A Bit of Mind Over Matter

Today was our annual "Christmas Decorating" day - or, shall I say, it was Colleen's annual Christmas Decorating Day.  She doesn't really want or need me to do very much.  If I strung the lights outside, she would inevitably find something she doesn't like and redo them to her taste.  She is a perfectionist with Christmas decorating.  Luckily for our marriage, I am not - so it is very easy to have her take over the reigns without any pushing back.    Anyway, my mission today was to go out to Target and Lowe's to try to find additional lights that have caught Colleen's attention this holiday season.  Of course, today was December 7th, and the only stuff left in the stores was the stuff that nobody wanted.   Perhaps there is an Island for Misfit Lights that is next to the misfit toys from Rudolph.

Coming home with nothing is always a bit of a downer for me - I am the type of person that is more than willing to drive all over town, going into various stores, just to find the one thing that Colleen or myself wants.  I like the hunt, I guess you can say - if the product is on the shelf, I am going to find it somewhere.  

After I came home with nothing, I believe a bit of an urge came over Colleen - the urge to find those lights she wants to add to her already impressive collection.   That urge lead to the point where she decided to go out and try to complete the mission herself - with our dogs and myself waiting back in the car at every stop.  And, of course, complete the mission she did - as we went to another Lowe's that had more stuff in stock than the one I went to.

When you are sick, there is always that feeling that you simply cannot go anywhere.  When that sickness involves a horrible sensation in your stomach, it makes it even worse.  Your mind goes to places such as "What if we are 20 minutes away from home, and I suddenly get so sick that I have no choice but to throw up in an aisle somewhere?"   There could be more to it than just that - if you haven't been out in a while, the whole situation of needing to get ready in and of itself can be daunting.  When you are ill, you simply don't want to deal with stuff like that.  As I have said a few times in this blog, the one thing I can relate to with Colleen is being sick for a long period of time.  I remember the days when leaving the house simply wasn't appealing to me - my thought process being that it would do me more bad than good.    

This is where mind over matter can come into play - my inspiration for this post came from something Colleen herself said:  "I was browsing through the stores, and I wasn't feeling sick - because I had something else to occupy my time...to concentrate on".   This is so very true - when you are sick in bed for hours or days, the only sensation you feel is "sick".   When you get out of bed to do other things, the sensation of sickness may alleviate - it is still there.   It isn't that you aren't sick.  It is just giving your brain a break from the constant thoughts of illness.

If you ever feel this way, one thing I don't want you to think about is whether or not someone will look at that and say, "See, you aren't sick - you were able to accomplish so much today!"  This is not the place you need your mind to go; to be exact, you need to 100% not think about that in the least.  Doing something that you enjoy doing or something you want to do shouldn't come with feelings of what others would think when you actually do them.   That is a vicious cycle that is impossible to break.  "If I go out looking at Christmas lights, everyone is going to think I am healthy again - instead of dealing with that, I will just not do what I want to do".  That kind of thought process will never work for you - because going down that path will just make you feel worse, and won't let you break out of the vicious cycle you are in.

As a loved one, my advice is simple:   When your patient is feeling the need to do something they really miss doing, lightly encourage them to do so.  Never try to force the issue, but also don't discourage.   One step to breaking the curse that illness puts on people is to not always let it win.   That isn't easy, and it can't always be accomplished.    But on days when it can be accomplished, do what you want to do - and don't worry about what others think.   In the end, what they think means nothing - how YOU personally feel is what is most important.