Posted by fxckfeelings on October 3, 2019
Nobody wants to hear that their health problems are chronic, i.e., that the symptoms you’re dealing with are never really going to go away. If you’ve got anxiety, however, it’s not just unpleasant to hear that you’ve got a chronic illness–it can be downright impossible. Your brain is wired to obsess, so it’s natural to keep searching for a solvable problem instead of accepting the one you’ve got. Instead of fruitlessly fixating on ways to fix yourself, here are five ways to force yourself to accept you’ve got a chronic illness.
1) Resist Revisiting the Diagnosis
Don’t believe your feelings when they tell you that if you could just find a better doctor/hospital/health care system then you’d be able to find someone who knows how to help. Bad news often makes people feel that way, but searching for better news is a good way to make the inevitable disappointment even more painful. Your job isn’t to find a cure or just the right doctor to deliver it, but to look for treatments that might help and figure out how much risk they pose to your health and finances.
2) Get A Civilian Second Opinion
Find a friend, relative, or therapist who can help you figure out your options, focus your questions and keep them realistic. Don’t look for blanket reassurance and emotional support, which won’t protect you from listening to every charismatic quack you find or embracing a never-ending series of unlikely and dangerous treatments. Ask your trusted guide to help you interpret what your doctor says and ask yourself and your doctor whether you’ve gotten all the necessary tests, what any possible risks or side effects are to a suggested treatment, and whether you’ve tapped into all the expertise available.
3) Confusion Isn’t Failure
When the first round of tests don’t offer a cure or explanation, don’t let helplessness or fear convince you that you’ve failed to find the right help. Remind yourself that it’s important to know the conditions you don’t have; otherwise, you wouldn’t know what treatments won’t help you and aren’t worth pursuing. Then get a second medical opinion to help you figure out whether there are other tests worth doing or treatments worth trying. Either way, trial and error is what chronic illnesses are all about, so don’t get discouraged quickly if you get negative results or don’t see immediate improvement.
4) Dictate Your Own Direction
Don’t blindly ask your doctors to tell you what to do. Instead, gather as much information as you can and ask them why they think a particular diagnosis isn’t worth pursuing or treatment isn’t worth doing. Without letting your anxiety push you into an endless quest for the answer you desire, use it to gain expertise in your actual, undesirable situation so you gain confidence in your decision making. Having learned all you can, you will develop your own opinions about how you wish to manage your symptoms; knowledge may not lead you to a cure, but it will make you feel less helpless and doomed.
5) Get New Goals
Once your research into your illness has persuaded you to accept that a cure is unrealistic, assign yourself a new set of management goals. They should include seeking advice and gathering knowledge from other people with your illness who have been successful at living with their symptoms and deciding whether there are management techniques or medical treatments worth trying. You must also select clinicians who have the expertise to provide treatment, advice, and coaching over the long term. Most importantly, don’t let your diagnosis consume you; don’t focus so much on your illness that you forget the other important things in your life, like your relationships, work and values. Just because you’re not a healthy person doesn’t mean you can’t still be a good one.
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 5, 2019
Paranoid thoughts don’t just feel inescapable, they feel infinite; convince yourself that one person is talking about you and you can find yourself doubting every friend and decision you’ve ever made. There’s no way to stop your brain from thinking or feeling whatever it pleases, paranoid or not, but here are five ways to manage those paranoid thoughts before they paralyze you completely.
1) Don’t Go Nuts Trying To Make Them Go Away
Trying to completely stamp out paranoid thoughts and feelings is like trying to eliminate intestinal gas; it’s a futile, painful exercise that make you obsessed with an asshole. Yes, medication or relaxation exercises may help to some degree, so they’re usually worth trying. In the end, however, there are usually some paranoid thoughts you can’t get rid of and need to accept and deal with. Dealing with them, however, doesn’t mean letting them run rampant and torment you; it means developing a bullshit detector that will keep the craziest thoughts under control.
2) Don’t Confuse Thoughts with Truth
Instead of trying to eliminate paranoid thoughts, work hard to evaluate them; ask yourself exactly what you think people are saying and who’s likely to actually react so strongly. With the slightest bit of scrutiny, these thoughts become easily dismissible; it should quickly become clear that you can’t think of anything you’ve actually done wrong, or imagine the people you care about judging you so harshly or the ones you don’t care about being too concerned about you either way. If, on the other hand, you think it’s possible some of your actions have been questionable, then it’s worth taking a harder look.
3) Examine Your Actions and Acquaintances
If you suspect you’ve done something really bad, think carefully about whether this action truly goes against your own values; ask yourself whether you’ve actually done anything so wrong that would give people a right to judge you badly or earn their disapproval. If you decide you haven’t really done anything that shady but that your friends may be overreacting, think about the whether the relationships with the people who make you paranoid are actually worth it or whether you’ve done anything to make them more important than they need to be. Relationships with people who judge and scrutinize you unfairly aren’t just unimportant, they aren’t worth having, period.
4) Reject Empty Reassurance
It’s tempting to ask people to assure you that it’s all in your head, and that they’re not angry and have no critical thoughts about you. Unfortunately, making such requests is like scratching at a scab; the relief is temporary, but every time you go back for more you’re actually making the problem worse. Plus you’ll just end up getting more paranoid wondering what those people think about your requests for reassurance, which pushes you to ask again, and so on, until you really have done something they’ll have a genuine reason to be annoyed about.
5) Forget The Thoughts And Find A New Focus
Once you’ve examined the content of your thoughts, the context of the relationships that seem to stimulate them and the credibility of both, it’s time to accept your conclusion and force yourself to move on. You can’t control people’s thoughts—your own or anyone else’s—so it’s time to focus on the stuff you do control, like your words and actions, and keep busy doing things you need to do. You can’t stop being paranoid, but you can find ways to keep those thoughts from overwhelming other priorities, preventing you from making smart decisions, and generally making you (and everyone around you) miserable.
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 18, 2019
When, like our recent reader, you know you’re trapped in a pattern of becoming the most attached to people who are the least interested or even worthy of your attention, it’s useful to strategize and make a plan for when the next would-be (but shouldn’t-be) object of obsession crosses your path. Here are five task-oriented techniques for overcoming obsession before it starts.
1) Accept Your Obsessiveness without Obsessing About It
You might think that you could avoid future fixations if you could just figure out why they happen, but plumbing the depths of your psyche to figure out which childhood trauma or lost toy caused you to be this way is, in fact, just another empty obsession that will lead you nowhere. As you’re already learned the hard way, there’s no better way to feed an obsession than to obsess about it, even if what you’re obsessing about is why you have it and how you can make it go away. In reality, no one knows why some people are prone to obsessive attachments and no one has a formula for ungluing you once you’re stuck, other than time and a constant effort to manage your unfortunate habit.
2) Delve Into Distraction
When you start to feel obsessive thoughts creeping in, try to keep your brain busy with more important activities instead. A new object of fixation can be hard to resist—especially at first, when they seem so exciting and promising—but your attachments to other people, work, family, and your long term interests will always be much stronger and more meaningful, in the end, than any obsession. So immerse yourself in whatever usually matters to you, fighting as hard as you can until your shiny source of fixation fades away.
3) Don’t Think You Can Turn A Fixation Into A Friendship
As much as you’d be willing to settle for any relationship with an object of obsession, even a platonic one, it’s too much to think you can immediately force yourself into a benign friendship with someone you were once fanatical about. These attempts at casual connection usually just make the obsession worse, since you’ll now be analyzing and obsessing over every conversation hoping to find evidence of something more. Then you won’t be able to control your sensitivity to being treated as a casual friend and you will hate yourself if your vulnerability shows, which will then cause you to obsess over your pain and foolishness until you’re in full fixation meltdown. Accept the fact that your obsession limits your options and there’s to be no contact until you’ve recovered.
4) Process Patterns
Obsessive tendencies are a lot like weather; you can’t control them, but with enough experience you can learn to predict when they’re coming and prepare for the storm accordingly. Look back at the kind of person you get obsessed with and identify what drew you to them. Unfortunately, the things you like about obsessive objects probably double as red flags, which means those are the qualities you should look out for and avoid in the future. Then list the character qualities that might guarantee you a more positive and reliable response so you can seek them out instead. Recall how quickly you latched onto people in the past and examine whether you could have improved your safety by slowing things down, determining new mandatory procedures for pumping the breaks in the future. You may not be able to make your brain stop obsessing, but you can teach yourself ways to stop those obsessions from taking over.
5) Consider Treatment
If the symptoms of your obsessive tendencies are extraordinarily painful or interfere with work or important friendships and you can’t find a way to break out of the cycle on your own, don’t be afraid to find a therapist who can help you manage the issue. Consider first non-medical treatments, which include everything from exercise to cognitive behavioral therapy (techniques to manage unwanted thoughts) to hypnosis. If those prove ineffective, you should consider medical treatments, namely medication that is low risk yet frequently effective, like a high dose of an SSRI. Either way, don’t assume that you’re doomed to an endless cycle of empty obsession and heartbreak. With some work and even a little help, you can learn ways to manage obsessive tendencies so your obsessions no longer manage you.
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 9, 2018
If you live with a recurring, debilitating mental illness, you may, like our reader from earlier, be hoping to find a routine, a management plant, or just an ancient spell that will keep unpleasant, disruptive relapses at bay. Unfortunately, mental illness doesn’t reliably respect our routines—it is, for lack of a better word, crazy that way—so instead of looking for ways to prevent relapses, here are five ways to deal with a relapse if and when one does occur.
1) Don’t Confuse A Few Symptoms With Something Bigger
Beware the urge to overreact every time you find yourself dragging, getting overly anxious, feeling miserable, or generally exhibiting some of the symptoms that come with your illness, especially when they could have an easy-to-identify cause, like PMS or stress at work. Instead, force yourself to look at the bigger picture; review your list of prior symptoms and ask yourself whether these ones are occurring in the same bad combination that interferes with your work and relationships and refuses to disappear after you’ve tried to chase it away with some healthy, happy activities. Then get input from your therapist or just people who know you as you decide whether to declare an illness in progress and implement your relapse plan.
2) Put Your Relapse Plan Into Action
As described in our earlier response to our reader, you should already have prepared a list of the interventions and medications that did or did not seem to work in the past and used this experience, together with advice from clinicians and others who observed your responses, to devise a plan for stopping future relapses. Of course, you may not know for sure what worked because clinical symptoms are often slow to respond and circumstances make it hard to tell what treatment, among the many you may be trying at one time, is actually doing the trick. As such, your plan must take these uncertainties into account while offering you clear options.
3) Know What New Treatments Are Out There
After reviewing your current relapse plan with your current doctor, ask her about any new treatments that may have been developed since your last episode. While remaining open to new treatments and ideas, remember to trust your own ideas, because your doctor is less likely to remember what worked for you in the past than you do. Also, there is currently no way for doctors to make good predictions about what will or won’t work for you based on an analysis of anything but the most basic symptoms and, of course, your previous response.
4) Push Back Against Fear and Pessimism
Drawing on your previous experience with depression and anxiety, as well as any ideas you have picked up from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), doctors, and friends, ask yourself whether your current thinking is distorted by symptoms, e.g., whether your depression or anxiety is making you believe that nothing seems to be working, you can’t tolerate your symptoms, your health routine has failed, etc. Then use your knowledge about the facts of depression and your own experience with it to respond to those false, negative perceptions of reality that your illness is flooding your brain with.
5) Begin Treatment While Staying Both Positive And Pragmatic
Knowing, as you do, that the results of current treatments for mental illness are always hard to predict, even when a certain treatment has worked well in the past, focus on how well you do with the process rather than the quality of its results. If improvement is delayed or a particular treatment fails, remind yourself that other treatments may well succeed and that keeping your life on track and persevering with your work and relationships when you’re impaired and distracted by psychiatric symptoms is always an achievement to be proud of and feel good about, even when you feel terrible overall.
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 12, 2018
After experiencing something painful and difficult, it’s natural to work hard to regain control and find ways to avoid going through the same thing again. In some cases, that means avoiding a certain kind of person, or type of dark street, or a specific hairstylist, and hoping that these better choices, combined with better luck, will keep you safe. However, when the experience involves a severe episode of what could likely become a chronic mental illness, your smart choices and allotment of good luck are fairly limited; as much as you may want to prevent a recurrence of your disease and future symptoms, no search for the best treatment or routine is guaranteed to help. And pushing yourself too hard to keep yourself safe won’t just dangerously raise your expectations but distract you from the real work of making a plan for how to deal with a relapse. So real hope should never create expectations of control, be it over your safety, heart, or bangs, but on living one’s life as fully as possible when control isn’t possible.
-Dr. Lastname
I am a person who has a mental illness! I have treatment-resistant depression and ADD and a soupçon of PTSD. I am in treatment with a psychiatrist I like very much and it’s actually pretty chill that therapy really works. I’m a much healthier person than I was five years ago! So between that and the fact that I have been in therapy long enough to throw my inner child a quinceañera, I am not asking for treatment-related advice. It’s just that sometimes, daily life is really challenging, and as a moderately successful person with a moderately growing career, I spend a lot of time worrying that my relative instability is going to just tank everything. Like I have spent the past three days in a panicky fear that I had re-entered the depression abyss when it turned out to really just be hideous PMS, which I can’t predict (really). Either way, my Depressed Self was back in action and I spent a couple days sleeping, crying, and unable to work. My goal is to build a routine, consistent life with steady work and self-care, despite the occasional, disruptive curveballs that depression throws my way.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 17, 2018
Just as mental illnesses are harder for people to accept because they lack the visible symptoms of physical illnesses, cognitive disabilities are much more misunderstood than physical ones. After all, you wouldn’t tell someone paralyzed to just try getting out of their wheelchair, but people often assume that they can help someone who, like our reader from a previous post, has a legitimate cognitive impairment like ADHD by encouraging him to just work harder or focus. And of course, as well intentioned as that kind of advice may be, it’s also ignorant, which means it hurts more than it helps. Here are five common, incorrect ways to avoid when trying to help people with ADHD and what you should do instead.
1) Loading Up Their ADHD Library
Some books on ADD are quite good and filled with helpful information, but expecting someone with ADHD to read them, no matter how beneficial the books are, is bound to backfire. If someone struggles with accomplishing tasks, giving them another task to fulfill, no matter how much it may benefit them, is only going to further frustrate them and disappoint you. Besides, trying to change someone, rather than helping them manage who they are, is always going to be met with resistance and resentment. So give them your own synopsis of whatever you liked about the book and offer positive reinforcement if and when they seem to put those ideas into action.
2) Nagging with Negative Reinforcement
You may think that someone with ADHD would appreciate frequent reminders about tasks; after all, if they have trouble focusing, any effort to help them stay focused should be a good thing. Unfortunately, people with ADHD are also still people, and there is no human being on earth who responds well to constant nagging, especially when it culminates in an angry scolding for not listening to the nagging and getting the task done. Don’t then assume that someone who lacks the ability to remind themselves to do things is eager to outsource the constant reminders to you or anyone else. Instead, urge them once to think about a way to set up reminders for themselves, like on their phone, or to feel free to ask for your help in providing such reminders if that would be better.
3) Echoing Others/Past Achievements
Encouraging someone with ADHD to believe in himself by comparing current failures to past achievements, or the achievements of others, is intended to give that person confidence by showing him that he can perform better now because he once did, or because someone who isn’t smarter/just as flakey once did. But there may be good reasons why he can’t repeat an earlier success or equal the performance of someone who may be similar but isn’t his equal in other ways. So, without meaning to, you’re making him responsible for a failure he may not be able to help, and that won’t have a good effect on his mood, self-esteem, or performance (and certainly not on his relationship with you). Better to focus on his efforts, regardless of whether he gets good results, and, if the results suck, to find methods that manage his attention better.
4) Giving Them Goals
As with providing constant reminders (a.k.a. nagging), giving someone with ADHD very specific and quantitative performance goals also seems like a good way to help since you think you’re stepping up where their brain can’t. In reality, giving someone a goal, let alone reminding them about it and rewarding them for meeting it, isn’t really the same as giving them the techniques to wrangle their mind enough to meet it. Since inventing and pushing someone towards a finish line will probably just make them more flustered and frustrated, ask them to create and share goals for themselves. Then congratulate them on their efforts, regardless of results, while supporting successful approaches and encouraging the search for better ones if a goal isn’t met.
5) Figuring Out Why They Fuck Up
Whether the problem is a cognitive issue like ADHD or an everyday issue like drinking or infidelity, most people assume the best way to solve is to get to its source or cause. So you may think you’re helping someone with ADHD by getting her to explore her emotional reasons for failing, e.g., that she’s performing badly because she’s secretly really angry at you and trying to defeat you out of spite, or because she’s afraid that succeeding will set her up for future shame, humiliation, or rejection when she eventually fails again. In reality, finding the source of a behavioral problem gives you an explanation, not a cure; being abused might be the reason you started drinking, but admitting that causation won’t be the reason you stop. With ADHD, the cause isn’t anything someone has done or feels, but the bad luck and/or genes they were cursed with. So trying to help someone find out why they have ADHD is in fact only pushing them to needlessly blame themselves for a problem they didn’t create. Instead, stop trying to fix or change them, period; you don’t get rid of or overcome ADHD, you manage it, so as soon as you accept them for who they are, it’ll be easier for them to do the same and work towards making the best of the brain they’ve got.
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 20, 2017
If someone breaks up with you for what you perceive to be unfair or unfounded reasons, one of the ironic effects of of the unjust uncoupling is that you can become so filled with confusion, pain and resentment that you can become the very kind of negative person your ex accused you of being in the first place. While there’s no reason to like the negative person you’ve become, there’s every reason to fear the results of sharing your feelings with your ex, even if you’re desperate to share something with her to win her back. Finding something sweet, giving and positive to think about and say may then seem like a good, positive solution that could restore your self-esteem and do some good. If being with her makes you become such a bad version of yourself, however, there are reasons to think twice about offering to help your ex feel better and instead use a different approach that will make you the better person you used to be.
-Dr. Lastname
I have an ex-girlfriend that suffers from depression and also has Aspergers. When she broke up with me, she accused me of being a liar and becoming a different, uncaring person over the course of the relationship. I don’t think any of those accusations are true, or that she even believes them, and I haven’t been able to get over her. Even though she said harsh words to me, I do not think she meant them and it was just the depression and Aspergers talking, especially since she told me she’s been depressed her entire life. I know that this might sound selfish and dumb, but I want to write something that could express that to her and maybe help her in the future. I will admit that I still like her and that’s why I’m writing, but I also really want her to be happier overall. My goal is to be able to get her out of her misery and be able to have a better life. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 24, 2017
Many of us, not just our reader from earlier this week, struggle with insomnia. Of course, said struggle doesn’t just mean dealing with sleeplessness but with the false and terrifying myths about the many ways insomnia can ruin your life. If you can’t sleep and can’t stop being freaked out by the potential effects it’s having on you, please do yourself a favor and read these five biggest lies about insomnia and the sad/sleepy truths you should believe instead.
1) “Insomnia is preventable and treatable with good sleep habits.”
No illness is ever guaranteed to be preventable and treatable, especially those that are more behavioral than physical, and statements like these aren’t just false but damaging as they often create unreasonable expectations for control. Yes, good sleep habits will push you in the right direction, but life will sometimes disrupt your sleep habits in ways you can’t avoid and even the best of habits can’t always control the neurological demon inside your brain that decides it wants to play and read and have great ideas just as your body wants to collapse. So yes, always be open to treatment, but don’t despair or blame yourself when they aren’t as effective as you’d like.
2) “Insomnia is always a sign that you’ve got bigger issues that require treatment.”
Insomnia may sometimes reflect your worries or neuroses, but that doesn’t mean that logging several hours on a therapist’s couch to work out those issues is guaranteed to unclog your non-existent sleep valve and make rest possible again. If you do find yourself being kept up with anxious thoughts, then do what you can to put your worries into perspective while also accepting your insomnia as just another part of your current bad luck so it doesn’t become yet another thing to get worried about.
3) “Sleeping pills are bad for you.”
All pills are potentially both good and bad for you, from Advil to vitamins, and focusing on the bad part is a good way to let fear demoralize and immobilize you into avoiding potential treatment altogether. Instead of spooking yourself away from medication, educate yourself as to the particular risks of each type of sleeping pill, both in terms of trying it once and, if it’s helpful, taking it more often. Then weigh those risks against its benefits. Of course, always use non-medical methods first, but when insomnia doesn’t respond to non-medical methods, you have a right to research and consider plan B.
4) “If left untreated, insomnia will permanently damage your health.”
Living damages your health, period, but insomnia’s potential impact on your wellbeing is a lot less clear. It does good when it puts you on alert for danger and trouble, as when you need to stay up to watch over a sick child or are required to stay on call for important news. On the other hand, it can also weaken you, at least temporarily, when you’re so tired that it’s harder for your body to fight off an infection. Either way, if you let a fear of insomnia exaggerate its dangers then that fear will cause you far more harm than insomnia ever could.
5) “Insomnia won’t just damage your health, but your ability to do anything from your job to parenting to operating heavy machinery.”
You may not be able to perform at your highest level when you’re tired, but ask any parent what they’re able to do when they haven’t slept well and they’ll tell you that they seem able to do everything well enough since they haven’t gotten fired or wrecked their car despite not having a decent night’s sleep since having kids. Instead of letting insomnia terrify and paralyze you, use that fear to become a knowledgeable and confident manager of insomnia. Once you learn the facts about how insomnia affects you and how you can deal with it, you won’t have to let scary myths keep you up at night.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 6, 2017
Good sleep, along with YouTube videos of porcupines eating and fresh mozzarella cheese, is one of life’s simplest pleasures. Unlike those other things, however, it’s not just a joy but also something of a necessity. A life without hungry porcupines or good cheese of any kind of unfortunate, but one without sleep can feel excruciating, so it’s not surprising that those who just can’t shut themselves down at a reasonable hour are so eager to figure out what’s wrong with them and so quick to blame themselves for their sleeplessness. While we now have clinical sleep specialists and a bunch of helpful theories, suggestions, and treatments, we don’t, of course, have any solid answers or cures. The answer then isn’t seeking complete control over your insomnia, but learning to manage it and find pleasure in life despite it.
-Dr. Lastname
In short, I cannot sleep. I mean, theoretically I can (because, well, biology), but practically I can’t, and I know it’s all in my head— the fact that I feel that “I have insomnia” makes it so much harder, because, obviously I don’t have any clinical disease that it’s a symptom of, just some mental block that makes sleep impossible. I really, really want to sleep and get back control over this one thing without depending on anything (drugs, diets, etc.) or anyone to fix the problem for me. My goal is to get to the bottom of whatever’s causing this insomnia and get rid of it.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 31, 2016
There are no surefire ways to cure, let alone control, mental illness, so, if like our reader from earlier this week, you find yourself yearning for a way to get your sick brain well, then you should stop torturing yourself and start redirecting your energies elsewhere. Here are five better goals for controlling your illness.
1) Assess Your Own Symptoms
Make your own list about the things that bother you most about your illness, paying more attention to your own experiences than the descriptions from doctors or textbooks, or whether you fit one specific diagnosis or another. Give priority to the symptoms or problems that endanger your safety, cause you pain, make it hard to work, or interfere with being a good friend. Only you know what symptoms are worth keeping an eye on and making an effort to manage.
2) Keep Track of Trouble
Until doctors develop a blood test or breathalyzer for measuring mental illness, you’re the one who knows best how you’re doing from day to day. So keep a log or diary of your symptoms and status, reviewing the list of problems that bother you and putting a number from 1 to 5 next to each one representing how bad it is on that given day. That’s the only way you can tell whether whatever you’re doing to get better is having a good effect or not.
3) Adjust Your Expectations
While you should of course work to get better, you should never expect to achieve total recovery. Some people do get better and never have symptoms again, but it isn’t necessarily because they’re good patients and know how to do the right thing (though that helps). It happens, mainly, because they’re luckier and their illness is not as bad. So instead of expecting to get better, get real about the work you have ahead of you and what the realistic rewards are.
4) Punishment Hinders Progress
If you try too hard to make yourself better and become too obsessed with your illness you’ll spend all your time looking for treatment and be too busy to spend time with friends, enjoy a fine meal, or generally go about your usual business. As hard as you should try to explore treatments that might work and pursue methods that you think are helping, you shouldn’t keep going with a treatment that isn’t working, nor so focus on treatment that you forget to live your life.
5) Remember the Real Goal
The fact is, you don’t beat an incurable disease by making it go away but by going about your business in spite of all the trouble that the mental pain, fatigue, doctor visits, medication side effects, and general chaos of your illness throws in your way. When you can tolerate all that shit, stick to your values, and try to live a life that matters, you’re accomplishing something incredible.
