Yes, helpful
On this site, I review the strategies that helped me recover from long covid and chronic fatigue syndrome. See all long covid recovery posts.
This is for information purposes only and nothing I share should be considered medical advice. What works for me may or may not work for you. Please do your own research and consult with your own trusted medical professionals.
Recovery is possible
When I got long covid, I had never heard of anyone recovering. I had two friends who got it and had not recovered. I heard terrifying stories in the news of people who never got better.
When I was later diagnosed with ME/CFS, I was told by my specialist that 5% of people with ME/CFS recover and only 1% of people in their clinic have recovered. I was also told if my symptoms got worse (a crash) I’d probably never regain the function I lost.
What I have learned since then is that this is not only wrong, but it is a roadblock on your way to recovery. Lots of people do fully recover. And that scary 5% stat is from one small study in the 1990s. No research on recovery has been done since then.
Why recovery stories matter
I believe that long covid is a serious physical condition that is caused by your nervous system and brain. Conditions like this fall under the umbrella of TMS or mind body syndrome. You must gently coach your nervous system back to “rest and digest” where you feel safety, joy, gratitude, and social connection.
Fear around your future and your symptoms is not the way to do this.
Nurturing seeds of hope through other people’s recoveries is one way to start this process.
Where to find inspiring long covid recovery stories
My version of long covid is the same as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), as it probably is for most of us. There is a lot of depressing ME/CFS content out there that was not very helpful to me. But here are some of the most positive and helpful ones.
Raelan Agle (YouTube)
Raelan is saving so lives with her YouTube channel. It’s been around for long enough that people are starting to reference her recovery videos as one of the things that helped them recover!
She has interviewed a lot of experts in the ME/CFS recovery world like Ashok Gupta, Pamela Rose, Miguel Bautista, Rebecca Tolin and others. She also has playlists for things like recovering from severe ME/CFS and long covid.
What I love about her channel is that she does NOT have an agenda. She just lets people talk about what got them better. Some of the ideas can be pretty out there, which I find comforting. There are so many ways to recover. But there are also themes that emerge that keep coming up.
CFS Health with Toby Morrison (YouTube)
Toby’s interviews are with people who recovered using his (expensive) program. And they aren’t as tightly edited as Raelan’s videos. But while watching them, I would get incredibly useful bits of practical advice taken from the CFS Health program.
Toby also has a number of free trainings on YouTube that were life changing for me including his baseline training and the stages of recovery.
If I could have afforded his program when I needed it, I probably would have signed up.
Other recovery stories
These YouTube channels I didn’t watch as much but have been useful.
Discover more from We Belong Outside
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
