of like seasonal affective disorder but more energy based and less mood based).

What is making me think this is that I never notice these symptoms on vacation and I seem to be able to "out relax" them if I rest a ton. It can be very difficult, though. I have also had long COVID since around when these symptoms started getting worse.

Has anyone noticed anything similar? And if you have, have you found anything that helps?

I'm looking into limbic system retraining as a way to help this, which my functional medicine doctor recommended. Basically learning how to relax again. I don't know very much about it yet, though.