Any one with chronic pain or chronic illnesses knows that to get by it is best to maintain some sense of humor, no matter if anyone else “gets” it, you know what you mean, that is all that matters.
I saw this cute post today:
Have you named your illness symptoms? That may sound like an odd question, but there are some very good reasons for giving your symptoms names. One of them is this: when you give one of your symptoms a name, such as Gertrude or Elmer, you separate yourself from it. When you do that, you are much less likely to identify with it, which makes it possible to step back and see ways for dealing with it and managing its effects on your life that you otherwise couldn’t.
Here’s an example of what I mean: if you have a severe migraine, you may say to a friend or to yourself that you’ve been having awful migraine pain. But when you do this, you can easily feel like a victim. If instead, you tell your friend or yourself that “Sylvester” has been acting up and making himself felt, you don’t make it personal, so you are much less likely to feel like a victim.
A related benefit of naming your symptoms is that it allows you to communicate with them. You can write to them and tell them how they’ve affected your life, and you can tell them how you have felt, and continue to feel, with them. When you do that, you will probably find that you feel a sense of relief and even freedom.
You can also talk to and even have a conversation with “Sherlock” or “Agnes” (or whatever you’ve named your symptoms). When you do, besides telling them how you feel about them, you can ask them if there is anything they want you to know. You can ask them what are the things you do and the situations that make them worse and you can ask them what changes you can make to lessen their severity and minimize their impact on your life.
End of Post.
If people with multiple personality disorders can do it, we should be able to be as equally creative or more. Illness may narrow your abilities to do certain things but it gives you an opportunity (when you are not trapped in a whirlwind of pain and unwanted thoughts) of time to reflect and open your mind to possibilities like when you were a child looking at the stars or the clouds.
I read recently that physicians are finding some people who have FTD while they lose their ability to process numbers etc. are becoming more creative and are more able to express themselves artistically. There are many ways to be artistic: painting, drawing, writing, collaging, making jewelry, etc. I participate in something I call creative television watching.
I love to watch Turner Classic Movies. Sometimes when I am watching a movie for the second, third, fourth time, I imagine what it would be like if they re-arranged the furniture, if the guy hadn’t gotten on the train, or if he had gotten on the wrong train or maybe the train didn’t show up at all. After a good movie often I think about the movie and the characters, imagining what might have happened after the end of the story, an entirely different story perhaps.
I think about possible future inventions and one gadget I would really like would be something that connects to your brain patterns and to my favorite movie so that I am able to take the characters and create additional scenes and plotlines.
You might think I have too much time, but my time like everyone else’s time is limited. I just know that my curtain call for this life character is sooner than I use to believe. I wonder when you leave off stage does someone direct you to the right or the left or do you just stumble out into the audience?
Back to the naming illnesses. I think I’ll give the name game a try. My father use to call me Myrtlerayleenajane. There’s a few names to start.
