Joanne Smith describes how old symptoms can return during recovery, like the dull ache in her lower-left leg that only disappeared during sleep. Panic and catastrophic thinking often follow, but expecting this possibility helps you stay calm and keep moving forward.
So we're thinking about, um, what, how it works, because many people in mind-body recovery, they'll have like maybe a few days, it might go, and they might be thinking, oh, all of a sudden that thing's disappeared. And, um, and it's like, this is more about what will happen if it was to return, because I don't think I've met many people in this recovery world who have not had to go through the symptom returning at some point. So for example, the first symptom of mine that improved was lower left leg. I had a continuous dull aching kind of feeling in that leg that was virtually permanent The only time I could say it wasn't there was when I was asleep. And so it's like, how will we respond if that sensation comes back again? Because most people, if you don't know this in advance, they might end up being in a bit of a panic, a bit of a spiral of everything— I thought everything was working, I thought I was making progress, but actually it's a failure. How, how on earth? And people can spiral into catastrophe. So if you kind of know this stuff in advance, then if that was to happen— and I'm not saying it happens to everyone, but it's just the majority of people relate to this and describe this in their recovery journeys— then you, you don't— you're already ahead of the game because you don't need to respond in that way.
