Chronic Twenties

Your doctor has probably told you that stress will cause flare ups.  Regardless of the chronic illness, stress is an easy (and valid) scapegoat.  Stress gets you agitated. Stress raises your blood pressure.  Stress causes flares and inflammation and pain.  Stress is stressful to think about it.

Before it turns into a cyclical mess, what can you do about stress?

Was your first response nothing? That there’s nothing that can be done about stress.

Or did it feel more like a joke with yourself? “Oh gee, I guess I could quit my job and be less stressed.”

These responses really imply the same root feeling.  Hopelessness.  When you feel like you lack control in your daily life, whether your internal monologue is matter-of-fact or sarcastic, that’s a pretty sad place to be.  Think about it, what you’re saying is that you’re not in control of your life or your path. And that’s crazy.

What CAN be done about stress is a change in thinking.

Take responsibility. You can’t control what other people think, feel, say or do. But you do have control of all of those things for yourself.  Meditation is a remarkable practice for learning to tame your own mind.  Similarly, actions and words (i.e. what you say) are certainly within your direct command – simply take a breath and you’ll find you have more time to say or do the right thing.  In the space between, there are decisions you’ve made that have lead to where you are (professionally, interpersonally, etc.) and mishaps along the way, but own those too.  It’s part of life.

Take action. While you can’t control what others think, feel, say or do.  You do control your relationship to those others. If you reach the conclusion that a situation you are in is not serving you personally, if it’s causing you more stress than benefit, if it’s leaving you feeling agitated, tired, or especially flared up, make a change in your relationship.  Whether it’s a personal or professional matter, remember that you do control your relationship to it.

Accept the rest. It is really easy to get worked up and stressed out about things completely outside of your personal control.  In fact, it can be very fun to talk about what that one person did or what’s going on next door, as if the gossip somehow makes up for being outside of the situation.  However, for your own sanity, accept what you cannot change.  And remember that acceptance is also a decision (to take responsibility for).

In a way, it comes back to the serenity prayer:  ”…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”    I omitted the God-piece because I find it easier to take this prayer as a sort of intention.

How do you manage stress?

Last week, I traveled to California for a yoga workshop. It was a fun and playful experience. But because of the nature of the type of physical practice, I found that I needed to share the details of my disease with the organizers and a few participants.

Generally speaking, everyone was very supportive. The instructors leading the workshop were kind in making modifications to the practice as needed. One of my colleagues, one who in the few days of the workshop had become rather close, said something surprising.

When I talk about rheumatoid arthritis, I usually reference “my disease,” “my RA,” etc. Talking about my illness, as though it belongs to me, as though it’s a part of me that isn’t going away any time soon. He suggested that I would be better served to not use the pronoun in describing my relationship to the disease, that it somehow described an attachment to the illness that may lock it into being.

An interesting thought. Though at the moment, I was a bit offended. “Let me take responsibility for my shit,” I remember thinking. It is something I will be dealing with, for better or worse, for the rest of my life.

Or is it?

The friend that brought this up is a follower of Abraham Hicks (LINK). To over simplify, he subscribes to the “if you can dream, it you can be it” philosophy

But for a chronic, is this type of hope valuable, or simply insane idealism to the point of delusion? Discuss.

Having this disease makes me feel a lot of things.  Pain, frustration, resentment, and more often than I like to admit, I feel angry.  I get pissed off and upset about the fact that I can’t do the things I want to do, that my body doesn’t allow me to maintain a regular schedule (you can’t plan for flare ups), and that I am different from my peers in a way that they don’t understand.

All this anger can be overwhelming.  I can’t do the things that I want to do.  I get mad.  I see the things I can’t do and watch others do them with ease.  And I get mad.  When I get angry, more often then not, I just feel disappointed.

But here’s where I say something radical: I’m NOT going to tell you that I take a breath and feel better.  I’m NOT going to tell you that I know everything will be alright… Be angry.  Be fucking pissed.  You’re entitled.  You’re entitled to your emotions.  In fact, you need to experience them.

We’re taught to mask our anger.  We’re taught to feel guilty about it.  We’re told again and again that nothing good comes from anger.  And yet, sometimes it’s what you have.

Embrace it.  It’ll go away faster that.

I’m tired of hearing “anger isn’t serving you.” You hear that sort of stuff a lot in the yoga community especially. It honestly sounds pretty judgmental when you’re upset or angry with yourself / body.  You have to acknowledge uncomfortable emotions without allowing yourself to be overcome by them.

Anger showcases loud and clear when things are out of balance.  Instead of getting judgey about it, which only spirals into more negative self talk, observe the emotion.  Tell yourself–the same way you would tell a small child that’s scared, hurt and upset–that everything is going to be ok.  Remind yourself that you’re safe and that you have everything you need right now.  Even if it’s not ideal.

Everything’s going to be ok.

What’s the alternative?

So, I’ve totally dropped the ball on keeping up with this blog. It’s been a year and a half since my last post about not wanting to take my meds. Perhaps it is apropos that that was my last post, since it is now a year and a half later, and in a few days I will be celebrating life one year meds free!

Meds free?! you say? But you have a chronic illness, that does’t go away….. That is what I thought until I completely changed my life. Now, what I’m about to say is NOT meant to be medical advice. I’m not trying to tell you to stop your meds. This  just happened to work for me, and I believe that it is possible for other people too… that being said, I’m going to get on with my story.

Let me start by explaining where I was health-wise in the summer of 2009: I was fat. I believe the AMA would even have called me obese.  I was taking a TON of meds (see my last post, linked above), my masto wasn’t under control (I had better days then before I was diagnosed and medicated, but certainly wasn’t living a chronic illness free life), I had acid reflux (better with the barrage of meds but still present), and my body hurt. All the time. Specifically, my lower back and left hip hurt all the time. So much so that walking down the street hurt my back, and I was incapable of falling asleep at night without taking some sort of NASAID (at least 3 200 mg pills if not 4. Some nights I took as many as 8 or 10).

The pain got to the point that I was desperate. I had moments when I could understand why people become drug addicts… anything to stop the pain. So I made an appointment at the pain clinic at the hospital. I got a MRI, x-rays etc. They decided the best course of action was to give me something similar to cortisone shots in my spine and hips. The story of that process is a whole other thing so I’ll leave it this: I got the shots. The pain went away. I went for a 5 mile hike, it was amazing. The shots were supposed to last for 3-6 months. They lasted for 5 weeks.

So, after 5 weeks, when the pain came back, I had a total melt down. I couldn’t go through getting the shots again, especially not to get them every 5 weeks for the rest of my life. And I couldn’t live with the pain anymore. At this point, I was staying with my Dad and Step-mom and she is a chiropractor and Feldenkrais practitioner. She is also a strong believer in alternative medicine, and actually hates western medicine. So we started talking about my alternative options.

The story of everything that has happened between that conversation and where I am now is for another day and probably many posts. But I will leave you with this: today I am meds free, I have NO masto symptoms, I only get acid reflux on a rare occasion and I know what causes it, I am a healthy weight (I never dieted) and I am mostly pain free.

The main things I attribute this miraculous change in circumstance to are: a complete change in lifestyle, a change of diet, and acupuncture. There have been many other alternative healings that have helped pave the way, but those are the main ones. I will explain more in near future posts. Promise