Ashok Gupta argues that joyful activities can calm the brain's emergency response and ease symptoms, but warns that regained energy needs careful pacing. Joy comes first, but you have to know your limits.
You see, sometimes with this condition, we think that, oh, we're not allowed to be happy, we're not allowed to have.
Fun because we've got to fix what's going on before we're allowed to have joyful experiences in our lives.
But we need to turn that on its head and say, actually the joy comes first.
Doing things that we enjoy, that bring us joy, that make us happy are.
Very important as we recover, wait to recover, and then do fun, happy things. And some of you may have note in the book we talk about glimpsing.
Well, let's say your mind is really engaged with an activity and it might be some writing or it might be having some friends around for dinner or.
Walking in the countryside. And because you're so engaged through that.
Activity, you've temporarily forgotten about how your body feels.
Some people notice that they start feeling.
Physically better just by experiencing that, where.
Their mind has got so thrown into.
Something else they're not worrying about their bodies anymore.
And the way that this works is when the little worried party saying, worry, worry, we've got symptoms in the body.
If this part of the brain, the conscious mind, if it's off playing the piano and is really enjoying that, then the worried part thinks, oh, I can't get this guy's attention about this danger.
Even though he or she is aware of it.
Okay, it must mean that these symptoms.
In the body aren't actually that dangerous.
Okay, for the moment, I'll reduce the danger aspect.
I'll stop releasing so many chemicals into the body. I'll stop sending this emergency response around the body. And people find that when they do.
That, they often feel better and they.
Can'T understand why they suddenly felt quite normal. And then they start questioning, do I.
Have really what's just happened? And it's just that the emergency response temporarily is switched off or certainly reduced.
Which can make us temporarily feel better.
The challenge is to make sure that.
We'Re still pacing because obviously when we're feeling better, we're still we've re engaged with joy.
We can then forget about pacing because.
We'Ve got so engrossed in an activity. So we want to be engaged with.
The activity, but we don't want to.
Be lost in the activity to the.
Point at which we lose awareness of.
How we're feeling and we overdo it. So it's a fine balancing act between having a background awareness of when we're.
Pushing too hard, but at the same time retraining negative thoughts and attention away from our body.
That's unnecessary.
