Why Living With a Chronic Disease Shouldn't Be a "Battle"

How many times have you described living with a chronic disease as "a battle"?

Maybe you said it when, after weeks of feeling awesome, you barely feel like crawling out of bed. 

Or maybe you were at a restaurant you thought had a gluten free menu...but it didn't end up being celiac safe. 

Or maybe you didn't say it all, but thought it as you tried - and failed - to get a stranger to understand that your invisible illness is 100% real. 

The point is, when you're coping with a chronic disease, it's easy to see life as a battle between you and your body. But it doesn't have to be that way. 

As Brenda commented on one of my previous posts, "I don't claim illness over my life. I speak health over my life. I try not to even use the term 'battle.' I don't want to be in a battle."

And as I read her words, I realized: the choice is ours. True, we can't say that about many aspects of living with a chronic disease. With celiac disease, I can't choose for my body to normally digest gluten. With fibromyalgia, I can't choose to wake up pain-free.

But I can decide to enjoy my gluten free diet and be thankful that my body works well when I eat gluten free. I can follow an exercise and stretching plan that minimizes my pain. 

Even more importantly, I can decide to stop seeing my body as the enemy. So much of our body is not under our control, we may forget that we have any control at all. Now is the time to remember. Now is the time to realize that, yes, our body may often misbehave and has plenty of flaws. However, our best friends and family members make the same infractions - and we still love them.

So what does living in peace - instead of in a battle - with your chronically ill body look like? 

Research on the empowerment of patients with chronic illnesses suggests that peace involves:

• Understanding your health condition and its effect
• Make informed decisions about your medical treatment and challenging medical professionals when necessary 
• Accepting and enacting lifestyle changes to help your condition
• Seeking out, evaluating and using information about your health condition

Basically, when you aren't battling your body, you're accepting responsibility for your health and care, striving to make the right treatment choices and doing your best to live healthfully. 

In daily life, though, peace can have different faces. For me, it means avoiding weight workouts for a few weeks (even though I love them) because weights sometimes trigger a fibro flare. It also means accepting that my stomach will randomly bloat - and, instead of stressing over it, eating normally and trusting that the bloat will subside. 

Especially if you're newly diagnosed, it may feel scary to accept that a chronic disease does - and probably always will - play a big role in your life. Accepting your illness might feel like accepting that your body or quality of life will never improve. However, it's important to differentiate fighting your body and fighting for progress. 

You can love your body - and maybe even appreciate your chronic illness - and still strive to improve it. For instance, I will never stop trying to increase my body's stamina or better my stomach's digestion. Starting today, though, I am going to try to remove "battle" from my chronic illness vocabulary. 

Because, like Brenda says, I don't want to be in a battle. I don't want to wake up every morning knowing that I need to fight through the day. 

What I do want to wake up saying? Something like: "I don't know how - or what - my body is going to do today. But whatever happens, I can choose to call today a good day."

Like this article? Then tweet by clicking here: "Are you #battling a #chronicillness? You don't have to. Why living w/ a #chronicdisease shouldn't be a #battle."

Ultimately, you decide what a truce between yourself and your chronic illness looks like. Similarly, you'll need to develop your own coping strategies for chronic illness. However, remember the phrase: "You decide." It's is a reminder of the personal control and empowerment no chronic disease can ever take away. 

*Also found at the Fibro Blogger Directory, Saturday Sharefest, Dare to Share*

Have you ever compared living with your chronic illness to fighting a battle? Any other thoughts? Tell me in the comments!