Two month update- brain retraining
Dirty burgers, forest walking and a clever brain
This newsletter is a republishing of a post I made on the DNRS community forums, but which I’ve edited slightly for those of you not familiar with brain-training specific terminology.
In most brain retraining programs they encourage you to do word swaps for any terminology that is especially triggering. DNRS has its own specific terminology, which I use in my day-to-day, however I conscious here of copyright etc. and so to play it safe I’ve subbed those words out. The idea is to choose benign, even playful words to replace those that have the most negative associations in your mind, to stop the firing of those automatic loops your brain has now become stuck in when it is triggered by a certain stimulus (in this case, a word).
For this post, I’ve made the following word swaps:
symptoms= scaries
previously unhelpful behaviour, though and emotional patterns = pineapples
Stupid? Yes.
Effective? Absolutely. Hard to be as triggered by your persistent scary thoughts when you insist on calling them ‘pineapples’ 🍍
I don't even really know where to start - so much has changed since my last post- so I guess I'll start with this attractive photo of me gorging on a burger!
A few weeks into my DNRS journey I was slowly incorporating more foods back into my diet after being down to only two at one point. I was growing in confidence, adding in more fruits and vegetables…all the ‘acceptable’ foods. But there were still a lot of food groups that terrified me. Three weeks ago my dietician asked what I’d like my goal meal to be. I didn't hesitate to say a big, fat juicy beef burger with a side of fries.
The reason being was that early in my DNRS journey I watched this recovery story. Kelly had many of the same health issues as me and has fully recovered from all of them. In her video there is a picture of her on a holiday and eating a burger. I was SO envious of Kelly. A burger had never looked so good. I decided I was going to be Kelly and one day take my own burger photo.
This week, I did just that.
So how did I get here?
Maybe it's because I've done a lot of visualisations around food. The incremental training has definitely also helped. But I think what really saw me catapult forward was the deep understanding I now have that is all limbic system impairment. I'd heard many times that the first big leap forward is often the hardest. This was definitely true for me. I experienced a lot of anxiety when I first tried a food outside my safe zone. When nothing really terrible happened, I grew in confidence. I started trying larger amounts of the food. Then I added two 'unsafe' foods in at a time. Then, I tried eating a meal in which I didn't know what all the ingredients were. I got to the point where I knew that if I did have a bad reaction, I was perfectly capable of handling it. And surprise, surprise, my scaries were minimal at best each time.
For the first time in my journey, my healthcare team has helped lessen my anxiety around food. They have been really open to the mind-body approach, which helped challenged a persistent pineapple I had that no medical experts would 'get it'. My gastroenterologist and I spoke the other day about how functional/alternative medicine can be really helpful for some people when it comes to digestive/foods scaries, but for others in just creates a lot of fear. I was definitely in the latter category.
It was revolutionary to me when she explained that the food sensitivities I'd had for most of my life weren't actually doing any damage to my insides- I just had really sensitive nerves. I'd spent most of the last year being told the opposite. This gave me the confidence to be okay with the scaries and just float above them.
I am confident in applying this approach to all my scaries now and my world has continued to expand. One of the pineapples I have tried really hard to work on was my fear of socialising, which started when a particular diagnosis was suggested by a previous psychologist (one that is common in the chronic health world I’ve since realised) and led me to believe that I just didn’t have the capacity for social interaction anymore. I spent a couple of years convincing myself that what I thought was a love of being around people was in fact a problematic coping mechanism, and that I needed to isolate myself to get back my energy. Had I been in a more rational state of mind, I would have been able to see how ridiculous this assumption was- some of the my best memories are those where I’m surrounded by people, and for good reason…I love socialising! I've since realised that many of my scaries and pineapples were actually exacerbated by a deep sense of loneliness and disconnection. So I made it a priority to reconnect. I’ve started small, set time limits, and am constantly teaching my body to feel safe and joyful again when around people. I've worked my way up to larger groups and being able to get out and about into busier places. I still have a long way to go, as I still get overwhelmed easily, and my mind still loved the old comparison game, but I know I’m heading in the right direction.
Another big breakthrough I've had is with my walking. My first goal with DNRS was to be able to walk a lap of my local park (about 30 minutes). One day I was feeling confident and headed out for a meandering walk with J. At the 30 minute mark, when we were nowhere near home, the scaries started to kick in. They were very persistent. I panicked for about a minute before launching into my brain training ‘script’ (a series of statements you repeat to yourself to communicate safety to your nervous system). I started saying my script out loud, doing the required hand-actions, definitely looking somewhat deranged, but I couldn’t have cared less. I started describing everything I could see around me, just like I had been doing in all my visualisations of walking around this forest. And it worked! My scaries calmed enough that I could keep going. Once I made it home and was no worse the next few days, it was like a switch flipped. My body was perfectly capable of movement. Since then, my fear around movement has completely vanished. I managed to go trampolining with my niece the other day. The joy of moving my body without fear is one I have missed more than anything (well, except maybe fries) and I cannot wait to get my fitness levels back up again.
Some of my scaries have mostly disappeared- such as my EMF sensitivities. My mould sensitivities are still there, but greatly diminished. I was able to move back into the bedroom that I had been avoiding for months because of the tiniest amount of mould on the window sill. My ability to handle emotional triggers is improving every day as well. Things that would have sent me spiralling only a few months ago have been manageable enough.
I want to be real with everyone though. I still have MANY scaries and pineapples. I think the real difference now is that they don't bother me as much as they did. It really is true that what you resist persists! The minute I became okay with the scaries and learned that they were not dangerous, things started to shift quickly.
This doesn’t mean I haven’t been tested though!
The other night a completely new scary came up and I started to panic. When we’ve been living in chronic stress for a long time, like I have, our brains adapt to this sense of dis-ease. Safety and good feelings feel foreign, and our brain doesn’t like it, so it will keep trying to communicate that things are not right. If we start ignoring the signals it gave in the past that easily got our attention, it will try out new things and see if that works to pull you back into the anxious cycle.
My brain was trying out new things. New sensations, new thought patterns. I quickly remembered how tricky the limbic system can be and the new scary was gone the next day. This just helped cement even more clearly that I am on the right path.
The delirious joy I felt for a few weeks has levelled out some. I don't feel good all the time, but I've learned to be okay with that. I know things will continue to level out as I keep practising. Another thing that I expected to happen, but that has been challenging, is the surfacing of buried emotions that can occur when your nervous system starts to regulate more. There are a lot of difficult things that have happened to me in the past that I wasn’t well enough to process properly when they actually happened, so I believe that ‘energy’ stayed stuck in my body. As my nervous system builds its capacity, and my body senses that I now have the skills to properly deal with all those buried emotions, they will inevitably bubble up. My body wants me to deal with them so it can move forward. Whilst this is frustrating, and can feel as though you are going backwards, I know that it is necessary if I’m to grow. Somatic tracking and experiencing has been hugely helpful when these feelings have surfaced, and so I’m really glad I’ve had that knowledge and practice to lean on in difficult times.
The question everyone usually wants answered when it comes to DNRS- am I sticking to the hour of practice a day?
For the most part.
I've let things slide a couple of times. This week has been busier than normal and I’ve found it challenging to stick to my routine. The difference between pre-DNRS me and now is that I have compassion for myself when this happens, and I just get back to things the next day. In the past I would have told myself it was a sign I wasn't committed and just given up. Now, it’s just a reminder that I need to course-correct. The reminder that boredom and hopelessness is a pineapple is helpful in those moments.
I still balance my days between challenging myself and allowing myself time for things that bring me joy and calm. I trust that I will be able to do more things as the days pass and I continue to rewire.
My next goal- to get back to work! I have just started applying for jobs again (lots of rewiring around this process has needed to happen!) and I'm excited to see what comes up.
I don’t know what my future looks like, but for the first time in my life, the uncertainty isn’t crippling me. That in itself is worth all the time and effort in the world!
Lou x
Ah this is incredible !!! What a journey! And to be sharing it as you go like this is amazing. This journey isn’t linear (something I’ve learned the hard way). Is it possible with your new scary that it was always there before, just masked by another scary? The only reason I ask is that I’ve come across scaries I didn’t have an awareness of before but in my case they were being masked and paled into insignificance because the other scary was so severe. I love that you’ve learnt to be ok with not feeling good all the time. When I realised that most days I felt ok and some days I even felt good (other days/weeks: horrific), it was a big breakthrough for me. I actually realised feeling ok was good enough. It was a big door opener to joy and I hope you find the same too.
Amazing update, Lou! 🧡 I’ve recommitted to Gupta so I’m on a similar journey, but not as far along progress-wise. Was fatigue one of your main ‘scaries’?
Reading your post was inspiring. May you continue progressing!