Ed Schipul via Flickr
Day 13 – The Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Prompts (#HAWMC) for today is “Open a book. Point to a page. Free write for 10-15 minutes on that word or passage. Post without editing if you can!” When I opened my book, the word I got was “acceptance,” so here goes.
The first step toward acceptance of a chronic illness is admitting that I’m powerless to make that illness go away, or to force my life back to the way it used to be. If I deny that I’m ill, or refuse to admit and adjust to my new limitations, I eliminate possibilities from my life.
This doesn’t mean that I’m powerless to make my life with illness better, or that I have to give up on being happy. Once I’ve admitted I can’t make it go away, and that my life is different; I can look for ways to reduce symptoms and find new ways to do the things I don’t want to give up.
Denial is a “stopper” though. If I won’t admit I’m sick, I can’t take my medication without reminding myself of that fact, so I forget to take my meds and make my problems worse. If I won’t admit my body can no longer handle sitting at the computer for 8 hours at a stretch, I make my pain and fatigue worse and end up in a flare that puts me in bed for days.
Werner Erhard said, “Happiness is a function of accepting what is,” and that is very true. Accepting my illness frees me to find new ways to live my life. It may not be the same as it was before, but it can still be a good life, a happy life.
Accepting that I can’t stay at the computer for hours at a stretch frees me to find new ways of doing what I need to do. Maybe taking my laptop to bed with me is the way to manage, or perhaps I just need to schedule a 5 minute break every hour to get up and stretch. Maybe working at the computer for 30 minutes, then getting up and washing dishes for 30 minutes will resolve the issue; or perhaps I can work at the computer for 2 hours and take a 30 minute break.
Not being able to do things the way they’ve always been done before doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t do them at all, it may only mean I need to find new ways to do them.
Acceptance seems very much like a spiral to me. When I accept that I’m sick, it makes it easier to find new ways of coping. Changes in the way I cope makes living with my illness easier, which makes it easier to accept that illness. That brings me back to the beginning again, but at a different level; perhaps with a different symptom or a new diagnosis, or maybe just with another modification that makes things even easier.
This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J
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It seems that we go ’round and ’round don’t we? Trying to accept what we have been dealt, and then getting slammed with a bad day. I seem to be going in circles lately. reat post!
mo
Thanks mo. We do go around and around, but I’ve noticed that lately it takes me less time to start looking for new options when I get smacked in the face with a new symptom. I may still fall into the pit and feel sorry for myself, but I don’t stay there as long and it doesn’t seem to be as hard to crawl back out.
Hmm. I don’t agree with your understanding of acceptance, because your definition says 1) I am powerless to make it go away and 2) I can’t make my life go back to the way it used to be. From a shamanistic/alternative perspective, I would hope that you would NOT want your old life back. Something in your old life wasn’t working, and your body/mind was telling you so. To cede power over your illness is almost agreeing to chronicity the way you express it. You have accepted the idea of chronic illness and ceded your own power to bring about change. Might it not be better to accept that you have been given a diagnosis, and you can’t change the diagnosis, but you do have power over your ability to change? Many illnesses, after all, are called “chronic,” yet many people report curing themselves of these so-called chronic conditions..
Rossa –
Thanks for your comment. Your second point is especially pertinent, and I actually DON’T want my “old life” back, but of the other patients I have contact with, at least 90% of them are stuck at “I want my life back the way it was.” Until you accept that going back to the way it used to be is impossible, it’s not possible to move on to “how it can be.”
Making changes in “how it is” can’t happen as long as someone is in denial. As long as I wouldn’t accept that I HAVE fibromyalgia, and kept trying to do everything the way I’d “always” done it, I couldn’t move past that. “When you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always gotten.” Or, as I heard it in the mental health community, “Crazy is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting to get a different result.” I had to accept the possibility of chronicity before I could move past the resistance and start looking for options; especially when every doctor I went to said “there’s nothing we can do but manage your symptoms” and “you’re going to be sick for the rest of your life.” As long as I wouldn’t admit that I was sick, that my symptoms existed and had to be dealt with, I couldn’t look for ways to deal with them . . .
As a fellow fm sufferer Wendy, I can relate to what you’ve written. Although I’ve now reached acceptance, it appears that many people in my life cannot accept.. I can understance their reluctance and even was guilty of that ‘sin’ myself when a friend was diagnosed with a chronic condition many years ago. She had been advised to accept that her life was never going to be the same and to learn to accept her condition. I can remember telling her to fight back and not give. I can see now that that was a caring but misguided thing to do. Of course we try to fight back… I think almost everyone who suffers with a long term chronic illness fights back in their own way, but acceptance is so so important to being able to come to terms and move on. Just today, someone very important in my life said that joining a support group might not be beneficial and would perhaps mean that my illnesss came to ‘define me. Right now, i feel a little wounded by that because I fight hard to be the person that I am and to never let my symptoms rule my life but to some degree, surely long term illness, whatever form it takes, defines us. Thank you for what your article, it has given me a little bit of a lift on a bad day. Onwards and upwards. Best wishes and better days to you.
As a fellow fm sufferer Wendy, I can relate to what you’ve written. Although I’ve now reached acceptance, and my life isn’t the same, it appears that many people in my life cannot accept.. I can understand their reluctance and even was guilty of that ‘sin’ myself when a friend was diagnosed with a chronic condition many years ago. She had been advised to accept that her life was never going to be the same and to learn to accept her condition. I can remember telling her to fight back and not give in. I can see now that, that was a caring but misguided thing to do. Of course we try to fight back, it’s human nature…fight or flight. I think almost everyone who suffers with a long term chronic illness fights back in their own way, but acceptance is so, so important to being able to come to terms and move on. Just today, someone very important in my life said that joining a support group might not be beneficial and would perhaps mean that my illnesss came to ‘define’ me. Right now, i feel a little wounded by that because I fight hard to be the person that I am and to not let my symptoms rule my life but to some degree, surely long term illness, whatever form it takes, defines us. Thank you for what your article, it has given me a little bit of a lift on a bad day. Onwards and upwards. Best wishes and better days to you.