Hi Friend.
I had a really tough night last week. Maybe you will be able to relate?
I woke up at 1am feeling sweaty, confused, heart racing and had no idea what had woken me up.
I just didn't feel right but I needed to go to the bathroom and as I stood up, I got a massive cramp in my right thigh that locked up my whole leg as I hobbled my way to the toilet.
So there I was, sitting on the toilet, trying to stop my leg cramp when my vision started shutting down and I felt like I was going to pass out and I had no idea if it was from low blood pressure, which I can fix by lying flat or low blood sugar that needs immediate treatment or it could kill me.
The challenge was to deal with my leg cramp, make it safely back to bed without passing out and check my blood sugar, all of which felt next to impossible in that moment when my body was doing something scary, my heart is racing and my mind wants to shift into full panic mode.
Have you been there [[firstname]]?
It's those moments with chronic illness when you feel more alone and vulnerable than you ever have in your life. When the reality of chronic illness hits you right in the face and you don't know how you are going to make it though this moment.
So here's what I have trained myself to do over the past 8 years to get through those moments and give myself the support I need:
- Stay calm. I shift straight into comfort and reassurance mode and coach myself into the next step. I literally speak to myself like I would speak to anyone else who is anxious and afraid. This is really important because most of us immediately jump to the worst case scenario which can easily tip you over the edge into panic.
- Check the most urgent thing first. In my case, the symptoms of low blood pressure and low blood sugar are very similar. Low blood pressure needs me to lay flat, low blood sugar needs immediate glucose or I could go into convulsions and die. The leg cramp needed immediate magnesium oil so I did that first because the leg cramp was making it difficult to stand and walk which would stop me getting back to the bed where my blood glucose test kit is.
- Evaluate if it's an emergency or not. Once I double checked that my blood sugar was not the issue, I focussed on my other symptoms to see if I needed to call an ambulance. Luckily I have only needed to do that twice in 8 years and once I was able to lie down and keep working on calming and reassuring myself, I judged that it was safe for me to try to go back to sleep.
The most important step after you have experienced a really tough moment with chronic illness is to leave the moment behind.
So many of us live with anticipatory anxiety or grief.
What this means is that you go through a horrible experience with your illness that you never want to happen again.
Because you never want it to happen again, your mind perceives it as a threat and starts to dwell on how bad it will feel to have to experience it again. So you keep thinking about it happening again which is exactly what you don't want.
Then you start telling yourself all of the scary "what if" worst case situations like: - What if this keeps happening every night?
- What if I never get better?
- What if this keeps getting worse?
- What if I can't find anything to help me?
- What if this kills me?
This creates even more anxiety, all you can think about is that horrible thing happening again and the constant stress and anxiety creates more inflammation which drives up symptoms and it turns into a vicious cycle that can ruin your life.
One of my mantras is that the time to deal with the horrible moments are when the horrible moments actually happen. I also remind myself that my track record for getting through those horrible moments so far is 100%.
Apart from taking reasonable precautions and taking the best care I can of myself, the rest is out of my control and there are so many good things in my life that I would much rather focus on.
Next time you are going through some weird, painful and scary thing that your body is doing or your illness creates, step up for yourself.
Talk to yourself in a comforting way, give yourself the reassurance you need, remind yourself that you have got through things like this before and don't abandon yourself to the wolves of your fears because they can eat you alive.
Remember Friend, if you want to learn all of the essential skills and emotional tools that I use to manage my own illnesses and make the best of my life, then book in your FREE Discovery Session with me now online.
You deserve to be helped, supported and believed and you don't have to deal with this alone.
Best wishes | 
