Being unwell, injured or living with a health condition can be challenging, and how your mood is impacting influences your health outcome. If you feel stuck, I can help.
If you are limited in your abilities and doing things for yourself, you can feel frustrated, helpless, trapped. You don’t realise how free you are until you lose that freedom. And if you are used to that independence, a whole lot of shame can creep in, too, asking for and relying on help from others. It can send you into a depression.
That depression can leave you feeling stuck. If you don’t have a way to get out of it, it will make your symptoms worse and keep you unwell for longer!
A recent study published in The Lancet (a medical journal) found that ‘mood outcomes (depression, anxiety and stress) impact inflammation‘ and ‘Treatments which address mood outcomes have beneficial effects on generic inflammation‘. This study was specific to IBD patients, BUT inflammation is inflammation; IBD is how it manifests in a particular group of people. You can read the full study here https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(23)00476-0/fulltext?fbclid=PAAaZ9oydDPN4bWXlUu8T8XbbhLXQfyUtIhRud0YXOWeExfwFF-xm7keYzP8g
Why am I sharing this information with you? Other than it being interesting (I think so anyway), I have experienced this first hand, and medical professionals have told me that ‘positive thinking won’t change my outcome’ – can I say how f*#king wrong this person was! There was research at the time and even more now. MINDSET MATTERS.
This isn’t about toxic positivity – being ill SUCKS! You are allowed to have down times and down days. It’s hard. When you are in chronic pain, you can’t remember what it’s like not to have pain, and you think that it’s never going to end. I know. I have been there. But if all you focus on is the pain, it gets worse. Where the attention goes, the energy flows!
So, how do we get out of it? Well, if the energy flows, where the attention goes, we need to find ways to distract ourselves. This is the first step to getting unstuck and out of that funk. There are different ways – watch a comedy, find a mantra you can repeat (this too shall pass is a favourite of mine to use), read, or bring awareness to parts of your body where there is no pain.
When you get those moments of reduced or no pain, they are the light at the end of the tunnel. When you start to get that flicker of light, it brings hope.
Hope is so powerful. Victor Frankl talked about hope in Man’s Search of Meaning, and Edith Edger talked about it in Choice – both of them were sharing about their time in concentration camps! They had hope that they would survive, and they did and have gone on to be inspirations for future generations.
Without hope, you get stuck in a victim mindset. Without hope, you lack the motivation to improve your situation. And there is always something you can do to improve your situation, even if, for the time being, it’s just how you think about the situation.
In my podcast yesterday, I talked about this. You can watch it here https://youtu.be/b7LPvtFqt4k
I have a free 3-day chronic illness mindset challenge coming up. If you would like to join, or know someone who would benefit, pop your details in here: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/566153/112347976950613529/share or share this information with them.
There is nothing like feeling better than you could ever have imagined. There is nothing like being able to show others what’s possible. There is nothing like proving doubters wrong…
Rebels, are you with me? Are you ready to reclaim your independence, freedom and control?!
