Make Visible: Understanding Complex Illness

#9 Staying connected (Part 1): Dealing with isolation and limitations in complex illness with Suzy Bolt

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Feb 11, 2025

Suzy Bolt, a counsellor, yoga teacher, and NLP practitioner, discusses her journey with Long Covid and the importance of building an online community for those facing chronic illness. She shares insights on how isolation affects individuals and the transformative power of connection. Bolt highlights the role of small positive changes and self-compassion in improving overall well-being. The conversation delves into the interplay between mindset, personal history, and chronic conditions, emphasizing the importance of understanding and support in the healing process.

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INSIGHT

NLP Unlocks Mindset Shifts

NLP helps people understand and reprogram limiting thought patterns shaped by illness experience.
Recognizing change is possible can produce a positive shift in body and belief systems.

ANECDOTE

Building Community from Illness

Suzy Bolt developed Long Covid and started an online community from her dark room to connect with others facing post-viral illness.
This community grew into her Rest, Repair, Recover program offering support, fun, and shared experiences to reduce isolation.

INSIGHT

Connecting Complex Conditions

Chronic illness, neurodivergence, joint hypermobility, and immune responses are connected under a broad spectrum umbrella.
Recognizing this pattern offers clearer understanding of complex health conditions.

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When Suzy Bolt developed Long Covid in 2020 she searched for ways to understand her condition and began to create an online community of like-minded people traversing similar health situations. From her dark bedroom she found many others looking for answers, validation and ideas to help them navigate their illnesses, and from this she started to develop her holistic program.

Drawing on her background in counselling, yoga and neuro-linguistic programming - alongside her own experience of illness - Suzy launched an online platform in September 2020 to help people with post-viral and energy-limiting conditions. Her Rest, Repair, Recover program provides a space for support, community, and a deeper understanding of the nervous system.

The program brings together practitioners with lived experience of these conditions, offering an interactive framework of movement, breathwork, creativity, and rest - all aimed at regulating the autonomic nervous system.

In this two-part conversation, Bolt explores the cascade effect of small, positive changes—finding joy, building community, and practicing self-compassion—and how these shifts can influence the nervous system, immune function, and overall well-being.

In this, the first part of the conversation, we discuss the impact of isolation and power of community; we delve into Bolt’s journey and discuss the way in which our histories and genetic make up play into these conditions; and we delve into the divisive topic of exercise.

Over the past five years Suzy Bolt has become a mainstay for those looking to improve their condition through a holistic approach. In a recent survey of those who have attended her programmes, the majority said that it improved their overall energy levels, improved their mood, alleviated some of their medical concerns and gave people confidence to manage their symptoms. She is regularly consulted and recommended by the NHS as an additional strand to medical help that people may be being offered.

Her approach endeavours to address autonomic dysfunction as a way to create optimum environment in which people can start to feel improvements in their health.

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