Slow and Steady Recovery from Post-Concussion Syndrome

    Laura Seago interviews Katia

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This interview is from the Like Mind, Like Body podcast. You can listen to the full interview below, on iTunes or Google Podcasts.

After participating in her college horseback riding team, Katia started to experience a combination of physical symptoms that baffled her. Her constant background headache, whiplash, and body aches eventually turned into migraines that lasted for half of each month. Katia was later diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome and spent years shrinking her life to fit around her symptoms. Today, Katia has finally discovered her path to healing and managed to reduce her symptoms by about 85% over the course of two years. Tune in to hear about Katia’s slow and steady path to recovery and learn exactly what she did to find relief.

You had used the app for two months and then you were in the Groups program for another 3 months, that’s 5 months of pretty deep healing work… How did things change for you both physically and mentally?

At that point, the migraines were getting a bit better and the constant headaches were getting better too. But I still wasn't really able to exercise or walk. I’m a very active person, so for me, being able to be active again felt like a very clear goal that I had in mind and the Curable Groups program and the app gave me the hope that I could be active again without flaring up pain.

I wanted to walk so I used graded exposure, which is mentioned in both the app and the Groups program, and I started out small. I was terrified to walk for even 5 minutes because it felt like it gave me a headache. So I started out walking for one minute and I did that for probably a couple of weeks until I felt really comfortable just walking even one minute each day. And then I slowly worked up from there. Before I knew it, I was up to 10 minutes, then 20 minutes and it just kept going from there. And then I was hiking. Then, once I saw that the graded exposure really did seem to work for me, I started incorporating other activities with the graded exposure. Like, I started trying to read a little bit again and then build up my reading. So I was just basically building up all these different activities overtime.

It felt amazing to be able to actually be out in the world again and take a walk or to see a book and think, “oh, I can actually read that now. Like I can just read for fun as a pastime again!” I think I mentioned that I used to feel like I woke up each day and really was just trying to get through each day... It slowly, slowly transformed from that, to actually enjoying parts of the day and then my pain also started to get better too.