Chris is using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to get back to some activities in his life.

Transcript

So one thing, at the outset, they talked about, which comes from cognitive behavioural therapy, is avoidance and thinking about, why we avoid things, what drives us to avoidance and what we get out of that, versus what it costs us … Are we avoiding it because we’re catastrophizing about the worst-case scenario as opposed to what’s likely to happen? So if we decide to go through with whatever activity you were going to plan, what then can we do to approach it? So everything from sleep hygiene and the night before, or several nights leading up to it. How we approach eating, before and after. Making sure hydration – and in my case because I have POTS, hydration is salt – and making sure the electrolytes are OK. So just – some very basic things – but instead of getting into the, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly take my daughter to the park because I could get dizzy, or faint, or something can flare up.” And sort of ways, how can you go about approaching it in a systematic way, to make it more likely to work? So think about beforehand, who’s going to drive you? Where are you going to park? Is there an area where you know there are benches, so that if that dizziness does come up, you can take a break? Or after you’re standing for a little while, you can take a break. I just went and got a small collapsible stool that I can take with me, so if there aren’t benches, I could just have that in my daughter’s stroller. So it’s a lot of very practical, simple things, that are designed to just (a) alleviate some of our anxiety about doing it in the first place, by building some simple [laughs] structures for us to follow.

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