Ashok Gupta advises on partners who don't understand chronic illness: explain what you can, then accept they may not get it. Seeking their approval costs emotional energy you need for yourself.
Our partner is someone that is, we're the closest to, hopefully, and we want them to understand what we're going through. It can be challenging when they sometimes don't understand or don't empathize with what we're going through. At the same time, we can do our best, leave the rest, which is we do our best to explain it to them. You know, send him a couple of my videos. But if they're not able to really empathize or understand, it's so important for our own health to save our own minds that we let it go and we just accept that, okay, this is as much as they're going to understand right now. And sometimes we have to also become aware, and this may not be your situation of Tina the ballerina, because sometimes we're also wanting other people to understand because Tina the ballerina is this part of us which is the approval seeker or people pleaser. We want people to understand. We don't want people to be judging us and thinking this isn't a real condition, et cetera, et cetera. But even that wastes some energy within us. As much as we want people to understand and empathize, we do what we can, but then we focus inward on our own strength, our own.
