A short monologue advising people facing serious or long-term illness to first practice emotional awareness (name fear, anger, despair), then ask how to best care for themselves. The speaker emphasizes becoming one’s own advocate and coordinator of a multi-provider care team, staying resourceful (e.g., seeking therapy, adaptive equipment, physical therapy), and practicing self-compassion when adapting to new limitations.
So all of us are going to have a time or many times where we're going through an illness or a very difficult emotional situation. And if we aren't aware of what it is we're exactly going through, we don't know how to take care of ourselves. So the first thing is, am I afraid? Am I angry? Am I despairing? And then the next thing is to be able to ask yourself a question, how can I best take care of myself? And when you do that, you instantly become your own friend and guide. Rather than swirling in the emotions. You're going to realize if you stay aware, you're in a new normal state of being distraught, helpless, frightened. And it requires you to be resourceful in a new way for first to recognize it. And then the adaptation is when I'm afraid, I need to summon up courage. When I'm feeling helpless, I need to summon up. How can I be helpful to myself? Do I need to call the doctor? Do I need to call a friend? Do I need to lie down? So the combination of being aware of where this new normal is and then being resourceful to guide yourself is gold. One of the most critical features in medical care in these days is to recognize it's not like the old days where you could have one doctor and they're going to take care of you. It's so important to have almost like a village of best friends, consultants, doctors, more than one doctor, all of which are working together. But you need to recognize you're the quarterback, you're the central coordinator, you're the one that has to be in charge of your comprehensive care. There is no replacement for having a team. It is so important to recognize that when we're ill, we're going to have serious emotions, we're going to be really angry, we're going to be really helpless or frightened. It's not just a small thing. And so it's utterly crucial that we learn how to find a place inside us that's going to intervene. It's like having a conversation with a friend, except it's all happening inside you. And when you realize that you can identify these very challenging feelings and not be run by them. Instead you're run by this other part of you that knows it's devoted to care for you in these altered states. And this is very challenging and requires a lot of practice when you're in these more charged emotional states. So let's be real. None of us were really raised to be prepared for being told that we have a long term illness or we have some kind of a serious illness that we're facing. And once we get through the shock stage, we need to be prepared to face the actual feelings that we have and then to learn to focus on what's really possible. So, for example, if you've just had three spinal surgeries and you can't walk, the natural tendency is, I want to walk more, I want to be able to walk. Or if you've had a stroke and you can't talk, the natural tendency is I want to talk or I'm failing. Now, how do you reframe that for yourself so you can focus on the possible? If you're the person that had the stroke, then you want to ask yourself, who are my resources that can give me speech therapy? How can I dedicate myself to that? How can I keep my focus on improving? Are there any machines that can help me? If you've had the three spinal surgeries, instead of focusing on wanting to walk, how can I focus on physical therapy, keeping up with my appointments with my doctors, adapting to where I am in bed or in a wheelchair to be making the most of my life and really not view that as a booby prize? It's utterly heroic to focus on the possible rather than dwelling on the impossible. We've been talking about how to best take care of ourselves when we're in the middle of a long term illness or something serious. And it's so important that you recognize and that we all recognize that this is a time where we deserve our caring. And it's worth pausing because it's a concept that's easy to understand. But this isn't just a concept. This is a quality of you pausing and saying, I didn't do this to myself on purpose. This was not intentional. This wouldn't be easy for anybody in the world, and I deserve my own mercy and kindness. Sa.
