There has never been a good time to have ME/CFS but there has definitely been less stressful times to have a chronic condition and an uncooperative immune system that continues to have an open door policy despite my objections.
I know I’m asking you to use some of your precious energy packet to keep reading but I’m hoping we can help each other. My plan is to provide a way we can normalise and externalise the million pesky feelings wer’e all inundated with right now and maybe not feel so alone.
The main aim is to provide a way for others to share how there’re feeling, what’s helping getting you through, what’s not helping and what topics you want to talk about through the Your Story page.
No promises that it won’t get a little dark but hoping to infuse some humour into this situation, especially about the less than empathetic reactions to people discovering what it’s like to be housebound. My plan also includes providing a little counter programming to the endless suggestions and resources to help people stay connected with virtual socialising, do they have any idea how exhausting a simple phone call is? Or the ever so popular work out videos to help people who are stuck at home deal with all their restless energy. I’m just trying to come up with things that require as little energy as possible but might actually distract me, even if it’s only for a minute.
There’s also the flip side of the less than empathetic moments when you desperately want to be out there finding a way to help others, especially those that don’t have a roof over their heads or live in domestic violence situations. But your ability to help is so drastically limited because of the symptoms that keep you bedbound or housebound most days or the risk of further compromising health is too great.
In so many ways I’m as lucky as it gets for people with a chronic condition, I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, enough medication for a couple of weeks and enough energy to be making words into sentences and tapping away on my laptop propped up in bed but (here’s the part where I share something I don’t really want to but have to because I’ve made a song and dance about normalising and externalising feelings) I hate the fact that I can’t do my job as a counsellor when its needed the most (If you’re playing along at home that was a thought, the feeling underneath is helplessness). So now I’m going to project my feelings of helpless onto you in a totally well-adjusted non-airy-fairy-self-help kind of way. I’m going to start a list of one minute meditations. If it makes you feel any better I do have the relevant bits of paper and work experience to sift through the research to find the type of tools that are applicable and effective.
Be warned, I’m leaning in really heavily to the irony of constructing a list specifically for people who are like me, fed up with being told what to do about their health. Who’ve had their psychological wellbeing treated as if it was the cause of all their problems rather than a natural reaction to having your life go to shit.
I am hoping to offer a bit of reprieve from all the healthy people suggestions of how to get through and share my own annoying suggestions. Here’s the first one – Its cold…that’s it…that’s the point.
This site is a work in progress, there is so much more to come. For obvious reasons its taken a long time to get this website up and running and there will be days ahead where putting a sentence together will feel like trying to construct a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle so I’m going to try to keep it simple but hope to expand on ways for you to share. Then I won’t be the only one being “that person” who’s giving their two cents.
Also really want to expand on links and resources but just wanted to get something out to get the ball rolling.
Cliché warning : Let’s do this together…in a non-exhausting kind of way.
Also on a side note I’m using COVID-19 as an excuse for any and all mistakes in the copy. Rigorous editing will be undertaken in non pandemic circumstances (hopefully). I apologise to those they are triggered by bad grammar but even in non pandemic circumstances sentences are hard.
