Reset to Thrive and Breaking Free: Jan Rothney on recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, M.E, and Long Covid

The second edition of Jan Rothney's Breaking Free is a beacon of hope for the millions of people living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME, and Long Covid. While many books about these conditions focus on endurance and symptom management, Jan's book focuses on the possibility of recovery. Drawing on her own experience of CFS, her background as a lecturer in Health and Social Care, psychology, and therapy, and her successful Reset to Thrive recovery programme, Breaking Free is a compassionate, science-backed guide that not only explains why these conditions develop but gives readers practical exercises and resources they can use to get their lives back. For people navigating an illness that is under-researched, frequently misunderstood, and too often met with hopelessness, it is exactly the book they need.  

In this interview with Imogen Gage, Jan discusses her own journey with CFS, her philosophy of recovery, and why she believes the body's capacity to heal is nothing short of magical.

I: Firstly, I’d just like to say that as someone who doesn’t have CFS, I loved this book and felt that its messages are important for everyone- it’s warm, compassionate, and accessible. But before we get into Breaking Free itself, can you take me back to when you first got ill? What was that period like for you?"

J: Horrendous. It was a very, very frightening experience. I was running around an adventure park with my daughter, came home, did a mad rush of housework, and went out in the evening with friends. I started to get a runny nose, so I came home early, went to bed, and I didn’t wake up. I was asleep for about a month.

My body literally shut down. It was like the whole engine had just blown up- the car was doing 80 miles an hour and then the engine just stopped. 

I was very lucky, in a sense, that I had taught health and social care and psychology, because I understood what was happening to me. The central theme of the book is that CFS is the body going into stress response, and the fact it shuts down is a protection mechanism. If I hadn’t understood that my body was trying to protect itself, I’m sure I would have gone under.

It was a battle between the protective brain wanting to shut me down and having to consciously override it by saying: ‘I am safe.’ You’re either thriving or surviving- you can’t be in both. The only way to get back into thrive mode is to be in a safe and nurturing environment. 

I first crashed in 2003, then had a relapse in 2006. And the second time, there were CFS clinics. The specialists told me I would never recover. I remember thinking: that wasn't luck. That experience literally destroyed me, because I started not to believe in myself.

I: The book opens with the line ‘There is no magic in my work, just the incredible magic of the body itself.’ I love that line so much- can you tell me what it means to you and why you felt readers should hear it from the start? 

J: When I had my relapse, I was told by specialists that I would never recover. It wasn't just that- they gave me one-to-one sessions until I actually said out loud: 'I accept I'll never recover.' I told the consultant that I had recovered before, but he just said I had been lucky.  

That wasn’t luck. It wasn’t magic that I just recovered. I had to understand the body and work with it. But the body itself, what it does automatically, underneath the surface, constantly changing its physiology- that is magical. The brain and body communicating constantly. 

I wanted people to have gratitude for their bodies, not to hate them for what’s happening. Yes, the body has shut you down but in order to protect you. The cellular biologist Robert Naviaux describes it beautifully: every cell in the body, when caught in the sickness loop of chronic illness is waiting for the all-clear signal that it’s safe to heal. 

Once you start to have gratitude and compassion for your body, you’re then sending out positive signals that enables the body to come out of the sickness cycle. 

So, it is magical how the body and brain automatically do their very best to protect you under all circumstances. And that’s the whole point of the book: there is no magic to recovery, but it’s magical what the body does.

I: In contrast to certain specialists, you’ve said you had a brilliant GP who always believed you’d recover. How much difference does it make when someone believes that your recovery is possible? 

J: The expectation of recovery is crucial. Having hope is probably the key factor of recovery. There’s so much research into CFS and numerous other conditions which shows that having the expectation from a professional that you will recover is a core part of recovery. Another core factor is having self-agency. This is the feeling that you’re not completely helpless: what if I could just take that one step?

I: I feel that in the book you’re particularly skilled at making scientific information digestible for those who don’t have a scientific background. Was it important to you that the information was completely accessible and written for someone who is unwell, rather than those who have a background health and social care? 

J: Yes- because for me, if I hadn’t understood what was happening to my body, I would have been so terrified. I want people to understand what is happening to them and how we can get the body to function in a different way. We have to get back to thrive mode.

So the book starts with the belief and then the second chapter is on the science because I knew, lying in bed that first time, that if I hadn't understood what was happening, I never would have recovered. 

I: Do you feel like awareness and understanding around CFS has changed much in the past twenty years? Do you think there's been a shift?

J: I hope so. Some GPs are beginning to move towards mind-body approaches, but the medical model is still dominant: give them antidepressants, give them sleeping tablets, manage the symptoms. You need to change the underlying problem, not mask the symptoms. 

The ME Association is adamant that ME is a disease, and I believe that it is because of shame. They don’t want it to be about stress-management or inability to cope with pressure. But when you label it as a disease, you basically say that ‘it can’t be anything that I have done or anything that I can do.’ And people have this massive grief and regret when they’ve had the illness for so long because they feel like they could have done something about it earlier. 

All of the research and money that goes into CFS and ME goes into finding a medical cure. Pharmaceutical companies make a fortune. Other branches of recovery are still left unexplored.

The NICE guidelines for ME and CFS now state there is no recommended treatment and no recommended alternative therapy. For every other condition- MS, Parkinson's, anything- the guidelines will acknowledge that CBT can be useful, that various approaches have value. ME and CFS is the only one where that has been effectively blocked. And that means anyone working within the NHS is only permitted to offer the medical model. It's deeply damaging.

I: Clearly the general conversation around CFS and ME is quite negative. It feels as though the community you’ve built is a beacon of positivity amongst the discourse. So many people quoted in the book talk about finally 'getting their life back.' So, how do you define recovery?

J: Recovery means very different things to different people. For me personally, it meant getting back to normal, back to everything I did before. For others, recovery might mean being symptom-free but no longer able to return to that same life because that same life was what made them ill in the first place. And actually, that can be the healthier outcome.

I worked with a woman who waited ten years before coming to see me, not because she didn't want to get better, but because she couldn't face the thought of returning to normal life and having all that expectation on her again. Her strategy had become: when I find it all too much, I take to my bed and someone else deals with it. That's not recovery. Recovery is asking: do I even want to go back to the life I had? Would it be better to do something I really love? It's about becoming your authentic self.

The whole journey to recovery is massive. It's not just about being symptom-free. It's about how do I stay healthy forever.

A big part of the book is also about celebrating every small step, every green shoot of recovery. We do it naturally for children. Then somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we stop noticing what we can do and only notice where we're falling short. Learning to celebrate again is itself part of recovery.

I: Are there any specific exercises or tools from the book that people come back to you and say made the biggest difference?

J: What's so interesting is that it varies enormously from person to person. For Holly, it was learning to shift focus away from symptoms- once she could do that, she was away. For Meredith, it was celebrating every small step. For others it's the somatic exercises, or learning restorative rest, or the traffic lights- that mindful pause between the stimulus and the response. 

Mindfulness, as Victor Frankl described it, is having that space between stimulus and response. And that's exactly what I teach- the checking in. Instead of living on autopilot, you stop and ask: is this useful? Is thinking like this actually helping me? It's a simple exercise, but it can change your health dramatically. It gives you self-agency, and self-agency is what signals to the body that you are safe.

And some people say that once they brought joy into their journey, and learnt to actually enjoy the moment, that was the transformation. 

But I would say there are things that apply to everybody: change your environment to be more nurturing, bring in people who are supportive, build social connection. Almost everyone I work with needs to tweak their environment to some extent- some massively, some just a little.

I: Would you say all of the symptoms before ie the gut problems, the skin, and the exhaustion are they quite common before people have that more dramatic crash?

J: I'd had ten years previously of post-viral fatigue. It's very common. There is General Adaptive Syndrome: the idea that for any organism on the planet, when you are presented with demands and a harsh or overwhelming environment, the body goes into survival mode. It fires off the sympathetic system, adrenaline, and cortisol. But that system is built for a short-term fix, not endless hardship. For human beings, that resistance stage can go on for years. And that is when the body starts to break down- the gut, the skin, and the immune system. I had all of it. For ten years.

I taught this material. I knew all the theory. But in reality, I still couldn't stop the overload.

I: Why did this feel like the right moment for a second edition?

J: We'd been talking about translating the book for Reset to Thrive participants in Germany and the Netherlands who were sharing it with friends and having to explain it in other languages. And we decided there was no point translating the first edition when we could use the updated research which had come out since. Improving the accessibility of the second edition was also important to me as I wanted a version with a larger and clearer font than the first. There’s also a contents page in the second edition which makes it easier to flick between chapters.

I: Has there been a lot more research since the first edition?

J: Half a million to a million research papers on Long Covid alone. They pumped billions of dollars and pounds into research because it was a pandemic. So yes- there's been a huge amount of new material, and I put in a lot of new research on the predictive brain, on non-medical interventions, and on the evidence around expectation and reassurance. I also put in research showing there is no evidence for the medical model. That'll go down well.

I: You mentioned being at the adventure park with your daughter at the time of the initial crash. In the book you talk about women being disproportionately affected by CFS- do you think there is a gendered aspect to this?

J: There are definitely more women than men, and there are a number of different theories why. The research is clear that there is a relationship between CFS and overload, and there is a lot of evidence that women are still doing the extra load. Traditionally, women are the carers, so they tend to be more responsible for the mental overload of the entire family. Nowadays, many women work full time as well as being primary caregivers. 

It could also be hormonal- women go through incredible biological change in puberty, perimenopause, and menopause which impacts the whole biological system. And then, the demands can feel much greater because you haven’t got the resourcefulness of youth. 

I: What do you most want someone to feel after finishing the book?

J: Hope. Self-agency. The feeling that there is something they can do, even if it's just one small step. And compassion: for themselves, and for this body that has been doing its absolute best for them all along. Even if it's just one person who reads it and feels a little more joy, a little more capable- that would be enough. As Mother Teresa said, if you can help one person in your life, you have achieved your aim.

I: And finally,is there anything you still want to say or do around this subject? What is the future for Reset to Thrive?

J: You know, I actually said I should have just written a book on thrive or survive. Because the material in the book is really about, are you thriving or surviving?

Jan also mentioned that the Reset to Thrive programme is now run by Nikki with Jan focusing on new webinars.