Styles of help

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and rewire itself. This approach retrains the brain to move out of chronic pain and symptom states and into healing, healthy and energetic ones.

These approaches suggest that chronic symptoms are often maintained by stuck neural loops - and we can shift them using consistent, structured brain retraining.

Often used for ME/CFS, Long Covid, Fibromyalgia, anxiety, chronic pain, IBS, POTs, FND, and more.

What This Includes:

• Brain retraining

• Limbic system rewiring

• Structured brain retraining rounds (as seen in DNRS, Gupta, CFS School, Sarah Baldwin, Lightning Process etc.)

• State-shifting practices to break fear/illness loops

• Thought catching and mental reframing

• Pattern interruption techniques - i.e. body scanning for pains/symptoms

• Creating new neural pathways through visualisation and emotional practice

• Nervous system journaling to build new internal dialogue

• Mental rehearsal of safe beliefs, actions or outcomes

These approaches focus on calming the stress response, supporting vagus nerve function, and helping the body return to a state of safety and balance. The goal is to move out of survival mode (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) and into a regulated state where healing can occur.

This category includes practices that soothe, strengthen, or re-train the autonomic nervous system (ANS), especially the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.

Common Practices and Tools:

• Nervous System Education
  Understanding how your ANS works (including polyvagal theory) can reduce fear, increase self-awareness, and help make sense of symptoms.

• Somatic Tracking & Felt-Sense Awareness
  Noticing sensations in the body with curiosity rather than fear, often used to calm reactivity and rewire perception of danger.

  • Somatic / Body Work has it’s own category as this can be very popular.

• Grounding and Resourcing
  Techniques that build inner safety (e.g. recalling safe memories, focusing on the breath, or using objects that soothe the senses).

• Vagal Nerve Support Tools
  Practices like deep breathing, humming, cold exposure, gargling, and movement to gently stimulate the vagus nerve.

• Titration & Pendulation
  Trauma-informed tools that involve slowly dipping into and out of challenging sensations without overwhelm, often used in somatic and trauma therapies.

• Movement-Based Regulation
  Gentle practices like shaking, stretching, walking, or somatic bodywork to release tension and support regulation.

• Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP)
  A sound therapy that uses filtered music to help stimulate the vagus nerve and support regulation.

• Body-Oriented Therapies
  Such as Craniosacral Therapy, Feldenkrais Method, or Alexander Technique, which use touch and gentle movement to influence the nervous system.

Emotions / Needs Work

This support style focuses on your present-day emotional world – not on processing past trauma, but on how your emotions, needs, and patterns of behaviour affect your body and symptoms right now. Many people with chronic illness unconsciously suppress emotions, ignore personal needs, and adapt themselves to stay safe, accepted, or in control.

The goal is to reconnect with your authentic self, understand your internal landscape, and create space for emotional honesty, boundaries, rest, and needs-based living.

How This Differs From Trauma Work

• Trauma work focuses on processing unresolved traumatic experiences from the past

• Emotions / Needs Work focuses on day-to-day feelings and behavioural patterns that are ongoing and habitual

• You don't need to uncover your trauma history to benefit from this – the work happens in the now

Common Practices and Tools:

• Emotional Expression
  Freewriting (e.g. Journalspeak), voice memos, unsent letters, or talking aloud to express suppressed emotions and thoughts

• Parts Work & Internal Dialogue
  Working with internal “parts” (as in IFS – Internal Family Systems), such as the inner critic, inner child, protector parts, etc., to understand your emotional patterns and create internal safety

• Reconnection With Authentic Self
  Peeling back layers of conditioning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and hyper-independence to rediscover who you are underneath survival strategies

• Needs Mapping
  Identifying unmet needs like rest, agency, boundaries, solitude, or joy – and slowly reintegrating them into life

• Self-Compassion & Reparenting
  Learning to respond to yourself with care, kindness, and non-judgment, especially during symptoms or setbacks

• Somatic Awareness of Emotions
  Tuning into how emotions feel in the body and learning to stay present with them safely

This category is for approaches that specifically help people process and integrate past traumatic experiences – whether it's a major event (like abuse or loss) or smaller, repeated experiences (like emotional neglect or feeling unsafe as a child). These events can continue to affect the nervous system, body, and beliefs, even years later.

While some support styles focus on current emotional patterns or physical symptoms, trauma-focused work goes deeper – helping you resolve the original source of survival responses that may still be “stuck” in the body and brain.

What Counts as Trauma?

• Big “T” trauma: violence, loss, abuse, accidents, medical trauma

• Small “t” trauma: emotional neglect, chronic stress, bullying, growing up with unmet needs

Even if something doesn’t seem traumatic, it may have overwhelmed your nervous system at the time – and that can still show up as symptoms today.

How It Differs From Emotions / Needs Work

• Trauma-Focused = explores and processes the past to resolve its effects

• Emotions / Needs Work = focuses on your current behaviours, emotions, and unmet needs in the present

Common Practices and Tools:

• Somatic Trauma Therapy
  Gentle, body-based approaches that help release stored survival responses (e.g. shaking, dissociation, freeze)

• Trauma-Informed Therapy Models
  Such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), Internal Family Systems (IFS), or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

• Guided Memory Processing
  Techniques that help you safely revisit, reframe, and integrate painful or confusing memories

• Safety & Stabilisation First
  Trauma-focused work often begins with helping you feel safer in your body and daily life before diving into processing

• Understanding Survival Patterns
  Recognising how past trauma shaped things like hypervigilance, perfectionism, emotional shutdown, or people-pleasing

Pain Reprocessing is a group of techniques that help you change the brain’s response to chronic pain. The basic idea is that pain can become learned – the brain starts to “expect” pain and keeps producing it, even when there’s no injury or danger. By retraining these patterns, the brain can start to turn the pain down – or off completely.

This doesn’t mean the pain is “all in your head” – it means the brain and nervous system play a key role in keeping it going. The same applies to many chronic symptoms beyond pain.

In fact, many people with fatigue, dizziness, gut issues, and other symptoms have successfully used Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) by simply replacing the word pain with symptoms in the exercises.

Common Tools and Principles:

• Psychoeducation
  Learning how pain is created in the brain and why it can become “stuck” even without a physical cause

• Reappraisal and Safety Messaging
  Telling the brain “this pain is not dangerous” – over and over – to change its threat response

• Somatic Tracking
  Gently observing pain/symptoms with curiosity and calm, helping to reduce fear and rewire the pattern

• Emotional Awareness & Reprocessing
  Identifying and expressing feelings that may be fuelling the brain’s sense of danger

• Graded Exposure to Movement or Triggers
  Re-engaging in feared or avoided activities to show the brain it’s safe

“Somatic” means of the body. These approaches work by helping you tune into your body’s signals, sensations, and movements. Instead of focusing only on thoughts or emotions, somatic work uses the body as the entry point to healing and regulation.

Chronic symptoms often come with stored tension, bracing, or disconnection from the body. These tools help reconnect you to physical sensation and allow the nervous system to shift from survival (fight/flight/freeze) into safety and presence.

Common Practices and Tools:

• Somatic Experiencing (SE)
  Slow, titrated awareness of body sensation to gently release stuck survival energy

• Breathwork
  Regulated or expressive breathing to calm the nervous system or release tension

• Movement-Based Healing
  Gentle movement (yoga, shaking, stretching, dancing) to move stuck energy or reconnect to your body

• Body Scans & Interoception
  Developing awareness of inner body states – like warmth, tingling, tightness – to build internal safety and self-awareness

• Touch-Based Tools
  Such as tapping, massage, self-holding, or pressure points to bring grounding and co-regulation

• Nervous System Reconnection
  Practices that increase tolerance for bodily sensation and rebuild a sense of trust in your body

These gentle, inward-facing practices support recovery by helping the body move out of a stress state and into a calm, regulated one. They create space for awareness, rest, and emotional processing, and are often used to complement deeper nervous system or trauma work.

They are not physically demanding and can often be done lying down, making them accessible for people with limited energy.

May include:

• Mindfulness meditation

• Yoga Nidra (guided yogic rest)

• Body scans

• Breath awareness

• Guided visualisations

• Rest-based grounding practices

Working directly with a trained coach could provide guidance, 1:1 support, structure, and accountability throughout recovery.

Recovery can feel isolating. Peer groups and memberships create connection, encouragement, and shared learning from others on similar journeys.

Pacing and graded activity are strategies used to manage energy, rebuild tolerance, and gently reintroduce movement, tasks, or exertion during recovery from fatigue-related conditions. They are commonly used in ME/CFS, Long Covid, fibromyalgia, POTS and other energy-limiting or post-viral conditions.

Common Tools and Principles:

• Energy Envelope
  Staying within your personal threshold to avoid post-exertional symptoms and flare-ups.

• Activity Planning
  Spacing out physical, cognitive, and emotional tasks to reduce overload.

• Structured Rest
  Using regular rest breaks to support the nervous system and avoid crashes.

• Symptom or Energy Tracking
  Identifying patterns and early warning signs to prevent overdoing it.

• Graded Exposure
  Gently nudging into activities that bring on symptoms – not through force, but through small, safe steps taken at your own pace. This can include visualisation, short bursts of activity, or simply being present with the idea of movement. The intention is to increase confidence and build capacity while staying in control. Messaging and tone matter: when delivered with empowerment, graded activity can help reduce fear around movement and reintroduce freedom.

Pacing and graded activity are not about rigid formulas. What matters most is the relationship you build with activity – not just the rules you follow.

These are gentle shifts in how you live day-to-day that can support a healthier, more balanced internal state. While they may aid recovery, especially in the later stages, they are not a cure – and rarely lead to full recovery on their own.

Many people find these tools most helpful after nervous system healing has begun, as they create structure and support ongoing regulation or fix damage that mis-aligned nervous systems can cause.

May include:

• Fasting and time-restricted eating (aligned with natural circadian rhythms)

• Alcohol, caffeine, or sugar reduction

• Improved sleep hygiene and rest routines

• Gentle movement like walking or stretching

• Slower mornings or low-stimulation routines

• Spending time in nature or outdoors daily

• Digital boundaries to reduce overload (e.g. screen breaks, tech-free hours)

• Calmer physical environments – decluttering, low lighting, soft sounds

These lifestyle changes are not sufficient for recovery from chronic conditions like ME/CFS, Long Covid, or fibromyalgia on their own. Be cautious of claims that say otherwise – they are best used in combination with nervous system and emotional work, or after deeper healing has taken place.