Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Do You Ever Feel Guilty When Your Health Is Good?

Life is unpredictable.  Living with an unpredictable, chronic, and degenerative disease such as RA or MS can be quite emotional.  The emotional roller coaster can be smooth at times or sometimes quite jerky and dangerous.  Lene’s recent post, Acceptance and RA: All Tangled Up in the What Ifs, illustrates that point well.

When life with RA keeps us from being able to do things, we might feel guilty.  Maybe we wish that we weren’t disappointing others, or even more likely, we sincerely hope not to disappoint ourselves.  A powerful feeling involved in this disappointment is GUILT.

Guilt can be insidious.  It serves to keep us down and tends to worsen our impression of its root cause (no matter what that cause, external or internal).  I’ll boldly say that most of the time we make ourselves feel guilty even when our loved ones are supportive and wish the best for us.  We feel guilty for not being able to do all the things we once were.  If we’re not careful that guilt can fester into a boiling self-hatred.

Whoa, hold up!!  Stop right there.

What if the guilt is not coming from the several things you can’t do, but from the things you CAN do?


Read this post in its entirety:

The Guilt of Remission and the Importance of Sharing

2 comments:

  1. Lisa, I don't know why I had trouble posting this comment on your linked article (brain fog?), but here is what I said.

    Go ahead and celebrate the good. Not only does it make the present nicer, but it creates great memories for when things are not so good.

    Judy

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  2. Thanks Judy!

    I agree that celebration is in order, especially when you can bottle up the wonderful feelings for when you need to drawn upon them later. Save a bit in a mental golden box to be brought out when life gets a little dark.

    :)

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