Give your nervous system the gift of honoring your needs

Holidays are notoriously stressful. Among the many things that make this is a time of year stressful are that we’re under greater pressure to put everyone else first, and we may also feel like there’s a huge spotlight shining on any ways in which we’ve failed to meet the expectations of others. However, most of us who are chronically sick or in pain have these conditions precisely because we were already neglecting our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs in favor of what others expected of us (or worse, what we thought others expected of us).

Illness and pain force us to be selfish because that’s what we need in order to get healthy and whole again, and it’s only when we’re healthy and whole that we can give more effectively to others.

So this holiday season, I encourage you to welcome and allow the selfishness that your illness and pain are demanding of you. This selfishness is your body’s way of telling you what you need to get better, but it can go against our nature to put ourselves first. Here are some practices I found helpful:

1) Say no. If you don’t want to do something, say so. Even if you want to do something, but you suspect you don’t have the energy, then say no. Now, one of the big lessons for me was that I was so out of touch with myself that I had no clue what I actually wanted and didn’t want. As if saying no wasn’t hard enough, not even knowing what you want makes it especially complicated. The best way I found to deal with this was…

2) JournalSpeak. I found this to be mandatory when I was visiting with family (and I love my family!). Visiting with others is one of the few times I think it’s acceptable to bend the JournalSpeak rules a little bit. Grab your phone, step into a room or bathroom where you can have privacy for 5-10 minutes, and rage or grieve with your thumbs. Try to do this multiple times throughout the day, and then do a longer session before bed. This will help you access and process emotions as they arise, rather than adding them to the pile of repressed emotions. It will also help you tap into what you really want to do or not do, which will help you honor your body when it needs you to say no.

3) Rest/nap/meditate. During the day, take time to just rest and reconnect with your body. 20 minutes may be enough, especially if you have a guided meditation or yoga Nidra practice that you like. But if you need an hour or more, take it. I found it helpful to plan “nap times” in advance, so that I knew I would be lying down at certain times, but I also took these rests as I needed them. I’ve even taken a 20 minute nap/relaxation in a car and met up with people after.

4) Remind people that this is what you need so that you can get healthy again and do more with them later.

5) Remember that you’re not alone in this.

It can be really hard to be around people who have sufficient energy and who don’t understand why you’re not healthy yet. It can be hard to deal with people who mean well but who give terrible advice because they haven’t been where you are. It can be hard to deal with people who have had something similar happen to them, but who were able to recover using techniques or treatments that didn’t work for you. It can be hard to be around children who don’t understand why you can’t give them the attention they crave.

It can be hard to remember that there are so many people in the world who do actually understand what you’re going through.

One of the things that happens with these types of conditions is that it can feel so alienating and isolating, which are feelings that wreak havoc on our nervous systems. But there really are a lot of people who understand what you’re going through and would empathize with you if they could.

This newsletter only has a small readership right now, but if any of you are interested in joining a group call, just to connect with others who are also working through this process, please reach out to me, and I can see about organizing something.

My next newsletter will be out in January, and in the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!