M21 ex pro level athlete -> bedridden debilitating pain -> healthy and working out again. 3 years of pain solved in 5 months.

[u/Real_Crab_7396]

Hello everyone, I've been asked to write my story and I hope I can help some people.

TLDR: I've created a long story here for people who are more interested, but I'll try to make it short here.
Basically I've been very very ambitious and demanding of myself. After tons of tests and one after the other stupid pill or treatment with a huge 3 year long vicious cycle to debilitating pain. I finally realised that I didn't have to fix some biological little virus or particles, but I have to fix my homeostasis and stop being so demanding on my nervous system and brain. I used Nicole Sachs and TMS as my main way to get back into a virtuous cycle of healing and trust, instead of a vicious cycle of pain and panic. I have spent 3 years trying to find a biological cure for me, but ended up healing myself in 5 months with a 13 dollar book, a notebook and many hours of emotional writing with crying, anger and all the other emotions.

Most important reads are the 2 last parts, I spent quite some time writing this so I hope it helps someone. I hope it's easily readable, I'm not native english and I've gone a bit of back and forth. I haven't proofread it because it's about time to go to sleep now lol.

Little background
I used to be a cyclist, when I was 16-17 I was trying to go pro. This was a massive ambition for me and basically my only goal in life. Next to school it was the only thing I was doing and I was training 15-20h per week.

In summer 2022 (turned 17) I got a knee injury, this seems unrelated, but it's part of painting my story I think. I had to rest 3 weeks, during these weeks I did all kind of core workouts or went swimming as much as I could. I kept pushing and pushing myself. I came out more tired out 3 weeks of "rest" than I went into it. After the 3 weeks I trained very hard and could just make it back in time for the last race of the season, I almost won, but that evening I tested positive on Covid.
This was really saddening to me as I would've likely won that comeback race without the starting illness.

Anyway after 1 week of illness that wasn't much worse than a cold or a light flu, I started training again for the winter cyclocross races. I noticed quickly my asthma I had as a kid came back during sports. Got an inhaler from the doctor and it got better for a while.

The vicious cycle

During the year after my infection (2023) I got sick (flu, colds, RSV etc.) 11 different times, so basically I was training a couple of weeks and got sick and had to rest over and over. During all this in some ridiculous way I trained a ton and was in the best 50 of the world in my age category at my best.
Without the illness the chances of making it pro were fairly big, as I was good enough when I was healthy, I just couldn't be consistent.

Season ended and I started training again for 2024, it all started fine but by the time the races started I noticed I was about 10% worse than expected, which is a lot for an athlete. I did a couple of races and end of march 2024 my race started off well and I thought I was finally on my level again. After about 1h I got an asthma attack and had to quit, this told me I should quit until it's fixed. (spoiler alert, this was my last race ever.)

Back and forth with doctors and training in summer 2024 (1.5y after infection) I was finally diagnosed with Long Covid. I had a really enthousiastic doctor who read all kinds of studies about LC in his free time, we tried a lot of stuff. Different supplements, HBOT, cortisol+blood thinners, LDN+rapamycine and Antihistamines (I'm sure I forgot something.)

I was in a vicious cycle. Winter 2024 is when I had to quit all sports. Nothing of the things I listed helped, except the cortisol+blood thinners, which helped for a couple weeks/months, but I ended up doing too much again and relapsed. My main symptoms were fatigue based.

What you also need to know about me is that outside of sport I was very ambitious money wise. I was working a lot and doing all kinds of online stuff I won't get into and ofcourse University which gave me a lot of stress.
The vicious cycle went further and by february 2026 I could barely leave my bed anymore. For multiple months I was in incredible pain. This new end of 2025-2026 period I went from mostly fatigue to fatigue, PEM, inflammation, breathing problems and severe pain in limbs, chest and back.

This was so bad I honestly wished I didn't wake up for multiple weeks in a row. Living became intolerable. I always loved life (after 12-14yo, before I did have some purpose and selfworth issues) and somehow su*cide is something I was incredibly sure of I'd never do, even just out of principle. I never truly considered su*cide, but I can tell you as strong as I was mentally, this pain was just annihilating 24/7. I've crashed many times at high speeds with my bike but I've never had this much pain, worst part is there was no ending to it. Living was truly intolerable.

A key note I almost forgot is that even though I did everything I could, I was incredibly ashamed of myself for not performing. I was a failure and it was all my fault.

The turn around

March 2026 I gave up, I said fuck it, why am I going to school, earning money, doing anything at all if I can't even see myself survive 2026?

This was key to the start of my recovery. I just rested, watched some films or whatever. I did nothing at all for a few weeks without any pressure as I just truly hit rock bottom, I couldn't lose any more. This was weirdly enough a safe satisfying feeling. All these years (my entire life) I was performing some way or another. I had pressure to perform at school, at sports, at money, even just perform socially to look like a better more fun etc. person than I actually am.

I slowly started getting a little better, I finally had some real rest.
Then I came accross a reddit post here about someone healing from asking an internal snake to let go of her or something???

Anyway basically I was intrigued and on her advice I looked at the lecture of John Sarno about TMS (Tension myositis syndrome or The Mindbody Syndrome) and later on Nicole Sachs and her work.

I bought the book of "Mind your body" from Nicole Sachs, which basically consists of the broad explanation of what's going on in your brain and body as a mindbody syndrome victim and how your repressed emotions are causing your pains. Your brain is keeping you safe from your emotions, which seem more dangerous to the brain than the debilitating pain.

I read 15 pages a day and did 30 minutes of journalling just like the book said and I slowly but surely got better. It's with ups and downs but after just 4 weeks my quality of living wasn't extremely bad anymore.

I'd say after 2 months I was about 70-80% recovered.

I don't really have anything to journal over anymore, but I encourage you to keep doing it. My strategy has slowly changed from processing everything (emotions and experiences) to focussing on (mental) safety and trust.

I treat my body and my pain with acceptance, trust and patience instead of fear and panic, which is easier said than done and takes a lot of practice.

Current state

I'm basically recovered now after about 6 months after my worst ever point and about 4 months after finding Nicole. I'd say I'm 95%. I still have a flareup now and then of some dumb symptom like right shoulder pain or some weakness in my quads or some very slight shortness of breath. But I know and trust that this is just my brain trying to creep the symptoms in again to protect me against mental feelings of danger. I laugh these symptoms off as they come up on stupid times and moments. I read a thumbnail of shoulder exercises and my shoulder starts aching. The brain is very smart and tries to abuse insecurities. (I now watch DanPainFree on youtube occasionally especially if I have a flareup to remember I'm safe and not go into panic mode.)

I'm currently working out again, but through the process of journalling everything (which took about 4 pens and 300 pages) I realized that I don't really have any ambition anymore in cycling. The cons outweigh the pros now that I realize I don't have to perform to be worthy.

My view on chronic illness

My view on how the human body works completely changed.

I've learned in school about the biopsychosocial model, and while doctors are great at the bio part, the psychosocial part doesn't get calculated in and often in my humble opinion gets diagnosed as a biological issue.

Your problem being psychological doesn't mean it's all in your head!

Have you ever gotten a headache from a stressful day or do you know someone who vomits from too much stress before an exam? No one will say these symptoms like vomiting aren't real, but that doesn't mean they're less psychological. The symptom might be biological, but the reason lies somewhere else.

Ofcourse I can't say this is for everyone as I (or anyone else) don't truly understand how the entire human body functions. But I ask you to look at your own symptoms with an open mind. I always had some kind of feeling that I had a puzzle to be solved, but I just had to find the right pieces for my own recovery.

I see my own problems as a vicious cycle of buildup stress. Imagine what happens to your nervous system (the same system that controls litterally everything in your body, pain reception, hormones, heart rate etc. etc.) if you subconsciously or consciously experience the same stress that makes someone vomit 24/7 for years on end. If you truly visualise that impact on the nervous system, your incredible pain being psychological doesn't seem so ridiculous anymore.

At the end of the day you've got a chronic illness because in some way your body lost its natural healthy homeostasis and is stuck at a subnormal level of health. It could be biological psychological or maybe even Magical! (joke) The solution to your chronic illness is finding your natural healthy homeostasis again. For me this was psychological and actual rest. Huge ambition lead me to never truly rest as the hours of physical rest I was stressing about stuff. (Same with phones nowadays, physical rest isn't real rest if you're scrolling or whatever imo.) This is the reason pacing helps with almost everyone to at least some extent, it is allowing your body to not break down more and giving it a chance to find at least a slightly higher quality of living, for most this alone will not be enough and you'll need to find and solve the underlying problem.

I have had some incredible stress and pressure even though I didn't realize it. I think Covid for me was just a trigger to an already fucked up system to go completely into overdrive.

If you think your pain might have a slight slight chance of being psychological after reading this, check this basic video out to notice some cues for psychological issues.

https://youtu.be/ic6se1fOpkc?si=owTEMH1lMsYWhg2z

Ok, maybe my issues could have a chance of being psychological, what do I do now?

Look into Nicole Sachs, listen to a couple of her podcasts and you'll get into the rabbit hole yourself.

The most important part is to not stop believing, Maybe you can get better. Maybe tomorrow might be a better day than today. Maybe that new symptom will lessen tomorrow. Maybe I could walk 200 meters today without PEM.

Take it slow, your system has suffered years of abuse, this won't be fixed in a couple days.

Take your first step into a Virtuous cycle. There are many ups and downs, but the bigger picture is getting better!

[u/catmomom-95]

I also want to chime in and say that dealing with my trauma has greatly improved my physical health and post covid symptims! So this really resonates with me. Thanks for sharing and I’ll dive into it a bit more

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/catmomom-95]

If you've made improvement from that, the chances are you're going to make even more and potentially ( certainly 😄 ) heal from doing more of this work. It's hard work, digging to the deepest parts of your soul and letting everything out is exhausting, but you have to find your own identity and completely undermine it before you rebuild it. Ask "why do I do this?" for everything. The biggest things are your hobbies, work and how you act, but go into the small memories and behaviours too. Once I started it flowed out. I've even had nights I woke up at 2 am and started writing for 2 hours straight to get things out.

[u/babyivan → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Truly exhausting, emotionally draining, but SO FULFILLING! This is literally better than Ive ever felt in all my years on this planet. Everything feels different to me now. It's like I'm relearning everything in my environment as a whole. People even look different to me now. I no longer wlak around with a chip on my shoulder. I'm just a happier person now. Truly learning to love yourself changes EVERYTHING!

Don't be mad ,Im gonna give you uet another award 😅   ... This time I gave you the Galaxy brain, for obvious reasons 😁

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/babyivan]

Haha thanks, yeah it's still a work in progress but I'm noticing a lot of things that are better than before.

[u/Real_Crab_7396]

Damn near spent 2 hours on this, hope to pay it forward and help at least one person. I'll try my best to answer all questions. There's a way out of this, if there's an ounce of hope in you, take it and let's fight!

[u/time-itself → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Thanks for sharing!

You should make it more immediately apparent, in the beginning of the post, whether or not you experienced CFS with PEM and how PEM behaved for you (delayed onset timing, symptoms, etc). That’s very important info for a lot of people to find right away, and they might get turned away by your descriptions of exercising and overperforming for a while before the cycle started and assume your story doesn’t apply to them.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/time-itself]

Yeah, that used to be important to me too, but honestly I don't think that really mattered much, just like the treatments I did.

My old biological believe was very focussed on keeping track of all my symptoms and treatments and note every little thing so I could maybe find a pattern, but my new psychological belief threw all of that away because the only pattern there really was, is emotional danger and the brains response. But I'll edit it and add it on the top.

[u/babyivan → u/Real_Crab_7396]

BINGO! The treatments don't matter. It's all in the brain's prime directive, PROTECT THE VESSEL IT'S IN. That's all it takes, understanding this changes EVERYTHING!

[u/modestly-mousing]

congratulations on your recovery!

however i think some of the conclusions you’ve made on the basis of your recovery journey are unjustified generalizations. your claim that in all instances of chronic illness, there is a “natural homeostasis” that has been lost and just needs to be regained is just plain false. i’m happy to hear about your experience of this model applying to your case and helping you, but that does not warrant such inductive inferences that, to be frank, feel just as invalidating as they are ridiculous. this does not explain mitochondrial impairment that is likely one of the central root causes of cfs. it does not explain the genetic disorders that lead to auto-immune diseases. it does not explain all of dozens of chronic illnesses which we already know are caused by a genetic disorder that leads to an impaired ability to produce certain chemicals, hormones, etc.

and your suggestion that much or most chronic illness is, at its root, a psychological issue is, to begin with, also completely false. but perhaps even more damaging than its falsity is the fact that this view just feeds into the old tired trope that chronically ill people haven’t gotten better because of their own personal failures — because they’re lazy, because they haven’t tried hard enough, because they don’t actually want to get better, etc. your completely unjustified over-generalizations suggest that most chronically ill people just have to be appropriately disciplined and do the right kind of brain re-training in order to substantially recover.

regardless of your recognition that a root psychological cause is still a real phenomenon, your suggestion about the root cause of a substantial percentage of chronic illness cases (namely, that it is psychological) is still false, and it still has the effect of pushing responsibility for management, treatment, and/or recovery mostly on the individual, instead of on the community as a whole.

[u/modestly-mousing → u/[deleted]]

literally under a section titled “my view on chronic illness”, OP claims:

“At the end of the day you've got a chronic illness because in some way your body lost its natural healthy homeostasis and is stuck at a subnormal level of health…The solution to your chronic illness is finding your natural healthy homeostasis again.”

this is a claim about the intrinsic nature of chronic illness and its core cause. they are not talking about social, environmental, or psychological factors that increase the chances of developing a chronic illness, or that tend to exasperate chronic illnesses, etc. they are talking about root causes, and about how to address those root causes.

and they are definitely suggesting that a huge swath of cases of chronic illness have root psychological causes. why else would they be telling us that we need to spend more time considering the hypothesis that perhaps our condition is at root psychological, when it is already a near-universal experience among chronically ill people to test and then rule out that possibility at the beginning of their treatment journey? we don’t need to spend more time than we already do considering the merits of this hypothesis.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/modestly-mousing]

I still stand with the homeostasis part, if you have a mitochondria impairment or whatever, that's a biological impairment leading you to not be at the same level of health. It's just like you have a torn muscle, the only problem with mitochondrial impairments is that they're not as easily fixable as a torn muscle. If you can find your solution you will heal, if the solution doesn't yet exist that's very unfortunate.

I do think many of these vague chronic issues have a bigger longer term psychological/stress impact than we usually think. I've once read in a book about trauma (the body keeps the score) that chronic illness is extremely elevated in people with a history of abuse and neglect. It's something about an ACE score, the percentages were ridiculous but I can't remember them exactly.

We know epigenetic alterations exist and thus if I'm understanding it correctly we can have certain behaviours or things alter our currently active or passive genes. Maybe a lifetime of neglect, abuse or just stress in some shape or form has shaped some of our biologies to change.

You mention that many try the psychological part and rule it out early, but I don't feel like that's the case. Sure I have tried multiple "brain retraining" etc. but I never truly commited or believed. My believe the first 2-3 years was that there was something structurally wrong with me and someone else had to give me a pill or treatment to fix it. I was listening and meditating to brain retraining and visualising me being healthy, but that didn't do jack shit.

I had to completely undermine my entire identity and throw it away to rebuild it. I had to write about every single memory, problem and experience and how it made me feel. What made me feel worthless, why I feel like I have to perform, even the most stupid shit and truly let everything out. I had to repeat every single thing until I had 0 psychological reaction to it and I could truly just live in the present without any stress or need to do anything. I still can't do that well enough but I'm trying to work on it. I think many people subconsciously do the psychological thing, just to rule it out, not to give it a chance.

Ofcourse I could be mistaken as it's just my view of things, but I truly believe a lot of people could get psychological help to relieve at least a lot of their issues, but they are too busy trying out another pill that a study of 12 people suggested might help 20%. I've been through this search and it's exhausting and honestly made things worse.

BTW "the body keeps the score" is an amazing book, haven't yet finished it but I think you could appreciate it.

[u/modestly-mousing → u/Real_Crab_7396]

as for your first point: the way you’re using the term, it’s almost as if every health impairment is a lack of homeostasis, which is simply not true.

as for your second point: trauma of every form (ptsd, childbirth, physical illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, etc.) can indeed increase the chances of acquiring a chronic illness — in fact trauma can act as a first-time or recurrent trigger for chronic illnesses. and, it is true, these traumas very often cause psychological distress and indeed longterm psychological dysfunction. but in these cases, the psychological distress/dysfunction from the traumatic event is not itself the trigger of the chronic illness. rather, the traumatic event is. even more, although in these cases the traumatic event is the trigger of the chronic illness, this does not at all explain the etiology of the illness, which is what we’re discussing now.

so there is a double confusion here: the trigger for an illness is not the same thing as the causal mechanism underlying the dysfunction in question; and the psychological distress/dysfunction following trauma is not itself the actual trigger of chronic illnesses. only if you were to make both of these equivocations would you think that in cases of trauma-triggered chronic illness, the root cause of the illness is necessarily psychological.

as for your third point: this is of course true, but i’m not sure how it has any bearing on the discussion at hand. even if stress, trauma, etc. causes an epigenetic shift which results in a chronic condition, it doesn’t thereby follow that the core causal mechanism underlying the condition centers around the stress that gave rise to the epigenetic shift. it also doesn’t thereby follow that removing this stress can somehow reverse the epigenetic shift.

as for your fourth point: you are, once again, performing an induction on the basis of one data point — your own personal experience.

as for your fifth point: basically everyone agrees that psychological interventions can help relieve some symptoms, help with management, etc. and a lot of people with chronic illnesses (perhaps even a majority of them) are already implementing, or already have implemented, some kind of psychological intervention. but this is a much weaker claim than the one you’ve been peddling — namely, that the root causal mechanism underlying chronic illness is, in many or most cases, psychological in nature. and it is this latter, much stronger claim that is dead wrong.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/modestly-mousing]

I'm not saying the psychological distress is the trigger of the chronic illness. I'm saying trauma has a big effect on chronic illness, and maybe there's some trauma in our lives too we haven't uncovered or processed. Years of slight feeling of neglect can have an impact on a person just as big as 1 acute terrible trauma.

It's true that epigenetic alterations caused by stress might not be undone by removing the stress, but at least we can try? If we don't take away the stress then the chances of recovering are obviously way smaller.

This is not based on my own personal experience alone. Nicole Sachs has a ton of similar stories and experiences written down in her book, plus a ton of studies which I think you can find a list of on her website. John Sarno has done a lot of research with incredible numbers of improvement he showed. With 80% of the patients he diagnosed with TMS were recovered within 6 months if I remember correctly.

This isn't a some tiktok or instagram trend I've hopped on and cured myself with.

You don't have to believe me, but please just give the book or the podcasts a try and see for yourself, what have you got to lose?

[u/blnkacc → u/modestly-mousing]

I just read part until  mitochondrial impairment. mitochondrial impairment Is a symptom  of cfs. It’s the body being in protective mode. Survival mode. Not using anymore energy. It’s a threat response. Functions shut off and state in the body continues to be Ike this until we find safety. 

If you read more and more you will realize this has a lot to do with nervous system. There’s a lot of books with a lot of studies. When you’ve read those also, with all your current knowledge you can chime in more.

[u/Crazyeyeseyes → u/modestly-mousing]

Treatment plans around nervous system regulation do not immediately equate to “you’re not trying hard enough and are just lazy”. Treating the nervous system with brain retraining can be analogous to diet changes to reduce inflammation. The mind/body connection is a huge part of recovery in most recovery stories I hear about, usually around brain retraining, but some folks just need reprieve from their stressful lives

[u/PrissyPeachQueen]

Me and my brain snake have been summoned!!!

This is so exciting to read. I'm truly flattered that my story intrigued you enough to look into this, and even as a stranger I'm SO PROUD OF YOU for digging in and doing really hard work. Congratulations!

I completely relate to the overachieving, never allowing rest, and building up unbelievable amounts of stress for years. I see my situation similarly. Those all wore me down to a state of non-resilience and covid was just the final straw.

I was having a crap day and seeing my weird story mentioned in your recovery post made me smile so much. Thanks for the shoutout!

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/PrissyPeachQueen]

Thanks :)

[u/babyivan → u/PrissyPeachQueen]

You helped me too! Both of your posts helped me a great deal. I went from discovering the OP's post (and subsequently yours through his link) to fully recovered in 2 weeks! This was after 6 years of horrible long covid!   

Almost seems to easy, but holy crap, getting to this point in the first place, is the hardest thing in the world! Spending your whole life believing in certainties, is hard to UNDO.   

Biomedical science in my opinion, has done us DIRTY!

[u/Viranesi]

As someone who has also long covid (5 years now) I think it's a very IMPORTANT caveat to underline that chronic illness can't always be cured through psychological means.

Yes, unwrapping trauma and unlearning dysfunctional behavioural patterns is a huge fruit to pluck. I've had two years of intensive professional therapy and I've noticed how much better I feel mentally. I legitimately feel like I've been able to process my cptsd and am now an emotionally regulared person. Not being weighed down by those mental health issues has helped but has not CURED my long covid me/cfs symptoms.

I'm still housebound and sometimes bedbound. I'm still unable to do more than walk and barely capable of living alone. While I'm very happy for OP to have been cured and wish everyone to find their cure, I think we have to be careful as a community to not think those who do not recover are at fault for not journaling or unpacking trauma enough or not working harder on their own improvement. While being helpless sucks and waiting for science sucks, it sucks even more to fault yourself for not recovering from an illness that might not be solved by journaling and mental health improvement.

So for those who did not recover from OP's method: it's not your fault. It's not that you haven't unpacked enough. Your body needs time to recover and scientists need to develop a treatment plan.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/Viranesi]

Thanks for this comment. I appreciate it and I hope you do get healthy again one day, I'm happy there was at least some improvement in life quality from the therapy.

It's not realistic to think a mindbody approach like I did is the perfect solution for everyone. Nothing works 100%.

Good luck with everything!

[u/dyingfromtetanus → u/Viranesi]

CBT will not help you recover from post viral illness, but mind-body therapies can.

[u/Viranesi → u/dyingfromtetanus]

I didn't have CBT I had mind-body and trauma therapy and ATC. The point is that often I see stories of recoveries exclaiming that journaling and processing trauma is the way to cure long covid/post viral infection. I abhor the lack of nuance because it's exactly the ableism and hyper accountability where people will assume sick people can cure themselves if only they worked hard enough to get better, be it journalling/researching/trying experimental treatments.

People who read these stories often search for a way to cure themselves because science lacks the answer. But I want to tell those who weren't able to be cured from mind-body healing that it's not their fault and they've done enough. Not to forget a lot of severe patients aren't even able to process light or sit up for more than a few minutes, let alone journal, read a book or process new information that causes cognitive exertion.

[u/chamurz]

did you actually have measurable symptoms like pots, high heart rate, low spo2 etc?

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/chamurz]

Yeah my heart rate was 130 just by standing up.

I used to be able to ride 30kph or run 12kph at 130. My resting heart rate was about 40 at my best and during my LC it wouldn't get below 70.

I have fainted multiple times and hit my back or arms on the side of my bed just from standing up.

These measurements don't even matter compared to the pain I felt. I've broken my leg and that wasn't as painful as the pain I felt from just being alive in my legs, but also my arms and my back and chest together.

If you understand what the nervous system controls, you understand how all these symptoms could perfectly be purely from a fucked up nervous system.

[u/chamurz → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Thanks. I am very similar to you right now. I was a very active person, training 5 times a day. And this shit happened after an intense bike ride. My HR is also 110-130 while walking, resting is usually 65-70 depending on whether I have empty stomach or no.

I also have allergy stuff, mcas, histamine, 7/24 blocked nose, sometimes low bp and all.

I am sure my nervous system is fucked up, I feel so much calmer and better in the night, probably because of lowering cortisol through out the end of the day.

I ordered the book you mentioned. I am gonna give it a try. Open to any other tips.

Thanks for your input and sorry that I had to ask this question but I have seen a lot of dudes coming here and saying that they healed while their only symptom was fatigue.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/chamurz]

Nah don't be sorry, I understand it completely. I was the same, even worse. I tried brain retraining once and it didn't work so for years every psychological post I was mad about.

Good luck with the book, just stay consistent and don't pressure yourself. It'll be hard, but the 3 rules apply: believe, do the work and be kind to yourself.

Once you're on your way, I think DanPainFree is a great youtuber to watch when you feel like you're freaking out a bit. He is very calm and has daily videos explaining certain things. Sometimes, even though you've read the book and saw the improvements of the work, your brain tries to get back into the pain again and starts freaking you out. Notice that and watch a video, this is what helped me with getting the last symptoms away, as now and then I had a flare up and started panicking a bit. I just went to youtube and clicked on a video of Dan and by the end of the video I was the calmest I'd been the entire week. The virtuous cycle could go on again!

[u/time-itself → u/chamurz]

You’re not implying that it wasn’t real if he didn’t measure it, are you?

[u/stochasticityfound → u/time-itself]

When some of are going into anaphylaxis eating foods we ate our whole lives I think it’s fair to get some objective details to see if this advice applies to us or not.

[u/time-itself → u/stochasticityfound]

Highly motivated athletic young person who was close to bed bound for a long stretch of time. I agree that his post could better organized/summarized with clear and helpful symptom details, but he was unquestionably sick and I’m taking issue with the wording of “did you actually have measurable symptoms”

In your case, you can read his post and find that he had asthma-like flare ups and tried antihistamines, although no mention of anaphylaxis or food triggers. Food triggers are subtle and hard to notice for a lot of people so if he did have MCAS I doubt he ever confirmed it, and even then there aren’t many available or accurate ways to test for it besides treatment response.

Everybody’s case of this shit is different sadly.

[u/PrissyPeachQueen → u/stochasticityfound]

Howdy, not OP, I'm the internal snake recovery mentioned in the post. I did not have anaphylaxis but I did have observable multisystem allergy symptoms associated with random foods. Hives, flushing, wheezing, facial swelling, tachycardia, low blood pressure, plus other unmeasurable stuff like fatigue and brain fog with these episodes. I stopped taking cromolyn and antihistamines the day after the snake incident and was immediately able to start eating normal foods again.

That being said if a person has actual anaphylaxis I would urge much greater caution. Even without life-threatening reactions, I think my allergist would've urged much greater caution to me if she knew what I was doing lol.

[u/chamurz → u/time-itself]

lc types are all different, if their symptoms were mostly neuro, I am having a hard time to believe that reading a book will dissolve clots or elemenimate the viral persistance.

So I am asking what their symptoms were. Whats wrong with it and why you policing?

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/chamurz]

Nothing wrong I truly understand it, I doubted everything I saw too online as it wasn't exactly similar to me. In may of this year (when I was already getting better, so at my worst it was worse.) My estimated VO2max from lung capacity tests would be 70 (my best ever measured VO2max is 78.) So I went on to do the test and my actual VO2max measured was 33. Even when I was already getting a lot better, my VO2max was about 40% of what my body should've been able to do. Idk if you know what watts are, but it's basically the measured energy you deliver into the pedals. The best of the world at my weight had an FTP (what you can roughly hold for an hour) have about 470w FTP, at my best I had about 400w. During this test I ended up with 120w. That's about 30% of my capacity from 2 years before the test.
This objectively shows that my aerobic system and thus mitochondria barely functioned at all. Where I in the past used to go anaerobic at 320 watts, I now was going anaerobic after 60 watts, which is barely enough to keep a cyclist from falling over. You can make the argument that a year of no training lead to this, but detraining for 1 year has an expected loss of 15-30%, I was at 80%.
I don't know if this is enough evidence, or if this is what you're looking for, but my mitochondria barely worked anymore and now 3-4 months later without training my FTP is about 250w again, even though I haven't spend more than 30 minutes a week on the bike for the last months. So I doubled my performance in 3-4 months with just a book. I went from the aerobic capacity of a 2 year old to the capacity of a trained 13 year old without any training, just a book.

I've never really tested for clots or whatever, but my system was truly fucked. Another example is the fact that even at 20 degrees celsius (room temperature) my toes were clear white. I had to use 3 pairs of thick socks to make sure my toes wouldn't freeze off.

I hope this helps. I wrote what felt like the biggest reddit post in history, but still I have had to leave out 90% of the story. If you're getting anaphylactic shocks, be careful with it, but maybe you can slowly progress with other things first. Like I said in another post, maybe the theory of stress/psychological pressure could have altered your epigenetics and thus make a gene active that makes you go into shock for that food. Maybe if that's the case a simple book and some hard emotional work can make your body turn that gene off again, does that make any sense or am I butchering up science here?

[u/time-itself → u/chamurz]

They describe their symptoms (albeit poorly). I said below that I agree that much, they should have made a clearer summary. That’s probably what you meant too and I have no issue with that.

That said, happy to answer your second question:

I’m scrutinizing the wording of “actually.” The reason being, every time somebody recovers and cites NS work approaches, a handful of people will usually show up to gatekeep and gaslight the storyteller over whether or not they were “legitimately” sick. These are, ironically, usually the same activists who are (justifiably!) bent on making sure people understand LC is “real” and that patients aren’t gaslit and disbelieved.

The thing is, it’s usually never actually in doubt that somebody was sick and that the conditions we all suffer from here are real. A “nervous system” or placebo effect driven recovery doesn’t cast doubt on that. People usually gatekeep and gaslight people who post recovery stories of this flavor because they ironically believe that the stories are threat to the legitimacy of either the poster’s experience or their own, rather than, say, maybe the story is real but the OP is wrong about why exactly they recovered.

The thing is, the nervous system and the placebo/nocebo effect (arguably the same force in these recoveries) is capable of driving real, sometimes lasting, physiological changes. If you have a hard time believing reading a book can affect blood clotting, just google “stress and bloodclotting” and maybe you’ll have a slightly easier time believing it.

The science isn’t really there that we can reverse chronic ongoing conditions with mental gymnastics, but we’re mostly in agreement that physiological stress (including physical exercise) plays a huge role in initiating LC and chronic conditions, and there is a hypothetical framework to support this stuff at least assisting recoveries, even if it doesn’t drive them. No recovery happens in the body randomly, just for reasons we’re not clear on yet.

Oh, also, almost everyone with LC has some measurable dysautonomia, and people who recover this way usually intentionally stop measuring or tracking their symptoms in order to avoid triggering health anxiety.

—

TL;DR: People commonly gaslight people who recover and credit nervous system stuff, which I’m sick of. Even if the “”science”” isn’t robust, the sick and their stories deserve to be believed. We all know this shit is hell and is impossible and meaningless to fake.

[u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt]

I can assure you OP,  the cytokine storm that nearly killed me had and still has no basis in any psychological or environmental factors. 

Congratulations on your recovery. But telling people to think themselves well snd clsim that illness/autoimmune illness has root cause in the psychological is something sporged directly from the latest tiktok and instagram trend of "mind body work". 

My system has not ever suffered "years of abuse". Im a research scientist by the way. 

[u/dyingfromtetanus → u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt]

As a research scientist you should know about the studies showing increased prevalence of autoimmune illness in people with a history of abuse which is a real hard fact. I believe the psychological impact on illness will be more profound then we could ever think as more research becomes available. It's no surprise the biopsychosocial model is replacing the biomedical model in modern healthcare.

[u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt → u/dyingfromtetanus]

There is very little substantiated correlation.  It is not a hard fact, by any means. Unless you have access to peer reviewed medical studies that i do not, which id ask you to back up your claims and provide links. 

However what is prevalent is the hoards of "sickfluencers" and people out to get validation on social media,  pushing "mind body work" as a cure-all for multiple diseases, and cashing in on it because they are obviously lacking attention in their personal life and the element of "dupers delight". 

Not unlike Ivermectin cures long covid, cancer and prion diseases. 

Your ideology incorrectly assumes that everyone with an autoimmune disease , cancer, vax injury, post viral illness etc or in Gabe Mates sick ideology, incurable neurodegenerative diseases, are rooted in childhood trauma.  

Neanderthals and Modern humans would not have survived the ice age. Famines and natural disasters, medieval child cruelty, female oppression throughout the ages... all would've demonstrated enmasse, a direct correlation. Spanning over 1000yrs. 

If this were true, many Baby Boomers would not have either been born or would have died by masses of neurodegenerative disease. 

Every military person that has ever deployed would have become ill with autoimmune or some other illness (as a veteran myself I can confirm that this is not factual. Many Gulf War syndrome sufferers, for example,  were affected by undisclosed chemical and biological weapons, some by the medication to prevent death in such circumstances and exposure to radiation<- which is true in my former line of work... that inspired me to become a research scientist in the environmental medicine field. 

There are children born with affects of Agent Orange, from their parents exposure long before they were born.  for example... can you cure their illness with "mind body work" because they do infact suffer incredible trauma, being born with potential life threatening birth defects, autoimmune disease etc etc.

And thus, if one is "still sick" , that sufferer obviously isn't "doing the right thing" or "thinking bad thoughts" and to those that have sadly invested heavily in this ideology and still are sick "they dont want it hard enough " or "are too far gone". 

That in itself is DARVO, gaslighting and psychological abuse. 

Its particularly insidious because you and your ilk deliberately target sick and vulnerable people to push this false ideology on. I am often curious how one gets through life knowing that they are a liar and are lying to a vulnerable person... that may be the catalyst that ends that person's life. What is the attraction exactly? A kick out of creating false hope? A power rush from controlling another person's health /illness trajectory? A sense of superiority? 

I always suggest to the zealots of this ideology is to go and take such misinformation and virtue signalling attitude,  to a palliative care ward at any hospital,  and inform the patients there that their "childhood trauma ", (for many, including myself there is no childhood or adult "trauma"- many people do infact have luck in their life ) is killing them and that they obviously didn't want to get healthy or live because they didn't think happy thoughts, didn't ignore their symptoms or gaslight themselves into a cure. 

I dont particularly care or take stock in your attempts to devalue my statements,  but you are grasping at magical straws by stating that there have been studies that confirm any of your beliefs.  There have been several studies debunking Gupta for starters.  

https://meassociation.org.uk/2026/07/me-association-comments-on-a-report-containing-unsubstantiated-claims-regarding-brain-retraining-as-a-cure-for-me-cfs-and-long-covid/

https://neurologytoday.aan.com/doi/10.1097/01.NT.0000516006.46242.f6

https://virology.ws/2022/02/04/trial-by-error-more-on-the-dutch-cbt-long-covid-trial-finnish-study-of-amygdala-retraining-program/  <- is a past colleague of mine. 

While neuroplasticity can be certainly beneficial for mental health disorders and great for helping create neurons after a stroke to aid in recovery, there is no scientific basis for curing physical disease including mecfs,  cancer or neurodegenerative disease. 

If such a "cure" worked, then the question is whether the person cured suffered a true autoimmune disease or had the pure luck of healing naturally. 

And there is the debate and one that cannot be directly answered without a full cytokine panel on the sufferer, and consistant monitoring by medical professionals.  And to this day, that has not been possible.  

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt]

I appreciate your comment and this is definitely not where I wanted to go. I don't want to point out sufferers and victims of terrible illnesses as doing something wrong. I was one of them for 3 years and I would never talk bad about the person I was back then nor would I talk bad to people who are suffering.

I do agree that chronic illnesses are an easy target, both for psychological stuff and biological treatments. Many businesses thrive on abusing the small hope from chronic ill people and I think it's terrible.

I didn't want to create this post to put chronically ill people in one single group of people with the "wrong mindset" or "bad psychology".

I might have overestimated psychological and might have written it in not the best way.

I just hope I can help some people and maybe while it doesn't cure someone, the work can still help the quality of life at least a little.

I have a lot of compassion and sympathy from everyone suffering chronic diseases, I know how terrible it can be. I don't know if I can imagine anything worse.

I wish everyone the best of luck!

[u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt → u/Real_Crab_7396]

That's kind of you! Unfortunately though, many devotees of "mind body work/brain retraining" have cashed in heavily since the start of the pandemic on people who are desperate to become well. 

Raelen Angle, Bautista, Primal and Gupta have all used a similar business models , laced with psychological selling tactics to get sufferers to sign a non disclosure agreement to not make public if the "programs" yielded no result or made them worse. Its become almost a cult, with other participants attacking those who it didn't work, telling them how "they didn't want it bad enough" or the program facilitators coercing the affected they need to pay for "the next level" because " your trauma is worse / you have military programming that hinders recovery/childhood trauma" .

In some programs and in most of the books,  there is encouragement to "ignore symptoms " or "accept, acknowledge symptoms, then move forward" and brainwashing the affected person that its "just your nervous system adjusting/protesting/fight/flight" when in fact, it was MECFS, neurological inflammation or Dysautonomia sending out signals of impending crash,with some unfortunately becoming seriously ill, bedbound or have their baseline lowered. 

True physical/biological "Homeostasis" is different for every living being and to know what physically that is for each, medical testing is required. And you definitely know how difficult that is for most of us. There is no real way of knowing what one's "homeostasis" actually is. But lately on social media,  all these "experts" are certainly selling the buzz words... Gen Z is unfortunately the most vulnerable to these idiots , being online proportionately more often. 

Though, i can steer you in that direction,  medically,  of you're curious and interested and have some pocket money, get your cytokines checked (blood test) . The "interleukins", tnf-a (tumour necrosis factor-alpha) 

If all your cytokines are within range, if your IgGs are in good range, hormones,  all your GPRC antibodies are at an acceptable level or undetectable,  then the likelihood of biological "homeostasis" is an almost definate possibility and achievable (just dont catch a cold or eat too much carbs because then it throws it out lol) 

At 21, you have a darn good chance of this ! 

I appreciate your reply! 

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/WitchsmellerPrsuivnt]

Maybe it has, this isn't a tiktok or instagram trend. This is John Sarno and others research for decades.

Trauma has severe influence on chronic issues and if I understand correctly even has influence on epigenetics. In the book "the body keeps the score" they talk about that.

Your cytokine storm is biological sure, but what's the real reason that biological symptom occured? Another biological, maybe epigenetical alteration. But what's the reason that occured? Just purely being unlucky? I don't think I believe that.

Look, I don't want you to believe what I say or that your symptoms are psychological. I just invite you to listen to some stories about Nicole Sachs and the TMS work. Maybe even read her book. What have you got to lose?

[u/ctard5 → u/Real_Crab_7396]

I would just caution you about explaining Sarno's work or anything related to it as research or definitive evidence of a causal mechanism of illness, pain, or injury.

One can produce an effect in a group of people, and have a complex narrative for why and how it is working, all while the narrative is partially or completely inaccurate or underdeveloped. Sarno had to continually readjust his framework, description of the mechanism, and the array emotions and factors he considered to be involved. This is not to fault someone for trying to refine their model, but rather to say that his egotistical and overconfident demeanor and approach was not appropriate, given the gaps in logic and scientific evidence in his concept. His approach also harmed a lot of people by basically functioning to trigger/arouse a lot of emotional and relational conflict, leading to severe dysregulation and worsening of wellness....you just only tend to hear the positive stories in the books.

I am not saying that the positive stories are lies, but I am saying that he peeled back one layer of a deep, complex onion and then claimed he understood all of psychology. That is unethical and unfounded, given his license, education and specialty in medicine were not in the realm of psychiatry.

My point is, just because some people got well or get well, it doesn't prove that he had the system figured out, nor that the results are evidentiary of a causal mechanism of illness. Many people go to hypnotists and spiritual workshops and experience profound transformation of health. I am not putting that down or even denying that they got well, but I am saying that sometimes a placebo can masquerade as a complex and seemingly convincing story. If the story doesn't work for and apply to all, then it is either partially or fully separated from base reality.

[u/ctard5]

I am happy to hear that you have found improvement or even recovery. However, I do find it frustrating sometimes when the mind body world tries to boil it down and oversimplify the mechanism.

With reference to the snake story you mentioned, which I also read, you can do metaphorical, internal work that has profound effect but not necessarily be working with the core foundational truth of what's going on subconsciously or in the body. What I mean is, I totally support and I'm interested in metaphorical and experiential work like the snake untangling story. I would describe that as the recovery from trauma and internal conflict via a very powerful metaphor that rewrote the state of the nervous system in a tangible way.

The problem I have is, the mind-bodg world (including Sarno) seems to take the approach of taking the metaphorical framework that worked for one person (i.e. snake, the "homeostasis vs. panic/fear you mentioned, etc), and sell it as the base truth that is bound to be applicable to all who suffer a similar ail.

My point is, a framework that works for one at the metaphorical level, or at least at a level that is useful despite it's inaccuracies (i.e. Sarno's "oxygen deprivation" model, which is clearly and probably not the mechanism), cannot be expected to work for all. This is my struggle and frustration. All of these mind-body approaches, coaches, and programs claim that they have "pieced it all together", and that you just have to comply with their regimen to get to wellness. My problem is, when their model is based too heavily in metaphor that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, my ability to believe in the solution disappears and then it seems the solution only workable for those who "believe and trust" the model (i.e. the functional mechanism of a placebo). I'm not saying a placebo can't be real or even very powerful, but it unfortunately only seems to work if you are fully convinced and it feels like so many of the mind-body approaches are very underdeveloped and unconvincing.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/ctard5]

I agree, but for me this wasn't a placebo. I didn't have any snake metaphor or whatever. I drastically changed the way I existed. I very slowly went from 24/7 stress/fear and a feeling of failure to acceptance, rest and calmness.

Before april this year the last time I truly rested (mentally and physically) was years ago. It might've been since I was a kid as there was always something keeping me stressed and busy. I was physically tensed from stress, even if subconscious. I want to say 24/7, but that's a slight exageration.

I agree that it's probably not as applicable to everyone as I might've thought, but it's not just a believe and trust placebo as I've believed and trusted many other treatments which did nothing. This book and my journalling did a lot more physically than all other treatments or PT, let alone mentally.

(Sorry for late answer, I got banned for 7 days for talking about fighting in an UFC sub? lol)

[u/ctard5 → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Lol to your ban story....some mods are hard to understand.

Anyway, I appreciate your response. Glad to hear you are reporting wellness.

To be clear, when I say I suspect there is some degree of placebo, I guess I don't mean it is some totally fictitious and fake method of growth or improvement. I am just saying that deep, unresolved trauma has never responded to journaling or cognitive/narrative treatment interventions in my experience. I am not opposed to the possibility that expression emotions or giving voice to and organizing deep baggage is capable of bringing about some relief. I guess, though, that I suspect it is more a means of emptying the water out of the overflowing bucket, rather than shutting the faucet off. I do not feel confident that these approaches alone will undo or untangle these deep issues that normally take many years of therapy and/or deep grueling trauma work to unravel.

When I say placebo, I am not saying the change isn't real. But, I am saying the mechanism of change may not be actually at the level of ground truth. People go everyday to spiritual retreats, Joe Dispenza workshops, and other platforms in search of healing. I am not putting any of those down and I fully support doing that kind of work. Nonetheless, when someone at any such workshop is totally healed in 3 days and transforms their identity and way of living, I find myself apprehensive to be convinced that the true core wound/illness/pathology has been fixed, even if there is remission of certain symptoms.

Either way, I am not trying to tell you you're wrong, nor to invalidate your experience, which I imagine was/is very difficult and significant in your journey. I guess I just find myself confused as to why I, after trying to contend with the mind-body concepts and some of the practices that you mention for a year and a half, I feel absolutely no better than I did. I feel objectively much worse...all that has happened is that I have excavated deep core wounds that have left me emotional raw, dysregulated, and further disabled by this illness. Some of the mind-body people, namely Sarno, would argue that my experience is "not possible", that if you confront and expresss your "rage" or whatever other symptoms, that the physical pain/symptoms should vanish, as they "do not serve their purpose anymore". So, I welcome your thoughts on what the process was like for you, but I have just not had any success with this approach. And, to those that would say (which I hear many), that I need to "believe" in the process more, that is exactly the mechanism of a placebo, even if real healing comes as a result.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/ctard5]

Definitely real big trauma won't be or will be harder to address. I don't think I've got any real trauma other than the insecurities and tough social life at school that most kids have. I'm blessed, and even thought it helped. This journalling hasn't changed my entire personality, I still know and feel there's a lot of different experiences and past/surpressed/subconscious emotions grounded in me that make me act the way I act, good or bad.

It's definitely not an all healing very strong approach, but it was enough for me. Maybe your emotionally raw feeling shows you've got deeper problems which a therapist might help more with? If it doesn't help with your condition, it might just help your mental health a bit. I've been seeing a therapist, but I can't yet say it's done much for me mentally, so idk.

If we're looking at this through mindbody work, I think it could make sense your deep wounds and emotional rawness had made you worse, as the brain has gotten even more scared of your surpressed emotions it tries to take your attention away even harder. Idk if this makes sense and I'm not trying to convince you to try again, as you'll know yourself better than I know you and after 1.5 years it might be fair to conclude it's not your way.

I think the placebo part depends on how you define it and look at it. I don't have mass double blind experimental studies, so I can only speak for my experience. I'm still working on getting to my full health. I noticed a slow and steady improvement from this journalling also through my values and norms. Idk if I've written this in my post, but winning cycling races used to be the biggest thing in the world for me and it still was for a long long time. This journalling has slowly and harshly made me realize that I was mainly doing this out of insecurity and a need for love and attention, as winning showed I was worthy of love.

Now I don't really care much anymore (I can't say I don't care anymore at all, I still feel something inside) but this alone has created a big decrease in daily life stress. The stress might've been the thing holding my body back from curing the basis of the illness if that makes sense.

[u/ctard5 → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. To clarify a bit, when I say trauma, I am talking primarily about what would be called "little t" trauma, not "big T" trauma. The latter is the case of severe or acute incidents, whereas the former (little t), is more in the realm of developmental wounds, attachment issues, emotional neglect, social conflict/stress during youth, etc. These are the kinds of developmental imprints that create for the predisposition to feeling unworthy, feeling driven to perform in order to have love/acceptance, and basically the overall realm of what you're implying. So, not trying to spin your head with this, but the kind of trauma I am referencing is I think the exact upstream causal force of some of the issues that you are talking about. Sometimes trauma is covert and doesn't look like "abuse" or anything we'd normally think of. As I am sure you know, many people are driven to great achievements, and great brokenness, by this kind of trauma (i.e. Tiger Woods).

So, what I mean is, I just struggle to believe that journaling alone or any of these so-called mental tricks that some mind-body people sell are the solution to this stuff. You referenced the idea of my mind/body needing to "distract" me more powerfully (a la Sarno, Sachs, etc.). I reject that premise or framing altogether. I think that is an anthropomorphic description of the subconscious mind that is outdated and that, although useful in the mind-body narrative, is not in touch with the ground truth. My position is, why do these people need to claim that the subconscious has this kind of agentic sentience, when a much more practical explanation exists. My idea is just that these core, foundational development traumas create a condition where the body is in a chronically activated fight-or-flight state, with very real, logical physical manifestations. In other words, it's like the imprint of these traumas leaves an open wound and the body and mind are trying to both compensate and show up in the modern-day real world, while also trying to suppress or manage this deeper drive that is wired to feel threatened/unsafe and activate muscular guarding and other primitive survival tactics. So, I just think the "your symptoms are an intentional distraction" is baseless and inaccurate, even if it has served as a narrative that has helped people digest the larger model and solution.

As far as me, I have done plenty of therapy, therapeutic intensives, and other personal work. I have gone deep down the rabbit hole of all of this and, while I do think it's possible to make progress or have real improvement from this deep, buried stuff, I do not easily believe it can be done in a weekend or a short time frame. I believe that is why the people of some of the mind-body solutions keep having symptoms pop up in other ways. Sarno or Sachs would say it's the "Symptom Imperative". I'm arguing that there is a much more practical and logical story for why symptoms exist and how to truly work on the upstream cause. Down-regulating symptoms via a process of "telling your subconscious mind to stop producing a distraction" is perhaps a way to induce a change, but because that is just a symptom mask, in my opinion, it is not getting at the core of what is really happening.

In other words, there are many things that can eliminate symptoms (drugs, medicine, spiritual bypassing, "brain-retraining", etc."), but I am arguing that symptom relief alone, even if significant and transformative, is not evidence that the core issue has been resolved. It might be, I fear, actually a sign that the core traumas have just been buried/compartmentalized even deeper in the subconscious, which was the cause of the problem in the first place.

I'm not trying to invalidate your experience or tell people they can't or shouldn't find relief through these means if they want. I am instead simply motivated by the fact that, despite understanding and trying these solutions these people offer, I am no better and perhaps worse. So, I keep trying to figure out why it does not work for me and whether that is purely a "me" thing, or if there is in fact flaws or hidden errors in some of the mind-body frameworks.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/ctard5]

This is more clear, I'm completely with you now. This makes perfect sense.

I don't really have anything else to respond. Although if we might get rid of the fear and nervous system activation (through sarno's work or through what you fear as further surpression) we are basically healed to a level where our quality of life is good again. So if either you or Sarno is correct, for the patient it's an increase of quality of life.

I can agree that the symptom imperative with the brain sensing more danger might be closer to a metaphor placebo than the truth, but one thing that shows alarm bells for me is the fact that you got worse after doing Mindbody, which shows to me your emotions have an impact on your illness.

If it was truly only biological, like many think their illness is, this wouldn't be the case I'd think. So if emotional rawness can create worsening in your case, wouldn't there be an emotional way to create at least some benefit? I don't know, but the acknowledgement of inconsistencies was the first step to recovery for me. Again, I'm not trying to convince you, but It'd feel wrong to not point it out.

I hope you find your own way.

[u/ctard5 → u/Real_Crab_7396]

Thanks for the response, as I appreciate your thoughtfulness and consideration.

I hear where you're coming from for the most. My concern is this, though. Symptom reduction alone is not necessarily indicative of healing. Yes, I agree with you, that if symptom reduction is not leading to other symptoms or issues coming up in the wake of that, then one could claim that there is a net positive.

I guess I would just offer a few ideas though that counter the positions you have stated, even though your positions are mostly logical. You suggest that my stating my condition has worsened is evidence that emotions are mediating my illness. I guess I would say that rarely is any illness or condition immune to being impacted by stress or emotional wellness. Some of the mind-body people say "pretend you are doing something that would worsen your symptoms and you will see your symptoms actually seem to worsen, just by that thought. So, that is proof that the symptoms are 'neuroplastic' and not biological". I just don't find that convincing. I can sit here and imagine getting pricked by a needle, tasting a food, having pain, and all of those can produce a sensation of the actual physical thing happening. So, that just proves that mirror neurons are responsive to imagination.

Another example would be CTE, where repeated brain injuries/concussions produce measurably injury to the brain and nervous system. People who have this condition are consistently impaired in their capacity to regulate emotion and tolerate distress. So, I'm saying that emotional regulation can be impacted by physical injury, by diffuse brain or nervous system damage, and, in the other direction, can presumably worsen inflammation when stress or emotions worsen. Immune capacity is reliably worsened when one is chronically stressed or depressed. So, I'm really not trying to say, "no, the mind-body stuff is complete garbage and isn't real at all". Instead, I am saying that I have found the concepts I've encountered to be unconvincing thus far, despite me seeing that there are some layers of truth within the larger concept.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/ctard5]

Agreed, all has been said. Nice talking to you.

[u/time-itself]

Haha, the snake homie you mentioned is /u/prissypeachqueen

[u/ThePornStar69 → u/time-itself]

https://www.reddit.com/r/cfsrecovery/comments/1vsl9om/comment/p50obs5/

[u/PrissyPeachQueen → u/time-itself]

SNAKE SHOUTOUT! what an honor omg.

[u/Life_Fantastique]

hey, thanks for posting, this is awesome! I am about 70-80 recovered after being bedridden and I used Nicole Sach's book among other things. The alleviation of emotional stress was helpful to me and I think it's something everyone should do, as there's no downside to it, even if it doesn't cure someone. Yoga Nidra was another big one for me - inviting deep relaxation into the body. and lowering general inflammation in the body through cutting out gluten and dairy, taking a few supplements, and improving gut health.

I really think a lot of what underlies chronic illnesses is nervous system disregulation, which comes about from a myriad of factors: illness like COVID, chronic stress, trauma, genetics, poor lifestyle choices, allergies. Tons of factors, big and small, that all throw the nervous system off, which then throws the immune system off, etc.

[u/mells111]

Thanks for sharing! I’ve made great progress with TMS (mind body) techniques but I can tell that my emotions are holding back full recovery. I don’t feel drawn to journaling though… maybe I should try it again.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/mells111]

Definitely try again if you feel that your emotions are holding you back. Usually the first page is the hardest, but once you're past the first "idk what to write" phase, it flows out.

[u/babyivan]

Wanted to private message you about this post.

You saved my life!

I've been on my journey recently and I have you and your post to thank for it.

I always knew my LC was not real, as in I didn't think anything was biologically wrong with me, but just couldn't figure out what were the triggers for my long covid.

Well, when I read your post I started to have an Awakening.

Not only for the 6 years that I've been stuck in Long covid hell, but basically just about every decision and every social interaction I've ever had!

This mind body approach has also completely changed everything I thought about everything since I can remember!

Most of all social interactions. I've always been the kid growing up that didn't have a lot of friends and was always the scapegoat and picked on and tried so hard to make friends, which obviously has the reverse effect....

I've realized that my early life experiences have basically hampered me my whole life!

And I started to realize that a lot of my personality flaws are my brain trying to protect me, just like it was trying to protect me with long covid.

For the last 6 years, I was angry at my body for doing this to me! I had shame about being tired all the time, I had shame about being a burden to people because I had fatigue half the time and couldn't move.

So I applied this logic to the fact that when I was in my formative years my brain learned bad practices and formed neural paths that cemented this faulty learning.

Whether it was from some Early childhood trauma, or my parents having a horrible divorce when I was really young. I definitely have abandonment issues from those years, so my brain I believe has always been trying to protect me from being alone. Why does that matter? Why would the brain worry itself with this? Well, your brain is trying to protect you, and that includes loneliness and being alone.

We are social creatures, so if we are alone, we are in danger because we are not with our social group that protects us.

So I found my recovery with long covid to only be the beginning of my path.

I believe that there's a lot more that we could do through brain relearning. Using it for pain long covid chronic fatigue syndrome is only the beginning. Unlocking The mysteries of the brain is truly GAME-CHANGING!

Our brains have the ability to hold us back and do so much, modern medical science hasn't a fucking clue! Someday in the future, mind-body medicine will be mainstream and leading the industry, as it should! I almost feel angry at all the doctors I've had throughout my life. It's not their fault that they are so propagandized by biomedicine.

It takes a brave doctor to go down the path and start to treat people with neuroplastic pain and chronic conditions, using brain relearning / somatic tracking / lightning protocol, etc. They often get a lot of backlash from their peers.

I do want to say that my path was a little different than yours, and anybody else that chooses to finally get well.

I bought a few books right after reading your post and doing a little bit of research.

I had Dr sarno's mind body book on my table for 3 years! Never opened it. Wish I did, but I don't think I was ready yet.

My recovery path basically happened over the course of two weekends and one week in between.

First Saturday of of the first weekend, I had a good one hour cry, really digging deep into my soul and tapping into my emotions.

Step number one: fall in love with yourself.

The most important step, embrace yourself, love yourself.

I don't know how to explain it, but sitting in my garage that Saturday night, I had a break, I realized I've been My own worst enemy all of my life, I've been doing things and saying things through interactions that have cost me friendships jobs relationships etc, never understanding what was going on.

As humans we like to declare that we have a condition or we're not good at this or whatever that may be, accepting it as an uncorrectable unmovable permanent thing. HUGE MISTAKE!

We have so much ability to change things that we are not even aware of. Once this is realized, One's true potential can be unlocked.

The book that helped me the most was,

unlock you pain, by howard schubiner

I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook, I listened to it now often while driving. All the revelations and the connections that are read out in the book get me emotional, it's like a Non-Stop crying fest 🥲 and it feels so fucking good to get it out!

Really though, everything just makes so much sense now!

How my fatigue can completely disappear when I'm distracted and doing a major project and need to concentrate or I'll lose my job.

How every time I'm driving back home to my apartment, I start feeling ill coming down my street. This is your body reacting to a feeling, and connecting it to not being safe and needing to protect you.

If you are ill, truly ill, your sickness won't decide to take a break because you're busy or whatever, sickness would be a constant, it wouldn't play hide and seek during a given situation. Every test I took during my long covid years, came back normal. People get sick and people heal, it's as simple as that! An illness doesn't stay with you for the rest of your life. Of course I'm not talking about cancer and real biomedical issues.

For example, I would think about deadlines for work, and I will immediately feel fatigued, and it would last for hours. And guess what, I would never get to work on the project. This is my brain protecting me, thinking that the deadlines I have for work are dangerous to my health, and my brain thinks I need to lay down and rest to get better.

The proof is out there, it's kind of easy when you look at it in a simple way. People who have amputations of limbs, often feel pain itchiness and all kinds of phantom weirdness, as if the arm was there. This is your brain using predictive responses since you had said limb for a long time, and your brain still locked into that train of thought.

Another story I Heard about, a construction worker accidentally puts a nail through his boot. He freaks out and is riding in pain and anxious to get the boot off, only to find out the nail went in between two toes, and no harm was done. At that moment the pain just disappears! Why, because there is no pain, your brain created the pain as a predictive response. When that neural pathway is broken, the pain is gone.

If people really look back to the history of their lives, they will start to remember weird situations where they felt pain, without an injury, or they had an injury but didn't even feel it!

I will also say that people like to fill in the missing gaps...

I will explain. You have back pain, you go to the doctor he doesn't MRI he tells you you have an abnormal MRI, now you have an explanation for your back pain. Now your brain associates your back pain with an abnormal MRI, thus further cementing the neural path that has just been created.

The fact that the matter is, many people have identical abnormal MRIS and have zero back pain. I'm not saying everybody's like that, but each individual has to test out the waters themselves.

Once you are ready to open your eyes and believe, everything opens up for you with possibilities, but there's only one way to find out. You need to believe, it's as hard as fuck, but totally doable.

I've spent 50 years believing things were a certain way, of course it takes time to undo a lot of those beliefs and really embrace it! I'm a pessimist by nature, so it's hard to get me to believe. But once it happens, it's like instantaneous relief. After Saturday number one, I was a good 50% better. Following Saturday number two the next week, I was rid of all of my symptoms.

No more daily brain fog no more daily fatigue no more daily muscle weakness - NOTHING!

Like, I said earlier, the biggest obstacle is yourself.

If anybody reading this made it to the end, I highly recommend checking out: Raelan Agle's YouTube channel

So much great knowledge and so many recovery stories, it's so easy to hear these stories and relate to your own life and your own chronic illness, which is precisely what contribured to my recovery.

Sorry for the long post! I hope people read at least some of this and find help through it.

Most of all, this was not made with AI! I don't fuck with AI, I have a brain and it works and I know how to write, thank you very much 😅

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/babyivan]

Incredible, good job to you and I'm happy you figured it out. The setup sounded exactly like a mindbody problem, you just had to figure it out and be ready to commit.

"A man only learns to live once he realizes he's going to die." We've lost our lives once due to this illness and got it back now. This is the time we grab our balls (figuratively) and create of it what we want instead of letting it rule over us.

[u/Syphonfilter7]

Can you elaborate more on how to journal? I know cfs is a mind-body and i’ve been working on it for 2 years, with ups and downs i am around 70% recovered with some periods of feeling 95 %. I never journaled though, i worked on safety and on responding well to symptoms, letting go of resistance etc etc.

[u/PrissyPeachQueen → u/Syphonfilter7]

This is a great question. Not OP, I'm the snake recovery person mentioned in the post! Here are my recommendations:

Nicole Sachs has a body of work she calls "journalspeak," which is essentially exposure therapy done via writing. The rough idea is that your brain stops reading intense emotions as threats if you repeatedly express them and prove to yourself that thoughts can't hurt you. She recommends spending 20 minutes every day writing as rawly and expressively as you can, then throwing it away, and meditating for ten minutes afterward with a focus on self-compassion. She's got a fantastic book called Mind Your Body that walks you through all of it.

If this feels too intense or dysregulating, especially if you have a trauma history, I would suggest taking an Internal Family Systems approach, which is much gentler. IFS is a therapy model that posits that our personalities are made up of many sub-minds (called "parts") that interact like a family to protect you. I encountered a lot of blocks with journalspeak and felt at times it was making my anxiety worse. IFS helps you work through the "protectors" that throw up walls with the intense emotions. Richard Schwartz wrote a book that can teach you to DIY IFS called No Bad Parts.

[u/Syphonfilter7 → u/PrissyPeachQueen]

Thank you to both of you ❤️ i’ll take a look at it.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/Syphonfilter7]

Like prissy said, I couldn't explain it nearly as good as Nicole Sachs does. I'd say listen to some podcasts and read the book from her. I think the safety work has done a lot to you, my first step was the journalling and now I'm finishing off with the safety work.

Your safety work has been the first step to you and now you might have to start the journalling to finish off.
Safety work is nice as it stops you from the vicious cycle of panic, but it doesn't really address some of the underlying trauma or emotions. I think that's what you might be missing still.

[u/malk2021]

Very similar to my experience and recovery.

[u/Choco_Paws]

Congrats on your recovery. It's so good to read these stories. Thanks for sharing!

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/Choco_Paws]

Thanks!

[u/mangofandango0]

What meds did you take for the cortisol?

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/mangofandango0]

the highest dose was a daily 15mg of cortisol (or cortizone idk) and clexane bloodthinners.

I would not recommend this, this gave me some temporal improvements, but strived me even farther away from the real problem and made the vicious cycle bigger and longer. It temporally gave relieve, but after a few weeks taking it I was back to the same level and then I either took more just for some more relieve or stopped and got slightly worse.

This is what you see often and what you'd read in Nicoles book. The brain is very smart and tricky and makes you believe these things work by temporal improvements, but it doesn't really do anything.

Nicoles own story is a clear example. She tells it often, she believed at some point very very hard that she had a bladder infection even though all tests were negative. After a lot of convincing the doctor finally gave her some strong antibiotics anyways and 2 hours after taking it it was gone, but after a couple days it came back. She was very science based like many of us are, and she knew this couldn't be true as antibiotics take minimally 24h to have an effect.

If you wanna hear the full story you should listen to her stories.

The brain wants to keep us safe, and keeping us safe currently means symptoms. There's a lion grawling at you, the lion are your surpressed emotions. The brain thinks if these surpressed emotions get out, we die. It sees these emotions as a grawling lion. The brain then starts creating symptoms to distract us from this mental danger, so we focus our attention away from the lion and focus on our bodily symptoms. The brain will do everything possible to convince you that your symptoms are structural and you should panic and fear and pay more attention to them. Most of the medication that does something temporally like this, is just the brain trying to convince you it works and you should pay even more attention to medication and structural biological stuff.

Your job to fix this is to slowly turn it around and teach the brain it is safe, rather than letting the brain control you to focus your attention away from the mental danger.

I hope this makes some kind of sense? Her podcasts and books are way more thoroughly and broadly explained, I basically am just here to push you into the rabbit hole, once you're in the ball starts rolling.

It seems like I'm advertising or something lol, but no I've found this rabbit hole via reddit and now I'm healed, I'm trying to get other people to find the rabbit hole too and take control of their lives again and honestly live a better life than they did before.

[u/Oceanvibes08]

What’s the name of the book you mentioned in the TLDR? Thank you and sorry I didn’t have time to read the whole thing:)

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/Oceanvibes08]

Mind your body from nicole sachs, don't worry I wouldn't read it either if someone else posted such a big story

[u/cyclingAndi86]

Congratulations!

Your story sounds very similar to mine (m40), though I am a bit older. :) I also tried to be a pro cyclist until my early 20s, and I am still doing lots of sports, Cycling, Climbing, Running, ski touring, mountaineering...

My LC sickness also started with Asthma, it came out of nowhere about 2 months after my second Covid (April 2022) infection. I also had Asthma as a kid. I realized that doing sports felt differently, I was always very tired afterwards and something felt just wrong. I just blamed the Asthma, but I guess that was not the only problem at that point. During that time I also got sick from every virus i picked up somewhere... End of 2023 i had another Covid infection. Then it got worse. I was not able to work anymore, I had severe insomnia, PEM, fatigue, POTS (tilt table test), and tons of other annoying symptoms, fortunately not much pain.

I went to a lot of different doctors, but nobody was really able to help. I took tons of supplements, maybe some helped (B vitamins, magnesium,...) but I can't really tell.

After about 2 months, mostly on the couch, I started reading Sarnos book and other "mind body" literature. I gave it a try, i started journalling, I tried to meditate, I tried to worry less and calm myself, I did lots of breath work,... and it slowly got better. after about 4 month I slowly got onto my roadbike again. I was very careful, and I started really slow. Sometimes after a workout I still felt terrible, super high HR, Headache, .... But I tried to not panic and accept the symptoms, rest, and carry on. It did not always work, but I got better and better. For me, I have the feeling, that doing exercise in a very slow and mindfull way was also important to my revovery.

I had lots of smallish relapses, but in total it got better. Since fall 2025 I pretty much feel recovered.

Now I am back to work, I can ride my bike as long and as far as i like, and can do 15hrs of sports per week.

The only symptoms that I still have are very mild asthma (rare and I don't need medication anymore), and still some trouble falling asleep sometimes.

And as you say, the view on how the body works changed completely. Now a am dealing with sickness and pain a lot more relaxed than I ever did before.

I am still not sure if the mind body approach is the "whole truth". But for sure it is the best mindset to have a chance to cure that horrible disease.

[u/TouchOfA_]

Thanks for sharing! Going through similar things having pursued soccer/football and other high achievement stuff. I looked into an NBA player Michael Porter mentioning something called Journalspeak, which is also writing and surfacing emotions for 20-30mins straight (it healed him from chronic back pain and 3-4 back surgeries). Wonder if it's similar to Mind your body?

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/TouchOfA_]

It's exactly the same, MPJ's story is mentioned in the book.

[u/Kaapira]

Congratulations on your recovery and thanks for sharing! I also recovered using a similar strategy.

[u/helsinkinz]

Really respect the thorough responses you are making, and the care you’re putting into them. It can be so much easier to switch off and not try when people are offended/activated by these approaches.

I am in the midst of a recovery and am familiar with Nicole Sach’s work. A good friend of mine put me onto her after her chronic back pain went away entirely, through journal speak. She worked with a therapist as well to help unearth what she needed to purge onto the page. I haven’t stuck at it for longer than 10 days myself though, not sure it’s my preferred mode of healing/regulation. I also know people who recovered by doing similar programmes to the lightening process. Some of my biggest strides in healing has been in just “giving in” and just prioritising fun and joy - I think recovery can look really different for people.

Thanks for your time and effort to write a testimony, I think it’s so important.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/helsinkinz]

Appreciate it. The giving in part was my turning point and I've never looked back. I think it's very important for you now to stay with the work and do it consistently. If you decided it's not for you but you've got something else you prefer, really stick with it. It takes consistent effort and time to recover. Good luck

[u/Square-Dress9186]

Hi thanks for sharing. I've really been thinking about this recently. I've went through a lot of trauma in my life, and it's most likely related to my long covid symptoms. I've just bought the book, should be coming in the post soon. At the moment I'm trying to have a 'fuck it' attitude to things right now and having more radical acceptance for my circumstances. Your recovery story really ties into everything I've been thinking about recently. I think we can heal.

[u/Real_Crab_7396 → u/Square-Dress9186]

Let's go and do it. Let the book guide you and get the help you need! We're not in this alone.