Post Covid - Dizziness / Off balance

Dear TMS Forum.

Many posts here asking for help, so I'll try and be short and sweet.

Several years ago now I was diagnosed with NDPH ((Headache upon waking not pretty) by the medical profession which lasted over three years off bouncing around the medical profession including stem cells injections in the neck, and so forth. I discovered Dr Sarno and his teachings (god bless him) and was cured 100%.

Roll on to January 2022. Some very minor bouts of TMS which I corrected over the last few years but minor and only every lasted a few days. I have some skin related issues which have been happening for the last year which may also be TMS but they don't really both me on a day to day basis.

Anyway to cut to the chase, I got Covid in the second week of this month. I believe it was Omicron. I had x2 Pfizer only recently and basically had mild symptoms (no loss of taste / smell) and it cleared by day 4. On Day 5 I started to get what could be described as light headed / dizzy / off balance when I was upright and walking. This has continued to this day. My body is still physically fit (I walk 5 - 10km) every day so I dont believe Covid has affected any of my major organs, I dont thankfully have any respiratory issues.

Ive been given a medical examination and told im in good condition.

Its this TMS ?? Its very frustrating tbh. How can my ANS have switched from headache pain to dizziness???

I watched this video with interest: https://www.thismighthurtfilm.com/long-covid (Long Covid — Neuroplastic & Mind-Body Resources — This Might Hurt)

Please any thoughts / ideas/ insights would be very welcomed.

Thanks,

Matthew

 

I also have similar problem. Dizziness and vertigo when walking or standing that started one month after covid. Feeling off-balance and starting to feel very anxious because of it.

 

Hi Alea - You have my sympathies. The good news is its TMS - and I cured it but took a good 8 - 10 weeks to get through it.

Had to read all the old material etc. I found a women, Lorna, who has dealt with cases similar to ours and incorporates breathing as part of the rehabilitation process.

http://lornanpilates.co.uk/ (Lorna Nicholson Well-being Sheffield)

Good Luck and let me know if you need further help.

 

That is great news Thank you for the information, I will definitely look into it.
Seems like the anxiety about it really makes it worse.

 

Dear Mathew and Alea,

That IS almost definitely TMS. I’ve was dealing with long Covid for several months with dizziness as a major symptom, along with chest pain and some shortness of breath. In the last 10 days I’ve finally turned a corner, due quite simply to my discovery of TMS through a recommendation from a member of my family. I urge you to stop what you re doing right now and listen to the following podcast from the channel hosted by Nicole Sachs as well as the others in that series about long covid. You ARE going to get better!

https://www.himalaya.com/episode/813366/150126861?Share_from=App&Influencer_uid=10005730808&Share_to=CopyLink (Episode 159 - Recovery from Long Covid with Kurt - The Cure for Chronic Pain with Nicole Sachs, LCSW | Ximalaya International Edition Himalaya)

 

Hello! Could you tell me in a nutshell what you did?? Also what other symptoms you had. Do symptoms get worse? How do you deal with fear/anxiety/ sadness from the amígdala if you had that?

 

Hello! Could you tell me in a nutshell what you did?? Also what other symptoms you had. Do symptoms get worse? How do you deal with fear/anxiety/ sadness from the amígdala if you had that?

 

Dear Villa93
I'm so sorry you're feeling like this. My very best advice is to go to this website (https://www.thismighthurtfilm.com/long-covid (Long Covid — Neuroplastic & Mind-Body Resources — This Might Hurt)) and check out the resoures listed, especially the recovery story from Lieke which is down the page. I did what she did, following the JournalSpeak techniques that Nicole Sachs outlines on her website and podcast (thecureforchronicpain.com and https://podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/the-cure-for-chronic-pain-with-nicole-sachs-lcsw/id1439580309 (‎The Cure for Chronic Pain with Nicole Sachs, LCSW on Apple Podcasts)). My symptoms were chest pain, dizziness, headaches, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, extreme anxiety, blurry vision, fear. I'm still working through it, but following Nicole Sachs stuff really helped me to turn a corner in my recovery. I did JournalSpeak for a month and saw the results: every day for 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of self compassion meditation. There's a lot of neuroscience to it, which Nicole explains in her podcast series (she worked with Sarno in NYC for a while). Here's a good summary of JournalSPeak if you want to read about it in a nutshell: https://mytmsjourney.com/resources/journalspeak-by-nicole-sachs-lcsw/ (JournalSpeak by Nicole Sachs LCSW) I know you'll get better. I was really hopeless for a while and it took that, it took a low low point, to really find my way out! The JournalSpeak will help with the fear/anxiety too, it will. You're not alone!!

 

Hi I hope you get on here soon!

 

Many members move on once they have achieved recovery. You received a wonderful gift when @Waiheke123 responded to your query, and it would be nice if you liked his post and thanked him.

It may be that your fearful brain is not allowing you to accept the information that is right in front of you, instead it is convincing you that it's not the right information and that you have to keep looking. This is your brain on TMS.

The fact is that there is a TON of advice in the Success Stories subforum, if you are willing to read the stories and do a little bit of research on your own. One of the materials that Matthew could be referring to in his older post is the Structured Educational Program, which is free and requires no signup. I suggest that you just start doing that, because the whole purpose of an educational program is to educate you and answer beginner's questions.

Good luck.

 

Thank you so much for the reply. I’m looking into all of it. Thing is I keep having these intensifying brain fog and emotions like fear/depression/anxiety to the point of wonderingly if ill end up in a psychiatric place and it creates more fear. I tried journaling which seemed to increase the sadness and I’ve seen others say there’s no need to dig up old things that’s why I also want to know what the other person did. Not meaning to offend you I really do appreciate you

 

@villa93, I can see that you're really struggling, and I feel for you, and I also have to ask whether you have ever had psychotherapy?

I am sorry to be so brutally honest, but the fact is that doing the emotional work can be really scary for people with bad childhood adversity or serious trauma. Most people here do not have these in their backgrounds, and journaling might not bring up more than a few childhood incidents or some family conflict that were troubling to a young child, but which, once examined as an adult, can be easily acknowledged and accepted so that the person can move on to TMS recovery.

Journaling and reflecting will almost always increase symptoms for most people, along with an increase in anxiety. For those with troubling backgrounds, journaling will also bring up OCD or depression, as you are experiencing. If someone like you does not have the emotional strength to fight back and keep working on it, they will simply quit, because it feels so harmful. This is, of course, the ultimate goal of your fearful brain, right ? To get you to stop digging. Which is why you have to keep at it. Which is much easier said than done.

For us, it's really tough to see people in this situation, because the only thing we can recommend is psychotherapy. Self-help isn't going to be enough, because your brain will always sabotage your efforts, and it will even go so far as to push you into the horror of depression, which needs to be avoided at all costs, because it is, quite frankly, evil. I get that (had a tiny taste of it myself, at the worst of my TMS crisis "before Sarno").

If you are so incredibly tied up in fear, rumination, and catastrophizing (as you are) that you can't rationally see this for what it is and successfully fight back, you need one-on-one professional help, to set you onto a new and constructive path to recovery.

Good luck,

~Jan

 

Ok. If you were me what would your day look like? The depression was there before journaling btw. And if I write about a painful event do I need to keep going writing about the same thing?

 

The problem is that I am not you, and the only thing you have disclosed about yourself is your extreme reactions to the exercises in our program. You did not even answer my direct question and you say nothing about the entire point of my last post, which has the only advice I am comfortable providing. In other words, to answer your direct question, my day would be spent finding a therapist.

If you want responses from other members of our community, you probably need to create your own thread instead of asking questions on an old thread. You provided more information in the question you posted to that old inactive link (not accessible to general users as I mentioned in our PC) - you could just copy/paste that to a new thread and make sure it's in the "Support" subforum.