Unlike common illnesses, chronic diseases never fully go away. Knowing that you will never be the same again can be hard to accept.
When you push against this diagnosis, you can waste precious energy and emotions, not to mention find yourself in a negative mindset. However, accepting a diagnosis like this can go a long way toward your day-to-day outcomes and the long-term outcomes of your condition.
For some people, acceptance creates thoughts and feelings of giving up. It may feel like giving up hope of recovery or giving up hope of regaining your old life. Yet, most of us will struggle to come to terms with these changes to our bodies and life.
The good news is we can learn how to accept our conditions no matter where we are on our journey. Acceptance takes time, and like most things, this process has ups and downs.
Once you have thought you have accepted your new reality, you may be in a flare with those old emotions of anger or frustration resurfacing. So the question becomes how a person can accept a chronic illness diagnosis. Another question may arise as to why you should accept your new reality.
Accepting your diagnosis is a form of self-love, as it allows you to focus on your present and future without hanging onto the past. When we grow our self-love, we can improve our mindset and build our resilience, so negative moments become lessons rather than obstacles.
Three Powerful Ways to Accept Chronic Illness
Leaning Into Difficult Emotions
Besides dealing with your health issues and symptoms, there are also many emotions to cope with. While not easy, you can learn how to manage isolation, anger, resentment, sadness and more. When we stop pushing away these feelings and instead allow ourselves to feel them fully, we can stop the cycle of hiding from big emotions with unhealthy habits. Once we pause to feel these emotions, we can take a pause rather than acting immediately upon those feelings. This pause allows us to recognize that what we are feeling now isn’t necessarily what we will always feel. We can lean into what is creating these feelings to identify triggers, or we can lean into separating ourselves logically from the emotions.
Rewriting Your Story
Sometimes, a chronic illness diagnosis comes with being unable to work or do the things you love. When these things happen, they can shake how you see yourself and describe who you are. Rewriting your narrative is crucial to your identity. So how can you do this? Well, you can stop comparing yourself to others while focusing on what you can do. You can break down what’s important and focus on building towards that.
Another thing that may help is to accept that what your inner critic is saying comes from a place of love. You can thank the critic for keeping you safe but also know that you can try new things. Looking at your life as a journey means you don’t have to figure out your new identity immediately. Instead, you give yourself time to grieve while being able to see possibilities ahead of yourself.
If you want to know more about rewriting your narrative or why it is so powerful, Tony Robbins has an excellent post you can find here.
Dance New Steps When You Don’t Know The Old Ones
One of the hardest things to manage when it comes to chronic illnesses is how unpredictable things become. Flare-ups will happen no matter how careful you are. The future will have changes as you travel down the path of chronic disease. When you embrace creating your dance steps, you cast off the illusion of control that most of us hold onto in our lives. Once you do this, you feel free to adapt as you need to, allowing you to trust yourself and cope with a future when many things are possible. This is critical to being able to change your perspective of things.
Acceptance is the first step on the path to true hope. It is having a destination in mind but knowing there are many paths to take you there, and no specific one is better than another.
How Can I Move Forward?
I know from experience that living with chronic conditions is hard. I also know that acceptance makes all the difference in my relationship with my diseases. Acceptance is neither giving up nor letting go of hope, instead, it is empowering myself to embrace a new future. If you are feeling overwhelmed and need help accepting your condition, let’s connect and get you back to living life beyond chronic illness. Supportegy Wellness provides chronic illness support through various proven ways, including chronic illness support groups.