Long COVID Coaching

Coaching is a specialized helping relationship with someone trained to help you move forward with your most important wellbeing goals.

It’s a supportive and empowering relationship in which the coach provides guidance and accountability as you take action to create the life you want.

A coach is a thought partner who helps you clarify your goals, build motivation, assist you in designing action steps, and work through how to manage any obstacles that might hinder your success.

Coaching draws on two core ideas:

This was so apparent throughout my Long COVID recovery! A physician or a clinician would recommend some course of treatment I knew wasn’t right for me. But in my panic, overwhelm, and desperation to get well I went with it.

With time, I learned to listen to my body and only continue the things that felt right for me. Only then was I able to start making progress.

My experience and professional expertise make me uniquely qualified to help you navigate the challenges of Long COVID and work toward your well-being goals.

I have lived the obstacles and the goals, but I also have the professional training to ask the right questions to help you arrive at the ideas and solutions that are most helpful to you.

Recovery really is possible with Polyvagal coaching.

Yes, you have a medical illness—Long COVID.

Yes, that means there are physiological mechanisms at play in your body that are making you feel so awful.

And you may have heard of a little thing called the Vagus nerve (actually it’s kind of a big thing) which runs between our gut and our brainstem.

The Vagus nerve is the central communication highway of our Autonomic Nervous System and is responsible for immune function, inflammation reduction, as well as all those symptoms that you have that come under the Dysautonomia umbrella. 

[And if you haven’t heard the word Dysautonomia yet it means Autonomic Dysfunction and includes heart rate, blood pressure, temperature control, breathing, digestion, hormone regulation and sexual function. If your physician told you you have POTs, that’s under the Dysautonomia umbrella.]

Polyvagal theory is the story of the Vagus nerve and the Autonomic Nervous System. 

Psychological strategies and nervous system regulation have a huge impact on physiological well-being, reducing inflammation, improving immune function and help reduce all the symptoms mentioned above that you struggle with every day. If you don’t heal your nervous system you won’t be able to recover from Long COVID.

Through my own personal experience and my work with clients, I’ve seen what’s possible when we tap into this power to support our Long COVID healing journey.

If you could be living your dream life again, what value would you place on that?

I believe that it’s possible. Let’s do the work. Together.

Hear more on Long COVID and Polyvagal Theory in an interview I recently did with Jim Masters at Close Up Radio!

Although rarely mentioned in the media, at least 10% of people with mild or asymptomatic acute COVID infection are now thought to fail to make a full recovery from their symptoms and return to their pre-existing level of functioning.

This condition is referred to as:

These all refer to the multi-symptom, multi-system post-viral syndrome that can follow a bout of acute COVID infection in some people.

In the US, people with Long Covid have been colloquially named “Long Haulers” by the peer lead community.

Many people have found that although their initial infection was relatively mild, Long COVID itself is anything but.

It can be completely debilitating and cause extreme discomfort and disability.

“I allowed my emotions to move through. I curled up like a ball, I just did something for myself, and all of these are because of polyvagal strategies. I noticed that when my nervous system is shutting down and the symptoms are flaring up, I now have a plan. My body is responding because of SSP. I now have efficacy, which I did not have before. I have come a long way. Even if what I’m feeling is not dramatically different, the strategies for resolving that I have are enormously different. And my ability to have a role in that is what’s different, and that’s what will then grow exponentially.”

Chris D., Long COVID Coaching Client

As we all know, the biggest issue with Long COVID is fatigue, post-exertion malaise, and pacing.

The acute trauma of having a novel illness sent our autonomic nervous system into fight-or-flight overdrive. The ongoing trauma of both the virus still wreaking havoc in your body coupled with medical and societal gaslighting keep us there.

And eventually, the body cannot sustain this and goes into immobilization—or shut down.

Coaching when applied to business or sports typically involves helping you take fast action and get traction.

Polyvagal coaching for Long COVID takes a different approach. It involves slowing down and tuning in to your own body and your own nervous system in order to help facilitate recovery.

It also has a heavy emphasis on mindset rather than mindlessly doing.

This is why the first goal of Polyvagal coaching for Long Covid is to learn how your own individual nervous system works. Then ultimately we can help improve vagal tone and vagal flexibility so that your body can begin to spend more time in rest and digest so that it can begin to heal.

And for those who have been in immobilization for a long time, this often involves a more powerful autonomic nervous system intervention like the Safe and Sound Protocol.

Most of us have been down the rabbit hole of medical treatments: stacks of expensive supplements, hyperbaric oxygen that our insurance doesn’t cover, functional medicine that requires 15 vials of blood draw and then suggests out-of-pocket compounded medication. All of these can be helpful and they also keep us in the trauma feedback loop.

Many of us have also pursued alternative things like acupuncture, Reiki or Craniosacral therapy. These are all wonderful ways of increasing vagal tone and moving back towards rest-and-digest, but they also require that we move through fight-or-flight. This often causes overwhelm and relapse.

The Benefits of Coaching Versus Psychotherapy:

“I started working with Sally at the end of January 2022. By this time, I was over 2 years into my Long Covid journey. I had spent most of the previous 2 years in immobilization. The Safe & Sound Protocol was really hard physically & emotionally, but Sally guided me through it and gave me hope that it would work. She was also a great resource for other issues related to Long Covid, like prioritizing my recovery, advocating for myself with physicians, and setting boundaries. Now I’m just over a year from our start and I have made great progress. My cognition has greatly improved, I’m more aware of my body and how to pace myself, I’m exercising (under the guidance of a long covid specialist), and my symptoms have lessened in severity to where I can function. I’m not fully recovered from where I was prior to COVID, but I now can see a life that I can live moving forward. My husband and family are happy to have me back. And it’s all down to Sally, and of course, my own hard work within her coaching, and not forgetting my husband who researched for hours on the internet to find her in the first place.”

Molly D. , Long COVID Coaching Client

When you sign up to work with me, we will work together for three – six months. We talk once a week, for 30 minutes.

Here is what you can expect during our coaching program:

Of course, your individual coaching plan is uniquely tailored to you—I meet you where you are. Then I help lead and direct you towards solutions based on your experience, symptoms, and needs.

And of course Polyvagal informed interventions can also include the Safe and Sound Protocol if you wish, again based on individual assessment.

You will also have full Voxer support (a free walkie-talkie app where you can message me in real-time, 24/7).

And by the end of our time working together your Nervous System will be permanently and positively different!! 

Which means your life will be permanently and positively different!

Coaching is for you if you are self-reflective, strategic, and unafraid to value yourself and your own recovery. It is also for you if you are willing to make a time commitment to working on your nervous system, mindset, lifestyle, and health.

Coaching is not for you if you are looking for someone to tell you what to do, fix your problems for you, or are not in a place where you can value investing in your own recovery. It is also not for you if you are looking for psychotherapy for diagnosable mental disorders such as depression or anxiety.

Ultimately, when considering any modality, your body knows best.

Want to hear more about what it’s like to work with me? Listen to a recent interview here You’re probably getting a lot of messages about what you should do and try. If you’re not sure if coaching is right for you, take a moment and a deep breath. See what your body is telling you.

I offer a discovery call to help you gain clarity on where your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is right now and what might be the next right steps for you in healing it.

The different coaching programs that I offer all build positive and lasting change in the ANS, which ultimately improve healing and immune function through the Vagas nerve, regardless of where you are in you Long Covid recovery journey.

But we are all individuals: some of us prefer individual, highly personalized and intensive support; others of us prefer low cost self paced learning. This call will help you determine where you are on this spectrum and which of these is right for you.

I am acutely aware that we all struggle with energy, concentration, and other symptoms on Zoom calls. If you would prefer to connect by phone only, or need a shorter consultation, then we can also arrange that.

Want to hear more about what it’s like to work with me? Listen to a recent interview here.

Hear more about working with me in an interview with Doug Lewellyn from Close Up Radio!