**Trigger Warnings: Depression, blood, needles, pain**
Mental health has been a taboo topic for decades, and unfortunately it still is. What my main concern for this post is, talking about the mental health of the chronically ill.
Mental health often takes the back burner when it comes to dealing with chronic illnesses, most often, because we are so focused on survival. Living with a chronic illness requires patience, and determination, not only from the person suffering, but also from those around them. This is often times where issue comes in, as most of us deal with pain on a daily basis, and comparatively have more stressors than the “normal” folk.
As a Diabetic with a pump, the stress of maintaining sugar levels, constantly checking my diet, and changing infusion sets, become a major cause of stress. These small stressors seem insignificant to those who do not have to experience it, and repeatedly being stressed by them, seems like a frugal thing. But it’s not. It is not frugal. Every pinch of a needle, every drop of blood, every spike, cause me to question my own abilities. Yes, I know that these are recurring activities that I am obligated to perform, and that they are inevitable for me, but they also cause me a lot of pain and suffering. For those who do not know what I am talking about, I have to prick my body with a 6mm cannula every 3 days, for the rest of my life; on good days, it takes only one infusion set, but on the bad ones, it can go upto 5 infusion set changes.
As I have previously spoken about the toll of these everyday activities, I have not gone in depth with the perception of pain, and how important it is to have a safe space to vent out in. Pain is perceived differently by different individuals, mainly depending on their tolerance of pain. Here, I use pain not just in the physical sense, but also, and majorly, in the psychological sense.
Psychologically, we perceive pain a lot differently than someone who is suffering from an acute illness. With acute illnesses, you know that it will end soon, but for chronic illnesses, the pain and suffering is lifelong. And repetitive. This repetition causes many caregivers to get frustrated and change their attitudes about the individual in their care. Many patients then begin to feel like a burden, and often fall into depression.
Depression is just one of the things that manifest from chronic illness. But a further issue is not having a safe space to heal in. Given the taboo surrounding mental health, it becomes difficult to get into therapy without the noise of unnecessary judgements. Therapy is meant to be a secure, and judgement free space for any individual, with the role of the therapist being amelioration of the individual. Therapy empowers a person to face their fears and overcome them. As well as, learn how to deal with stress, and negative emotions. Most importantly, it is a place where someone like me, can complain about my pain in each session, and not feel like a burden. It is important to empower individuals with chronic illnesses and help the get out of the damaging cognitions that have risen in their minds. Pain is not avoidable, but the suffering is. And if the suffering can be reduced, people like me will find ourselves in a much healthier mental space. I’ll end with a quote from Charles Bukowski, “We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain”.
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