Accepting the future

Just some thoughts about mourning over the past, drowning in self-pity and accepting the future.

When you are told that you have a chronic illness, it takes quite a while to melt. To understand the extent and to realize that the rest of your life won’t be like before. But even if you understand it logically, you don’t want to fully accept it in practice. You try to live as you always done, and when you find that it is not possible, the anger and frustration is hard to take on top of everything else.

I don’t know how many times I have become unnecessarily angry and sad because I couldn’t manage an usually easy task, or become unreasonably exhausted by a simple activity. The energy that goes into these negative feelings could be used to something much better you might think, and that’s exactly what I’ve finally realized.

To fully accept your illness, or as in my case several diseases, is probably the most important process for giving yourself the chance to become as functional as possible. Learning about how the symptoms affects you in a short and long term, knowing your limitations and being okay with them is actually liberating. When you have come to that insight and have been able to release the frustration and feeling of injustice, you get the energy and desire to try to improve your odds through training and other health promoting things instead of drowning in self-pity.

I know that I’m likely to occasionally fall back into old feelings of self-pity, but I’ll probably be able to shake them off much easier. Instead of being angry for failing to do a certain thing as easy and effective as before, it’s better, and above all, more clever to put the energy on finding new and smarter ways to do certain things. It may take longer, but the time factor is one of the first things you have to get used to since almost everything takes extra time when you have a chronic illness that’s related to pain and immobility.

Negative thoughts and feelings are something that takes a lot of energy, where a positive mind boosts energy. Just remember that and life will be a little bit easier.

/ Marianne