Fear Of The Flare [Your Chronic Illness Ally mini-series.]
So much of the time spent living with chronic illness is spent in fear - actually, I once read (can’t remember where, sorry!) that living with chronic illness means you’re living in a constant state of fight or flight; your nervous system is constantly in a sympathetic state. Whilst I don’t know how scientifically accurate that is, it was certainly true for me.
As we approached winter last year, and I hadn’t experienced a flare in close to 10 months (I said 12 in the podcast, sorry, I miscalculated!). I became a bit apprehensive as to whether I would flare because historically, winter = prime flaring ground for me (atopic skin friends, hello!)
In this episode, I talk about the fact that yes, I am flaring (albeit mildly), but mainly about how the work I’ve been doing over the past 18months/two years has completely changed my experience of what flaring means, or shall we say doesn’t mean, and why staying in a place of fixing, abandoning and measuring ourselves up against the societal expectations of a human being (which are a load of tosh!) means that we will always be controlled by chronic illness.
LISTEN HERE: