Psychology Problems Advice Info

Chronic illness involves more than physical symptoms.  There are the psychological and emotional symptoms as well.  These, along with the physical, demand immediate attention, can disrupt the family, and include losses.

IT’S NATURAL

All the odd feelings are natural when your life has been hit with a chronic illness.  It’s natural to worry about your health, family, and job. You face the unknown.  It’s as though you’ve been dropped off in a foreign country to be tortured.  Friends make no contact when you cannot attend social activities. You feel completely alone when even physicians won’t take you seriously.  Because they react that way, you feel guilty and inadequate. Anger threatens to overwhelm you. You’re scared for the lack of control. The longer the illness goes undiagnosed, the lower your self-esteem gets. Usually with a crisis, you physically work off tension, but with an undiagnosed chronic illness, you live in another world almost unable to cope. If you must take medications, there are the side effects to deal with.  You feel as though you are in a salt timer, your life turned upside down. These are natural feelings and concerns.

“Part of us does die when we can no longer live as we did in the past,” said the Rev. David W. Carlisle, DeKalb, IL, former district superintendent of United Methodist Churches, in one of his sermons.

FEAR

When I first experienced heart valve pain, I knew it was an attack of some kind.  However, my mind wouldn’t consider it a heart attack.  I stood, looking out the front door, with my nose against one of the small panes, and thought what a terrible situation I was in. Suddenly a crushing pain smashed my chest with such force, I couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened like an opera singer’s as I gasped for air. At the same time, I stepped back in a feeble, instinctive attempt to get away from the pain.  After four giant steps, a sharp, sword-like pain sliced through near my breast bone, doubling me over. Then all pain was gone. I stood in wonder that so much had happened so fast.

I can usually laugh away odd, occasional pains. I knew this was serious. Get it checked out. After a cardiogram, we knew the pain hadn’t been a heart attack, but what could cause such severe pain?

A prolapsed valve.

One evening my older children cornered me to ask if I were dying.  I laughed but quickly realized how serious these young ones thought.  Was their mother going to be with them at Christmas?  What was this strange sickness that eluded the physicians?  Fear breathed in their emotions like oxygen in their bodies. “When I come home, I never know if I’ll find you dead or alive,” my husband told the disabilities judge at my hearing.

ANGER

Chronic illness always arrives when at an inappropriate time. When would an appropriate time be in anyone’s life? Never.

For me the time had arrived for me to head into the world to do my thing.  I’d raised our children.  I had my journalism degree. It was my turn—my rightful turn—to start my career, to help with the family finances, and to move beyond home work to business work.  I was angry at the illness for coming and at God for allowing it.

Later as I learned how to live with my symptoms, I had to sort through this anger and realize my identity could not hinge on what I do.

My youngest child reached in anger to me and indirectly to my illness.  She needed attention, both disciplinary and loving, but I couldn’t give it to her in the way she wanted.  Always, in my deepest anguish, this daughter and her need for a mother pulled me out of my self to find the answers.

My husband’s anger was directed toward the physicians.  “They only practice medicine,” he’d say in a rough tone.

FRUSTRATION

Out of anger rose frustration.  Frustration toward anything. Everything went wrong. As I learned, an attitude comes from how one views situations. If you’re joyful and happy, even the toughest frustration is seen in light. When one has been continually frustrated, denied, and rejected, soon you become like Pavlov’s dog, conditioned to expect situations to go wrong.

DEPRESSION

Need I explain the why of depression?  How can one not be depressed when she knows her illness is chronic and won’t go away? Every physician who examines her says her health regimen is the best he can offer. Suppression of feelings makes a person and often alienates her from others.

HELPLESSNESS

When you have a chronic illness, you often feel helpless, especially when yesterday you felt fine and today you are in pain. What is different?

When you’re out of control with your illness, your fear can grow into agoraphobia, a term for fear of open, public places.

Again this is natural not to want to leave a secure environment. We have to learn to manage our environment and reduce our fears.  We have to rebuild our confidence and relearn how to balance our lives. This includes the family.

LONELINESS

Other people don’t know how to handle chronic illness any better than we do. They have their lives to live, and they can’t stop point blank and sit at our bedside. That’s not what we actually want.  Maybe a phone call, a visit, a letter or note, some form of communication that tells us they care.

Most people want to give answers. They only want to help, but what a chronic illness patient needs is others’ support, their faith in you, and their nearness. Otherwise, those chronically ill feel lost or in limbo.

It’s natural to feel this way.  I doubted I would return to my life prior to my chronic illness. What about the future?  I couldn’t live like I was. Or could I?

RELATIONSHIPS

Sickness can wreck havoc on any relationship, especially long-term ones such as marriage.  When a friend‘s husband left her because he couldn’t handle her chronic illness, she had a nervous breakdown.  How could she support three children when she couldn’t work outside the home?

“I just went crazy,” she said.  “I couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility, knowing what the answers were.”

For my friend, disability didn’t apply because she had worked only in her home.  She solicited a sensible, reliable attorney who won her child support and alimony.  With counseling and financial support, she got her life together, and she and her children do well.

Your children, depending on their age, need to know what is happening in your life for it affects them. You need to explain according to their level of understanding.

Your parents, your sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, all close to you are affected by your illness.  They might want to help you, they might disbelieve you, and all the in between.  Your illness affects everyone in your life.

NATURAL REACTIONS

These emotions are natural for our situation.  That phrase, it’s natural, should put a small part of you at ease, give you hope that you are responding naturally to a life-changing illness.

“You are not crazy,” Kristine Scordo, PhD. and director of the Cincinnati MVP Clinic, assures her patients.

You are sane and have good inner responses to listen to, even if physicians, nurses, friends, and relatives don’t believe you.  Never consider yourself crazy or inferior because of your illness.  You need not feel inadequate because of being ill.  You are as special with a chronic illness as you were before it.

©2008