Finding It Hard To Be Well?
One of the goals of a therapeutic approach to losing weight is to resolve and release the stress triggers which can lead to carrying excess weight. With obesity often comes Type 2 Diabetes or a diagnosis of pre-diabetes.
Rates of obesity are increasing year upon year, and so is the incidence of Diabetes. There is an insightful quote in Jeff O’Connells’s book called ‘Sugar Nation’.
He wrote, “The truth is, by the time you have or even flirt with type 2 Diabetes, there’s probably a lot more out of whack with your life than just blood sugar‘.
In my work I find this to be very much the case. My therapy approach includes reframing and changing the mindset to enable people to alter their habits, adopt healthier lifestyles and create the life they want.
Living With A Chronic Disease
For my clients living with a chronic disease, it is common for them to feel utterly overwhelmed with the degree of medical intervention they are dealing with on a day to day basis. Complex drug regimes can leave you feeling as though you have little or no part to play in achieving your best life.
Sound Familiar?
Feeling powerless is counter-productive to optimising your health and well-being and can keep you stuck in self-limiting beliefs and negative thinking. Powerlessness does not leave you with access to your emotional resources or personal resilience to draw upon to help you do whatever you need to improve your health outcomes.
It can leave you feeling as if your whole life is one long duvet day with your head under the covers.
Are You Newly Diagnosed?
When newly diagnosed with a chronic illness a person can experience feelings of grief similar to bereavement. The person mourns their previous sense of self and all its future possibilities.
They often struggle to accept what is happening to them and can stay in a period of denial for quite some time. This denial can coincide with poor drug compliance or a delay in starting treatment. This can make the long-term prognosis worse.
Other emotions that present can be issues around not deserving to be well. Self-blame, anger, long-buried resentment at others, frustration, self-punishment, and fear can all appear.
What Could Your Secondary Gains Be?
On top of feeling unwell, all these emotions are exhausting and can wear you down. When not taking care of oneself there are also secondary gains to be considered however uncomfortable that idea may be. Secondary gains are ‘benefits’ from being in any given position or state. They do not have to be positive and still count as secondary gains if the impact of them is negative for the person experiencing them.
In therapy work, these can be safely explored so that they can be released. It is only then that self-forgiveness and the development of self-worth and ultimately self-love can become the dominant feelings. These are crucial steps on the journey of living as well as one can.
An illness can also provide a person with a voice or a narrative when they felt they were not heard in the past. Although having an illness can be a ‘successful’ strategy for gaining attention a person pays a high price for this to be their voice.
Stumbling Blocks To Well-Being
It is always worthwhile using hypnosis to explore what a medical condition might ‘say’ for the person suffering it.
A therapeutic goal would be to reframe those feelings or emotions so that the person felt able to have their emotional needs met in new and different and more empowering ways.
Scientific evidence recognises that type 2 diabetes, for instance, can respond more favourably to changes in lifestyle more than the current drug regimes. Stepping up and making changes that can positively impact on one’s health is a big ask for someone whose self-esteem is on the floor and who feels it’s their fault they are unwell in the first place.
The desire to thrive can be blocked for a myriad of reasons and therapy can clear away those blocks to achieve your best self.
You can begin to feel more peaceful and accept everything that has brought you to this place in your life, and from there you can have a profound and beneficial impact on your health. Not just diabetes but all illnesses are exacerbated, to a degree, by cortisol hormone, a by-product of adrenaline, which is triggered by stress.
So, what this post aims to share today is that whatever health concerns you have, and we all have some, therapy is a powerful way to start making changes in how you think and feel about yourself so that you can star in your own life.
Make contact If you are feeling overwhelmed by your health issues and not sure how to move forward to maximise your health potential, then you can book an obligation free discovery call with me to find out what may be blocking your journey towards health and well-being.
Thanks for this Sally. I have PCOS. I had no idea that I was unwell, and would need to take medication for pretty much the rest of my life… And I had no idea that I needed to renew my prescription every month or how to do that. No one gives you a manual on “How to manage your illness”. My hubby is very positive, so I didn’t fall into a heap and cry. I felt relief from the diagnosis and that with medication I could feel “normal” again. Whatever normal feels like…
Thanks for commenting. PCOS is quite a challenge Sarah and it’s great you’re supported and not on your own with all this. You’re right about there not being a manual to handle your illness. Everyone gets to reinvent the wheel all over again or that’s how it can feel. Enjoy your ‘normal.’