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Frequent companions of physical suffering are not only despondency, anxiety and insecurity, but also exhausting thoughts: “Why did this happen to me?”, “Will I ever get better?”. Fighting them is an important step in accepting new living conditions. What else can be done when faced with the disease?
A long illness is, in addition to all the minuses, also an opportunity to learn to empathize with oneself. But, unfortunately, when we feel bad, most often we choose to follow the path of self-criticism. For example, some people are ashamed of what is happening to them, especially if doctors cannot find the cause of the disease.
Psychotherapist Seth Gillian has worked extensively with clients suffering from chronic illnesses, but he only truly understood them when he became ill himself. For three years he went to the doctors, trying to figure out what was wrong with him. As a result, Gillian was diagnosed with mold poisoning. Like many people with chronic diseases, he has had to significantly reduce his work hours, face financial problems and uncertainty.
Jill Kanahan, a functional medicine expert who specializes in finding and treating the causes of disease, has also gone through great trials – breast cancer, Crohn’s disease. Here is what she advised in a conversation with Gillian for those who are faced with chronic diseases.
1. Try to accept your life as it is now
With an illness, life inevitably changes, but we continue to expect ourselves to cope with everything as well as before the illness. “The problem is the expectations that we place on ourselves, but at the same time attribute to others. We demand from ourselves the ideal career, the ideal relationship and the ideal home – we set the bar for ourselves unrealistically high.
Jill often felt self-hatred for her problems and for the way the illness affected her family. Her self-directed anger exacerbated her autoimmune disease: “There is a link between self-hatred and autoimmune disease. And this is logical – the body attacks itself, ”the expert notes. It took her more than two years to accept her limitations and adjust to them.
2. Remember: You are doing the best you can.
We often criticize ourselves for not recovering: as if we are doing something wrong, otherwise we would have already recovered. But with chronic diseases, this approach does not work. At one time, Kanahan thought that she would get better as soon as she started eating right – she associated any exacerbation with the fact that she had eaten the “wrong” product. But no matter how she ate, every day she got better, then worse.
In some cases, nutrition really affects well-being. But do not rush to blame yourself and your menu for everything. Sometimes it takes years before doctors can determine the cause of an illness.
3. Prepare for ups and downs
Many chronic diseases are very unpredictable. Your condition may get better or worse. According to Kanahan, she blamed herself for the fact that after improving her condition worsened. It seemed to her that she herself “failed” her recovery. But the fluctuations of the disease can hardly be controlled.
On bad days, remember that you will most likely get better. Perhaps when you least expect it. Appreciate these respite: let them end, but they remind us of what it’s like to feel better.
4. Don’t judge yourself for sometimes being discouraged and sick “wrong”
During your illness, there will be days when you will be proud of how you cope with it: these are the moments when you try to live as fully as possible, even if your health is far from normal. You feel grateful for what you have. On such days, you feel that you are sick “right”.
But then something happens. For example, you realize that you will have to miss an important family event due to illness, or remember something you loved to do but can no longer do. You reach a boiling point: you are sad, you are angry, you are frustrated. And then you feel guilty for your gloom. Kanahan emphasizes, “It’s not abnormal for you to feel discouraged from time to time. Don’t judge yourself for how you react to illness.”
5. Keep in touch with people who understand you.
When we are sick, we don’t really want to communicate – we have no energy and we don’t feel like ourselves. But the support of loved ones in difficult times is priceless.
“I was very independent and thought I could handle everything on my own. But the further, the more I realized how important it is to maintain relationships with loved ones and ask them for support, says Kanahan. Most relatives and friends really want to help, but don’t always know how. They may be embarrassed to talk about your diagnosis. They may be scared that you are sick.”
Jill advises spending time with someone who understands what you’re going through and how your illness limits your life, but doesn’t identify you solely with your illness: waking up in excellent condition, by 10 in the morning you want to lie down, because you are terribly tired.