How to Keep Busy and Stay Sane When You're Chronically Sick - Mindfulness?

Recently, as in the past couple of weeks, things have ramped up here. This is partly because I have gone back to class (and started a new one), and partly because I also had a couple of appointments and various things that needed attending to. As I have written before, managing this type of situation is quite difficult or challenging when you're struggling with chronic sickness. I am surprised and pleased to say that I think I have been doing quite well! I shall review this at half term, and see how I am managing once the culmulative effect occurs - hopefully things will continue to go well health-wise. I think when you have something like M.E. mixed with other health problems, it's the little achievements and triumphs that stand out - for me to even do any class/es is nothing short of a miracle, when you consider that a year or two ago, I couldn't even leave the house consistently (so couldn't plan to do a thing).

Green juice anyone?

At the same time as being quite pleased with my progress, one of the things I have been struggling with is my anxiety levels. I would like to think that without chronic sickness, I would never have suffered from the anxiety that I suffer from. Pretty much all my mental health issues relate back to being ill. I get very anxious, apprehensive and nervous about new things because I worry that I won't be well enough to manage, or that I will be too sick on the day, or that I will go somewhere by myself and then collapse or be too sick to cope and what will happen to me... and those kind of anxious thoughts are self-perpetuating, so once you start down that road, it only gets worse! Some of it is probably unfounded, but some is founded in past experience. As one M.E. blogger wrote in their blog, when you become unable to reliably and consistently do things, you start to let people down and they lose trust in you. In my case, I lost trust in myself. I don't really trust my body to be there for me in a reliable and consistent way, because it generally is not. Building a better relationship with my body is a WIP (work in progress).

Another aspect of the anxiety is that because my life is unconventional for someone my age, people judge me. Ever since I got sick as a child, I have been negatively judged... by my peers, their parents, my family's friends, random family members... work colleagues, perfect strangers... and the big one: the medical profession. When you experience the criticism and judgement from a young age, it's formative... it starts to form part of your world view. This became a problem for me because it made me socially anxious. I went from being a confident, outgoing child/person to someone who struggles to cope with socialising. Of course, when you add on how sick you feel, that makes socialising even less appealing and my solution has been, to some extent, to avoid. I found it easier to remove myself and avoid social situations than to have to be assertive and end up rowing/having cross words with whoever it was who thought it would be a good idea to judge/criticise/invalidate me.

As I knew this was a problem, I started to tackle it again (I have bouts of facing it) by signing up for courses where I would have to walk into rooms full of strangers and somehow manage/cope. At least one of these courses is profesionally important for my career development, so there has been a real motivation to actually manage to do it. In doing so, I signed myself up for a big bout of anxiety... you have to almost go through it, to come out the other side. So after I experienced this awful anxiety from Sunday/Monday through until my first new class on Wednesday, I decided I needed to do something more direct about it. It felt very out of control and unpleasant to be so worked up about something, that should not be so stressful.

I was wondering what I could do to help myself to become more confident in my own abilities and to be less reactive on a sub-conscious level about the things that I find difficult - new situations, talking to strangers, using the telephone... anyway, aside from deciding to challenge myself to face them rather than just avoid, I went to Long Melford for the afternoon, and popped into the bookshop there. There was a shelf of books about various, I guess, self-help and religious themes, and one stood out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Mindful-Manifesto-noticing-stressed-out/dp/1848508247/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

It has mixed reviews, but so far I am enjoying it. Mindfulness is not a new concept to me, but is also not something I have managed to integrate into my life effectively... yet. I am working on this area now. I also bought another book along the same theme, which I can't remember the name of, but will read after this one.

General update:

For anyone following my LDN journey, I am still taking 3.5 mg of it and will be looking to increase that in early July. I would like to increase earlier, but I daren't because I am committed with studies until then and I really need to pass the course I am taking.

I am still taking random supplements when I remember. The best one is high dose Vitamin C, and also Vitamin D too. I really need to take the Vitamin D because not only have I been severely deficient in it in the past, but when I started trying to go in the sun without any sun protection for a bit (to allow me to actually get some Vitamin D), I ended up with a lesion on my face!

Another reason I think I have been feeling a bit better is because I started juicing again: green juice and eating a lot of salad, plus some 'slaw' and fruit, as I need to increase my raw vegetable and fruit intake again. I find that it does make a difference to the way I feel, especially the juice as it is quickly absorbed.

I am debating about whether to try the Bob Beck protocol, but at the moment I am holding out because I have a feeling that it would make me a lot worse before I started to feel better, and with the things I am committed to doing at the moment, feeling worse would be a disaster. The other thing that concerns me about it, is how I would take LDN. You are supposed to come off all prescription drugs (thyroid supplement is okay as it's a hormone) while doing the protocol and be careful about consumption of various foods. I have a feeling I could keep taking LDN if I took it straight after one of the things you have to do, but I need to check into that. I would like to give it a try, as some people have had good results with this type of protocol, but I am also conscious about not making myself permanently worse - for me, my current baseline as it stands is bearable, but not over-useful... and if I were worse, I would struggle to do anything. As my aim at the moment is to go back to self-employment, and run my business, I really need to aim for more ability, not less. So we shall see...