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HAWMC Day 19: Defeating Stress

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Welcome to the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge brought together by WEGO Health – a social network for all health activists.  Again, I am participating in the annual Writer’s Month Challenge in which I will be writing about my health activism and health condition based on given prompts.

Sunday 19th April: Stress Awareness Month 

What’s the best way you deal with stress?  How do you like to let loose to escape common stressors?  Share with us your favourite ways to shake off the stress

Stress is defined as “the physical, mental or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension”.

Stresses can be external (from the environment, psychological, or social situations) or internal (illness, or from a medical procedure for example).   When these stresses are triggered, it initiates a complex reaction of our neurologic and endocrinologic systems also known as the ‘fight or flight’ response, in other words, our body prepares us to either fight the cause of our stress or run away from it.

no-stress

Everyone is susceptible to stress and is something that everyone will experience many times during the course of a lifetime.  It can be caused by anxiety over exams, financial problems, family arguments to name but a few examples.

Chronic Illness Cat understands that stress levels can increase when living with a chronic illness
Chronic Illness Cat understands that stress levels can increase when living with a chronic illness

Furthermore, everyone is susceptible to the effects of stress.  However, living with a long-term health condition makes you particularly vulnerable.  In addition, to challenges that are normally faced, chronic illness can provide new stressors, including:

  • pain or discomfort from symptoms
  • managing the condition and coping with the treatments
  • adjusting to the new limitations that are caused by the condition
  • feelings of frustration loneliness and isolation

There are several strategies that they suggest to increase the quality of life for those living with chronic conditions and to minimise the challenges that go with living with a long-term illness, such as:

  • Self-Management: Making positive conscious decisions to help ease the symptoms experienced and to improve quality of life.  These include the choice of eating nutritious foods, getting plenty of sleep and exercise, all of which can help improve mobility and ease symptoms as well improving mood and lessening the effects of stress
  • Developing adaptability: By accepting your condition and the limitations that arise as a result can allow you to take control of the condition as well as allowing you to develop coping strategies that work for you.  And by doing so also allows you to better manage any new challenges as they arise
  • Understanding the condition: It’s always helpful to learn everything about symptoms and treatment options.  It’s also helpful to observe your body and learn any triggers that exacerbate the symptoms as well as those which ease the symptoms as they will not be the same for every patient.  Use a journal to record the insights that may help you manage the symptoms.
  • Managing emotions: Experiment with different strategies to manage stress and other negative emotions.  Find the strategies that work well for you can incorporate these into your daily, or weekly routines.

What has worked for me? These are some of the strategies that I have found particularly helpful, and not only for stress management but distracting me from symptoms such as chronic pain:

  • Listening to music: When I am stressed or experiencing excruciating pain then I like to press play on a playlist of my favourite songs and listen to them whilst lying down on my bed with my eyes closed and focusing on the positive, inspiring and uplifting lyrics482887415
  • Breathing and relaxation exercises: As someone who experiences anxiety as part of my condition, or when I am experiencing insomnia I find breathing and other relaxation techniques very useful to help.  It is important to regularly practice these types of techniques, as they are much like muscles which need to be worked on to be effective.  And after practicing these techniques I usually feel so relaxed that sleep comes very naturally!Word Relax on beach
  • Colouring-in: A new technique that I have discovered, yes, it’s no surprise children are so relaxed as colouring books really help with switching off the brain and helping us to unwind from the stresses in our lives.  Although, I have been using it as a distraction technique to manage the pain I have been experiencing, which is helping and is an activity I am very much enjoying!

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  • Puzzle Books: These are another great distraction technique from stress, anxiety, and pain.  The concentration needed to complete them is a welcome break from worrying about the little stresses in life, or about the troubling symptoms.  My recent favourite puzzle has been the codebreaker – what is yours?
  • Painting Nails: If  am feeling low or particularly unwell, painting my nails with a bright, bold colour always cheers me up, and as someone who suffers from shaky hands I also need a lot of concentration to do a good job and in doing so any pain or stress that I may be experiencing is forgotten!

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In Chronic Illness

HAWMC Day 12: When in Need of Self-Care…

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Welcome to the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge brought together by WEGO Health – a social network for all health activists.  Again, I am participating in the annual Writer’s Month Challenge in which I will be writing about my health activism and health condition based upon given prompts.

Sunday 12th April: Day of Rest

Kick your feet up!  What is your ideal day in?  When you’re having a bad day, or a long week – how do you relax, recharge, and reset yourself?

Self-care can be defined as the process of maintaining health and managing chronic illness through health promoting practices and self-management.  It could also be defined as coping strategies during relapses or flares of symptoms.  Self-management are behaviours that are performed in response to signs and symptoms of illness.

When living with a chronic illness, therefore it is important to embed self-care and self-management practices into one’s routine.  Perhaps one important aspect of self-care is having a day of rest on days in which symptoms are particularly bad, or even days following a relapse to allow the body rest and recuperation, and a chance to regain depleted energy levels.

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Recently, the symptoms associated with my neurological condition such as pain, dizziness and the trembling and weakness in the legs have been debilitating; often finding they become worse days after trips out with my carer.  As a result, I have been in need of days of rest myself, so this post should come easy!

These are some of my top tips for activities to put into place on those bad days, or just for when you need to relax, recharge or recuperate from life with chronic illness:

  • Date with Netflix (other streaming service are available!) or DVD: When I am having a bad day, or in need of a quiet or relaxing day, then watching a film is one of my favourite ways to spend my time, especially for someone who is somewhat of a film buff.  In particularly I love romantic dramas or even a good romantic  comedy.  Nicholas Sparks adaptations, such as Safe Haven, The Best of Me and The Notebook are amongst my favourite films to watch when having a bad day.  Or, the need of a quiet and relaxing day is a perfect opportunity to discover new films to enjoy20150411_183711
  • Art Therapy: The pain that I experience in my legs has been really bad of late.  So bad that it is hard to concentrate or think about anything else.  A while back, however I remembered an article that I read that discussed the new craze and resurgence of colouring books for adults.  In the article it suggested that the art of colouring-in is very beneficial for relaxing and beating stress and anxiety.  Colouring allows a person to concentrate and escape from their thoughts and daily life in a similar way that mindfulness does.  At the same time, I seen advertising for a new magazine called Art Therapy, which has pages of different patterns and designs for users to colour-in, also including pages dedicated to insights  regarding to mindfulness and relaxation.  Basically the magazine allows for quality time with yourself.  I subscribed almost straight away and after receiving the first issue, I have been colouring during my days of rest and has found it has been a great technique to distract myself from the pain.  It’s also really fun!20150404_182614
  • Pampering!: Nothing like a bit of pampering to relax and give yourself some self-love.  If I am feeling down or had a bad week, then I love nothing better than to use one of my luxurious nail kits and paint my nails.  Whilst Mum and I were in Bath, and my pain was bad, she went into the local Lush store and bought me a Massage Bar which includes an oil which has been shown to increase serotonin levels in the brain.  A great way to give yourself a little pampering and lift your mood at the same time!20140920_165005
  • Create a happy and relaxing playlist: Music has been shown to have a positive effect on mood and well-being.  And I love music and have songs on my iPod that triggers a special memory or instantly makes me smile.  So, why not create a playlist of happy and uplifting songs to put on your MP3 player for when you need a pick me-up, or relaxing and chilled music for the times you need to unwind and recharge.
  • Create a Comfort Box: I have written about the concept of a comfort box in previous posts.  But simply, a comfort box is a box that you can fill with things that brings you comfort, joy and relaxation.  Ideas to put in a comfort box include craft kits, pictures of happy times, favourite books, films or television boxsets.  Other examples include scented candles, favourite snacks or even a journal.  The comfort box can even be placed under or near your bed so that it can even be of use when stuck in bed due to chronic illness.

    Inside view of Comfort Box
    Example of a Comfort Box
  • Spend time stroking your pet: Take time stroking a pet (if you have one) as research has found that doing so can lower your blood pressure, helps the body release a relaxation hormone, and even helps cut down levels of a stress hormone.  And it has beneficial effects for the animal too!
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A Bad Day Does Not Mean The End of the Day…

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Regular readers of my blog, and especially those who follow me on social media will know that life recently has been very tough due to the symptoms that are caused by the neurological condition that I am now forced to live with.  The symptoms associated with my neurological condition such as dizziness, fatigue, pain as well as the severe weakness and trembling in the legs have all deteriorated.  And as a  result of this deterioration, it has resulted in the loss in the ability to do a lot of the things that once came so easily, or those activities that I enjoy participating in.  One example, is the great difficulties that I have experienced in visiting our local high street.  Before this sudden deterioration, I found it so easy to be able to park in the town’s car park and walk the moderate distance towards the top end of the town to visit the shops that I like to browse and buy everything that I need.  However, recently due to the deterioration in the symptoms in my legs (the pain, trembling and weakness) even the short walk from the car park to the shops have felt more like the prospect of walking Mount Everest.

Dealing with symptoms can often feel like an uphill battle...
Dealing with symptoms can often feel like an uphill battle…

As a result, my carer has instead had to use the disabled parking bays in the town centre itself, so that I am able to use the amenities that I need to use, and still be able to go to the shops that I like to visit.  This arrangement has been far easier as they are extremely close to all the shops that I regularly shop at, but in all honesty, some days it is still a struggle to go shopping because of the severe weakness and trembling in the legs.  The dizziness, has also caused a very big obstacle in going out because it has become so intense, and has resulted in me having to wear a hat when visiting places (wearing a hat helps to limit the exposure to triggers that can cause vertigo, double vision or make the dizziness worse).

Last week was a particularly bad week, and a trip to town was cancelled after my legs almost gave way in the middle of town.  Instead, because the pain and weakness was so bad, my carer and I returned to the house and watched a film.  It is bad mornings with chronic illness like these which can be difficult for our morale and self-confidence; and very often it can feel that our day is already over thanks to chronic illness, unable to accomplish anything because of debilitating symptoms and so instead we find ourselves spending the rest of a ‘bad day’ spent in bed or lying on the sofa watching a marathon of our favourite TV series (my guilty pleasure of the moment is One Tree Hill).

However, I recently learnt that it does not have to be this way.  I found a blog post that read:

Today is not over yet.

And it is true.  At the time, I wrote off the day that my legs decided not to work properly and had to spend the morning watching a DVD instead of the shopping trip I had planned.  But that was not the end of the day.  After the film, and after I regained enough strength in my legs, my carer and I took a short drive to a nearby coffee shop and had lunch.  It actually turned out to be a lovely trip out and exactly what I needed to take care of myself and my body against the effects that my condition has had on my life.  And perhaps ‘Today is not over yet’ is a mantra that we spoonies need to remember.  Just because a day has started off bad because of the effects of chronic illness does not mean the day will be bad.  It does not even mean that the day is over.

Finding joy can often be like seeing a rainbow appearing behind clouds...
Finding joy can often be like seeing a rainbow appearing behind clouds…

We can find joy in the little things on the bad days – a letter or card from a dear friend landing on the doorstep, a cuddle from a furry friend, a favourite song on the radio, someone making our favourite meal. Our silver linings can come from the smallest of things.

So, our chronic illness may have meant that we have frittered away our time doing as little as possible, however as the quote suggests it does not mean that our day is over.  We are still here and we are still very much alive and as long as we are it is not to late to do something, to do anything.  It can provide the perfect opportunity to pursue some self-care practices in order to take care of not just our physical health but also our psychological health.  A few self-care activities may include:

  • having a soothing bath
  • meditating
  • reading
  • pampering yourself, e.g. getting hair done or even a manicure
  • crafting
  • can even be as simple as setting limits for yourself

Even if you do end up doing something, it may be something that we hadn’t planned on doing or even wanted to do.  However, it might just end up being something we needed or better than originally planned.  Just like my impromptu visit to a local coffee shop.

So next time, you have had a bad start (or at any point of the day, really) to the day and your thought is navigating towards writing the entire day off as a bad one, just remember:

Today is not over yet.

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