Posts Tagged ‘hugs’

Having a Caring, Compassionate, Understanding Friend

Friday, June 25th, 2010

When our lives are difficult, as they often are when we have a chronic illness, having a caring, compassionate, understanding friend can be tremendously helpful. A friend can give us hugs, and when we need it, a shoulder to cry on. A friend like that can be the difference between getting through difficult times or just giving up.

Everyone I have talked to about this has told me they know how much of a difference having a friend during difficult times in our lives makes, because they have experienced that difference for themselves. I’m sure you have too.

But not everyone has a friend like that. And even if we are lucky enough to have such a friend, it’s very likely that there will be times when we need caring and understanding, but our friend isn’t available to give it to us. Fortunately, if we don’t have a friend like that, or we do but he or she isn’t available, there is something we can do – something that very few people know about: we can be that kind of a friend for ourselves.

The reason we can do that is because as human beings, we are innately caring and compassionate. Without even thinking about it, we care about injured pets and other animals. And we have compassion for our children, friends, and partners when they are facing or going through difficult challenges. All we need to do to be the caring, compassionate, understanding friend that we need is to direct those innate qualities to ourselves.

We can do that in many ways. For example, we can by give ourselves hugs, and we can tell the person in the mirror how much we care about him or her. Doing that may feel strange and awkward at first, but over time it feels less and less so. And I know from watching my clients, as well as from my own life, that the difference being a caring, compassionate, understanding friend to ourselves makes is immense. So I strongly encourage you to be that kind of a friend to yourself.

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Group Coaching

Do You Hate the Effect Your Illness Has On Your Relationships with Your Children and Your Partner? Do You Hate Not Having a Life?

My coaching/support group can help you have better relationships with your children and your partner, and it can help you find new ways to manage your illness symptoms and challenges so that you, with small steps or big ones, start to create a fulfilling life despite having a chronic illness.
The next group will take place by phone on Thursdays at 5:00 PM PDT / 8:00 PM EDT starting on July 8th, and will continue weekly though August 12th (six sessions).
These groups offer the support that people with chronic illnesses often need, at a fraction of the cost of individual coaching or therapy. As a member of my list, you have the first access to this group.
To find out more about the content, the cost, or to sign up, go to Coaching/Support Group information.

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An Opportunity to Walk My Talk

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I know I’ve been very fortunate, because I’ve had relatively good health for most of the time since I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. As I describe in the page about this blog, my symptoms kept getting worse and worse during the first three years after my 1996 diagnosis, but in 1999 I found the combination of standard and alternative treatments that put my Crohn’s into remission and gave me my life back. Since then I’ve had a few fairly mild flares, but I’ve been drug and pain free for almost four years.

Because I’ve been so fortunate health-wise, it’s been a long time since I have needed to practice the suggestions I write about. Now I know those suggestions are good ones, because many people have told me how helpful they’ve been. But last week I found out firsthand that there is a big difference between recommending them to a client or describing them in posts, and being in major pain from a flare-up and struggling to do my best to use them.

The flare happened10 days ago and it turned my world upside down. After almost four years in remission, I had the mindset that for all intents and purposes I had beaten Crohn’s. But for some reason, some foods that hadn’t bothered me before (broccoli and almond cheese), triggered inflammation and spasms in the lower right side of my abdomen. While I can’t prove it, I’m convinced that the fragile emotional state I was in at the time was a major factor. But whatever the cause, all of a sudden I faced the same uncertain future that is all too common for people with chronic illnesses: would the pain lessen or would it get worse (it was a seven on a scale of one to ten, which was more than enough to keep me from getting much sleep that night)?

I did my best to follow my own advice, especially in giving myself lots of hugs and compassion. I would give myself a B+, maybe even an A- :) I’m glad to say that my flare is almost completely behind me. But it was a great opportunity for me to use my own suggestions, and more than that it was a firsthand reminder of how truly difficult living with a chronic illness is for many people. I had a lot of compassion for you and them before; today I have even more.

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Give Your Partner What You Can – and Have Compassion for Yourself

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

I send out biweekly tips for how to have a better life when you have a chronic illness (if you would like to get them, you can sign up for them here). I sent the following tip about three months ago. If you’re curious about why I’m posting my tip to my blog, you can skip to the end to find out – but I encourage you to read it first.

I know, from coaching clients as well as from my own experience, that it’s not uncommon for those of us with chronic illnesses to feel guilty because of how much help we often need from our partners.  We may also feel guilty because we can’t help them nearly as much as we could when we were healthy, and we can’t do all the things with them that we formerly could. If you sometimes feel this kind of guild, here are some tips to help you lessen or eliminate it.

First, please give yourself lots of compassion. Have compassion for the part of yourself that needs help, but isn’t able to do as much for your partner as you want to because of your illness. Also have compassion for that part of yourself that feels guilty. They both deserve all the compassion you can give them, and lots of hugs too. I recommend that you give them at least three compassionate hugs a day.

Second, be sure to let your partner know how grateful you are for all the help he or she gives you. Everyone – including your partner – feels good when they do things that other people appreciate, so expressing your appreciation can more than offset the time and energy your puts into helping you.

And third, look for ways that you can give back your partner. Those ways can be as simple as giving your him or her a little more listening and understanding when they’ve had a hard day at work, renting a movie they’ve wanted to watch, or just rubbing their shoulders.

I hope you found this helpful. And now I see some shoulders nearby that could use some rubbing and a gentle massage.

This post is my entry in February’s Health Activist Blog Carnival. If you’re interested in participating too, you can read all about it here: http://blog.wegohealth.com/2010/02/introducing-health-activist-blog.html.

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It’s Never Wrong To Be Upset Or Scared

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Even though I have Crohn’s disease, I belong to support groups for people with other diseases. I joined them to learn more about what life is like for people who have different illnesses and also to give suggestions that I think will help others in the group. One group I belong to is for people with Still’s disease (Still’s is an inflammatory disease that can affect the joints, tissues, and organs).

A woman in the group  wrote that she had recently been diagnosed with Still’s. She said that she was familiar with that illness because a cousin whom she was close to had it for many years and died from it in his early 30’s.

Karen, as I’ll call her, wrote that some of her family members responded in a belittling way, saying that “Still’s is just a fancy name for plain old arthritis.” She said she felt hurt because those family members were dismissive of her year-long struggle to get a diagnosis for her night sweats, rashes, and crippling pain. (As an aside, “just plain old arthritis” can be very painful, and I would feel very hurt if I had it and didn’t get any compassion or understanding from my family.) karen asked the others in the group if she was wrong for being upset and scared.

I hear that question from time to time from people with chronic illnesses, and my answer to Karen is always the same: No. Make that a very loud and clear NO!!

Having a chronic illness often makes our lives difficult and unpredictable, so it’s very understandable that a person who was diagnosed with one would become upset and scared. And given the fact that Karen’s cousin died from Still’s disease, I would be very surprised if she wasn’t scared when she learned she had the same illness he did.

So the answer to the question: Is it wrong to be upset and scared after being diagnosed with Still’s disease—or any other chronic illness—is no. But a much more important question for Karen to ask is: How do I deal with my feelings of being upset and afraid, and how do I take care of myself?

While she didn’t ask those questions directly, she asked for support from other members of the group, and she received several supportive replies. She was given the reassurance that Still’s disease is different for everyone who has it, so the fact that her cousin died from it was not an indication that she will too. She also received some good ideas for educating her non-supportive family members (who very  likely responded the way they did because of feelings of helplessness and discomfort that they weren’t aware of).

But one thing she didn’t receive were any suggestions to give herself lots of compassionate hugs because of all that she had gone through, because of how little understanding she got from her family, and because of how painful and difficult her symptoms were. I’ve seen “self-administered hugs” make a very big difference for lots and lots of people (as it has for me). So I hope Karen heeds my suggestion to do that. I hope you will too. And to learn about some other ways to take care of yourself when you have a chronic illness, I encourage you to read my free report: How to Have a Chronic Illness – Without Letting Your Chronic Illness Have You.

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Some Strategies For Dealing With Chronic Fatigue That I Wish I Had Known

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Those of us who live with chronic illnesses can have many difficulties to deal with because of those illnesses. But I have found,  from my own life and from coaching and talking with others with chronic illnesses, that there are five main illness-related challenges, and most of us have to contend with one or more of them. These challenges aren’t independent of each other. On the contrary, they are all connected and inter-related. They are: chronic pain, chronic fatigue, lack of money, depression, and finding meaning in our lives. In this post, I’m going to share three strategies for dealing with one of those challenges: chronic fatigue.

The suggestions I’m going to share with you are ones I wish I had known when my chronic illness (Crohn’s disease) was in an almost constant flare, instead of being in remission like it is now. I often suffered from severe fatigue, and at that time I only knew three strategies for dealing with it. They were to nap in my car during my lunch hour at work, to get as much rest as possible on the weekends to recover from the previous week and get as ready as I could for the next one, and to learn about all the standard and alternative treatments for my illness and try the ones that seemed like they might help (I often spent two hours a day doing research on the internet).

Those were pretty good strategies, but if I had that period of my life to live over again, I would add three more that I think would have helped a lot. They are:

1) Look for and think about small things I could to make my life better. For example, I could have made a list of movies I wanted to watch, including comedies to cheer me up and uplifting ones to give me hope, and then watched them (while resting in bed, if necessary).

2) Keep a gratitude journal. Gratitude has been shown to to improve people’s health and their outlook on life. In spite of having overwhelming fatigue (and many other difficult symptoms), I had a lot to be grateful for, including a roof over my head, food on the table, a bed to sleep on, and a whole lot more.

3) Give myself lots of self compassion and hugs because of how difficult my life was (instead of spending a lot of my time dwelling on how sick I was).

As I said, I wish I had known these strategies when my life was a overwhelming struggle because of chronic fatigue and my other symptoms. But I’m very glad that they’ve been very helpful for my clients and others I’ve shared them with, and I hope you will find them helpful too. And if you would like even more strategies, I invite you to get and read my How to Have a Chronic Illness – Without Letting Your Chronic Illness Have You report.

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How to Love Yourself When You Have a Chronic Illness – Part 2

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Last spring I wrote a post I called “How to Love Yourself When You Have a Chronic Illness.” In it I included a letter I had written to Richard M. Cohen, an author and award-winning journalist, in response to an article he had written for O – The Oprah Magazine. In his article, Cohen, who has had multiple sclerosis for 25 years and has had colon cancer twice, wrote that what he sees in the mirror disturbs him (I’m sure because of how having MS has changed how he looks), that he will never love himself, and that the idea of self-love seems mythical.

In my letter, I wrote that compassion is a form of love, and I suggested that Cohen give himself the same compassion that he would give to his wife or one of his children if they were facing the same serious health challenges that he is.

I reread that post recently and I saw that while my suggestion to Cohen was a good one, it didn’t go far enough. Here’s why:

Those of us with chronic illnesses deserve and need compassion, and I have found that my clients understand that and see that it makes sense to give themselves the same compassion they would give to someone they cared about who had a chronic illness.

But we also need and deserve to be loved. While we deserve compassion because of the challenges and pain we live with because of our illness, we deserve compassion (and need it) because we are human beings. Very few people love their children, parents, partners, or other loved ones any less if they are diagnosed with a chronic illness. They don’t wonder if they are less deserving of love or less loveable. And you are not less deserving of love and no less lovable because you have a chronic illness.

So be as good to yourself as you would to someone you truly loved and give yourself lots and lots of loving and compassionate hugs.

For more ideas of things you can do to have a much better life when you have a chronic illness, sign up for my free report: Having a Chronic Illness is the Pits – Here’s How to Live Well Anyway. When you do, you will also get my bi-weekly “Tips For How to Have a Better Life When You Have a Chronic Illness” (from which you can unsubscribe at any time).

Note: Richard Cohen never responded, so I don’t know if he followed my suggestion, but I hope he did.

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Another way to benefit if you’re in an online support group

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

In this post, I’m going to describe a very different way to benefit from participating in on online support group. But first I will say a few words about them for those who have never joined one.

They are great places to connect with others who understand what it’s like to have your illness because they have it too. And the groups are also a great place to support others and receive support in return.

To find support group, go to yahoogroups.com or groups.google.com. There are literally thousands of them.

If you are someone who already participates in online support groups, here is a new and very different way to benefit from them: go through your group’s message archives and read your old posts. Read them not as you normally read things you’ve written, but the way you would if someone else wrote them.

Read them with empathy and compassion. Let yourself be deeply touched by the writer’s words and try to imagine what he or she was feeling, when he or she wrote each post.

If you were hurting a lot physically or emotionally when you wrote those posts, reading them may bring tears to your eyes. If they do, give yourself a big, comforting and compassionate hug, and keep reading.

From my own and my clients’ experience, I know you will find reading your old posts with empathy and compassion to be very healing – healing that you deserve!

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I’m So Sorry

Friday, August 14th, 2009

In this post I want to tell you three of the most important words I’ve learned in my life. Those words are: I’m so sorry.

You may be wondering or guessing why I think those words are so important. The answer  is that I have learned how to live very well in spite of having a serious chronic illness (Crohn’s disease) and learning about those words – and how to use them – has been a major reason why. They helped me when my symptoms were severe, and I’m convinced that they’ve helped me keep my illness in remission. Also, like many others with a chronic illness, I’ve suffered from depression, and those words have been miraculous in helping me heal from it. And when I’ve taught my clients and others with chronic illnesses those words, and then told them how to use them, they’ve helped them greatly too.

So how did those words do that, and how can they help you? After all, they are very ordinary words and you’ve probably said them many times. So had I. But they didn’t help me with my illness until I discovered who to say them to, and how to say them.

What I discovered, after struggling for many years, was that the person I needed to say them to was me. While I had family and friends who cared about me deeply, that wasn’t enough. I saw that there was a part of me that needed to know that I cared about him, that I was really sorry he was in so much physical and emotional pain, and that I wanted the best for him.

The other part of my discovery process was really seeing, for the first time, the tremendous amount of physical and emotional pain I was in. I had become pretty good at minimizing and even denying it, and a part of me wanted to keep doing that. But the pain became so great and had such a big negative impact on my life that I knew that continuing to deny it was no longer an option.

So I told the person in the mirror how sorry I was that he had so much pain and I hugged myself several times a day. And over time, the emotional pain lifted and my Crohn’s disease went into remission.

Let me say here that my discovery about those three words was not a magic cure for my illness. I did extensive research into standard and alternative medicine from the day I was diagnosed. I found the treatments that worked best for me and benefited greatly from them. But I truly believe that my discovery of how to use those three words is what has made it possible for me to keep my illness in remission without drugs.

So what about you? Are you trying to minimize or deny your physical or emotional pain? Is there a part of you that is yearning to hear the words I’m so sorry from you? If there is, I hope you’ll say them with lots of kindness, compassion, and understanding, and give yourself lots and lots of hugs. And after you’ve done those things for a couple of weeks, I would love for you to come back here and to leave a comment about how well they worked.

Best wishes,

Tom

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