Tag Archives for journal

Am I Losing My Resilience?

I used to be tough. I had to be. I grew up in a family where being needy was a sign of weakness, and feelings and emotions were things you kept to yourself. My parents separated when I was quite young, which meant I had to learn to depend on myself because neither of them was ever reliably available for me. Repeated disappoints from my parents made me resilient because I had to recover and bounce back from so many situations that need not be a part of a person’s childhood. That learned resilience helped me cope with every obstacle life put in my path and all the crappy things people believe it’s okay to do to each other.

The thing is, the longer I’m sick the less resilient I feel I’m becoming. The unshakeable pain I feel every minute of every day is starting to chip away at my psychological and emotional strength and my ability to bounce back, relatively quickly, from difficult issues that crop up, regardless of the size. That concerns me because I think to survive this illness for an unpredictable amount of time I need the spark of combined toughness and grit I’ve always carried within me. That spark has lit my way and guided me through countless hard and painful situations in my life; and I feel like it might start to fade under the unyielding pressure from my pain. To be truthful, I’m more than concerned, I’m a bit afraid. What if, I can’t hold on to the intangible thing that has kept me grounded and moving forward in life until now; until now, when I need it more than ever.

The strange thing is, the more I question myself about this, the more my mind turns to a TED Talk about grit and resilience – primarily in children – I watched a few years ago. I felt immediately connected, to the theories the speaker, Psychologist, Angela Lee Duckworth raised as she spoke. I understood her ideas about how or, more accurately, what is necessary, beyond intelligence and socioeconomic background for a person to succeed. However, that was three years ago, when I was healthy. Now, I can see that there is so much we don’t see or are unable to measure with tests or studies to chart ‘success’ because my perspective of success is no longer measured in the same ways. Now, my success is rooted in what I can do from day to day, within the limits set by my pain; and I can feel my pain chipping away at my toughness and working to dim my spark every day.

As I thought more about this TED Talk, I wondered if anyone had done any studies on resilience and chronic pain. I found some published psychological studies that I’ll be reading in more detail later. The gist of them all is that resilience does matter and chronic pain patients with greater levels of resilience have a higher survival rate. Now that I know this, the question for me is, how do I keep myself from losing my resilience? I truly hope I’m able to find something in one of these studies that helps me to keep my spark lit.

 

 

Gratitude and Creativity: We Evolve

Even before the arrival of my illness, sleep was a difficult thing for me. Insomnia and I are old friends, but having to cope with it while dealing with high levels of pain is not an easy thing. When I was working, I used to take advantage of the times I couldn’t sleep by catching up on or completing work tasks early. In some ways it seemed like a blessing to be so productive, but of course there were the drawbacks of struggling to get out of bed many mornings and having to caffeinate myself to get my brain started and to stay alert sometimes later in the day.

When I can’t sleep now, I don’t feel productive, I feel restless, which makes my mind bounce all over the place during the longest stretches of the night. Sometimes I watch TV shows or movies to make the time pass more quickly. Other times I spend hours online poring over pages of articles, news, videos, and interesting writing others post here. Thankfully, many of the things people post here positively occupy my thoughts and lead to me being creative, which feels so much better than being productive.

In the dark, early hours of Thursday morning, a poem I found on Dave Kavanagh’s site, which he titled ‘Dark Eyed Woman’ sparked some creativity to help me pass the time. I was fortunate to engage with him through the comment section of his site and part of our exchange calmed the restlessness of my thoughts enough for me to write some poetry. In this respect – my creativity being sparked so I can write – I still see insomnia as a blessing sometimes. However, I know that sleep is the bigger blessing I need so I can better manage my illness.

We Evolve

 

Gratitude and Creativity: Death Comes

I was in a very dark mood yesterday because of the intensity of my pain. Unable to sleep – as I often am – last night I went searching through the WordPress community for interesting things to read. Sometimes I search through the list of blogs I follow in the Reader, while at other times I randomly select a tag to see what others are writing about under different topics. Last night, or early this morning, I chose to search under the tag ‘death’ because I had attached it to yesterday’s post.

What I found wasn’t as morbid or bleak as one might expect. Not that I didn’t find some heartbreaking posts, but I also found inspirational and philosophical writing from many members of the community. One of the posts I read was about an excerpt of a letter from Pier Giorgio Frassati a beatified early twentieth century Italian Catholic social activist. The letter was in response to a friend who had not heard from him for a long while, who wrote to him asking if he was dead. In his response Frassati wrote, “Dead – what does this word mean?”

He then details definitions of death for his friend, and goes on to say, “But if we’re talking about the word in its true essence, then sadly not only am I dead, but already resuscitated a number of times only – alas! to die again.” The post I read this in came from the site Contemplative in the Mud, whose author seemed to have had a bit of a day herself/himself, or at least was introspective about the ups and downs of life. The nice thing for me, after reading this post, was that it opened me up to write some poetry in the early morning hours, which distracted me, at least for a little while, from my pain.

 

Death Comes