Hey there, friends!!! I hope that this past week has been good to you and treated you well. Today I’m going to dive a little bit more into what my life is like, especially on days when I really don’t feel well (which unfortunately is more times than not) and how I try to get through the day.
For the last few days, I have been feeling a bit low and just terrible overall. It’s difficult to explain to someone. It’s almost similar to when someone is ill, just a bit worse; there is an achiness all over your body mixed with feeling like you are in a fog, along with a pain that feels like you are being stabbed by a bunch of small knives all over your body. It’s overwhelming and it is very easy for me to get caught up inside of my head. I typically tend to doubt myself a lot when I go through this. I don’t know about you, but I am my own harshest critic — no one can hurt me more than myself.
The reason why I am telling you what I usually feel like on my “flare” days with my fibromyalgia is that I want to share with you what I experience on my bad days. I can’t help but notice that these “flare” days are when I get hard on myself the most. I am working on trying to treat myself a little bit kinder. I have a tendency to be hard on myself and I get upset with myself when I can’t do some of the things that I used to be able to do before I had fibromyalgia. It’s very easy for me to tell myself that I am an awful person now because of my fibromyalgia. I got upset with myself last night because I wasn’t as prepared for this blog post as much as I wanted to be for this morning. Thankfully, I wrote down some thoughts for today’s post in my journal last night that are helping me remember what I wanted to write today. I have to remind myself that it’s at least a good thing that I wrote notes last night.
In addition to working on being kinder to myself, I indulge myself in some of my favorite things. Personally, I am not usually someone who feels better by eating my feelings (I usually feel bloated and worse the next day after doing that). Do I like chocolate cake? Definitely, but it needs to be gluten-free so that I don’t get sicker than I already am. All jokes aside, if having gluten-free chicken alfredo for dinner sounds good, then of course I’ll have some. I just don’t want to seek out food each time that I go through a “flare” day — that’s not healthy for me. So, I make a point to show myself some self-love in other ways. I practice yoga at home (thanks to the power of YouTube) most days of the week. Or I do other things that sound good (i.e.: listening to relaxing music, journaling, taking a bath, watching TV shows that I enjoy binge-watching, crocheting, sewing projects, etc.). I am always amazed by how much good any of those activities bring into my life. I feel the pain all over my body all of the time. None of these activities erase my pain or make me forget about it, but that’s how loud my pain usually is. The only reason I can sleep at night is because of how exhausted I feel at the end of my day. But each of those activities helps me to reflect and they help me figure out how to get through my day-to-day. As silly as this sounds, I often do more than one thing at once. For example, last night I was eating my dinner while spending time with my fiance and watching an episode of Lucifer (a really good TV show that I recommend watching). My body felt slightly better last night while I got some much-needed calories in my system while watching a TV episode that makes us both laugh and is fun to watch together. My fiance and I both agree that it’s very important in our lives — having a sense of humor is what helps us cope with our lives.
I think that we all are our own worst critics, especially on days when we don’t feel well. Our mental health is just as important as our physical and emotional health. It’s important to live a balanced lifestyle so that we all feel our best as much as possible. That being said, it’s also important to let ourselves rest on days that we don’t feel well. It’s difficult and challenging to live like this. But it’s something that I think really helps me get through my day-to-day. This is something that I struggle with a lot, especially when I’m caught up in my head and mad at myself because I didn’t get done what I wanted to get done by the timeline that I had set for myself. For example, I was really upset with myself when I woke up this morning because I didn’t wake up as early as I wanted to so that I could get this posted earlier in the morning. But I am trying to not beat myself up about it. It’s not the end of the world just because I didn’t get this blog posted when I wanted to. It’s just as important for us to be kind to ourselves as it is just as important for us to push ourselves to be a better person. My dad taught me that at the end of the day, I am going to be the only person who is ever going to know how to take care of myself the best. I am glad that he taught me this. If I don’t take care of myself, who is going to? Don’t get me wrong — it’s not like I can’t count on my loved ones. I know that I can and I don’t know how many times they have helped me out. However, on the other side of the same coin, only I am going to know what is going to be good for me and what I need. I need to rely on myself because my loved ones can’t help me as much as I would like (and vice versa) because of the pandemic. At the end of the day, the only person who is going to best take care of me is myself. This is why I think that self-love is as important as it is.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Feel free to share with us some of your favorite things that you treat yourself to when you are looking to give yourself some self-love — I love hearing other people’s ideas. I hope that you will have a great week! Stay safe out there! Until next week, my friends! :-) ❤
