SPEAKER_01: hey guys if you're struggling with the overwhelming challenges of chronic fatigue please know that you're not alone and what's even more important is to know that there is a way out many people have recovered from this and are now thriving hi everyone i'm raylan if you're new here welcome on this channel we share insights knowledge and resources that we have learned to be helpful with conditions like mecfs and long covid so how do we know these things we've learned it from the more than a hundred and fifty recorded recovery interviews right here on the channel i'm excited to have frances goodall with us today all the way over in sheffield in the uk francis has an incredible story of overcoming mecfs and has used her knowledge to help others to also return to living fully like she does today as a working mom and an outdoor enthusiast who has even completed three half marathons so let's dive right in and welcome francis francis so amazing to have you here thank you for doing this today oh thank you for having me on your wonderful channel so take us back what was happening around the time when you first became unwell

SPEAKER_00: so when i first became unwell i was quite young i was only nineteen i was at university and i was doing all of the things you know i had a job i was studying hard i joined all the different societies i possibly could join and you know developed a new friendship group and was going out a lot and then suddenly one day i was on my way to do some voluntary work and i just yeah just didn't feel well at all didn't know what was going on felt a bit fluy felt a bit strange felt a bit scared because it felt really weird and then yeah that was the start of it really i ended up not being able to continue my university studies ended up having to come back home and live with my mom and i think it probably took about six i think it took six months to get a chronic fatigue or me diagnosis

SPEAKER_01: yeah you can tell when someone went through this a while ago you know it wasn't last year the year before because i feel like we developed this ability to just zoom through that one of the most intense experiences of our life like yeah so i became unwell and then i had to drop on a university

SPEAKER_01: you know that had to be a really scary thing at such a young age you know when you got started not feeling well and didn't get better what were you thinking

SPEAKER_00: yeah i was well i also got i had a doctor wanted to diagnose me as being depressed not being the main issue as well like very early on but i knew it wasn't just depression i knew there was emotion about feeling unwell and you know i was emotionally challenged by that was probably getting depressed by that but i knew there was something else going on so yeah it was really scary time definitely a time that i feel like i've grieved and worked with as i healed you know at the other end which is probably why i can talk about it so lightly now but yeah at the time it was really really scary and i didn't know what was happening i didn't know what to do yeah and at first i kind of gave up it i went home and was kind of even doing things like watching daytime television and just feeling a bit low and you know all my friends from home had gone to university all my friends from university were still at university so initially i didn't really have anyone there other than my family and yeah it was a very tough time

SPEAKER_01: so doctors told you that the cause of all this was depression

SPEAKER_00: yeah one of the first doctors said she just thought i was depressed that was it

SPEAKER_01: yeah i think a lot of us hear that and it's i think a little bit infuriating i can see how they come to that conclusion because we likely are depressed but that wasn't for most of us the first thing takeaway pitch that was ability to function in the world and anyone's going to be depressed yeah so what did you do did you just start googling or how did you start to try and figure your way out of this

SPEAKER_00: in the year before i got ill i had also traveled the world before going to university and i had got really interested in meditation and buddhism and yoga a little bit as well so i thought i did think quite early on well perhaps meditation and yoga can help me heal so i did start quite early on doing a little bit of meditation yoga a little bit of breath work like for instance i remember one time doing the alternate nostril breathing and noticing i felt different after doing it so or doing a relaxation oh yeah i often listen to relaxations as well guided relaxations and then doing them sometimes i'd notice i felt considerably better after doing one so that those sorts of experiences quite early on gave me some hope that there was something i could do about getting myself better but often it was just like feeling better for a little bit and then i'd feel much worse again you know so it took a long time to learn to really get a deeper shift or to yeah well took five years to get fully well but it was a very up and down journey as well yeah

SPEAKER_01: so i imagine you tried some things over those years that didn't work what were some of those things

SPEAKER_00: well for example quite early on i remember going to an acupuncturist who had written an article that said me and my me chronic fatigue recovery cure and i was like oh this is going to be the thing that's going to cure me so i had some acupuncture and she gave me some herbs as well which just tasted so bad and no it's not like against acupuncture because i love it and over the years it has been good since then and it did help it did help on some ways on my journey but that particular acupuncture or series of sessions didn't seem to do anything for me at that point but maybe it just wasn't the right thing at that point you know but later on i do think acupuncture did help a little bit i'm not quite anything against chinese medicine or acupuncture but it was yeah that didn't didn't particularly do anything in those early stages i'm trying to remember i mean i would at some point i started like trying one therapy after another you know i'd go for reiki and i'd go for this and i go for that and you know try different kinds of alternative therapies i went to a nutritional therapist she did colonic irrigation but i didn't even know apparently i brought in chronic irrigation but she gave me some nutrition advice and i do think i did have a you know like a candida issue as well so that perhaps was somewhat helpful to learn a bit about the body and things like candida imbalances and things like that but at the same time it wasn't that helpful i don't think yeah i don't know that makes sense

SPEAKER_01: irrigation was that like colon hydrotherapy

SPEAKER_00: they put water up you and like flush out your system yeah i've never had it done i didn't go for it but it was so in a way it was kind of funny that i hadn't even booked in for this session but i didn't think i had i thought i'd booked in to see a nutritional therapist again because my dad had told me that she'd helped cure someone of chronic fatigue you know so it was like following these different things these different lines of possibility for hope and a cure

SPEAKER_01: i ended up doing colon hydrotherapy as one of the zillion things i tried to get well and did you keep watching if you've never tried it you haven't lived experience fully i think funny though i ended up meeting one of my best friends ever she was my colon hydrotherapist i think you just bond really quickly like you get past all the small talk once you're anyways it's the stuff that we all tried well it's just it's yeah that level of desperation

SPEAKER_00: as well before even all this you know cold therapy that it's about these days but back then i remember reading an article about how cold can help me and i'd lying cold baths and i did often feel better afterwards i mean over there lying in a cold bath trying to get myself well yeah it's quite funny

SPEAKER_01: i know you think about it we're going through this incredible suffering we have all these scary symptoms and then we're getting hoses put up our bums and laying in breathing full bath tubs it's like as if the suffering isn't enough we just kind of just desperate like okay if it even works for one person i gotta try it it's amazing that everyone i talked to your mind just suddenly becomes very open

SPEAKER_00: yeah yeah i would try one thing and then the next thing and the next thing and i even flew to america i mean i'm in the uk and i flew to the us to florida to work with a healer that apparently had healed quite a few people of chronic fatigue as well so yeah just like loads of things i was i was so desperate to be well and to figure out what was going on

SPEAKER_01: yeah okay so eventually you did start to find some things that did help so what did that look like

SPEAKER_00: yeah well actually well two years into the illness i was doing a lot of meditation and i had an experience of meditation of a lot of energy flowing through my body and then i felt amazing like i felt like something had shifted but actually i ended up in quite an unstable kind of up and down process for three more years after that but i did think i was cured after two years through this meditation experience which is a bit mad but i was a bit intense about my meditation practice and i think i did have a kind of a release of energy but it was just not sustainable and yeah i still had a lot of things to figure out in myself but the things like towards the end of the recovery journey i read a book on reverse therapy and nickel therapy they were two practitioners i think that around the time they were working together at one point around reverse therapy and then they split off and did their own thing but i think i read both of their books and yeah something in that was like a bit of a light bulb for me about one of the key things i realized in myself was i had a massive pattern of like avoiding conflict at all costs like i could not possibly share something that might upset somebody else so i would just shut down and i think recognizing that pattern was one of the key parts for me to be able to get better and to sustain my health and i also didn't realize but i had quite a bit of suppressed anger and unresolved trauma in my system that i didn't realize was there

SPEAKER_00: kind of started to come through in the various workshops and therapy sessions and coaching sessions i had during the five years to try and heal

SPEAKER_01: okay so you mentioned two things there reverse therapy and mcale therapy so the first one reverse therapy what does that look like

SPEAKER_00: yeah they're very similar i can't remember the exact difference but it was about looking at symptoms and getting curious about symptoms and what is there an emotion underlying this symptom that's what i remember from it and starting to like really check in with myself and you know try and be more in tune with what was actually going on for me emotionally and yeah so that was a massive part i mean looking back i do think and all the research i've done around trauma i do think a lot of it for me was the impact of trauma on my system manifesting physically like a freeze response i don't know if you thought your perspective on that kind of stuff is but because even after i got better sometimes i'd go a little bit like a bit fatigue again and then i'd have to kind of work on something and then i'd feel back to normal again so it was yeah for me a lot of it when i look back i think was what's to do with the freeze response in my nervous system

SPEAKER_01: yeah it's definitely a theme i couldn't begin to count how many people who have said something similar in their interview about that being a key piece of their recovery and it seems to be a core component of many recovery approaches like dr john sarno we hear a lot about his tms approach and lots of that theme of it's so mind blowing to me this is i think one of the most fascinating topics to me is how much those repressed emotions and that unresolved trauma can impact our nervous system and our brain and create all these symptoms and how much so many of us don't realize in our modern day society that we're walking around feeling like we are suppressing these things these feelings of anger and rage like i don't know i need to be a certain kind of person as a woman or a mother or a father or i need to be okay with working seventy hours a week or you know i have shame around this or it's not okay to feel this way or it's not okay to express my emotions and just by tampering all that down for all these years you know our system starts to recognize those feelings as scary and bad and it's fascinating how the body creates all these symptoms as a new distraction or is it because it's being hypersensitive or whatever the different theories are just understanding that and bringing that into light very impact for a lot of people yes

SPEAKER_00: i mean i have one really strong example where i started to really understand the mind body connection you know i was with a group of people we were doing we were actually doing reiki on each other like a reiki share my boyfriend was there i was making tea for everyone my boyfriend was getting triggered because he thought i was going to tire myself out by doing too much and that he was going to have to pick up the pieces afterwards and then i was getting angry with him because you know because i felt like he wasn't trusting me and but i think it was just triggering some old stuff as well and then like i couldn't handle the anger so i remember just being like can't feel this i don't know what to do with it so just shut it down but then i could hardly walk and then i had to just lie down on the sofa and then he said something again that triggered me again and i just ran upstairs he said oh see i told you this is going to happen and i was like not because of that it's because i've done what to do with it yeah one moment the next moment i could run up the stairs i was like okay yeah this is really odd yeah what

SPEAKER_01: did that look like for you starting to understand this mind body connection so what does that mean for starting to feel better and come out of this what does that look like

SPEAKER_00: yeah well i think a lot of it looked like learning to be more myself more authentic you know learning to express myself more authentically i remember learning non violent communication so i felt like when i had a bit of a way that i could communicate my feelings without it also being too much for someone else which i think initially because i had been so suppressed things would come out quite strongly at first you know like i remember alex howard i trained with him in coaching and he was talking about the pendulum that can swing from being you know very repressed to then the other way or a pendulum can swing from being one way to the other way and it's almost like coming back into balance again so i did notice that it was almost like i went from being so suppressed to then quite reactive and then had to learn how to be able to be authentic with people communicate my needs my feelings you know it's okay to have needs you know all these kind of things and but also to do things like continue to look after myself and you know prioritize time in nature prioritize time with friends prioritize self care as well as you know once i was better start developing my work and stepping into the world of work again after a long time of not being in the world of work but doing it in a way that was you know trying to be as balanced as possible and not too yeah not too out of balance yeah

SPEAKER_01: it's so interesting that so many of us go on this journey let's call it i mean it is a journey but can be very tough tough tough experience becoming so unwell and for many people last years it ends up being this teacher about how to like you said be more authentic take better care of yourself it is an amazing teacher and you know most people do come out the other side of it so much happier and more content and at peace and better equipped to deal with their life and their emotions and their health and the world it's it's fascinating i don't think most of us if you told us that coming into it we probably think you were crazy because it sounds even after doing all these interviews and i know it's true i know this is the case for so many people it's still every time i hear it my head kind of explodes you know yeah you're so sick it was like you need to lead a more authentic life yeah

SPEAKER_00: it definitely wouldn't have made sense when i first started to get sick but looking back i can be in a way i can be grateful for how much i learned through that journey of you know getting sick and figuring out how to be well again yeah how much so much learning so you've

SPEAKER_01: talked about before or we talked about before this call preparing for this but you know the spiritual elements of your healing journey so can you talk a little bit about that

SPEAKER_00: yeah i don't know if you've had an old channel who shared anything like this i have had the odd client that's come to me with this but i also had a kundalini or spiritual some kind of spiritual awakening during my healing journey which is i think why the ups and downs were so intense i think i also there was also kind of trauma element of it like dissociation like coming out of my body definitely was part of the condition for me and part of what i had to work with afterwards was to learn really how to be in my body and i think spiritually i found something like meditation where i could have these really beautiful experiences sometimes i felt like i left my body and i was like connecting with the whole universe and you know it felt really amazing but then i but then i was really struggling to function in my life and my health was still all over the place you know sometimes i'd feel well and other times i crash again things like that so the spiritual element was an important element of my journey and yeah it's hard to describe it but i have also witnessed some other people who have also had that experience so it's kind of yeah happy to talk a little bit about that element of my journey yeah and i got deeply into meditation you know was reading so many books about buddhism and meditation and sometimes i was meditating at times when i was sick three hours a day and i actually got to the point where i had to stop meditating for a while because i was kind of using it in the wrong way i was using it to sort of escape everyday reality and have these mystical experiences but then actually finding it harder to function in everyday reality so i had to sort of yeah learn to do normal things for a while and connect with nature and you know be able to have a normal conversation i think after like a five year healing journey and then all the spiritual experience as well it was it was like yeah i just found normal life a challenge to integrate back into that makes sense that's a really

SPEAKER_01: good point yeah because then once you're well and feeling better the rat race the world is waiting for you and

SPEAKER_01: people that haven't been through what you've been through especially at such a young age i imagine just emotionally matured much more rapidly than most of us do at that time period in our lives probably challenging to you know connect or just see where this how this all fits together yeah sounds like this

SPEAKER_01: changed you a lot clearly this whole experience has changed you a lot what has life been like since you've been well

SPEAKER_00: yeah i mean life has been good overall i mean overall i feel like i've learned how to have experience a lot of joy a lot of inner peace you know i have a great community yeah i've had a child i've got a son who's ten yeah and life's been rich and great and i've you know done lots of different kinds of therapeutic and coaching trainings and been working in this field myself nearly twenty years so yeah there's been lots of great things i've run half marathons i think i did what partly want to prove like to the world of myself i am fully well you know yeah so yeah life's been life's been good and i feel like i've definitely learned so much through that time that shifted things for a deep level for me and also kept me interested in personal growth you know because i was like well how you know doing some emotional work and spiritual work and heal chronic fatigue and where else can i go with this you know how much joy can i create in this lifetime how much ease can i create and yeah so i do keep up quite a few of the practices that support me to heal and new practices you know always learning new things and do feel like i'm a lifelong learner as well i'm always fascinated by learning new things

SPEAKER_01: yeah i was listening to you talk like how do i have more you in my life

SPEAKER_01: this is i'm so inspired by how this has changed you and just the spiritual development and yeah that continuous growth i'm curious because a lot of us think of recovery from these conditions like there's a finish line where that chapter ends and then the rest of your life starts yeah but in reality a lot of people find it's more of an ongoing journey so what's that been like for you is there self care things you need to still do you know is there any part of you that's worried about you know becoming unwell again what's life kind of post recovery been for you

SPEAKER_00: i mean it has been a really long time now so yeah it's been maybe seventeen years since i'd say the five years was up but in those years you know especially in the lesser in recent years but definitely sort of my later twenties early thirties i did have periodically sort of what i would now describe even back then i didn't always understand it would be like trauma type symptoms would come up like i'd feel a bit shut down or a bit dissociated and i wouldn't know why and then i'd have to go and do some work on myself with a practitioner or perhaps i'd go and spend some nighttime in nature and that would regulate me but i did have to quite yeah quite regularly kind of figure out how to regulate myself again when things were out of balance and that can still happen today but not to the extent it was still happening in my sort of late twenties early thirties and not as often so yeah but that was when i yeah i guess sort of started to see that it wasn't all about being chronically sick and definitely wasn't about being chronic sick anymore like i don't worry about that and i didn't worry about that i mean maybe a little bit in the early stages because i was a bit kind of like oh i've been ill for all these years now i need to make up for it i need to go and help at these retreats that i used to go and just receive i need to go and do all these things and i need to get this message of healing out into the world and you know and there was a bit of a kind of pushy energy and all of that sometimes but overall no i never worry about getting chronically sick again with chronic fatigue yeah

SPEAKER_01: yeah amazing clearly this also shifted or influenced your career trajectory so you tell us a bit about that

SPEAKER_00: well yeah yeah so i mean i trained my first training was with alex howard and the optimal health clinic and their therapeutic coaching training and actually even before that i train in some body work and doing the bowen technique so i actually started out i was a body work practitioner and then in time i ended up connecting to ashok gupta and i made the louis training program and ended up being a coach for the gut program which i have been for since two thousand and eight so really long time and yeah so that's kind of been a lot of my work actually has been a coach the gupta program more recent years i've trained in internal family systems ifs work which is about working with inner parts so i also work with people with ifs as well not necessarily through the gut program but just people with that model as well therapeutic model yeah

SPEAKER_01: wow what a wealth of information and knowledge and insight you are from all of this it's just incredible you know over the years the many years that you've now been doing this and working with people has your understanding of these conditions or recovery changed do you see a lot of variety in people's path to recovery and what are some of the biggest takeaways from the work that you've done

SPEAKER_00: yeah lots of different things but the power of recognizing the mind body connection and starting to understand that and do the work around that one piece that's perhaps a bit unique about what i bring is that looking back i feel a lot of my trauma wasn't necessarily personal but was ancestral was kind of more that i sort of took on from my family line so that that's a piece sometimes i see in clients that perhaps isn't spoken about so much that sometimes and particularly people are like oh not much happened to me but then you find out their mother's ill and their grandmother was ill or something like that what's going on in that family line that's created this pattern of illness for example

SPEAKER_00: so yeah i also trained in family consolations work and that you know that's all about kind of how it affected by our wider family system and how an illness in one person might not be the root of that problem might actually be a more systemic or kind of wider family system issue so yeah that's an interesting

SPEAKER_01: perspective it's fascinating i remember recently in animals and they can trace back if they have let's say a dog mother that has trauma they will see health problems in her children up to three generations after that from that and this is you know a study with dogs so i can even imagine how this all i'm sure i'm oversimplifying what you're saying here but just yeah of our families

SPEAKER_01: so many things that we don't understand fully about what impacts our health and our world it's really fascinating yeah francis so grateful to you for being here today thank you so much for people watching everything you need to know to connect with her will be in the video description of course please expand that and check that out yeah i just adore you so glad you've met so appreciate taking the time to share this today the world is so much better for having you in it you just radiate goodness and insight and light and yeah so so glad that we connected so thank you for doing this today me too thanks for amazing work yeah and for those of you watching if you haven't already signed up for my newsletter i know there's a lot of recovery interviews and it's a lot to keep up with so every week i send out an email with just the bullet points like for people what worked what didn't work the key resources that got them there so if you're worried about missing out on anything you can sign up for that there and i also just want to send a quick shout out to our channel member mark laine thank you mark for joining the channel i really appreciate the support big hugs to you on your journey if you're not people watching if you're not already a channel member you can click the join button below to learn more and get access to perks that no one else gets yeah that's it for today thank you again francis thank you to all of you watching big hugs to you whatever you're going through keep at it we have totally got this i hope you enjoyed this video as much as i did this interview i hope you got a lot out of it and i hope to see you in this next one
