How to Heal Chronic Lyme: What Actually Worked After 8 Years Bed Bound
What Allie Chandler learnt from a decade of illness and how to apply it, even if you're not sick.
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Watch On YouTube 〰️
TL;DR
Allie Chandler spent close to eight years largely bedbound with chronic Lyme, mould toxicity, and hyperadrenergic POTS before the pieces finally clicked.
The turning point wasn't a supplement; it was rewiring her nervous system through brain retraining (DNRS), reframing her identity, and finding community.
She now runs a marketing agency in the same industry that helped her heal, and lifts weights six days a week.
Six lessons pulled straight from the conversation, each with something you can try today.
🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Introduction
At her worst, Allie Chandler's resting heart rate was 55. The moment she stood up, it shot to 180 and stayed there until she sat back down. Stairs were out. Walking to the mailbox was out. Being newly married and going on dates, out. She was in her twenties. She'd been a healthy kid, a competitive volleyball player, and a high school teacher with a Master's in Writing. Then she got bitten by a tick in Europe and lost the next eight years of her life to a mystery no doctor could name.
This is where most chronic illness stories either become miracle narratives or victim narratives. Allie's is neither. It's a slow, honest account of what actually moved the needle, and most of it happened inside her own head.
Today she's the founder of Upsell Health, a marketing agency working with functional medicine practitioners and wellness brands. She lifts for two hours in the morning. She runs a 20,000-person social club on the side. She sat down with Jack on The True Form Podcast for an hour, and what came out was less a recovery story and more a manual for how to think differently about your body, your work, and who you're becoming.
Here's what to take from it.
Listen On Apple Podcast
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Listen On Apple Podcast 〰️
Listen On Spotify
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Listen On Spotify 〰️
Lesson 1: Stop tracking symptoms. Start tracking wins.
What it is: A deliberate shift in what your brain is scanning for, from threats to progress.
Why it matters: When Allie was at her sickest, she was cataloguing every symptom in real time. Every headache, every food, every environmental trigger. "I think that trained my brain to constantly be scanning for threat," she said. Your reticular activating system, the filter for what you notice consciously, gets trained by what you feed it. Feed it symptoms, and it finds more. Feed it wins, and it finds those too.
How to apply it:
Delete or archive your symptom tracker for one week.
At the end of each day, write down three things that went well, however small.
When your brain jumps to "what's wrong," ask instead: "what's working right now?"
Pro tip: This is uncomfortable at first because it feels like you're ignoring a problem. You're not. You're changing the filter.
Try this today: Write down three wins from yesterday before you check your phone.
Lesson 2: Rewire your nervous system with brain retraining
What it is: A daily practice of interrupting your brain's threat response and replacing it with a new, calmer pathway.
Why it matters: Allie credits the Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) as the single biggest lever in her recovery. It's an hour of daily practice built on two parts: deliberately entering situations that trigger you, and using a spoken script that acknowledges the fear and reroutes it. "Hey, I appreciate you making me feel anxious to point out that there's a threat, but we're actually okay," she'd tell her body. Sounds basic. But repetition is the point.
How to apply it:
Notice one recurring anxious pattern: a body sensation, a thought loop, a reactive moment.
When it fires, pause and thank the response out loud: "Thanks for watching out for me."
State what the new pathway is: "We're safe. This is what calm looks like."
Repeat daily. Six months is a reasonable expectation, not six days.
Common mistake: Doing it once when you're already panicking and concluding it doesn't work.
Try this today: Pick one moment tomorrow morning to run the script, even in a completely calm state, so the pathway is there when you need it.
Lesson 3: Visualise the version of yourself you can't yet imagine
What it is: Structured mental rehearsal of the life you want, in enough sensory detail that your brain treats it as memory.
Why it matters: Allie couldn't picture being well. She'd been sick so long that her ceiling was "well enough to make eggs." So she forced herself to visualise further: the house, the sounds, the smells, the emotions of a healthy body. "I would spend thirty, forty minutes doing these visualisations," she said. "Picture myself lifting again. That was really important to me." Athletes do it. Olympians do it. It works because your brain doesn't strongly distinguish rehearsed experience from lived experience.
How to apply it:
Choose one specific future scene, not a goal, a scene. A morning, a conversation, a lift.
Add sensory layers: what you see, hear, feel, smell.
Sit with it for 5-10 minutes daily until it feels familiar.
Notice what it stirs in your body. That's the point.
Try this today: Close your eyes for two minutes and picture one moment from a life you'd love to be living.
Lesson 4: Stop claiming your diagnosis as your identity
What it is: Separating what's happening in your body from who you are.
Why it matters: This was the sharpest moment in the whole episode. Allie stopped saying "I have Lyme." She started saying "I'm dealing with these symptoms right now." Same facts, completely different energy. "Energetically that feels wrong. I don't want it as part of my identity." The same trap catches people in fitness ("I'm just unfit"), work ("I'm bad at this"), and relationships. Once the label becomes the identity, the identity defends the label.
How to apply it:
Notice how you introduce your struggles. "I am" vs "I'm dealing with."
Rewrite the sentence. Same problem, different grammar.
Watch how it changes what you're willing to try.
Pro tip: Your language to yourself matters more than your language to others. The inner sentence is the one your brain acts on.
Try this today: Catch one "I am [problem]" statement and rewrite it as "I'm working through [problem]."
Lesson 5: Community isn't optional, pick it deliberately
What it is: Choosing to be around people who match the version of yourself you're trying to become.
Why it matters: Allie was clear that community was one of the pillars of her healing, but she was equally clear it can go either way. Some support groups helped her; others were people "wallowing in it" and treating the diagnosis as identity. She sought out the ones with a "this isn't going to be my life" mindset. Same principle applies to the gym: her flatmate is a strongman competitor who squats 600-plus pounds, "delusionally better than me," and it pulls her up.
How to apply it:
List the five people you spend the most time with.
Ask: are they scanning for threat, or scanning for wins?
Add one person or space that models where you're going; a coach, a group, a training partner, a community.
Reduce time with the loudest complaint voice, even if it's close to you.
Try this today: Message one person you admire who's further down the road than you.
Lesson 6: Lead with value, not urgency, in marketing and in life
What it is: Empathy-led marketing, Allie's phrase for building trust through education rather than fear.
Why it matters: Allie now works with functional medicine practitioners and supplement brands, and she's turned down significant revenue when clients wanted to run hard-urgency, fear-based campaigns. Her audience is chronically ill people with dysregulated nervous systems — the last population you want to hit with "buy this now or stay sick forever." Instead: seven or eight nurturing pieces of content for every one sale. It's a marketing lesson, but it's also a life lesson. The people who lead with value in their relationships, their work, and their content tend to end up with better everything.
How to apply it:
Audit your last ten posts, emails, or conversations. What ratio of value to ask?
If it's less than 7:1 in favour of value, adjust.
When you do ask: for a sale, a favour, a decision, make it clean, brief, and specific.
Common mistake: Assuming "value" means free stuff. It means content or effort that actually helps someone, whether or not they ever buy anything.
Try this today: Send one "no ask" message to someone in your audience or network, a link, a resource, a genuine compliment.
The moment that captures it
Allie's clearest example came near the end. She wanted to lift again but couldn't stand without her heart rate spiking to 180. So she started smaller than small.
"Put on your gym clothes, lace up your tennis shoes, and… ooh, that's a lot for me today. Okay. Now tomorrow, what can I do? Can I take one step out the door? Okay, great."
For weeks she walked to her apartment gym and lay down at the door because her heart rate was too high to stand. Eventually she managed twenty seconds on an elliptical. Five years later she was lifting for two hours in the morning. That's the whole method in one story: identify the smallest possible next step, do it, then do the next one. No motivation required.
Quick wins checklist (do these in the next 24 hours)
Write down three wins from yesterday before checking your phone.
Rewrite one "I am [problem]" sentence as "I'm working through [problem]."
Visualise one specific future scene for two minutes with your eyes closed.
Message one person who's further down the road than you.
Send one "no ask" message to someone in your network.
Choose one uncomfortable trigger to face tomorrow, however small.
Closing insight
The thread running through Allie's story isn't a supplement, a doctor, or a diagnosis. It's the choice, repeated daily, for years, to change what her brain was scanning for. She stopped scanning for what was wrong and started scanning for what was working. She stopped rehearsing the version of herself that was sick and started rehearsing the version that was strong. She stopped claiming the diagnosis and started claiming the direction.
You don't need chronic illness for any of this to matter. The same filters run in the background of a career you feel stuck in, a body you're frustrated with, or a relationship you can't quite name what's off about. What you scan for, you find. What you rehearse, you become. What you claim, you defend. Pick better inputs, and the outputs quietly move.
The version of you that this time next year is glad you started, start rehearsing them today.
🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Watch me on YouTube
Listen to the True From Podcast
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-true-form-podcast/id1593804496
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6RVH2O6MbLOCohBKPhXO0L?si=ZI8D3MnhSfSjnohSXYN_MQ
Everywhere els - https://trueform.buzzsprout.com
Sponsor: If you’re interested in trying red and near-infrared light therapy for recovery, pain, and overall health, check out Lumaflex. Use code TRUEFORM for 10% off: https://lumaflex.com.au/TRUEFORM
