Tag: goals

3 Must Do’s When Living With a Chronic Illness

On By epil(epsy)ogueIn chronic illness, Health and WellnessLeave a comment

Trying to be “perfect” with a chronic illness is impossible. However, being open to learning about yourself, and adapting to your ever-changing situation, can help you thrive in ways that may seem unattainable. Here are three basic things that greatly help manage living with chronic illness.

Turn Bad Days Into Good Data

There are no avoiding bad days when you have a chronic illness. There is no doubt that a bad day can cause feelings of anger, frustration, and grief when losing another day to your condition.

One way we can turn them into a positive is by learning everything we can about those days. Analyze your day or week leading up to that bad day. Was it food, lack of sleep, and/or activity that triggered this bad day? If you are not sure, keeping track will help you see patterns you never noticed before.

Photo by Isaac Smith

Sometimes with chronic illness bad days happen for no particular reason. But perhaps you can find something that you have the ability to manage. Changing that one thing can perhaps decrease the frequency and severity of the bad day.

A health journal can be an ally in tracking your ups and downs. You can create a diary on paper, or look for apps that fit your needs. Along with tracking the “what went wrongs” do not forget to note the “what went rights.” Remembering to mark those positives can help maintain perspective.

Treat Your Emotional Health, Not Just Your Physical Health

With chronic illness you more than likely have been prescribed medication (or several) to treat your physical health. You have maybe changed your routine, or added an activity in your life to help cope with your chronic illness. But have you added anything to help improve your mental health?

Photo by Mike Erskine

Sometimes people feel like we must hide our illness, or just “tough it out” but that can be extremely detrimental to your mental health. Along those same lines, mental health can be extremely detrimental to your physical health.

Take the time to acknowledge your emotions, so that you can deal with them in a healthy way. If you are unsure how to start, reach out to a professional to help guide you in your mental health journey.

Be Forgiving

Would you treat a friend badly because they had to cancel plans because of their chronic illness? I assume not. So why would you be down on yourself when you have to? Treat yourself how you would treat a good friend in the same situation.

Replace judgemental thoughts with love and forgiveness. When you catch yourself saying or thinking a negative thought, stop, and reframe the thought. For example, I find myself thinking “I’m so pathetic” quite often.

When I catch myself in those moments I stop, take a breath, and change that thought. “I may not have been able to open the jar, but I tried, and asked for help when I needed it. And for that, I am proud of myself.”
This may seem difficult at first, but the more you practice, the easier it becomes. Eventually, you may even find yourself skipping the negative thought in the first place!

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar

What are your “must do’s” in living with a chronic condition? Do you practice any of the above? Let me know in the comments below!

Create the Perfect Apology With These Five Tips

On By epil(epsy)ogueIn Health and Wellness, lifestyle, Mental HealthLeave a comment

‘Tis the season of forgiveness.

We all have said, and done things that we regret. We know we messed up. So how do we start the apology process? Sometimes it seems impossible.

If we break down the process into steps, and gather our emotions, it’s not.

Here are five ways to communicate that you are sorry, and have the other person feel your sincerity. 

Express your regret or remorse. Something happened, and it didn’t turn out well. How do you feel about what happened? Were your actions something regretful? Do you feel utterly empty without the other party’s presence in your life? Be honest and open about how you feel about the result of what happened.

Explain what you think went wrong (without pointed phrases). Pointed phrases are statements that shift responsibility to the other party. They invalidate the other person’s feelings. An example of a pointed phrase is “I’m sorry that you were offended” or “I’m sorry, but you…” They have every right to feel what they feel, as do you. As much as you wouldn’t want them to dismiss your feelings, don’t dismiss theirs. 

Request forgiveness and allow as much time as the other needs to process their emotions. Putting a time limit, or expressing an expected date of when the other person should forgive you, will most likely cause the other person to not want to even begin the forgiveness process. 

Before composing: Give yourself time to be in a space where you feel ready and able to apologize. Being sincere is more important than rushing an apology. Emotions of remorse best translate in a face to face interaction. in times of COVID-19, that may not be an option, but consider a video visit. Likewise, just your voice can convey sincerity over the phone. 

If you want to say sorry but feel like an in person or over the phone apology would cause more issues (ie. Interruptions, raised voices), a hand written one is better than none. No deed is too small if the relationship is worth restoring.

You are ready forgive/apologize, and move forward. How do you know the other party is ready? You won’t necessarily know. But don’t let assuming that the other party is not ready to forgive, hold you back from reaching out with an apology.

Do you feel like you need to apologize to someone? Are you going to use the tips above? Let us know, in the comments, how your apology was accepted (or denied).

I’m trying minimalism (to see how it would impact epilepsy) so you don’t have to.

On By epil(epsy)ogueIn lifestyle, Personal StoriesLeave a comment

My chronic illness causes constant fatigue. My body is battling itself from the inside, and it’s hard to deal with anything on the outside. Housework falls by the wayside; it is just too hard to make things happen. Everyday I got to see things getting piled up larger and larger, waiting for the time that I felt good enough to do something about it. And that time rarely comes.

One day I took a good long look at my house, and my life, and finally decided I needed to do something drastic to help me. What I ended up looking in to, was minimalism. At first I thought, “how ridiculous? I love the majority of my items in my home, I will never be able to part with them. I should just give up now.”

As I read, I found minimalism didn’t mean living with nothing, it meant living with less.

Research shows brain fatigue increases when it has to process more in an environment. Brain fatigue means body fatigue. Studies have found that clutter in a space raises cortisol levels. Cortisol is your stress hormone. Therefore clutter hits you with a double whammy, to your physical and mental health.

The more I thought about it, the more it started to look good for my epileptic brain. With things being simplified and reduced in my house, my brain would not need to use as much energy (because it really does not have any to spare). 

So, this is where we started.

Chalk board reminder if our Keep It Conditions.

Set some guidelines to help you out with the decision making process of what to keep, donate, or trash. Actually write these down, so that you have something visual to reference. Our guidelines are: 

  • Have I used this in the last year? Will I use it in the upcoming year?
  • Can it be replaced for less than or equal to $20? Can it be borrowed?
  • Would I purchase this item again?
  • Is this living out the purpose for which it was created? Or have I found a better use for this and it is currently doing its job?
  • Am I keeping it out of guilt?
  • if I had the opportunity, would I sell it in a yard sale?
  • Could somebody else use it or love it more?
  • Does it “spark joy”? (Inspired by the KonMari method)

My largest collection that sparks joy is my wardrobe. I love my clothing. I do not buy an item of clothing that will not create at least three complete outfits with the clothing items that I currently have. I am truly a curator. 💁🏽‍♀️

However, I do hold onto my items of clothing for decades. I’m not kidding, I have T-shirts that I wore in the 5th grade. (And yes they do still fit; I went through a very early growth spurt, and then never grew again.) 

So some items of clothing are clearly made for a younger person, and I am holding on to them purely for selfish nostalgia. That is where those questions come in. “Could someone else use or love it more?” 

Two bags of clothes ready for donation next to Al the avocado plant.

Most definitely, yes.

I feel better knowing that I’ve donated them and somebody else will wear and love them the way they should be loved.

The majority of my newer wardrobe has been left untouched, but a lot of other items have been donated, easing the stress of both me and the bar that holds my clothes!

Onion method is not called The Onion method because it’s stinky and makes you cry, it is because you focus on your house layer by layer. Start with the large items, or the items that you can easily identify that do not belong in that space.

Here are some items I found in my living room.

Left to right: Hair tie, Jack-o’-lantern necklace, mailbox key, kangaroo pencil, camera lense cover.

It is September, so that Halloween necklace has been out for almost a year. How embarrassing! 🤦🏽‍♀️ But it has a home in the Halloween decoration box in storage. The extra camera cover belongs in the camera bag, the pencil belongs in the office, the hair tie belongs in the bathroom, and the mailbox key belongs in the key bowl. And done! That’s five things already cleaned out of my living space! Small victory, but it feels pretty good.

Starting in the space where the smallest amount of work, makes the most visually impactful change, can be a great kickstarter. We donated a lot of clothes, but we don’t get to admire the closet like the clear space in the living room.

It is the room we hang out in the most as a family. Moving those 5 items made a clear open space that I can admire while the family spends time together. And this can be now more quality time because none of us are distracted by the mess that we are surrounded by.

The 15 minute rule. Limit yourself to 15 minutes at a time. Set a timer, and work consistently for that 15 minutes. If that is all you can manage for that day, it is absolutely fine, you did an amazing job.

Metallic Sandtimer – Not 15 mins.

In the beginning, that’s all I could manage. My body would get fatigued, or I just felt that I could not bring myself to do any more work. But I quickly found myself able to extend that 15 minutes. And not only physically I was able to, but I actually wanted to!

I’m not too sure if simplifying will help me as drastically as others. Regardless, I am sure that the benefits, no matter how small, would be worthwhile.

This is where we will start. I’ll give updates about this journey. I hope you are as excited as we, to find where this experiment brings us!

What is the level of clutter in your house? Do you have any tips on how to simplify that you find helpful? Let us know if you try any of the methods above, and how well it worked for you! 

How to Focus on the Positive (in a time of Negativity)

On By epil(epsy)ogueIn Health and Wellness, lifestyle, Mental Health10 Comments

“Just focus on the good”. – Advice I’m sure you have heard before.

Kind of a hard thing to do right now in the world. All the scary and bad thoughts that can easily occupy your mind. Everything and everyone is focused on the Coronavirus how terribly it is affecting the world. So if everyone and everything is having you focus on the bad, how are you supposed to get your mind at ease, and off of this pandemic?

The simple answer: change of mindset.

The better answer: small steps can help in changing your mindset.

This will not happen overnight. This is something that takes practice, and dedication. Dedication to see the good. This does not take more than a few moments, and you don’t need any special equipment. 

Right now change of mindset might seem like an overwhelming task. But all you need, is one. One good thing. 

How do you find your good thing of the day?

First assess who you are, where you are, and what you have in this moment. 

Is there someone in your life that is always your support? Have you accomplished something that maybe was a bummer doing, but you are proud that it’s done? Did someone say or do something that made you smile? 

Even if you’re something good is simple as: I had good snuggle time with my dog today. That’s where I need you to start – smallest things. Overtime reflecting on your day it will get easier, and you will find more, or bigger good things. I promise.

Enlist the help of your family and friends to start getting in the habit reviewing your one good thing of the day.I practice at the end of every day with my husband. But as long as we have been practicing, even we found we forgot to think of our one good thing, once this virus stopped the world. 

But being dedicated to our mental health, we picked it back up. Don’t let a slight lapse in practice discourage you. Just start again and let you one good thing of the day be that you are back focused on remembering your one good thing!

You’ve got this, friend. So go out there, and be prepared to start counting your good things!

Anything you can think of right now as your one good thing? Share it below in the comments.