Why am I not "better" yet?

This is a question that often floods my mind. And is often a question we get from others. 

But it depends on whose idea of better we are going by. Mine, or yours. And that depends on the goal of healing. I spoke a little last week about receiving a diagnosis of Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and how crushing this was for me. Over the years I have used psychology, as well as Zen Buddhist concepts, to help me to let go of some of the shame and guilt I've felt. In all honesty I think the BPD diagnosis was one more thing I didn't need on top of cancer. Speaking with nurses and other patients since cancer, my reaction seems fairly normal. I remember the oncologist telling me they'd be worried if I wasn't scared, because being scared about cancer, about possibly dying, is totally normal. 

I do not believe healing to be linear. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes we see no progress, sometimes the progress is slow, or more obvious with it's rewards. I've found using a self-care app for keeping on top of this really helpful. The one I use has journal prompts, breathing exercises, mental health quiz etc. It's really helped to learn different techniques for healing through the app. I choose to pay for the premium service as it keeps me engaged in my self-care when I'm not able to engage in therapy. For me self-care is not about bubble baths and candles, although they are a nice treat, they aren't the mainstay of my routine. For me, self care is about looking after myself: taking my medication, taking time to sit with my feelings, doing a breathing exercise daily so that it becomes muscle memory.

In the past I was able to do more, go places, see people, socialise. Now I find these things so much harder. My energy runs out faster, pain disturbs my sleeping and I am often awake in the night, only to need a nap during the day.  I'm awake no less hours, but I'm doing the day in two separate shifts. This can be difficult while visiting folks. The travel itself is exhausting, every jolt adding to my pain level, my body keeping track of each bump or sudden shift. I am more sensitive to bright lights, loud noises and smells, leading to sensory overload. This can really zap my energy and leave me feeling tired and in pain from head to toe. I'd forgotten quite how draining it was until doing it fairly recently.  I don't do it often because my body isn't up to it. I am slowly learning to make other arrangements. I am slowly learning to say "no". And that I don't need an explanation as to why I can't, or why sometimes I can. Pain is unpredictable. I am slowly learning to change how I experience my pain by slowing down and succumbing to it, which sounds bleak but isn't. Personally I have found it liberating as I am listening to my body more and making changes for it's needs. This can be conflicting to other people's needs and opinion of me. But they don't have to live in my body, with the exhaustion that comes from chronic illness, and from cancer. I have had to learn to live at the pace of my body, and I've had to accept that that fluctuates constantly. Going against my body just causes unnecessary resistance, leading to pain and exhaustion.

I set very high goals. Only to feel like I have failed. This tendency toward perfectionism is something I have been trying to let go of, but like many things in life it has been slow and arduous. A great chapter in Jeffrey Marsh's book "Take your own advice" talks of this very subject and helps the reader to forgive themselves for these habits rather than beating themselves up. This act of self kindness can change the whole narrative. They often repeat the sentence "you were doing the best you could, with the information you had at the time" Jeffrey Marsh (2023). Learning what my body needed after cancer was a difficult process. And I know I am still in that process. In all honesty, before I got cancer, I don't think I ever asked myself what I truly needed, what my body truly needed. I had been living in survival mode for years. I had been living with undiagnosed endometriosis for who knows how long, each month my body wearing down, with no proper place to rest between jobs. I had no idea how to take care of myself. I also had a tendency to sort other people's problems while ignoring my own. I was ill, tired and hopeless. Moving to a house for the sake of my health gave me a place to rest. Rest is still something I am working on. 

I believe that it's perfectly acceptable to need to do things differently, just because we notice that we need to. There doesn't need to be a life altering diagnosis for us to think about what our body needs to thrive. And there are so many different ways to exist. Who gets to say what is normal or acceptable?

I have accepted that my health might not improve but my experience of it can. By making space for my self and tending my needs, I can have a less painful experience. When I ignore my body, it doesn't stop, it just gets louder. Until I have to stop and tend to it and nothing else. This halts any progress and mentally puts me back months. I think society puts pressure on us to do things a certain way. But having started to experiment with different ways to heal or deal with pain, I have found that it's very personal. I think it's one of the reasons why I loved Jeffrey's book so much, as they teach the reader to TRUST THEIR INTUITION. Not necessarily an easy task.

I think it's easy to assume we are doing a bad job and blame ourselves for "not doing well enough", "not being well enough". I am definitely one of these people. I have worked so hard at it, and felt like I got nowhere. Then I tried not trying and that made even less progress. Maybe trying to make progress is what is stopping me from healing. Maybe I am looking at the wrong thing entirely? And it occurs to me now that maybe for me to heal, personally, I must first get rid of this notion that there is progress. 

What if we accepted our half baked selves, slightly messy and irregular shaped. Our humanness. Our Mistakes!

Would this make it easier to feel "healed"? 

with Love Mx

Book reference

Jeffrey Marsh "Take your own advice" (2023)

Jeffrey Marsh | Trusted Mental Health Expert for High-Functioning Growth & Healing