We all say so many negative things to ourselves every day. This is especially the case if we have osteoarthritis or any chronic illness. We don’t feel our best. We may even experience brain fog or debilitating fatigue. These negative experiences can impact how we feel about ourselves.
I can’t go on like this!
What has my life become?
I’ll be in a wheelchair in a few years.
I can’t do anything anymore!
I feel sooooo unwell!
If you start your day saying negative things to yourself repeatedly, you’ll set yourself up for a difficult day. This is because your negative feelings, emotions, and moods will affect how you function and cope. In other words, what you say to yourself repeatedly can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, don’t keep telling yourself you’re going to get worse. It’s hard enough living with the physical and psychological effects of your chronic condition without negative self-talk. Ultimately, this can have a negative impact on your self-esteem, if you’re not careful.
It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself and not know how to move out of this negative mindset. Living with chronic conditions is hard. But if you keep dwelling on all the negative aspects of living with your chronic conditions, you’ll get sucked into a vortex of negativity to the point of feeling where you will feel stuck. You may even feel it’s unfair that you’re constantly experiencing so much pain and fatigue. I get it. It can be very hard to create a life that’s positive and self-nourishing. But dwelling on your negative thoughts won’t help you either. You need to create a balanced approach.
Be Proactive
Ultimately, we must choose how we react to our pain. We can either be proactive or reactive. In other words, you can either do something proactive about what you can control about your chronic condition and symptoms or do nothing but enter the realm of negative emotion where pure frustration, angst, stress and much more reside.
To alleviate as much pain and fatigue as possible, you must manage your life and symptoms proactively. Throughout this book, I offer many tips on how you can take steps to manage your life effectively. Choose a few tips that resonate with you and try to live a more balanced life. Therefore, you can choose to be reactive and miserable every day. Or, you can try to take steps to live a more positive life. The choice is yours. But notice that I said you have a choice because you always do.
The good news is you are in charge of your health and well-being, even when you are negatively impacted by a chronic condition. You could either chose to live a self-empowered life, or give in to the pain and it’s resulting suffering. This can ultimately result in a lack motivation and resilience to live your best life.
One overarching purpose of this book has been to provide self-management tips to empower yourself to live your best life. You didn’t choose to become chronically ill. However, you can choose how to live well, despite your chronic illness. You can choose not to allow your illness to steal your joy in life. You can take the time to reframe your life so you feel fulfilled and happy, even though you regularly experience pain and fatigue. Again, you can choose to be defeated by your illness or learn to live a good life in spite of it.
The good news is when you feel self-empowered, you won’t feel as helpless over your chronic condition. Your self-esteem won’t suffer either. Instead, you will take steps to manage your life so that your authentic self remains resilient and you can cope with the effects of your chronic illness. To reframe your life requires a shift in perspective, one that’s overflowing with self-compassion.
To bring this to fruition, take steps to empower yourself from the inside-out. It can be difficult to empower yourself to live a good quality of life if you allow your pain to impact every facet of your life. The good news is that you can choose to empower yourself to live a resilient life by taking care of yourself from the inside by practising extreme self-care.
In this way, you will become more self-empowered and in control of your chronic condition. Further, this positive mindset will help you choose to be much more positive about your life. In this way, you can learn to manage the symptoms of your chronic illness effectively, one habit at a time. Remember, your disease is not in charge or your life—YOU Are!!!
Choosing how you speak to yourself can help you become more proactive about your health and well-being by prioritizing what’s important and eliminating what’s not necessary. Try to work through your negative thoughts and emotions by journaling about them. Journaling alone can miraculously help you be more resilient and self-empowered. Let’s face it, it’s hard to live with a chronic illness. However, by learning how to manage your pain, fatigue, and negative emotions, you can live a good quality of life.
Living With Chronic Illness 