Category: invisible illness
Chronic Pain Affects the Holidays
If you suffer from chronic pain, then you know how if affects your social life. Interacting with people is difficult because you cannot do all the same things they can do. You have trouble keeping up with the flow and people do not understand how you feel.
Having chronic pain can affect the holidays and your ability to participate. Along with chronic pain, also comes chronic fatigue. You can get very tired and need to rest. This can also cause frustration in dealing with family and friends who may not understand that you need to rest.
You have the right to take care of yourself and you need to keep your boundaries about what you can and cannot do. It is easy to get depressed when you are struggling through the holidays.
Some people end up self isolating for a variety of reasons. It can become tiresome to keep trying to explain to people about your condition. Some people find that they cannot get people to believe them. Invisible pain is invisible…and thus non-existent to people who cannot empathize.
You may have become alienated from family and friends who became tired of adapting for you. This can be a very painful experience and the holidays can be very triggering and depressing of you have lost people you once spent time with.
Then there are some people who hide their pain and try to keep up. You might do this because you do not want to burden people. You might just not talk about your pain because you know the people will not be sympathetic or they will not believe you.
If you are feeling alone, or are struggling with chronic pain today, feel free to connect with us about how you are feeling. You can leave a message in the comments below or you can write a post and leave a link for people to read.
Thanksgiving Meet-up on Gentlekindness Blog
On Thursday you are invited to connect with all of us here. Thanksgiving is the first of the holiday season and can trigger depression and anxiety in many people. Others are feeling lonely during the holidays.
If you are feeling alone or just want to connect, you can come here on Thanksgiving. I will create posts during the day that you can leave comments and also leave links to your own posts.
If you want to contribute a Guest Post , A Poem, or a Letter , feel free to do so. If you want me to post something for you, you can contact me at michelemimimish@gmail.com
If you have posts that you want to post the links to, you will see posts you can put them in the comments section of.
Artwork, poetry , details of what you are doing or how you are feeling are all welcome. Everyone is encouraged to leave kind, thoughtful comments on anything that others leave.
You are Enough – You Have Enough Within You
Invisible Illness
Dance Anyway
You are Not Your Mental Illness
About 1 in 5 people in the U.S. and England suffer from some kind of mental disorder. Other European countries have similar statistics from about 27 percent to 30 percent. Studies in South Africa say that over 30 percent of adults have suffered from some form of mental illness during their lifetime.
The statistics that have been gathered are similar is most countries with mental illness affecting about 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 people. This is based on information that has been able to be gathered but keep in mind that many people never seek treatment.
People have reasons for not seeking mental health diagnosis due to fear of stigma, lack of enough mental health facilities, lack of health insurance and other personal reasons that deter them.
A mental disorder does not mean you cannot function, keep a job, be a good parent, or that you are not as good as other people. Something is defined as a “disorder” when it interferes in your life in some way. This varies from person to person as to how your life may be affected.
Many people with a mental illness need medication in order to attain their best functionality and their best quality of life. Others are able to manage their mental illness with therapy or other intervention type treatments. Some people choose to use holistic or spiritual methods to deal with their mental illness.
There are many different mental disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and anxiety disorders such as PTSD and C-PTSD, Everyone is not born with mental illness and all mental illness does not have a genetic factor.
The brain can be affected by trauma and by abuse. Disorders such as PTSD and C-PTSD are caused by abuse or trauma. Other disorders like depression and severe anxiety disorders can have roots in abuse including emotional and mental abuse. There is also a high number of people with other disorders that also either had abuse during their childhood or domestic violence as adults.
Mental and emotional trauma can be caused by violence upon or around a person. It can be caused by being in a traumatic event or witnessing a traumatic event. Other things like living through a natural disaster, living in poverty, the loss of a child, wartime exposure, and many other things.
The brain creates associations related to what it has experienced. Associations in the brain can cause emotional responses that arise from connections in the neural pathways. Different parts of the brain are affected by different mental illnesses. These can be seen in CT scans which were done to study the brains of people with bipolar. depression, OCD and other mental disorders.
If you or a loved one suffers from mental illness you are not alone. With the percentage of mental disorders being around 30 percent most people have friends, family members or loved ones that have a mental disorder of some kind. You may not know about mental illness in all of your friends or family because some people keep it a secret from others.
Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. The stigma about mental illness makes the problem worse by causing people to fear seeking help or to talk to anyone about it.
You are not your mental illness. Neither is your friend or family member. People with mental illness are not usually dangerous. There are only a few mental illnesses that predispose people to violence. Most people with mental illness are suffering within themselves and not causing harm to others at all.
Suicide rates are high in every country. There many death related to suicide and the feelings of hopelessness, shame, guilt , fear and worthlessness that people live with. People who suffer from mental illness are not all the same. People are people and they are all individuals.
Please do not see yourself as your diagnosis or as a label. You are unique and no one is just like you. Each person was born with value and worth that is innate. If you suffer from mental illness you should not have to feel shame about it. You just have an illness that is just as real as any physical illness.
People with physical diseases and illnesses are more likely to be recognized and less likely to be judged as a person, in regards to their diagnosis. Just because mental illness is invisible does not make it any less real or the suffering any less.
Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Juicing / PTSD and Bowel Disorders
For ulcerative colitis or irritable bowel syndrome, juicing with a juicer is a good method for getting nutrition without irritating any flare ups. If you are in the middle of a flare up it is recommended to go down to liquids for a few days and then soft foods, until the flare up is able to heal.
The body wants to heal itself and it can do this better when the problem is not being irritated by wrong foods.
Here are some recipes for the juicer that contain green veggies. This is a great way to get your vitamins without eating solid foods.
This is great video that talks about diet and home treatment for flare ups of ulcerative colitis. I liked this guy. He was very down to earth and knowledgeable.
You can use apples to sweeten your juice because green juice does not always taste the way you might like. You can use any color of apples. The following recipe is from All Recipes.com and it calls for green apples.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/230642/healthy-green-juice/
Basically this recipe calls for green apples cut in halves, 4 celery stalks , 6 leaves of kale, half a pealed lemon, 1 inch of fresh ginger and a cucumber. Put them through your juicer and then add extra apple if you need more sweetness.
I have been struggling with colitis for several months now. I was hospitalized once and I have taken antibiotics for infections a few times. It is a very frustrating disease that can cause fatigue and weakness in the body and even joint pain.
If you are having unexplained abdominal pain, changes in bowel habits, and pain in your joints resembling arthritis pain, you might have colitis. Arthritis and colitis often go hand in hand. This is the case with me. I also have moderate to severe arthritis, depending on which joint we are talking about. Some places it is more severe to the point of extreme pain.
Your general health is important and it affects your mental health. There is no way to separate the body and the mind. Any sickness in the mind will cause physical symptoms. Any sickness in the body will cause mental / emotional symptoms.
If you have PTSD or C-PTSD then you are prone to develop problems with the bowels. Anxiety disorders if any kind also can cause bowel disease and other problems. If you are recovering from narcissistic abuse or domestic abuse you are prone to develop problems with your bowels.
PTSD can crash your immune system. There are many physical problems, diseases and infections which can occur when your immune system is compromised by PTSD and trauma.
Depression and anxiety also lower your immune system and make you susceptible to disease and illnesses including ulcerative colitis.
Financial problems cause anxiety and depression, so you could say that financial stress can also cause infection and disease. Financial problems often follow someone after they get out of an abusive relationship. So then you are particularly prone to a crash of your immune system because you have the financial stress along with PTSD from the trauma.
I wish you all good health and peace of mind,
Annie
OCDvocate Program – Check out the site and You can sign up to get a free Wristband – OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
This is the link …HERE... to the page where you can sign up for the free wristband and be on the email list
This is the link ...HERE...to find support groups for OCD in your area by typing in your zip code
If you write any posts about OCD dealing with your personal experience, advocacy or any activities supporting OCD sufferers then you can tag them with IOCDF and #OCDvocate and your post will show up when people search those terms.
http://gentlementalannie.com/2015/09/09/2-more-days-tomorrow15-wspd15/
I’ve taken the pledge and signed up to be an OCDvocate for the International OCD Foundation. You can find out more too and sign up if you want – here. They can even send you a wristband!
Celebrate the Little Things
GentleKindness 