Roberto
I was a covid nurse working in New York City. I remember watching NBC News and how they said this disease was viciously taking lives in other countries. Over the next three months I experienced many patients pass away in front of my eyes. All the nurses and doctors were extremely afraid of this disease. I ended up getting covid a few months later. I was hospitalized and realized my symptoms weren’t getting better. I had no idea this was the beginning of an epic journey.
I couldn’t do the bare essentials. For the first three months after being discharged from the hospital, I couldn’t walk well, I couldn’t digest foods, I couldn’t think. My hands would shake at all times, I would have heart palpitations, and my heart rate would shoot to 150 bpm by simply standing. I would feel cold and hot all of a sudden without any explanation. “What is happening to me!?”. Fearing and thinking about how covid damaged me, I visited a neurologist, a pulmonologist, and a cardiologist, and all said the same thing. “The exams all came back negative. We don’t know what is causing your symptoms”. I panicked even more. This is when I started to attend youtube university.
I watched every video I could on covid. I found out these terms were being used: “Long Covid”, and “Long Haulers”. I would search for these terms and peruse dozens and dozens of articles and videos. The conclusion I gathered: “There is no cure. You will be sick for the rest of your life. If you are lucky, time may heal you partially”. When I learned this conclusion it didn’t make me feel better at all. I became angry and started to boil inside. I became angry at the world, angry at my hospital, angry at my government, angry that I chose to be a nurse, just angry at everything. I couldn’t believe I had this incurable disease. I thought to myself, “I’m 32 years old and lost my life”.
In scrolling through these youtube videos I saw a thumbnail that said something along the lines of “Type A personality”, and “Past trauma” causes Long covid. This caught my eye because I have a type A personality and experienced trauma before getting covid. I delved into this video and it explained how people who have type A personalities and past trauma together are at high risk of getting Long Covid. This made sense to me. The psychologist in the video explained a method people were using to heal themselves called “Polyvagal Theory”. This theory stated how a dysregulated nervous system could explain all of the symptoms I was suffering from. It all made sense to me. This was the only theory that I’ve heard that explained every single one of my symptoms. It was game over for Long Covid.
I used the same drive I had before Covid to implement these polyvagal exercises. Within three days of doing these exercises my brain fog lifted for a few minutes and then came back. For the one year and eight months I had Long Covid not once did my brain fog lift. It was amazing! This validated that the Polyvagal theory was true. After three months I was fully recovered. I went back to work full-time. I started going back to the gym and running again. I want to make clear I didn’t get my old life back, I built a better life. There is a big part of this healing process that is very dark and not so obvious. It is hard for me to talk about it.
Childhood trauma. I asked myself, “Why am I such a people pleaser? Why am I so driven? Why am I such a perfectionist?”. This was the hardest part of my healing. The answer to these questions was the way I was brought up. I was physically and emotionally abused if I wasn’t perfect. I had to accomplish things to get my parent’s attention and to receive love. The way I made sure I was safe and felt belonging was by making sure I pleased my parents and they weren’t angry at me. Sadly as we grow up we continue with this programming and we begin to act this way with the people around us. Even though our parents leave most of our life, a part of us carries them alongside us. We begin to verbally abuse ourselves for our mistakes. We don’t feel worthy of attention or love when we don’t accomplish anything fancy. And we feel a great sense of anxiety when we upset people around us.
Understanding that my type A personality was rooted in my lack of self-love was the beginning of healing. I realized that this person who was verbally abusing me all the time wasn’t really me. It was my parent’s voice and I was allowing it to talk to me even as an adult. This is when I took my power back by refusing to listen to that voice anymore and by learning to love that inner child. I had to love myself, something I never had done my whole life. For people like me, loving ourselves is harder than abusing ourselves.
If you are still reading this and you are struggling to heal and you have tried everything please look into childhood trauma. These traumas create beliefs in us as adults that are toxic and keep us sick. Challenge those beliefs and understand that those toxic beliefs are not true. No matter what those voices are saying, you can choose not to listen to them. You are worthy. You are loved. You are valuable. You deserve more. Not because you won a medal, because you have a prestigious career, or because society says you are worthy. You are worthy because you are human. You are worthy because you were born. You are worthy because you have air in your lungs. You are worthy because you were given the gift of life.
Roberto Escobar, NYC, NY