Chronically Ill Kat

At the end of 2020, I began to fall out of the helpful habits I had spent the previous two years cultivating. I think a mixture of exhaustion from the cold, and a lack of motivation after being locked down and in isolation since March, started getting to me. But, without those habits, I have really noticed a difference in how I feel about my life, my health, and the way I spend my time. I have come to realise that, when I am at my best, my life is powered by a few, quite basic, helpful habits.

After having a had a lovely Christmas, and a really fun New Year’s Eve virtual murder mystery party, I feel refreshed and ready to make a new start, rekindling my helpful habits. I know lots of people do not really like goal setting, or new year’s resolutions, and actually I used not to, but this year it feels like a really helpful moment for me to regain my motivation. And so, without further ado, the helpful habits my life is built upon – with one extra that I think should be in my life!

Morning Pages

I’ve briefly spoken about journaling before, but I’ve recently realised my motivation to achieve anything, to take my meds, to drink water, my ideas for blogs, tik toks and social media posts, almost all come from writing my morning pages. Well, some of them come whilst I am whistling in the bathtub, but most of them come from my morning pages.

I discovered the idea of morning pages a couple of years ago, whilst living back at my parents’ house because I could not afford to, and was too sick to, live by myself. I was pretty lonely as my parents were working, I didn’t have a car or a way out of the village, and my entire social life was based in two different countries, neither of which was the UK! Rummaging through a stack of books I found one called The Artists Way and, whilst I never completed the book, the first chapter talked a lot about morning pages.

The idea is that, as soon as you wake up, you do a free write of three pages, writing absolutely anything that comes into your mind. Some mornings I write “I don’t have anything to write” for one or two entire pages until something else pops into my mind. But what I find happens is that I am able to get either the negative or positive energy that I wake up with out on to the page. When I wake up filled with stress and negative thoughts, I am able to express them and get them out, so they don’t float around in my head ruining my day. When I wake up with positive thoughts, I am able to hype myself up and really feel like I can seize the day. On these days, I often end my pages with a tiny, and somewhat badly drawn, picture of someone leaping in the air with joy. I guess that’s the chronically ill equivalent of jumping out of bed and dancing!

I could sing the praises of doing this for several blog posts more, but I will try not to. For a long time, I felt very disconnected from having ideas and from my creativity but, since doing morning pages regularly, I have noticed that I am increasingly coming up with creative ideas, and actually have a huge store of cool ideas in my brain – which is very affirming for a wannabe creative! I have also slowly started to undo a lot of the negative self-talk that, for a while, was a big part of my personality, and that has obviously helped me to increase my self-worth a thousand-fold. In fact, the morning pages have helped me work out a lot of complicated emotions, with fairly minimal effort.

So, as of 2 January 2021, I am back to waking up and writing three pages in the morning. So be prepared for a whole slew of awesome projects in the future (slew is such an ugly word, but I’m keeping it in here for that reason)!

Hydrating

I have always been terrible at drinking water. I actually really dislike the feeling of drinking water. So much so, that my optician even noticed how dehydrated I was, once long ago. So now I have to make a very conscious effort to drink enough. As someone with POTS, it is extra important that I drink enough water – and so I am aiming to drink enough.

A couple of months ago, I was very kindly gifted some rehydration salts and tablets from a company called Precision Hydration, who have recently been looking into the effects of their salts on people with POTS. And I have to say, I drink one of their tablets a day, and take two salt capsules alongside it, and these have made a big difference to my hydration levels and, obviously, to my POTS symptoms – but also to my migraines. This is something I can highly recommend.

Yoga

I was very resistant to the idea of doing yoga for a very long time. As a former athlete, I felt yoga was not hard enough work to be interesting, and then, when I became ill I, like many others, was told so many times that it would cure me, when quite obviously, it isn’t going to, that I never really gave it a second chance! But then I discovered slacklining and realised that I really wanted to learn to do the splits. So, whilst spending one January at a friend’s house in Sri Lanka, I followed a thirty days of yoga video series with Yoga with Adriene, and, whilst I am not much closer to the splits, I realised how nice it felt to do yoga.

For me, yoga is a gentle thing that I can do with my body, that helps me feel like I am still the athlete of the past. I mean not really, because I have to modify the videos that I follow very intensely so that I don’t overdo it and make myself sicker, but it has been so nice reconnecting to moving my body in an intentional way. It took me a while to give over the internalised athlete attitude of pushing yourself whilst exercising, but that has really taught me to listen to my body in a way I’m not sure I ever did before. And now I find that yoga gives me such a good space to mentally rest, connect with my breathing and how my body is feeling, all the while stretching out my body. My osteopath can always tell when I have fallen out of my yoga practice, because everything is so much tighter!

This is practise that I try to do daily, even if on some days that just means rolling out the yoga mat and lying on the floor because it gives me time to breath intentionally and focus completely on my body. And on these days my cat will often curl up next to me, purring!

Taking my medication

This has become increasingly difficult for me, because none of my medication is lifesaving, and I don’t notice if I don’t take it on a certain day – but it all builds up and makes a huge difference. Last year, I didn’t take anything for at least two or three months – partially so I wouldn’t have to use my health insurance, as these meds are expensive, but also partially because I felt too demotivated.

But of course, the cocktail of supplements and meds that I take (it fluctuates from about 8 to 12 tablets, daily) are important and it is a habit I will try and get back into this year, whatever the financial cost!

Intentional resting

This is a habit that I have been avoiding for a long time. But I really feel like now is the time to start. What do I mean by intentional resting? As someone with chronic fatigue syndrome, everything I do uses energy in a way that other people may not realise. So, for instance, listening to music is incredibly tiring for me. So the way in which I have previously rested, which is mostly reading or scrolling through social media, is not actually properly resting. Intentional resting is about doing nothing. And really doing nothing. This is something which terrifies me. I am an overthinker but also get very restless, so invariably, if I do nothing, I will either start to overthink things, or get bored.

However, this year, I am committing to prioritising intentional rest (I’m not sure if this is the actual term for this) so that when I do rest I am really benefiting fully from it. Honestly, I’m not really sure how this works yet, and I’m not sure how it will go, but it is something that I’ve been putting off understanding for far too long. So this is a promise on which I will report back in a few months when I am an expert at intentional resting. But it seems to be an important management tool for chronic illness.

The building blocks of my life

These are the important building blocks that power my life, and these will be my priorities in the new year, for the simple reason that, when these are in place, I feel at my best and most content with life.

As the corona pandemic continues, and many of us continue to isolate, I think we need to be extra considerate about the ways this affects our bodies and our mental health.

Each of these goals is in place to support me through tough times in a way that I know will really work – so please feel free to help me keep them up by checking in!

“The chief beauty about time
is that you cannot waste it in advance.
The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you,
as perfect, as unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
You can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose.”
                                                         Arnold Bennett

Do you have any new year’s resolutions or helpful habits that you intend to restart this year? Or are new year’s resolutions not your thing?