Coping with Chronic Illness and Its Effects

@PEMprincess Self-compassion has been so helpful for me. I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm actually going to recommend you to a woman named Laura Banks, who teaches something called Compassion Cultivation Training, designed by experts at Stamford. She's the sweetest person, and her facilitation of that eight-week training was my touchstone for jumping off into my own continued practice. A lot of self-compassion for me looks like actually talking to myself, addressing myself and my emotions directly. I use gentle terms of endearment and express support and empathy for what I'm feeling and going through. If I'm having a bad day, for example, I might take time to reassure myself: "It's okay to feel this way, sweetheart; of course you're tired and drained." That kind of validating self-talk, just really tender and kind, helps me a ton. Sometimes it also helps me to imagine I'm supporting a dear friend, or a young child who's feeling all these things; what would I say to that person? There are also self-compassion mindfulness practices, which you can find on YouTube.

@PEMprincess Financial independence is still a thing I'm working towards. Right now I do some piecemeal freelancing in various things when I have energy; I'm working with a physical therapist to stabilize my system to where I hope to be able to hold down consistent work even part time and/or remote; I'm working with a dialectal behavioral therapist to build my skill sets for managing the things life demands. I'm blessed for now to have temporary financial support from family, though not much support from them in other ways; I have to get that from my own support network.

@PEMprincess You're so welcome. Sometimes it helps to hear that you're not alone and that your feelings are totally valid and make perfect sense. Of course you're feeling under-supported and drained; anyone would be in these circumstances. Normalizing it has been a huge help for me. I do live on my own, and I've established a sort of flexible routine, if that makes sense; I have a list of chores that I try to cycle through every week to two weeks and when I have energy and can focus, I look at the list and pick the one or two that sound most doable and get those done. I also build deliberate chunks of time in my schedule, and sometimes whole days, where I have absolutely nothing planned and nothing required of me, which helps me restore energy and focus.