Hi there!

 My name is Lauren, and I want to share my experience of chronic fatigue and my journey to recovery with you. I first started feeling low energy in 2009 at the age of 24. I had recently bought my first house with my husband and was in the beginning of my career as an RN on a Neurology unit.  There were many events around that time in my life that were difficult. I was working nights and feeling socially isolated. I found a deceased patient as a new nurse which led to a lot of anxiety about my job. My parents divorced, which led me to become my sick mother's sole caretaker.  And then in 2011, my mother passed away. Though I thought I was tough and “dealing” with everything quite well, I now understand how these events, as well as others from my childhood, began a pattern of fear in me. During these years I would categorize my fatigue as mild,  but it was only the beginning.

 

 In 2018, I was helping my dad, who had been diagnosed with dementia, through a particularly toxic divorce. As a mom of two young boys and working as a nurse, my fatigue was getting worse. I'd frequently crash at 7 p.m. and not be able to move off the couch to help my husband put the kids to bed. This continued intermittently for a couple years. I’d visited doctors several times over the course of those 9 years but everything always came back normal.

 

Fast-forward to March of 2020, I was one of the not-so-lucky ones to get Covid 19, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I believe my immune system was vulnerable because of the stress of helping my father through his divorce.

I had a mild case, but after two weeks my fatigue continued. Not only did it continue, but it essentially "exploded" and was worse than ever! I had fatigue every day, sometimes all day long. I went to doctor after doctor looking for answers but they never knew what was wrong. I did hours of research on my own and spent what seemed like every free minute of my day trying to figure out what was happening to my body. I changed my diet, took a boatload of daily supplements, and read everything I could about fatigue.

  

During this time, I was also working 12-hour shifts as a labor and delivery nurse that would leave me in a crash for days. Everything I was trying to do to heal seemed futile when I continued to crash like that. I decided to cut back on my hours at work and just focus on getting better.  

 

Finally I stumbled upon Curable, an app for chronic pain sufferers.  It taught me that the mind plays a large role in creating chronic pain, which I had seen for myself with my own mother.  I thought maybe it would work for my fatigue too.

 

I eventually began working with a coach trained in Pain Reprocessing Therapy. This is when things really began to change for me. I began to understand that the brain "learns fatigue," typically as a result of some kind of chronic stress or adverse events in life. Everything I was hearing just clicked with me; it made so much sense! Learning about the neuroscience behind my fatigue gave me the hope I was so desperate for.

 

​My coach suggested I read the book The Way Out by Alan Gordon, an LCSW who created the Pain Reprocessing Theory (PRT).  Though I was not experiencing any pain, I learned how the techniques work for many different symptoms. Pain, fatigue, migraines, GI issues/IBS, Long Covid, and many more all fall into the category of neuroplastic symptoms. The good news is, if the brain learns these symptoms, it can unlearn them as well.

 

​Over the next year, I used these methods to heal myself. Slowly I went from crashing 3 times a day, to 2 times a day, to1 time a day, and finally, 0 times a day! My life now is even better than before, because I learned the healing power of self compassion and the negative ripple effects fear and other negative thoughts can have on the body. I learned to change these patterns of fear that had gotten me into this mess. 

 

Over the past several years, I have learned so much about mind body symptoms and what it takes to get better. My hope and passion is to help others who are suffering.  I want you to know, that you too can recover using these scientifically proven techniques!