“My life has a great set of characters; I just haven’t figured out the plot.”
I recently had the opportunity to work with a client in a coaching capacity, unrelated to lupus. She called me to help her objectively evaluate what her priorities are and chunk them into an achievable action plan that she will follow through with. She actually knows everything she needs to do, but, because she over thinks everything, nothing was getting done. That habit of thinking things to death leads her to feeling to “overwhelmed” and having me there to go through the process with her, she tells me, always energizes her to accomplish her goals. It isn’t because I have magic powers or specialized knowledge that things get done or even the financial incentive to be paying me to join her. What is truly happening is that she is with someone who she can talk to about her goals, her thoughts about how to get her jobs done and have someone there to make it fun. The fact that I do organizing and small business administrative support work helps, but it is just the opportunity to team up that brings in that energy. She usually follows up our sessions with an email telling me how her “Maria fix” is still lingering and that makes me feel great to know I’ve helped.
While working with her on taking a look at what she already does do and knows, I gained some insight myself on how I should also be resisting the urge to think too much and simply work with I already do and know about my health. In the beginning of our adjustments to all the new health-related symptoms (even when we’ve lived with illness for awhile), we have a sense of urgency in learning as much as we can about particular symptoms and how they will affect our lives. Sometimes that urgency can get carried away and we tend to forget that our gut instincts have done an amazing job already in evaluating the ‘data’, yet we get too distracted to listen to what our intuition is telling us.
Without exact medical science and much public awareness, lupus is a pretty solitary journey. We share our lives with others, but only we personally understand what lupus is about. Even among a group of people with lupus, you will find a wide diversity in diagnosis, support network, symptoms, economic status, education, emotions, behaviors, goals and so forth. The importance of having trust for our own judgments can sometimes be dismissed by family, friends, doctors and ourselves. I know I seek out more and more information when trolling the blogs, bulletin boards, websites and social networking sites, convinced that I’ve missed something. Eventually, I realize that I am missing something… my own instincts about what works for me and trusting what I already know.
I believe that I have learned the most from individuals who are just beginning their life with illness, mainly because I suspect that their use of intuition is most acute. Since we haven’t accumulated the reams of paper on every topic yet, our need to understand what is happening still includes a sense of openness to learning about ourselves. Every situation is different and talking with others who are jumping on board the “L” train offers me many options to do things better, easier, quicker and with more self-forgiveness —despite how I had already learned those lessons many times over. So, why do I keep listening to the same old recommendations and encouragements if I already know I need to do them? What makes me think that visiting a chronic guru, who tells me the same thing I read from a book, will change the fact that I’m not doing it? Why does this client achieve so much from me helping her do what she really could do for herself?
If you look more closely, you will see that the many bloggers and writers out there are not cured nor have they achieved enlightenment nor sainthood from their struggles. Indeed, they are doing just what we all are doing—the best they can, each and every day. Yet, with all the name recognition and glitter, it is easy to assume that they are different than we are, better off than we are, stronger than we are, and so on. We flock to them for information that we obviously are missing, otherwise we would be doing and feeling better about our illnesses, right? What they offer really isn’t wisdom about living with illness, just as what I offer my clients isn’t rocket science. What is really being offered is simply ‘opportunity’.
When we take in too much information or create too many options, we lose our way because our brains are wired to only be able to process a certain amount of information at a time. That is why we are hearing how multi-tasking is actually less effective in getting jobs done well. Sometimes, we need a ‘tour guide’ to get us around our own thoughts and that is all I do for clients.
The opportunity to share in a dialogue of what is most pressing in our lives, like living with illness, is out there and it benefits us to occasionally invest in participating so that we can apply all that information we’re spending hours accumulating. Maybe investing on one topic or one experience is all you need and that may just open the dam for more energy and inspiration. You may share a similar thought through a “tweet” on Twitter or some mutual friends on Facebook. One day you may be doing well with lupus and the next day you find yourself needing to vent to someone who ‘knows’. The value in connecting with others, reading what others write and listening to others’ life experiences isn’t just to dwell on illness— it is to celebrate the rest of those parts that we are made of—one step or one day at a time.
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This is part one of a two part introduction to our current book discussion. This month we are talking about Despite Lupus: How To Live Well With Lupus with the author Sara Gorman. We encourage you to pick up the book , visit her website, learn more about her in our May post or read our review of her book.
Part Two will be posted tomorrow that will have Sara’s introduction for the discussion group already available on the Shelfari.com book group under “MLWT Book Discussion Group”.
