3 Signs Your Nervous System Is Stuck in Fight or Flight | CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME

[00:00:00]How's it going guys? Miguel here from CFS Recovery. In this video, we're going to be talking about how to know if your nervous system is stuck in fight or flight mode. If you've been down the rabbit hole researching the Vegas nerve, fight orflight mode, all your different symptoms, down all these forums, all these groups, and you still can't figure out, do I actually have a nervous system disorder? Do I actually have CFS? Do I actually have long CO? After working with thousands of people all around the world who have CFS and longco, I'm going to share some of the top three ways to recognize if you likely have one of these conditions. And the thing is a lot of people when they get diagnosed with this or they realize, okay, by process of elimination, I definitely have CFS or I definitely have long COVID, they can get really scared because there's not a lot of positive information about those things online. You're going to see a lot of things like very low recovery rate. I think with CFS it says the recovery rate is 5% which is not true and same thing with longco like there's not a lot of clear very specific answers on how to treat these and also at least prior to the last few years here there wasn't a lot of evidence that you could get better but with all the research coming out now with all of these YouTube channels like this one and so many other channels online you see people getting their lives back all the time and so it can be a very confusing journey trying to figure out if this is actually what you have. At first, when you're starting to get symptoms, the typical path is you have a few sensations in your body. You don't really know what's going on, so you try to just ignore them. Eventually, the sensations and symptoms become so loud that you can't ignore them. They actually start interfering with your quality of life, and then you start seeking out help from maybe your family doctor. Maybe you even end up going to the hospital or the ER one time because your heart rate's out of control or you can't see or maybe you think you had a stroke and you go there with all these things going on in your body. The doctors run their tests, their scans, they do their diagnostic and they come back and you are perfectly fine. On paper, you are healthy as can be. For most people watching this video right now and searching up these kind of things online, they've probably been through that exact same process. Now, you may have some things out of the ordinary here and there. Um, this video is specifically for people who have had their test and scans done and nothing is showing up that explains the level of symptoms that they're feeling. And so, when the doctors don't know what's going on, when the tests are saying that you're perfectly fine and you're sitting there feeling like you're going crazy, the next thing that you probably do is you try to figure this stuff out on your own. And that leads to you researching every single symptom. And every single symptom leads down a different rabbit hole that can be very confusing and overwhelming and actually quite terrifying sometimes when you really don't know what's going on. I remember early on in my recovery, I would search up heart palpitations or the fact that like my fingers and feet were tingling or the fact that I had brain fog or slurred speech. And next thing you know, I'm convinced that I have early onset of Alzheimer's, that I have early onset of Parkinson's because I couldn't stop shaking because I had so much adrenaline in my body. I thought I had a heart problem. I thought I had adrenal failure or Addison's disease because my body was just not able to produce cortisol. And so it was pretty terrifying to say the least trying to figure out, do I actually have all these other pretty scary diseases and am I going to be able to fix this thing? The real question was, am I ever actually going to be able to live a normal life again or am I just stuck with this for the rest of my life?

[00:03:44]And so you're on this journey and it could be a few months to several years, maybe even a couple decades trying to figure out what's going on with you. And when you do your research and those things aren't working, a lot of times you start going to specialists, you start going to treatments and unconventional alternative approaches like naturopaths, like maybe some energy healing or spiritual healing or, you know, detoxing. I had to went that through a few times. And the thing is, every time you do these things, you have a lot of hope that, hey, maybe this is going to be the thing that changes everything. Maybe this is actually going to make me get better. Maybe it's actually going to help me, you know, and you get these hopes up. The problem is you're really excited that this thing might work because that's what you've been told, but it doesn't work. And so you're sitting there disappointed, afraid to hope again. Now, one of the biggest pain points you're probably trying to solve right now and the whole reason you probably clicked on this video in the first place is answering the question, "What is wrong with me?

[00:04:48]Where do I even start? I've read everything. I've done my research. I've done my due diligence and I still can't tell what's wrong with me or where to even start." And so, there's really three things that can help you narrow down the fact that this might be a case of a hyper sensitive nervous system disorder. And that's what I like to call this chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID. As long as you've had your tests and scans done, I like to just call it a hyper sensitive nervous system disorder because that's really what it is at the end of the day.

[00:05:20]The best way to approach this is to keep it simple and call it what it is. Your nervous system is very reactive. I mean, just think about it. Have you ever had an experience where you're out in public and you were feeling super overwhelmed?

[00:05:34]where the movement was overwhelming, where even the noise or the lights or even the colors that people were wearing, that was overwhelming and it led to symptoms. Have you ever sat down on a couch and you didn't really do anything physical, but you watched a movie and maybe it was a violent movie or a scary movie and then you felt symptoms after? Have you ever had maybe a difficult or emotional conversation where you didn't do anything physically?

[00:06:02]You just sat there talking on the phone and then now you feel physical sensations in your body. A lot of people can relate to the experience of having a doctor's or specialist appointment coming up and just the anticipation building up to that. You're getting more and more wired as you get closer to the date. Maybe you're having trouble sleeping. Maybe you're feeling more fatigued. And so these are telltale signs of a hyper sensitive nervous system. And so the hyper sensitivity, your body just feeling very sensitive to any kind of stimulation, that is a telltale sign of obviously a hyper sensitive nervous system where you feel like you're very tired but very wired as well. You feel these internal vibrations, almost these jitters, like you're very restless, but you're also extremely fatigued. You might have racing heart palpitations. You may have difficulty handling light or sound.

[00:06:56]There was a time when my grandma just walking into the room to bring me food, she would open the door and just the clicking and the creaking of the door, it felt like someone was, you know, banging symbols in my ear and I would hear ringing from that. Or she'd open the blinds in the morning and just a little bit of sunlight would give me a headache. It felt like someone was shining a very bright flashlight in my face. And so this hyper sensitivity could also revolve around touch where someone touches your arm or even wearing clothing can cause pain. I've worked with so many people who have had that experience where certain types of clothes can actually hurt. Sometimes it's like wool. Wool can feel really prickly and actually cause pain on the skin. Or if the fabric isn't soft, that can cause pain on the skin. I had a lady, she's all better now, but she was bedridden for several years. And the times that she would get outside the house on the way to a doctor's appointment, just the wind on her face, the wind would cause excruciating pain.

[00:07:58]So, any kind of hyper sensitivity where there's a slight sensation, but it is amplified, that is a telltale sign of a hyper sensitive nervous system. The second telltale sign that you might have this is that your symptoms actually move around. Now, when your nervous system is quote unquote glitching out, that's essentially what's happening. Your brain is sending the wrong signals to your body. So, it's triggering all these different symptoms in different places in your body. So, some days you might get leg pain. Other days you might feel it in your arms. Other days you might feel it in your head. And if you have symptoms that move around or turn on and off at random, that is another sign that your nervous system is probably in this hyper sensitive state where it's kind of just malfunctioning. And the reason it's malfunctioning is it's trying to put limiters in place to stop you from going out there and adding in more stimulation to your body. Because ultimately, the whole reason this started in the first place was because you have a maximum stress threshold. And through whatever happened in your life, it was maybe something you did or didn't do intentionally or something happened to you, but these stressors stacked up in your life and it went over your stress threshold. When you go over your stress threshold, your brain goes, "Okay, we need to slow things down." And we don't trust this person being in control of this body. So, in order to stop them from going out there and exposing themselves to life, exposing themselves to more of the world, we need to dial things back and stop them from doing that. And we're going to do that in the form of symptoms. Maybe we're going to make their legs hurt. Maybe to reduce the cognitive stress that they constantly place on themselves because they work all the time and put themselves in stressful situations.

[00:09:46]Maybe we'll give them lots of brain fog and slurred speech and memory issues to make it very difficult for you to have conversations. And so these symptoms, they can be very random, but if they're coming and going and they're moving around in your body and it doesn't really make sense. This is part where you tell your doctors what's going on and they'll kind of look at you like you're crazy, right? And if they don't look at you like you're crazy, then congratulations. you have found an awesome doctor who probably understands this side of things like cuz normally in in medical school they don't really teach this stuff or at least the things they do teach they say hey this is just all in your head you're just stressed out you have anxiety we just need to fix it which a part of that is true I want to say a part of that the missing piece is that they don't really tell you what's going on they don't help you understand what's happening to your body but most importantly exactly what you need to do to get out of it. Okay, so that's the second one is your symptoms move around in your body. And the third thing, I kind of mentioned it previously in number two, but your symptoms are inconsistent. Sometimes they're very intense and sometimes they go away. I had so many experiences where, you know, I was doing something and it would trigger lots of heart palpitations, something as simple as getting the mail.

[00:11:08]And so my association with that activity was a pretty negative association. I thought, okay, that activity is bad.

[00:11:16]That's making me overdo it, so I'll stay away from that. And then maybe a week later, I would have to get the mail or or do something similar to that and I would have zero palpitations. My heart felt okay. And that didn't make sense because it was the exact same activity I did previously. And this time I didn't have symptoms. And it happened vice versa as well. There were times when I was vacuuming the house and I was completely fine. I was okay. The sound I could tolerate it. I didn't have a headache. I didn't have any racing heart rate during that experience. But the next week I do the same thing and within a minute I'm feeling heart palpitations.

[00:11:55]I'm feeling my heart rate go up. I'm getting a little bit dizzy and lightaded. Right? But the same activity cause different effects. And so when there's inconsistencies and your symptoms are coming and going and moving around, classic telltale sign of a hyper sensitive nervous system. And I really want to emphasize that it's very important you go get your test and scans done, that you go to the doctors, you try to get referrals to specialists to make sure the heart's okay and your lungs are okay and your body is actually okay on paper. Because if that's the case and you have all of these other symptoms going on and everything you're trying isn't really working, the typical conventional methods are not working, you probably have a hyper sensitive nervous system disorder. Okay. Now, once we identify, okay, this is probably what you have, right? The thing is there's no real test that is accessible to people that will 100% prove that, okay, you have chronic fatigue syndrome, you have long COVID. It's typically a process of elimination where you do all of these tests and if you don't have any of those things then they just boil it down to okay you have this cluster of symptoms so you have this syndrome and syndrome means a cluster of things that they don't really understand yet so they just lump it all together essentially a hyper sensitive nervous system disorder but it can be fixed and that's the beautiful part about all of this because I'm willing to bet you if you're watching this right now think back to a time where you were actually normal. We all were normal at one point where we didn't really have any symptoms, where we didn't have to worry about our body keeping up. We didn't have to worry about overdoing it, where we could just go out and have dinner with friends and we could enjoy our lives, right? There was a time when that happened. Now, that was then we've somehow transitioned to this place where you are now where you feel these symptoms and you do feel like you're walking on eggshells every day and your body is hyper sensitive. So if your nervous system and your body can go from functioning perfectly normal to functioning how it is today, then it can also shift back. The brain is so so powerful and there's a few steps that you can do in order to make that happen.

[00:14:10]Okay? And I'm going to break it down into three steps here, right? Number one, it's really understanding what's happening to your body in the first place. Because the whole reason we can run on this loop of fear and emotions and anxiety and these symptoms just keep getting triggered and triggered and we get more and more tired and more symptomatic is because we don't understand what's going on because it's terrifying not knowing when the symptoms are going to come, how intense they're going to be. It's terrifying not being in control of your body. So understanding why this is happening in the first place and it it's happening because you've reached your stress threshold. And if you're not sure about the stress threshold, just click this video up here where I dive deep into a lot of what's causing all of this. I try to break it down very simple in terms of your stress threshold. Okay. So number one is understanding what's going on by watching these videos, right? By watching these videos and seeing something that clicks. Because once one thing clicks and it starts to make sense, all of a sudden it's almost like solving a puzzle versus throwing darts in the dark hoping that you get better.

[00:15:19]There is a logical sequence of actions you can take in order to get a certain outcome. And in this case, the outcome is thriving health. There is a way to get there for your situation. So that's number one is understanding what's going on. Now number two, it's implementing these strategies. It's re-calibrating your nervous system, I like to call it.

[00:15:41]And all of that happens in how you respond to symptoms. Because there's only two scenarios that can happen when you do feel symptoms. Number one, we can start to panic. We can start to go into this very fearful, doubtful mode where we feel unsafe. And the more unsafe we feel, the more our nervous system goes, okay, you're right. There's danger, right? We need to protect you. We need to pretty much go into hibernation mode.

[00:16:08]We need to shield you from the world and force you not to go out there and expose yourself to danger. We are going to lock this thing down in the form of symptoms.

[00:16:17]Now, your brain, it doesn't ask you to slow down. It doesn't say, "Hey, Miguel, we're feeling unsafe right now. Can you please slow down? That would be great."

[00:16:25]It's not going to say that. It's going to give me symptoms, right? It's a very primal organ. It's very primal system.

[00:16:32]it will just give me symptoms to try to slow me down. And if I understand the reason it's giving me symptoms, I can see, oh, my body's not breaking down. My body's not punishing me. It's not torture. It's not fighting against me.

[00:16:45]My body is actually trying to protect me. So, if anything, it's trying to keep me more safe. Now, that's not to say that it's easy to respond well. It's easy to stay neutral emotionally and, you know, sit back and say, "Oh, I don't care." Because the truth is, yeah, the symptoms really suck. They're really, really uncomfortable. If you dropped me into a scenario where I had a bunch of symptoms, even with everything I know right now, having recovered, having gotten my life back, having gone from completely bedridden and hospitalized to being able to travel around the world and work out and exercise and see all my friends and really get my life back.

[00:17:25]Even with all that knowledge, knowing that recovery works and knowing that I'm safe and I'm going to be okay, it would still suck, right? I'm still going to be feeling the symptoms. So, it's not the most pleasant experience. But there's a difference between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable with the symptoms and feeling safe and feeling the discomfort with the symptoms. So the big difference here is sure you can be experiencing these sensations, but do you feel safe or do you feel unsafe? And usually it's not one or the other. It's like a sliding scale, right? In the beginning, you're going to be feeling very, very unsafe. You're like, "This thing's out to kill me. My body's going to shut down. Am I just going to stop breathing?" Plus a thousand other thoughts, right? But as you implement these concepts, as you remind yourself, oh, it's a hyper sensitive nervous system. my body, my nervous system and brain are doing what it's designed to do. It's putting limiters on my body in the form of symptoms. And you tell yourself that enough times and that will help you respond better to the symptoms and you actually bounce back faster. The flare-ups go away faster. The symptoms feel less intense when you have that emotional neutrality, right? That that good solid foundation of emotions and you're not all over the place. Over time, you go from feeling unsafe to feeling safe. But it's a slow progression, right? You don't just go all the way. It's not like flipping a switch on and off. It's more like a dimmer switch. So, once you start responding better to symptoms, and I do have a more in-depth video up here about responding well to symptoms and what that looks like, then the last step is number three, which is building your threshold. There is something I like to call a progress cycle when it comes to recovery. It's a term that I've coined because it just made perfect sense to me. Now, I used to be a personal trainer, so I understood how to put on muscle, how to get more fit, how to increase your cardio, all of that stuff.

[00:19:25]And the way it works is in cycles, okay?

[00:19:29]You train hard, you get really sore, and the reason you're sore is you tear muscles down. and your body takes that as a signal that hey, next time we lift that weight, we need to be able to lift it. So, we're going to add on more muscle or the next time we go for that run, we're going to be running 10 minutes again. So, let's adapt our body to be able to do that. And so, there is this adjustment period. The adjustment period is kind of like the flare up.

[00:19:57]Well, not kind of, it is the flare up when you're in recovery. The adjustment period is when you do some kind of activity and then you feel symptoms after and it could last a few hours to a few weeks sometimes depending on how much activity you did. Now the most important thing here is during that adjustment period you obviously dial things back, slow down a bit, but don't slam on the brakes. Don't completely stop everything you're doing. Keep the ball rolling. Just slow down. And you want to use that time to respond as well as you can to the symptoms because the better you respond, the higher you will bounce. And so the cycle typically works like this. You increase some kind of activity. Doesn't have to be physical, could be cognitive, could be emotional.

[00:20:40]You increase that. Then once you do flare up, you have this adjustment period. You dial things back. And that's really where the magic happens. Very similar to getting sore when you're working out, right? That's actually where the growth happens. And number three is when you bounce back and you level up and you actually get granted a higher capacity than you previously had because your nervous system sees that you're trying to do this thing, but it doesn't quite trust you yet and you don't trust it yet. So over time, it's building this trust with your nervous system. And once you trust your nervous system, you fully trust it and it trusts you, that's when you have no more symptoms. And that's when you can go out and work full-time and hang out with your friends and travel and exercise without worrying if your body is going to hold up. And so that's the place I've gotten to. That's the place I've literally seen it hundreds and hundreds of times just on this channel alone. We have almost 100 hours of YouTube videos specifically about people's recovery stories. So all these case studies, we have thousands of screenshots of people getting their lives back. So, the stuff works, but the thing with all of this, it's simple, but it takes a lot of work to do, right? But I imagine you're already doing a lot of work right now for recovery. It probably feels like a full-time job, and you're working overtime because all you think about, all you care about, all you plan about is recovery, right? How do I get my life back? How do I get to whatever level you're at? How do you get to that next level where you can have that little bit of higher quality of life? That takes a lot of work, right? So, you're already doing the work. Now, it's just a matter of let's redirect that energy into responding better to symptoms and understanding this stuff. So, that way you actually get a return on your investment for time and energy that you're putting into your recovery. So, I hope that makes sense in terms of how to figure out if you have a hyper sensitive nervous system. And if you do, what to do about it. I have lots of videos on this channel. I just linked a couple videos down below. I pointed up here so you can dive even deeper into it. And hey, if you want some extra help and guidance on this, this is done in video form. It's just me talking to you, sharing some ideas of things you can implement. But if you wanted to talk to a coach regularly and have that one-on-one help, if you wanted us to create like a personalized plan for you so you know what your day-to-day looks like, so you know specifically what to focus on and what not to do to avoid any crashes or flare-ups, then click the link down below. You can fill out a questionnaire. You'll do a diagnostic assessment. We'll look at your situation and see if it's something we can even help. If not, we'll point you in the right direction. If it is a good fit, we'd love to share how we would probably go about helping you. And it's up to you if you want to work with us or not. We have different solutions where you can do it more so on your own. You could do it in a group setting or you could work directly with a coach and the team and myself where we can help you go from surviving to thriving. So that's in the link down below. Hey, always remember that you are a Thor and you are just one mind shift away from living life with thriving health. I'll see you in the next video. Let's say that CFS recovery is absolutely the real deal.

[00:23:54]>> I actually felt like somebody had an answer, like somebody explained what was going on and it all clicked.