“My chronic illnesses feel like stuck places that surely can never change.”
Holly writes:
Last week’s Tip really spoke to my heart as I have a few chronic illnesses I am managing. They feel like stuck places. (Chronic migraines and chronic fatigue syndrome). So many people believe you can just solve these somehow, if you just stop stressing or just think positive! There is a part that is hoping for change and is often being let down (24 years). And there is the part that needs to be real to deal with the day to day.
Is there some way to just be OK with barely functioning each day? How do we speak to the illness in the body that won’t shift?
I believe change is possible, and yet I grow weary. Become skeptical and deflated. Focusing helps me greatly with emotions …but what about when it’s physical? Physical stuckness, that more than likely won’t change.
Dear Holly:
I hear a lot of courage in your determination to find some way to live resiliently with your chronic illnesses. No wonder you grow weary…or something in you does.
I am a big believer in being real. From the Focusing viewpoint, being real means sensing and dealing with how it is right now. Nobody knows the future.
Something in you might say, “Be real. Accept that this can never change.” but I would call that a part of you, not the whole You.
Here are some tips that might help.
(1) Although having a diagnosis is helpful so you can get the right treatment, you can also let go of the label (for example, “chronic fatigue”) and just make a relationship with how you are actually feeling right now.
(2) With chronic conditions we can start to think the feeling will be always the same, like “always tired.” But body process is always subtly different. Try sensing how you feel (how “it” feels) right now as if you had never felt it before. Allow fresh images and metaphors to emerge. “It’s like…”
(3) Say “Hello” to the feeling that is here right now and sense how It would like You to be with It. What happens might surprise you.
Please be in touch and let me know how it goes…
