Part of my POTS rehabilitation is retraining my nervous system. 

We’re going about it through a series of physical exercises—starting slow and gradually building myself back up. But I also believe I need to retrain it mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

These past five years have been a wild ride at times in my life, and looking back, there are moments I have no doubt contributed to my “upside down nervous system” because of how I handled them.

How do you respond when you get a call that your mom is missing and has been gone for over 12 hours in Salt Lake City, knowing she was in a manic episode?

How do you respond when you’re out on the streets looking for her with strangers, family, and friends who were generous enough to help search with you?

How do you respond when you get a call from the police department saying they found her after 36 hours, and you arrive to see her in the back of an ambulance—where the only word you can use to describe it is “horrific”?

I stuffed it.
I suppressed it.
And I moved on.

I didn’t fully deal with it. I didn’t allow myself to go there. I just piled more and more onto my nervous system and carried on. 

Truthfully, I’ve done this my whole life. It’s been my coping mechanism for the chaos I’ve faced. But eventually—just like a dam whose levees break—my nervous system did the same.

I think a lot of us are walking around numb. We suppress the hard things, and as a result, we dull the highs. We flatten ourselves out. Instead of experiencing life in all its color, we gray it out.

Part of my healing now is learning to feel again, and I’m actively working through Al-Anon’s 12 Steps.

To open up.
To be vulnerable.
To let my guard down.
To let the hurt in—and alchemize it into something good.

I know my nervous system could use the weight lifted off my shoulders.

And I’m willing to bet yours could too.

Easy Easy,

-Luke Falk

See you next Monday!