Progress and Set-Backs

I have been told many times that I’m too hard on myself. I hold myself to high standards and when things go wrong, I do probably attribute blame to myself more than to others. It’s important for people like me to make a point of reflecting on progress and successes. We are in the habit of looking forward, frustrated that we are not further ahead on our path. Looking back often provides a welcome relief to those high standards in the acknowledgement of how much progress has been made.

I went on a longer walk than usual today, mostly to escape the mayhem at home. On my walk I had the realisation that it has only been a few short months since my diagnosis. Only four months have elapsed but it feels like a year to me. I think that’s because there has been so much personal growth. I have found myself being irritated that I didn't have insights earlier than I did, like that I took a while to realise that daily naps are important. But in reality, only a few weeks elapsed before I implemented that regimen. Perhaps all the turmoil of addressing important life issues has left me feeling that I've aged a year in only four months.

Some recent emotional wounds were opened yesterday. Sadly, it does cause me stress and it has taken its toll on my energy levels. Because I don’t feel rested today I’m having a lot of difficulty being at home when the family is here. My girls are driving me crazy and I’m finding myself being overly irritable with them. It is certain that stressful events slow down my recovery and set me back. I’m feeling the need to withdraw to recover. Unfortunately my environment expects me to mediate fights and provide entertainment for small children. Not so aligned to my needs today. The good news is that the girls are close to their father after me spending a weekend away recently, so they are in good hands and happy to be there.

I’m reading a wonderful book on building resilience which I’m hoping will help me bounce back quicker in adversity. I have applied the happiness building techniques learned from books I have read, so I have no doubt that I can improve my resilience as well.  Next time those wounds are opened, I will hopefully be able to reduce the impact on my energy reserves and not let it affect me so much.

I feel that I’m gaining more and more clarity on my career path. I suspect that I’ll receive income from a variety of sources in future. I’m so very grateful for the opportunities that are coming my way. I’m certain that it’s due to being clear on what I enjoy and what I want in my life. Sometimes I feel that the answers are unfolding faster than I can handle.

Looking back over the past four months I have gained an enormous bundle of personal insight and have been able to define a future path for myself that supports my talents. I've been clear in knowing what must disappear from my life and what must enter, in a generalised way. I've been reciting my Best Possible Future Self every day and in so doing, I've put my intentions out there and the clarity is improving with each week that passes.

It’s strange to realise that I've only recently connected with my needs and talents. In my previous role I spent a lot of time doing what I could do and not want I really wanted to do. That has been a key learning for me on this journey in that although I’m good at something, it has no place in my  job function if I don’t enjoy it.

The recovery process takes time and requires patience, both of which are in short supply. But I do have the sense that the next few weeks will see the fruits of my efforts unfolding further. I’m hoping that in a month’s time, I’ll be in remission and well enough to do work that is aligned to my passions and that builds me up.

The Power of Affirmations

This weekend I was reminded of the fact that many people speak negatively about themselves. I don’t think many people would dispute that negative self-talk is quite clearly destructive. The thoughts we have and the things we say about ourselves can cause damage. If we cultivate an environment where we constantly criticise ourselves, it is hard to thrive. I’d like to encourage you to take the first step in combating negative self-talk: noticing it. Try to catch yourself as you think negatively about yourself or say something unpleasant to yourself, or about yourself to others.

Once you start noticing, replace the negative thoughts with kind and compassionate words such as ‘well, I’m doing my best at the moment’ or ‘let me be patient with myself while I learn this’. It sounds contrite but just noticing and being kinder to yourself can make a difference.  Hating yourself does not serve anyone so find something that is more constructive.

Personally I have struggled with affirmations. I feel a bit silly and I’m terrified someone overhears me and I hear guffaws in the background while I'm saying 'I have a happy and slender body'. I have failed to implement them properly in the past but lately I’m getting it right. I have included an activity on my self-care roster to do affirmations daily. This is my reminder and if you need to use your calendar or a reminder on your phone, do so. If you can’t bring yourself to come up with positive thoughts about yourself, try some ready-made affirmations. It’s like a TV dinner for self-improvement.

The affirmations I use are from a few sources but in my view, the queen of affirmations must be Louise Hay. She spent years interviewing people and uncovered trends in terms of the ailments in the body and associated thoughts and emotions. If our thoughts are dominated by the negative, there is no question we will become sick, literally poisoned by our thoughts. I read her book You Can Heal Your Life and I earmarked all my ailments and their accompanying thoughts. 

I typed out the affirmations aligned my ailments into a spreadsheet, with the ailment in brackets behind it. I colour coded them, printed them and stuck them on a piece of cardboard. Each day I read these affirmations out loud, focussing on ones that might be more pertinent. I do this even if I don’t believe them straight away. I have found that in time I have started to be kinder to myself. Part of the reason I became ill was inadequate self-care and I have been told many times that I'm too hard on myself. Affirmations are my method of approving of myself and of graciously accepting good things into my life. 

Affirmations can be centred around many different aspects of your life, not only healing your body. They can address aspects such as abundance, relationships, career and spirituality. The mechanics are important however: always ask in the positive (exclude any terminology  such as ‘not’, ‘don’t’, ‘should’) and say it as if you are welcoming it into your life. An example would be ‘I now accept a happy life with my dream job’.

I have noticed lately that many of the people I care about are sorting out problems in their lives. Things appear to really be falling into place. Whether it is prayer or affirmations or simply letting the Universe know what you want, it can’t do any harm to put it out there. I believe that as soon as we know what we want, we must ask for it regularly. Affirmations can be a way of doing that so if you need to think if it as a prayer, do so. 

Many people dislike affirmations as it feels foolish or seems like brainwashing. I see it as a way to cement positive thinking about myself and to ready myself for accepting good things that come my way. It takes literally a minute or two of each day and it helps to program my thinking to be more positive about myself and my future. I’m willing to sacrifice two minutes daily in the interests of trying something that can improve my life. Are you? 

Exercise and Well-Being

Something I’ve been grappling with lately is that I can’t really exercise. I can’t exercise like I’m used to – running about five days a week and training for big scary goals. Currently, I can’t even walk up a steep hill without feeling exhausted. I’m now one of those people who will circle the parking lot, looking for the closest spot near the entrance.  To the average bystander, I just look lazy.

I’m used to being fit and I’m used to my weight being fairly static. Now, I’m deliberately slowing down my metabolism with medication and I can’t exercise. It’s not that I’m just feeling the symptoms of Graves’ disease, being fatigue. I’m totally and utterly depleted from stress. When your body has invoked an auto-immune attack, you have to rebuild your energy reserves and change your life to prevent a relapse. It is not a matter of weeks or days to recover from something this serious. And it's not just a matter of forging through the fatigue - I can set my recovery back if I'm not careful. 

I often encounter people who work with athletes and their advice seems to be quite wrong to me: they are advising me to do a 40 minute cycle when five minutes flattens me. Because I look fine and I can hold a conversation, people just don’t understand just how depleted one gets from a stress-induced illness. This is not laziness and this is not me being over-dramatic. If I was prone to drama, I would not have become so depleted in the first place because people would have listened!

Even if I were able to stay on the bike for 40 minutes, I would feel the impact of that for days if not weeks afterwards. I recently had a spike of stress again and it set me back about a week. I felt my immune system dipping and was even advised by medical practitioners to up my Vitamin C dosage. So an intense cardio work-out is not what I need now.

I've tried going for a gentle walk and that works quite well. I found spots in my neighbourhood where I can rest on a bench if I get a little tired. I've also been doing ball exercises for various muscle groups but mainly core strength. I have been doing a cycle of ball exercises, walking and the five minute cycle once a week each. In the week where I had more stress, I had to stop all exercise again.

I have been pretty patient by my standards in not getting too uptight about gaining weight. Over the past few years and months I have given up alcohol, caffeine, carbonated drinks and am eating more of the things that are healthier. I was a healthy eater to start with, so there was not that much refining that could be done. I do feel very sorry for myself that I cannot control my weight, even though I'm eating well. The one weakness I do have is sugar, primarily chocolate. I feel that I have really done so much to work towards healing and recovery that I really deserve just one indulgence. 

For someone who used to say ‘my biggest health problem is sinus’, this is quite a different landscape. And I do find it enormously frustrating. I’m a person of action. I like to get things done, take ownership and put plans in place. For me to reign in exercise to this degree after being idle for months, is actually very hard. Sadly, even my fat pants are now becoming tight. I don't fancy buying a new wardrobe for my expanding physique so something must be done. 

In the reading and research I have done, I have noticed how much yoga comes up as a healing form of exercise. I have previously done the 90 minute gruelling sessions of Bikram yoga in a sauna environment, as it was at my level of intensity. Now, I think it would kill me. But I have resolved to try restorative yoga this week to dip my toe in the water.

I remember getting advice from Bio-Kinetics I was attending that the yoga was not at all compatible with running. The statement she used was ‘you don’t see any people from India winning marathons’. I was quite sad to have to give up yoga as I really enjoyed the intensity, the progress I was making and how great I felt afterwards. Perhaps this is my chance to improve my flexibility and to invest in a new regime of exercise that is health-building.

Recovery is Slow

People ask me quite often if I’m feeling better and it’s a hard question to answer. Recovering from something quite major like Graves’ disease is not the same as the flu. It’s going to take months to go into remission and some people have told me to cater for a year. I took years to get into this poor state of health and to embed the life circumstances that created it. And it will take many months to recover and to unravel my life. It takes focus, discipline and courage to renegotiate and to prioritise yourself.

I’m not sure I’ll ever feel as robust as I have felt earlier in my life but perhaps that’s true of any grown-up. I've always wanted a sabbatical but I dreamed of having the time to do things, learn things, clear out cupboards at home and enhance myself significantly. It’s true I’m on a personal growth path but I have to be quite cautious with anything that drains my energy, given my depleted state. I can’t commit to courses that last four hours because I’m afraid I’ll take days to recover.

There’s no question that recovery is boring. And it’s frustrating that my state of health is not apparent to other people. Sometimes I wonder if people think I’m just pretending. I haven’t lost hair or weight and I’m not covered in purple spots. I can hold a conversation and can go out briefly. I don’t believe in dramatizing my illness so I probably put on a more energetic demeanour for my rare outings. What people don’t see is the impact of overdoing it. They don’t see me having to sleep for a few hours each day in order to just cope with caring for my kids. They don’t see that I actually need recovery time on a Monday after the weekend.

I have times when I think I’m getting better. On Friday I missed my daily nap due to my three-year-old being sick. Expecting to feel exhausted on Saturday morning, I actually woke up before my children. That tells me that perhaps I’m getting enough sleep and I’m starting to recover. But it’s really hard to tell whether that’s true, or just one occurrence that I should not read anything into.

I’m really afraid of regressing as I do struggle to know how well I really am. Looking back, I know that I am much better than I was in November last year. But I also know that I’m not up to a full work day or even a lot of commitments in a week. I have blood tests taken once a month and my doctor has not really even given me timelines on how long this typically takes. I’m doing what I can to rest but how do I know if I should be only sleeping and reading? I’m afraid that by the time my medical leave is over, I might actually not be up to it. Am I wasting my leave by going out for coffee once a week? I also need to solve this underlying problem of my future career passion and that can’t be done at home by myself all day for months on end. I have to talk to people and be around those who care. 

Many of the entrepreneurial articles and personal growth books I’ve read cite the importance of waking up early in order to succeed. Ordinarily I’d love to do that – be up before the family wakes, have a chance to shower in peace, go to the toilet without being followed and perhaps write a bit. Given my state of depletion and how much rest I need, I simply have not been able to do that. 

I so look forward to a time when I can work, I can help people, contribute to the world and still have energy to care for my kids. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to run again. It all feels so far away. I’m tackling my recovery like a project, with my self-care roster and making sure I have alternative healing and a healthy diet. But that could also be a problem. Maybe I’m creating more stress for myself. I just don’t know and there’s no-one who can guide me.

So the answer to the question ‘Are you feeling better?’ right now is ‘I think so but I’ve got a long way to go’.

Keeping the Boredom at Bay

I've been wondering lately why I seem to avoid meditation and my daily nap, despite the fact that they are on my self-care roster as daily activities. There are days when I skip one of both of them. The plain truth is that it’s boring. There’s an opportunity cost in that I’m not learning, growing, advancing towards something. I suppose one could argue that the nap and the meditation speed up my recovery but it just feels boring to think of nothing and to sleep. At the end of each day I like to feel as if I’m closer to a goal or improving myself. But I suppose the reality is that I need a lot of days with nothing but rest in order to restore myself to full health.

And as usual for me, when there’s a problem, I need to find a solution. I’m doing well on my roster in that I’m ticking off the occasional responsibility item such as children dentist trips. But it does get monotonous. And I have read that any happiness-inducing strategy needs to change occasionally if you want to retain its effectiveness. It’s easy to get bored of scheduled acts of kindness and gratitude journaling. So today’s task is to plan for the next month as well as to get started on my book.

As I've mentioned in my post about goals, it’s important to set deadlines and to create sub-goals. I've created a rough outline of chapters for my book and have given myself a month on each chapter and a month to edit. So chapter one is due in a few weeks and it will be something new for me to tackle. As mentioned, one of my focus areas is to find flow activities and writing is certainly one of them. Any flow activity, by definition, needs to include a challenge that is slightly greater than skill, in order to keep your attention and to challenge you. It will be a difficult exercise to structure my ideas into a set of chapters that work well together.

I also realised that I’d like to inject some fun or creativity into my life. I've heard of an online course where you can learn to draw. I've signed up for a women’s retreat in May that should be an opportunity to be creative, meet other people and of course, to escape my children. And I think it’s really positive to be taking a step that puts my well-being first. As I mentioned in my last post, I need to speak up about the things I want to do and not to just let everyone else decide my activities for me.

The organiser is Taryn Harris, who also suffered from a stress-related condition and changed her life as a result. She is really inspiring to me and I’m so looking forward to meeting her and understanding the insights she can share.

A batch of books arrived today which always cheers me up. For a change, they are not related to happiness or self-help but are around rediscovering your creativity. This is just the catalyst I needed to shake things up and find a little optimism in the drudgery of rest. And yes, I will most certainly do my meditation and my nap today.

The Gift of Sleep

In the past few months, although I've been trying to get a lot of rest, I haven’t been sleeping in the day. I’m not sure why, possibly I just feel it’s too indulgent. I shouldn't feel that way since I need a lot of recovery to ensure I can get my Graves’ disease into remission. I’m on a medical sabbatical from work so I should be doing all I can to recover.

Being a mother of small children, I've had a good few years of interrupted sleep. Now that my youngest is three years old, it’s only the occasional nightmare that wakes her (and me) up in the night. But being in a depleted state, I most certainly feel it the next day.

There are a plethora of articles online that promote the benefits of sleep. Some benefits include: curbing inflammation, improved memory and concentration, improved cognitive function and decision making, reduced blood pressure and cholesterol levels, improved mood, fat loss, muscle building, tissue repair and more. My favourite three, most relevant to my current state of health are spurring creativity, reduced stress and improved immune function. These are the things I need in order to restore myself to full health.

There are some horrifying experiments done on rats for sleep research which show that you will die without sleep if it goes on long enough. I’m sure all mothers know the feeling of sleep deprivation and how hard it can be to work a full day with inadequate sleep. When that goes on for a few months or years, your ability to function at work and in day-to-day life is substantially impaired. I’d encourage fathers and friends to help out to make sure mom gets a good rest.

I’m a great sleeper and much to my husband’s disgust, I often fall asleep seconds after my head hits the pillow. I have noticed that on the days I meditate, I sleep much better. I have also learned that I need at least one extra hour of sleep per night when I’m training towards a marathon or ultra-marathon. It may seem pretty boring to go to sleep so early but the body just needs that extra restoration in order to function properly. Take a look at this TED talk about getting more sleep. 

It’s clear that some people need more sleep than others and at the moment, I need a lot of sleep. I’m striving for eight hours at night and I’m trying to get a few hours in the day as well. I’m hoping that this will help my body restore order, get my immune system to stop attacking my thyroid and to not feel so fatigued. One positive by-product will be a happier me, benefiting my family too. 

Isn't it funny how kids resist sleep because there’s an opportunity cost of playing? And sleep-deprived mothers wonder why anyone would resist something so valuable. Only when sleep is inadequate do we truly realise how much we need it. I’m not sure how much sleep can be guaranteed for me over the Easter weekend, with the kids home and my husband away, but let’s hold thumbs.

Nutritional Focus

To remind any readers who are not regulars, I have Graves’ disease which is an auto-immune attack on the thyroid, induced by stress. So I’m changing my life to make sure it’s aligned with a happy healthy future.

I’m quite focused and when I apply myself to something, I really do a thorough job of it. Granted, I'm focusing my energy to avoid going mental from cabin fever as I have limited my outings to five per week. I believe that it’s insufficient to merely take the drugs and carry on, expecting to be fully well. So I am doing the following in addition to the medical treatment:

• Homeopathic medication that is supportive of the standard medication
• Alternative healing methods such as reflexology, Reiki, Applied kinesiology, Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping), meditation and mindfulness so far.
• Understanding my strengths by doing various assessments and reconnecting with things I’ve enjoyed in the past. Methods have been STS Brain Profiling, Gallup’s Strengths Finder, various exercises in forgiving others, recovering from past traumas, following creative pursuits.
• Reading and research on subjects such as introversion, happiness and restoring health. I’m investigating what my future career path looks like in order to avoid the same stresses that caused my health condition.
• Implementing my own self-care roster to ensure I track my progress, get adequate rest and look after my health in an organised way.

I’m open to trying a variety of things in order to find something that may work. Some of the things I've tried have been less powerful than others, but I maintain that exploring is part of the journey. If I’m incapacitated and unable to work, I might as well find things that can help me be fully well as quickly as possible. I have not been able to implement much exercise such as yoga and Nia, but I will do so once I have adequate energy.

The aspect that I have not yet tackled is nutrition. I was feeling so bad towards the end of last year that I was ordering things like pancakes for breakfast because I thought that I might as well enjoy my way out of the world. That was not so wise in retrospect since weight loss was probably the one symptom I didn't experience.

Many people have asked me whether I should be on any particular diet for Graves’ disease. There is no defined diet that I could find but there are foods that are to be avoided and those that support recovery from both Graves’ disease and a weak immune system (stress-related). 

The foods themselves are probably not of much interest to you but the process is something that may be of interest, if you have any major medical condition. No Earth-shattering revelations but my approach is usually research, document and implement. I searched the Internet for any articles I could find that made recommendations in terms of foods to avoid and foods to include in my diet. I’m a big fan of Healing Foods by Margaret Roberts so I made sure I included her recommendations as well. I listed all the foods in an Excel spreadsheet and categorised them into Good or Bad and the types of foods e.g. protein, vegetables, fruit, grains, dairy etc.

It is interesting to note that there were some contradictions such as eggs and chicken, so I’ll just keep an eye on them as I go. I have sorted the list into the various categories and I’m going to ensure any meals I order at restaurants are focused towards the healthy foods for me. I’ll also ensure that the foods are on the shopping list. Some of the items are quite new to me and I have never cooked with them or eaten them before. But I am on a learning path so I’m open to trying new things. I do need to balance the needs of my family as well in that the kids are quite fussy and I married a veggie hater!

I have considered visiting a dietitian or nutritionist but I’m pretty sure I’ll get advice that goes something like “fresh fruit and vegetables, no caffeine or alcohol, no sugar, no dairy, no wheat”. So I’ll just wing it myself for now and as long as I’m eating well and avoiding the danger foods, I should be helping my recovery by my intake.