The relationship between grief, emotion and chronic illness can be immediate and direct. Indeed, strong emotions can wreak havoc on autoimmune disorders and chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia, where stress triggers a flare up in symptoms. Learning to ride these strong emotions instead of resisting them can help reduce the negative impact on your health.
It sucks to be sick. No question. It hurts, it’s exhausting, and sometimes depressing. Managing your illness can take all your focus and energy. But to keep your relationship healthy is to honour one of the most important areas of self-care. Especially when you’re chronically ill. Here’s how.
The lightbulb went on with a bang when I watched The Connection, a documentary by Shannon Harvey, about the mind-body connection in health. It was suddenly clear there’s an important role for belief in managing – and healing from – chronic and other illness.
As a person with a chronic illness, there are many days I don’t feel great. Some days I just can’t get anything done. But what if it isn’t my fibro? What if it is my head or my heart instead? There’s a process I go through to figure it out. Maybe it will work for you.
Having to be right all the time is a horrendous burden. First, it is impossible to attain. And second, striving to make it so surprisingly harms your health. I suspect this tendency of mine served to set me up for the fibromyalgia I eventually developed. Thankfully I figured out how to give up on being right and reduce stress. Which…
Experience has taught me that trading fibro shame for acceptance leads to better quality of life. Is it a factor of my age? The length of time I’ve had fibro? Or is it that I’m in a better state of mental health than when I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2003? I don’t know. But today, I share the fact of…
All or nothing thinking is harmful in a number of ways. It limits a whole world of possibilities by trying to force everything into one of two polar extremes. It creates unattainable expectations, for example: if I’m not absolutely perfect at everything, I must be an abject failure. Or, when the unrealistic ideal of perfection can’t be realized, I take…
I used to be the master of get-everything-done now, and perfectly. I could rock my job all week, care for my young son, get to fitness classes, and still find the time and energy to clean my entire house, grocery shop and host a dinner party on Saturday. The very thought of that now makes me feel faint. When first diagnosed…
As a person who dreamed of a life free of the shackles of corporate employment and big city living, and then made it happen, I’m passionate about the power of a dream. I like to ‘dream big’ and I raised my son encouraging him to do the same. “Dream big,” I’d write in his birthday cards. I wanted him to…
My predisposition to an eating disorder started early, in much the same way I believe my predisposition to fibromyalgia started early. I was 11 when I started my first diet. Grade five or six. I embarked on this diet with the full in-my-best-interest support from my mother, may she rest in peace, who was also always dieting. Ever since, until…