While I don’t have a serious chronic illness I have been around people that do. My profession as a pharmacist and jobs in various disease settings gave me an awareness of chronic diseases. Through my functional medicine treatment journey I have worked on my toxic mercury levels, mold toxicity, candida overgrowth, vitamin and mineral imbalances and genetic pathway abnormalities.
Your Identity and Core Values[1]
Your life has been redirected, and it made you who you are today. No one tells you how anxious you and your caregivers would feel. How will you find your new identity and path forward? If you’re not working due to your condition, what do you say when you are asked “what do you do?” How do you want to show up for yourselves and others? Do you want to have pride, love and compassion? What else?
Every situation is different, but there are coping mechanisms involved. You can still live a life with your core values intact. What are your core values? How can they show up in your life?
Strengths
You’ve hit a definite roadblock in your life yet, you can leverage your character strengths.
Working within what’s possible. When you’ve had to do hard things in your life, how did you do them? How can you apply that to your life now?
Love and connection
How can you incorporate self care, unapologetically taking time for yourself and connecting with others? What can you prioritize?
Focus on positive relationships and let go of negative people in your life, or at least minimize your interactions with them. Quality social connections whether romantic, friendship, or casual daily interactions can offer a sense of happiness. Support groups can be a source of connection, coping and motivation.
Honestly assess your life and your needs. Easier said than done?[2]
Don’t let others persuade you or influence your choices. You have gathered a lot of wisdom over your years and you’re the expert on you!
On the other hand it is possible that your perspectives on some aspects of life could be outdated, less relevant or jaded by your situation. In that case you may want to seek some advice and not rush into a decision.
Envision what you want and not what you don’t want.
- Many times I’ll notice in a discovery or visioning session with my clients that they will tell me what they don’t want. Reframe that into what you do want in your life.
- Create a powerful vision and capture it: make a vision board, create a phrase, mantra, photo, poem, song, drawing, journal entry or a Canva image that captures the essence of your vision so it is front and center.
Taming your inner critic
Everyone has an inner saboteur. This is the negative voice you hear when going about your everyday life. These are automated patterns in your mind established during your childhood and early adult years. This can often lead to unhappiness, doubt, fear, stress and generally a lesser feeling of wellbeing.
Accepting your situation without preconceived notions can be powerful. Letting go of things you can’t change and accepting them can make a huge difference.
Think about who you want to be in this life? How do you want to show up?
Stay present
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. This study, published in Science, found that people think more about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is happening. The researchers found that doing so typically makes people unhappy. Focusing on the current activity (even if you don’t like the activity) leads to higher self-reported happiness than when your mind wanders to other topics (even if your mind wanders to happy topics).
Merriam-Webster definition of hope: “to want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true.”
Hope and positive belief in chronic illness is so important. I learned, from this research, that hope is something that takes practice to develop and sustain. The same research states there are many things for which one can hope while living with chronic illness.
If you’ve experienced a state of hopelessness before, how did you move back to a state of hope?
What about your identity and core values? I would suggest preceding this heading with a sentence that frames the entire article. For example, “Here are a few main aspects of your life that become even more important when navigating a chronic illness.” Then the reader would expect each section following to be one of those things.
It seems like there’s a shift in the article from “aspects of your life that are important when living with a chronic illness” to, “actions you can take to help”.
If you’re inclined, you could make everything from “Honestly assess your…” to “Stay present…” a separate blog about things you can do to make living with a chronic illness better.
It seems like this section falls under the “aspects of your life that are important when living with a chronic illness”. I feel like it should be grouped with the others, maybe falling after your section called “Love and connection”
