Emotional Autoimmunity: Dealing with the emotional issues of chronic illness

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From the moment you become chronically ill, all of the focus is on 'getting better' but what does that mean? 

And more importantly, how do you know how much recovery is actually going to be possible for you? 

The most common expectation is that 'getting better' means getting back to normal, they way you were before.

But getting back to normal and exactly the way you were before may not ...

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In my 13 years of living with chronic illness, almost every single health improvement I've gained has come from fellow patients, rather than Doctors. 

Not everything has worked for me but collective patient wisdom and experience and people being so willing to share what's helped and brave enough to blog about it or share it in online groups has made such a world of difference. 

But how...

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One of biggest emotional challenges of living with chronic illness is the impacts it can have on your relationships with others. 

So many of us living with chronic illness often feel that the people closest to us either don't understand, believe or support what we are going through and how much it has changes our lives and bodies. 

Friends can start to fall away, partners can struggle ...

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If I had to name the one question that almost every person asks me when we start working together, it's this: Is what I'm feeling normal? 

This is because there is a complete lack of understanding about what chronic illness is and what the appropriate and normal human emotional responses to becoming chronically ill are. 

Often, currently healthy people mistakenly believe that their hea...

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How do you find joy again? 

Question: It’s been 4 years now with chronic illness and I am so sick of being sick and I know everyone around me is sick of me being sick as well. 
 
 I feel like my whole life now is based around managing my symptoms and the exhaustion and the grief of everything I have lost. How can I start to feel some joy again because right now, ...

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Of all the emotional issues that come with chronic illness, the most painful and most damaging is shame.

While guilt is about something we have done, shame is about who we are and all of the ways we feel that we are bad, wrong, weak, lacking or 'less than' that make us so very different to everyone else.

Especially when we compare ourselves to others who have our illness and who seem to be doing...

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I asked my email and social media communities a while back to ask me anything about the experience of chronic illness that they were struggling with to see if I could help and in this episode, I am back with part 2. 

I was planning to answer three questions this time but unfortunately, I was running out of energy towards the end of recording and had to leave the last one for now. 

I wi...

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By far, the biggest and most upsetting issue for those of us living with chronic illness is not being believed. 

From Doctors, family, friends and even total strangers on the internet, there are so many people full of scepticism, unsolicited advice and downright disbelief. 

But how do you deal with the questions and comments like:

• It's all in your head.
• Why are you still so sick?
• Ther...

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The emotional and psychological impacts of becoming chronically ill so often go unrecognised, misunderstood belittled or simply ignored.

Which means that when it happens to you, you have no idea if the grief, fear, overwhelm and exhaustion that you feel are normal or that maybe, it is all in your head after all. 

A big part of my work is to normalise and validate the often complex emotions ...

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Most of my new clients with chronic illness are starting from a place of complete overwhelm and feeling like they are sitting in the wreckage of their lives and wondering, 'where do I even start to deal with this?'

So let's talk about overcoming that overwhelm and finding ways to help yourself take back some sense of direction and control. 

In this episode which will be a se...

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Chronic illness changes every aspect of your life and a large part of that is figuring out ways to best manage your symptoms and protect your energy. 

The biggest problem is though that other people can get in the way of that. 

Whether it's Doctors not supporting the treatment options you want, friends or family criticising or judging the changes you are making or havin...

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After a while, most people who live with chronic illness give up trying to talk about what it's like and how it feels, because people don't seem to understand. 

Especially as time goes on and those around you don't see you 'getting better' and can't seem to grasp what 'chronic' actually means. 

Often, when you do try to explain and seek support, you end up feeling judge...

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In this episode I answer questions from my chronic illness community including:

Can you speak to the cost of the unique stressors in chronic illness including not being able to trust the guidance of doctors, trying to resolve health problems alone and how do you cope when taking expert advice goes badly for you?

How do you revise your story of self, worth and identity when illnes...

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Today (June 19th, 2024) marks 4 years since my Type 1 diabetes diagnosis which makes this the perfect time to talk about how my chronic illnesses affect my everyday life. 

In this podcast I open up about each of my 4 different autoimmune diseases, the impact they have on me, what's changed  what ongoing issues I still have and how I deal with them.

This includes how it'...

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One of the big, missing pieces in supporting people with chronic illness is that there is so little acknowledgment that becoming chronically ill changes peoples lives and that this creates complex emotional issues that are in fact, completely normal. 

The typical experience is that you get your diagnosis (or not) and leave the doctors office with no idea what to do next and how to ...

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One of my main objectives both with my podcast and my work, is to educate and validate the very normal emotional experiences and issues that come with becoming chronically ill. 

The feelings of jealousy and envy are the ones we don't talk about because it creates so much guilt and shame to even admit them to yourself, let alone to others. 

Watching your friends doing al...

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Anxiety and dealing with constant 'what if' thoughts are something that every human has to deal with as our brain is  trying to interpret our environment for potential threats to try and keep us safe. 

But when you live with chronic illness, you will experience new levels of fear that create specific types of anxiety that non chronically ill people never need to think about.&n...

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When you live with chronic illness, you can feel so very alone which makes getting support more important than ever. 

What's often shocking though is discovering just how little support is actually out there!

There is so little knowledge about chronic illness in our communities, families, medical and social support systems that you can end up feel judged, blamed, isolated an...

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If you live with chronic illness and autoimmune disease, then you understand just how frustrating and debilitating brain fog can be. 

From the embarrassment of forgetting simple words, losing your ability to concentrate and focus or reading the same lines over and over again and still not being able to take it in, brain fog can have a significant impact impact on our work, relation...