Are You Making Space for Your Illness?
Have you ever noticed how nature has this way of filling up space? Nature loathes a space, so it will fill it up if you don’t. An example is when you step in the sand, nature will fill your footprint back up with a gust of wind or a wave washing over it. When you lost your baby teeth, new teeth filled the spaces.
Take a moment and look at your junk drawer. Is it full?
Now, look at your closet. How about your garage? Your storage unit? Your linen closet? Your desk? All full?
How about your life?
Your mind?
Pretty full, I bet.
Yeah, mine too.
What’s this have to do with having an illness?
We are subject to nature’s ways. Our lives revolve around filling voids. If something is empty (our home, mind, body, etc.), it won’t be long before it is filled with something.
Here are some things humans tend to hold onto:
Security and comfort
Memories
Money
Food
People
Stuff (objects, belongings)
Roles and expectations
Habits
An image
Achievements
Health
Beliefs and ideas
Rules
Keeping the peace
We live in a culture that tells us to keep attaching to more. Marriage, house, children, work, money, friends, hobbies, service, and health all require our time, attention, and energy. But we don’t have an unlimited supply of time, attention, or energy.
We grip so tightly to these things that there isn’t room for something new.
What happens then, when life throws a big curveball, like an illness, and we don’t have space for it?
I’ll tell you what happens. Because it’s the main reason, most of my clients start therapy.
We get sicker. The illness gets bigger, stronger, and more relentless.
Clients come to me with one goal: to keep their illness under control. This comes in many forms of avoidance. They fight, run, hide, deny, medicate, ignore, blame, etc. They essentially initiate a battle against making space for their illness. They buy into a belief that opening up to their illness means that they are surrendering to its power. They wage war against it because they know that making space also means giving up other things. And the result of giving up other things is grief - heart-wrenching, all-consuming grief.
When I got sick, getting rid of my illness seemed like the practical thing to do. I got so preoccupied with controlling every aspect of it (so that I didn’t have to give up other things in my life), I didn’t know what to do with my emotions. So they came out in brutal ways. As I battled more, I suffered more.
Avoidance like this leads to more problems. Because two things cannot take up the same space, the illness will start permeating everything. You’ll be forced to give things up, whether you like it or not. The choice to engage in the battle causes even more problems. You can’t focus at work, and your performance sucks. There’s tension in your marriage. You feel like a Negative Nelly every time you see your friends. You aren’t spending quality time with your kids. You begin to think that you’re a total fuck up because your life is falling apart.
So now you’re sick, you can’t get your shit together, and you hate yourself.
Not a winning combination.
Here’s my invitation to you: If you have acquired a health condition, make space for it. Sit down with a pen and paper and list all the things that are essential in your life. Remove everything that will get in the way of you being able to welcome your illness and focus on your health. Set boundaries. Strengthen your “no” muscle. Focus on what’s important.
And secondly, allow the grief to come. Grief is a natural and expected part of accommodating anything new into your life because it also means losing something else. If you don’t allow the grief to flow, it will take up space in its own way, perhaps when you’re not expecting it and at an inconvenient time.
