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Posts Tagged ‘telling the truth’

Telling the Truth about Your Disease

January 15th, 2009

Here’s a New Year’s Resolution for you: Tell the truth about your disease this year! How many of us are walking around in a state of denial, not having told the truth to ourselves about our disease, or about what we need to do to manage it? How many of us are in a state of conflict, hurt feelings, or even losing relationships with the people in our lives who don’t know the truth about our disease either?

What do I mean by telling the truth? It may be that many of us would be better off if we didn’t have to work, or care of our families, if someone else would care for us, or pay the bills, but we just don’t live in that reality. Telling the truth doesn’t mean you have to deny your reality, or not deal with it. Quite the contrary, your reality may be that you have to work, and care for your family, but you can’t care for your home to the standards you have always had, or you can’t work the kind of hours you once expected of yourself, or you can’t micro-manage your family members but have to allow them to make mistakes and muddle through. There may be many things that you have to let slide, and telling the truth may involve reminding yourself that if you exacerbate your disease through overwork, lack of rest, not caring for yourself, then none of the other things you value will be possible. For many of us, the truth is we must put ourselves first, and that isn’t some kind of nasty self-indulgence, it’s not “No I can’t take care of my child I have to watch tv and eat these bon-bons,” it’s “I must care for my well-being or there will be none left of me to care for others.” It means put on your oxygen mask first on the air-plane or you will both be dead!

Denial is what has us clean one more thing instead of resting, or ignore the migraine twinges instead of taking the medication to treat early. Denial is what has us try to be super-women and men, has us go on hosting huge parties in order to not disappoint the family, or do whatever we believe is expected of us, at the expense of our well-being.  Denial is lying to ourselves about our own disease.

This may sound harsh, and believe me if you find yourself in a state of denial you have all my sympathy. I find myself there from time to time as well. It is human, and it will happen. The key is to practice telling the truth, to have it become a habit. You may not want to answer “How are you?” with complete truth in every situation – there may be reasons not to do that at work or in some social situations. But practice telling the truth about who you are to yourself, and to someone! Come here and tell it to me, in a comment. Sign up for the e-course The Six Keys to Manage Your Life With Migraine (in the upper right corner of the page) and tell it to me there. Register for a relaxation or support teleclass and talk about it there. Go to a Migraine Forum and talk about it. Find a friend or two you can tell. Write it in a journal, or in your own blog. But practice telling the truth.

And remember that there are people in your life who need to know the truth about your disease as well. You may want to practice telling that truth to yourself first, but your spouse or significant other, your parents or children or siblings or best friends, need to know some basics.

• They need to know if you are a Migraineur that you have a neurological disease which you cannot control.
• That when you have a Migraine attack you experience extreme pain, nausea, dizziness, whatever the particular symptoms are for you, and that you must treat it and avoid light, sound and stimulation until it passes.
• They must know something of the dangers of leaving a Migraine untreated.
• And they need to know that you are not doing this on purpose, to avoid being with them, or work, or obligations, that you wish you didn’t have this disease, that you appreciate everything they do for you, and that you need their love and help and support.

Here’s a link to a great letter Teri Robert wrote to share with the people in your life to help them understand Migraine disease. I can’t promise you that every person in your life will understand and support you. If you can keep the conversation about your disease and asking for their help and understanding, and keep any hurt or accusations about past actions out of it, most people are more receptive. I can promise you, though, that it is important to take this step. More hurt feelings and lost relationships come about from not trying, from failing to communicate, from wishing, hoping and expecting the other person to understand. There’s no way around communicating, scary though that may be.  If I can support you, please let me know.

– Megan

Heads together image courtesy of Vera & Jean-Christophe; conversation image courtesy of John Wigham.

Tags: Communicating, denial, Migraine disease, self care, telling the truth
Posted in Communicating, Musings, Tips & Techniques | Comments (2)