healing – Skillfully Well & Painfully Aware

Winter is a time for cozy hibernation, while the world sleeps. It’s a natural time for reflection, and to integrate the lessons you’ve learned from the past year, as you evolve into the person you will become next year.

I think we’re always looking for peace of mind, learning how to navigate through the storms of life, to manage significant stress, as well as difficult thoughts and emotions. It’s liberating when you start to accept, heal, and relate in a positive way to your thoughts and feelings. But how do we actually do the work, come to acceptance, process emotions, and grow as people?

Illness can be intense, and even traumatic. Or perhaps you’ve experienced grief, stress, manipulation, childhood issues, relationship problems or family estrangement. The most common two reactions are either to obsessively over-analyze or avoid and deny the emotions. Both of these reactions ultimately leave you stuck, with your emotions festering under the surface. Resisting your feelings only really leads to suffering.

For me, the first step on this journey has been to develop greater self-awareness. Can you name your feelings or write down your thoughts? What do they feel like, and where are they felt as sensations in your body (a fluttery stomach, a tight chest, constricted throat etc.)? Spending a mindful moment with your emotions to get to know them, instead of shoving them back down, really helps you to make wiser decisions. Taking that deep breath before responding during a disagreement stops me from saying something angry, or helps me know when I need to take a break because I’m feeling overwhelmed.

It’s important to let emotions flow through you, but to stay grounded all the while. Emotions are like electric energy in this respect. If you recall a stressful past experience, it’s important not to become flooded by emotions (to torture this metaphor further, you might short circuit if this happens!). The way to stay grounded is to stay connected to the present moment, and to your body. Breathe, scan your heart and stomach for sensations (which can be easier to identify than the feelings), look around, listen to the sounds in your environment.

Remember that emotions are like guests, and you are the host. You are not your feelings, and they are not the truth of you. If you feel sad, guilty, or angry today, this doesn’t mean you are a sad, bad, or angry person. Feelings arise and then pass away, while you stay… you! Keeping this distance from your feelings, separating you-the-host (your awareness) from your emotional ‘guests’, helps give you much-needed perspective.

Stop any runaway trains of thought if you become anxious, by breathing, taking a short walk or stretching, making tea, etc. Responding with acceptance and compassion by taking care of yourself when you experience difficult thoughts or feelings is life changing. Do you treat yourself like a person who is only worthy of love when they don’t make mistakes? Turn that around and you’ll finder greater peace and happiness very quickly. Literally start by just doing for yourself what you would recommend for a sick friend when you feel stressed, think soft blankets, rest, cups of cocoa, and favorite movies. You are entitled to acceptance and love, like all creatures. Tell yourself that.

How reading chronic illness blogs helps me navigate life with chronic illness

Living with a chronic illness can feel isolating. How many people do you know who even have a chronic illness? Our daily challenges are unique, and it can be difficult to find someone who really understands.. Even when it comes to positive changes, I find that friends and family can have a difficult time relating to the treatments or lifestyle changes that I’ve made in order to improve my health and well-being. For example, starting a meditation practice or taking supplements was considered equivalent to fraudulent ‘snake-oil treatments’ by some of my more skeptical relatives. Even more broadly, living with chronic illness changes your perspective on life and your priorities. While you might see working towards acceptance as part of healing, other people around you might see it as ‘giving up’ on getting better. For all of these reasons, it can be difficult to find your way through the realities of life with a chronic illness

This is where the community of chronic illness bloggers comes in. Reading about shared experiences can help reduce that sense of isolation –– knowing other people out there can relate to what you are going through. Chronic illness blogs can help to suggest treatments or self-care strategies, which is important given the lack of research, medical treatments or adequate pain management supports out there. Most importantly, chronic illness blogs can inspire their readers with the wisdom of experience and the power of insight.

Here, I wanted to share a few of the inspiring posts I read this spring about navigating real life with chronic illness:

Inspiring blog posts from Spring, 2017

What does healing mean when you have a chronic condition? Sarah from the Pain Companion shares an insightful, inspiring post on understanding healing as a holistic, lifelong journey. In her post “Will I Ever Heal from Chronic Pain?” she writes that healing “is the process by which we create a new relationship with our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and our spirits as demanded by some crisis in life.”

A beautiful, uplifting poem called “You Are Miracle” by Thuli Zuma shared by Sheryl over at Chronic Voice. A snippet of my favourite verse:

You are miracle.
You are harmony.
You are 90 trillion cells weaving new tapestry.
Each one testifies to the mystery
That even on the worst day
Even at your worst
You are still your best
You are miracle

The Beauty of the Story Your Life Is Telling by Stacey from Chronically Whole An inspiring take on the narrative of being a person living with chronic illness. My favourite lines: “Some may say it’s telling a story of failing by not getting better faster [but]… Let your life keep telling the story of adapting, overcoming, loving in spite of loss, being unafraid to face the uncertain future head on…”

What can fairy tales teach us about living with chronic illness? That we have to be our own heroes, for one. Rhiann, from My Brain Lesion and Me, writes: “My experience of living with a permanent neurological condition has also taught me that we all have the power to rescue ourselves from our own battles in whatever form that they take.” Read more at Life is Anything But a Fairy Tale.

Identity and chronic illness is such a complicated topic. Many of us lost core aspects of how we identifed ourselves after developing a chronic illness. Career is often one of those casualties. So how do you construct a new identity for yourself beyond being someone living with a chronic illness? Jenny from Tips for M.E. shares her thoughts on important issue in her post Ascribed and Chosen Identities in Chronic Illness.